Once you’ve  got more than 10 sites keeping track of what’s going on can be a nightmare.  For example how do you know when one of your keywords is rising or falling in the search engines?  Having good quality information is a key to success and having access to that information on a daily basis is essential.

Unitl now I have used the highly unreliable page rank checker which is a free tool from seobook.com.  However this is buggy and frequently loses data.  I also tried the tool offered as part of SEO Elite but again the functionality is rudimentary and it is a pain in the ass to use.

Finally, a new tool has been released SEO Cockpit which ends the nightmare.  It’s not free; unless you only want one domain.  But I think the standard package which costs just $20 per month would suit most niche store builders.

SEO Cockpit updates daily and shows your keyword rankings in Google, MSN & Yahoo.  It is absolutely brilliant and enbables you to tell easily and accurately when offsite SEO is required to boost ranking.

Give SEO Cockpit a try today.  Highly recommended.

I’m trying to increase my post regularity once again to this site to offer some additional value.  Since last September I have tested both BANS and PHPbay quite extensively and feel the time is right to come out and say that I no longer build BANS sites.  There is much to admire about this script and the interface for creating customized store pages is strightforward and simple.  It is also the best way (in my opinion) for a complete newbie to make money money online.  Take me for example, I was able to build enough sites in just 9 months to replace a full time income which enabled me to work from home.

Unfortunately Google is no longer in love with BANS and whether you add content or not oftentimes you will discover that your sites get deindexed.  Of itself this isn’t the end of the world as there is plenty of potential to make money via Yahoo and MSN.  My top store made $6,000 last year despite being deindexed by Google.

That said you want your sites indexed in Google as they dominate search.  If you’re NOT  in Google you’re out of options.  Try flipping a site if you’ve been deindexed – it aint going to happen.

I now build a mixture of sites autoblogs, affiliate sites, squidoo lenses and phpBay pro sites.  My phpBay sites are gaining ground on BANS and earnings will likely surpass BANS by the end of the year.  phpBay is a better product than BANS for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, I can use Wordpress as a frontend content manager which gives me tremendous flexibility.  But most importantly, unlike BANS, you can use SEO URLs  on links and images which remove the eBay footprint leaving Google less cause for concern.

Don’t imagine you can put up a crap site using phpBay and make money as you still have to content and not just auctions and I would avoid auctions on the front page at all costs.  However, if I chose to I could put up one site a day with the content writing outsourced.  In reality I build about 1 phpbay site per week and spend the rest of my time developing other sites as I want to diversify my income streams.  This acutally requires quite a lot of discipline as making money via eBay is a doddle compared with other models.  However, if you want your business to have secure foundations you must develop multiple streams of income.