Wow, I can’t believe it’s so long since my last post.  I’ve been working so hard I’ve lost all track of time.  My BANS store tally now stands at 25!  I’ve got my eyes on more domains and I have set a target to reach 75 stores by the end of the year.  Right now this post is acting as a brake to enable me to think about what I have learned and the mistakes I’ve made on my journey so far.

Since my last post I’ve been catching some very interesting views on BANS over at BloggerUnleased.  Really interesting stuff and very different from Marks approach at thenichestorebuilder.  Which is the better method?  Well, that’s an interesting question and what I will say is that there are many ways to skin a cat.  You will learn a lot from both of these guys so I recommend taking there RSS feeds through Google Reader to keep an eye on what they are up to.  I have also run through Marks entire BANS Empire series again and found it made more sense this time.  I also grasped a couple of concepts that blew straight past me the first time which shows the benefit of practice and experience.

My biggest learning point so far has to be niche selection and keyword selection which I’m finally getting my head around.  You can enter a saturated market if you can find high demand low competition keywords and rank well for those phrases.  Probably half of my stores have been built on high demand and high competition keywords so it isn’t too surprising sales have been low.  As I add additional categories and pages for more longtail keywords I expect traffic to rise.

I am very aware that I need to do more to generate traffic as I’ll go broke waiting to rank in the SERPS.  Because of the success contacts I know have had with BANS I hoped to be doing a bit better than I am in terms of earnings and I guess I just haven’t found a great niche yet so I am considering nichebot and another niche tool to see if they can help me get great focus on markets with potential.

As for traffic generation for existing stores I’m going to work on putting up USfreeads next week 2-4 per store so that should keep me busy!  For the first week since I started I will not be putting up a new store (unless I change my mind of course – lol).

I still have concerns with the Ebay Partner Network.  Yesterday my stats showed a big jump nearly all attributed to one store which, until that point, had only had a dozen or so hits.  Sorry guys but I’m not buying that there were 500 hits to that store yesterday.

After seeing steady growth in traffic and sales I was surprised to see that I had no clicks and no sales yesterday.  I find this difficult to comprehend and like many others I am starting to believe there is a bug in the ebay partner network tracking systems – it makes no sense.  My stats show increased numbers of visitors for Wednesday and I can’t believe no one clicked through to ebay.

I also discovered I had a total of 8 stores in various stages of phase 1 development – a couple have even made sales!  How has this happened?  Well, truth be told some stores just take longer to put together than others and I get bored and move on to another job.   Of course, this is not a trend that could have been allowed to continue so I completed 3 and now have 5 remaining.

Temptation also gets in the way.  I do a bit of niche research every day and I’ve identified 10 new niches 3 or 4 of which I’m very excited about.  Being human, the first thing I want to do is buy these domains and start building the stores immediately putting the others to one side.  This is not good and I am attempting to put off buying more domains until I have finished the current batch of developments.

On the tool front, yesterday I came across Article Submitter & Directory Submitter from Brad Callen.  I already own Keyword Elite but I hadn’t seen these other two products.  What’s more they can be downloaded for FREE.  I’m sure they’ll have limited feature sets and that there is bound to be a pro version but I will check them out and feedback to you guys in the near future.  If you’d like to check them out for yourself you’ll find more information here.

One of the most important aspects to building BANS stores is establishing a routine.  You can just stick up a store and leave it there, but, truth be told you’re unlikely to make any decent money.  As of today I have 17 stores either in Phase 1 or Phase 2 Development (see previous posts for definition).  These have been developed in 4 weeks so I’m moving pretty fast although I do this pretty much full time.

Moving so quickly I have had to develop a routine which goes something like this:

• Update BANS today Blog

• Spend 1 hour per day per store on a maximum of 4 stores in Phase 2 Development.  Tasks include optimizing pages, creating new pages, adding graphics, checking logs, identifying keywords, creating content, writing content for supporting blogs, creating ads, building  backlinks etc.

• Spend 1 hour per day browsing the BANS forum and reading BANS related blogs (see my blogroll links) although I use Google Reader for this purpose as you can just subscribe to the RSS Feed.  Side note – if you don’t have an RSS feed for your own blog learn how to set one up immediately.  Google Reader is a brilliant tool.   Learning new stuff is crucial and this has been invaluable to me in acclerating my progress.  Yesterday, for example, I learned that all sites should have a privacy policy and how to easily add one to your store – thanks again to Rochelle.  Writing that has reminded me to post a request in the BANS forum that this be automatically included in the next release.
• On an adhoc basis Jot down ideas for new stores and carry out research on suitability for new stores.  I have identified at least 10 additional stores this way and it takes away the pain of concentrated research which I dislike.

Earnings Update

So have I broken the bank?  Well I’ve already reported some numbers but today I’ll give exact figures by broad niche.  My first store went live a couple of days before the release of BANS 3.0 EPN and the changes caused set me back a couple of days although I purchased BANS 18 March according to my receipt.  I said yesterday that my one month anniversary was approaching but it had actually passed so as an act of compromise  I’m going to give my one month update today.

So here we go (nos are rounded):

Womens Fashion $48.00
Outdoor Sport $14.00
Electrical $5.00
Garden $5.00
Crystal $4.00
Fishing $4.00
Fitness $3.00
Audio $1.50
Gardening $0.50

Giving a total to date of $85.00

I have 6 sites yet to make a sale and a couple of others yet to generate any traffic.  My biggest disappointment is a store in the home appliance area which after nearly a month has had 209 click thrus to ebay but no sales.

So I don’t know what your expectations are for earnings after one month but I am pretty pleased.  I have done very little to drive traffic at this stage all of these sales have come from SERPS.  As I start promotions under Phase 2 I hope to see these numbers start to increase

I thought I should give a plug to Rochelle over at Nice Store Strategies who runs a great blog full of great information.  Store optimization is the key to BANS success and it is really necessary to keep good records of your progress.  Rochelle developed a Niche Store Checklist which also includes some really cool “how to” links that will help position your stores ahead of the competition.  Check out her site.

I don’t tend to post to my blogs much at weekends but that doesn’t mean to say I haven’t been working. When developing an existing store I tend to do this in 1 to 2 hour blocks. If you’ve followed my posts you’ll know I am at a phase 2 development stage with a number of stores. That is, the store is built, link building outsourced and I am looking to add store pages, content and pretty things up a little.

Well following the recent ebay category changes a number of my stores were not displaying sub-categories correctly. For example, changes have been made to electric guitars which no longer display by brand e.g. gibson, fender etc. This meant each sub category displayed the same instruments which means I have to make changes and add search filters.

Have you reviewed your stores to make sure all sub-category pages display properly still? If not you’re store will look half complete or abandoned. I easily identified half a dozen other BANS stores (not mine) that have this problem and easily confuse visitors.

On another note, I notice I am rapidly approaching my first month anniversary as a BANS member and I will prepare a detailed post to summarize progress including earnings. I had a slow couple of days with no sales coming into the weekend but my earnings currently stand at $65. Will BANS pay for itself in a month? Stay tuned to find out.