BANS Today

Build A Niche Store Challenges

Written by mbpage on April 10, 2008

Yes the title says it all,  yesterday was a real challenge and full of frustration.  I completed my eleventh store to a phase 1 level but fully intended to get to 12.  Unfortuately the 12th site created nothing but problems.  I was looking at a niche of electric guitars but when the data import ran nothing was categorizing correctly.  I thought this may have been down to some of the recent BANS changes so I deleted the entire store and database and did a clean install.  It made no difference.  I puzzled over this for an hour or so did another install and still the same result.

I decided to put it to one side and move on by undertaking some research into new niches.  This was pretty time consuming but I have now purchased a further 6 domains for my next projects.  When I hit 12 stores I will slow the pace of development to 1 or 2 new stores per week and focus on building the existing ones through addition of adsense, affiliate progs, and developing the template banners.  I have bigger plans but I will outline these when the phase 2 development kicks off.

The 12th store will be completed by Friday so I’ll be kicking in to phase 2 developments on Monday if all goes to plan.

Feedburner

Written by mbpage on April 9, 2008

You may notice that I’ve just added an RSS feed to the site via Feedburner. It’s not quite set up as I wanted but it seems to work. This stuff is all new to me so if anyone knows how I display the RSS logo and enable email sign ups please let me know.

Developing BANS Templates, Adsense & Commission Junction

Written by mbpage on April 9, 2008

One of the first sites I developed has now been indexed by Google and I decided to use the opportunity to place adsense on the site, a couple of CJ banners and develop the logo and template.  As a quick aside it may be worth mentioning that I was taught not to add adsense until after the site had been indexed.  It supposedly increases the frequency of googlebot visits to your site if you do it this way and helps with your ranking.

I’m very pleased with the results which you can check out for yourself here.

I got the template from Mark at thenichestorebuilder. Mark’s generosity is quite incredible and you’ll see him mentioned a lot in this blog. If anyone is going to help me make it is Mark.

This was an interesting exercise as it was the first time I have put adsense on a page. Google makes this very easy you set up your adblock choosing size, colors etc. and paste the code block into your chosen template. I strongly advise anyone using adsense to match it with the site colors. I use a fantastic free little utility called Pixie to help me do this. It is absolutely brilliant. If anyone knows of another tool that can do the same thing with fonts please let me know.

I then added some CJ banners for a couple of stores. This was a little more complex as the formating was off. I did my first ever HTML tuturiol courtesy of w3schools and soon found out how to position the image so it displayed correctly - I surprised myself as I was pretty nervous playing with code.

This was swiftly followed by first Photoshop experience in banner building. Again I am delighted with the results. I need to learn a bit about shadow effects but that’s just being picky at the moment.

I now have a total of 9 BANS sites developed to a phase 1 level and 1 at phase 2. This being the example above. I am on target to hit 12 by the end of this week after which I will develop 1 new site a week and start to develop the others. My intention is to spend 1 hour per week on each site for the next 3 months or so.

I am only making sales on one site at the moment and my income stands at approx $30.00

Checking Backlinks

Written by mbpage on April 8, 2008

Just a quickie to say I have found a great tool for checking backlinks.  It is from SEO Pro and can be found here.  It is very useful to verify any linking work outsourced to a third party such as Submit Edge and best of all it’s free.

Build A Niche Store (BANS) Progress Report

Written by mbpage on April 8, 2008

I now have 9 sites live which have completed the phase 1 build. This means I have researched the niche, registered a domain, installed BANS V3 EPN, configured the basic site, researched long tail phrases for main page categories, set up a minimum of 10 store pages including meta title, description and keys. This flows through to the all important sitemap the data from which is then used to populate the backlinks form via Submit Edge.

At this stage the templates are mostly plain grey and contain no graphics or content.

I have investigated the sales I referenced yesterday and discovered someone actually searched for my domain name. As the site is virtually unindexed this shows the power of a good domain name.

I really like BANS and whilst a simple concept I do worry (as most people do) whether or not I am doing everything right. The answer is, of course, that I’m not. I’ve only been doing this for two and a bit weeks and there is still a lot to learn. However, I can really see the potential (motivated by my sale) and whilst I have no expectation of any further quick sales I can see how these daily actions add to the long term goal of generating $100,000 per anuum in BANS income.

I Make My First Sale

Written by mbpage on April 7, 2008

As suspected my opportunities to work on my sites this weekend were limited but I did get to grips with BANS 3 EPN and created a RAW directory on my Hostgator account and took care of the installs for the 4 new domains I bought on Friday. By hosting a RAW directory you can set up a new store template in less than 1 minute which is much quicker than uploading a new store every time.

I also checked all my existing stores were working correctly following the EPN upgrade and found one with the wrong tracking id. Everything else worked fine and again I owe a huge debt of thanks to Mark at the nichestorebuilder for producing a video showing what you need to check.

I also made my first sale! I was staggered to say the least as I have done nothing to promote the site other than the backlink strategy via SubmitEdge. The site currently contains no graphics and is simply a plain BANS out of the box template. Mark had said making the site look pretty was unimportant compared to getting a dozen or more sites up and running quickly and I guess this proves the point. I made approx $27.00.

Bringing You Up To Date

Written by mbpage on April 4, 2008

So following on from my background post I started to build sites (see below) but I got hit this week by the changeover from Commission Junction to the Ebay Partner Program. I upgraded some of my sites, I thought without problem, but I see there have been many issues and a further update was issued on Wednesday I think it was. So I’m a bit frustrated becasue I don’t know if the sites I have built are now working correctly but that’s going to have to be a job for early next week.

I’d been following Mark’s plan and I’d done a bunch of research using the following tools that had been recommended to me and are freely available.

• Wordtracker
• Wordtracker G Trends
• Ebay Pulse
• Terapeak
• Google Trends
• Ebay - Hottest Items Report (although this seems to have been discontinued - unless you know better?)

Off the back of that I bought a dozen domains via GoDaddy using the discount code OYH3- thanks again Mark.

I set up a hosting account with Host Gator - what a fantastic deal. I’m actually in the UK and was used to paying $15 per month per site. As of writing this I’ve got 16 sites to develop at a cost of just $9.95 per month - what a saving. Any other UK residents reading this move to Host Gator - great service, great site and I’m over the moon with them.

With that job done I got down to work following the nichestorebuilder worksheet. So as of right now I have 6 sites built with link building outsourced to the excellent Submit Edge. I have two more 75% done which I might finish over the weekend although I am away so maybe that’s over optimistic. I aim to have another 4 completed by 11 April which will bring me up to 12.

My BANS Background

Written by mbpage on April 4, 2008

I heard about BANS from Kent via the Wealthy Affiliate which we both recommend unreservedly. If your serious about making money online you really should check it out. Kent had experienced some great success with BANs and I would recommend you check out his Blog at (add when known) . Anyway, I joined via his affiliate link and he gave me a few freebies to let me know how he had succeeded. What a great guy.

So I got my hands on the BANS software 18 March 2008. I didn’t realize at the time but this was only a couple of days after the launch of BANS 3.0. Unfortunately for me that meant I installed the script on a domain and promptly had to do some updates.

Now before I go on I should give you some background. The business I worked for failed in 2006 and I had to decide what path to take. I decided to have a crack at working for myself and got by until Dec 2007 when I decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I started to explore different options and decided to go full time into internet marketing towards the end of January.

I have always been interested in computers but would not describe myself as a techhie. I can knock up a website in Frontpage using bought templates and that’s about it. Since January I have been learning the ropes and unsurprisingly made very little money- about $200 which would be a loss after expenses. That said I didn’t set out with short term intentions but I do have a goal to be making $5000 per month by the end of the year.

I settled on two monetization models for this year BANS & Internet Marketing using the Affiliate Cash Secrets system.

For my internet marketing education I became a member of Wealthy Affiliate Member and also purchased the excellent Profit Lance course. I have no plans to outlay any more money on training in the short term but I am very tempted by Wordtracker. I currently use Keyword Elite but I am not sure it is right for me based on where I’m currently at.

Back to the BANS story. Rather than dive right in I had a look through the forums and cam across Mark who had launched his Build a Niche Store Empire Series back in February. I read through what he was proposing and as he knows what he’s doing I decided to play catch up using his excellent instructions and videos.

I started work on my first site 20 March and played around for a week trying to get to grips with everything that was going on. It might seem simple but I think there is a lot to understand if you want to make money but more on that in a later post. I outsourced the link building work to Submit Edge 1 April.

I noticed that many BANS users work to generate immediate profits using adverts in USFreeAds, Craigs List and others. I will use this strategy in a few weeks but for now I have chosen to take a slightly longer term view. With the inbound links being taken care of courtesy of Submit Edge, I have got on with building other sites.

Due to it’s length I’m going to end this post now and write another shortly that will bring you up to date with my exact position. I will then post every couple of days to let you know what I’ve done, the ups and the downs and I will also report any earnings as they happen. At the moment my BANS income stands at $0.00 but I wouldn’t expect anything else given what I’ve done so far.

Introduction to Build a Niche Store

Written by mbpage on April 3, 2008

Welcome to my Build a Niche Store Blog. Also known as BANS - Build a Niche Store is a product that enables you to create an ebay store empire.

Take a look at the (as yet unfinished) hydroponicsstore.net for an example.

I have chosen BANS as one of my main monetization models because it allows me to generate revenue from ebay, adsense and other related affiliate programs of my choosing.

It is also a rapid development tool as it is possible to create a store in approximately 2 hours when you know what you’re doing.

This blog is going to record my progress as a BANS member and I will include earnings reports as a measure of progress.

Tell me more about BANS