Well I not sure whether to laugh or cry today but I favor the latter.    With the bulk of my income coming from Yahoo and next to nothing from Google/MSN/Live/Bing,  I fear the worst.  Why does anyone think combining these two search engines will dent Google?  More likely, it will drive more traffic to Google.

Bing is the new kid on the block and it has no track record – it should have been allowed to stand on it’s own two feet for a couple of years before being pushed into the spotlight.  It is now going to power the Yahoo and MSN websites ultimately giving the consumer less choice and creating a duopoly in search.  In the UK this deal would be up in front of the Office of Fair Trading as anti competitive.  I only hope the USA has a similar body and that they will refuse to rubber stamp the deal.  In no way can this deal be in the interests of consumers/browsers/searchers.

I find it extraordinary that Yahoo doesn’t see search as a key component of it’s business model. I remember reading a couple of years back that every 1% of search was worth a $1 billion turnover so Yahoo apparently doesn’t see $15 billion as that big a deal or it cannot figure out how to turn a profit (in which case it’s entire executive team deserves a pink slip).

I always felt that 3 search engines were insufficient to ensure a competitive market place and now we’re down to two with Bing barely out of BETA.  It’s like Yahoo and Microsoft turned out the lights and waved the white flag.  Oh yeah, I noticed that white flag was emblazoned with Google’s logo.

I’m at a loss for words.

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.

A couple of interesting stories on SEO in Sitepro News today.  Firstly from http://www.seobook.com/google-branding on how Google is now favoring big brands.  I had noticed this myself over the last month or so and the trend is now firmly set.  Big corporates will start to dominate search in the same way they dominate traditional markets – perhaps more so.

This sucks if you’re a one man band search marketer and it will become increasingly difficult to generate profits without PPC which I still find something of a lottery.  Sadly, it is understandable.  The amount of crap you come across now is quite extraordinary especially from atricle spinners.  The information is often out of date and incorrect  Those of us that practice article marketing will realise that for the majority it is only utilised as a mechanism to build backlinks for ranking purposes.

I make a good living online but it is really thanks to Yahoo as (despite what I read) ranking in Google becomes increasingly difficult.  Is the end nigh?  Well one can only really hope for greater search competition.  The day Google only has a 30% market share or less will be a great one.  It is a virtual monopoly and, in my view, it should be broken so consumers have more choice.

Matt Cutts might say write great content but even that looks more and more likely to be ignored as they begin to favor of big brands over smaller businesses.

The other story of note is that Yahoo is updating it’s search.  This is always a nervy time for me as I rely on them for my profits.  In November I recieved a huge boost which doubled my traffic (and therefore my earnings) overnight.  I hope to benefit similarly this time but am all to aware that things could just as easily go in to reverse.

For now we can only carry on doing what we’re doing as it is exceptionally difficult to anticipate future trends, but, there is no doubt that 2009 could be the most challenging for search marketers to date.  As several noted last year (Shoemoney in particular) search as we know it could be dead.

What are your thoughts?

Here is a post I drafted in July but never published.  In some respects it’s not finished but I thought it would make interesting reading – especially the last couple of paragraphs.

I have been reading in the forum and in many blogs that a lot of guys out there are only making a few dollars per month from their BANS stores and to use Rochelle’s words feel in a “rut”. I have to be honest and say I am not surprised. This comment is not intended to be harsh but reflects the fact that the web grows more competitive every day.

Let me provide an example. A few years back the hottest product you could buy was Google Cash. An authoritive guide on making money with Adwords. It’s still a great intro but in those days you could make money by creating an ad, linking to an affiliate sales page and picking up a commission. The author made thousands and thousands of dollars by linking to eBays sign up page when they launched in Germany for example. Not only is that opportunity long gone but you are no longer allowed to use the term eBay in adwords campaigns this being reserved for eBay themselves.

Things change and now you need, squeeze pages, your own landing page, email capture, follow up procedures and more to be successful. Witness the recent launch for John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0 for example.

What’s this got to do with BANS? Well in most cases, the effort you put forward is commensurate with the amount of money you make. Not long ago you could make money by putting up a generic store front, creating a few categories promoting products and away you’d go. There are now hundreds of thousands of BANS stores, not to mention hundreds of thousands of other affiliate style stores such as the excellent Datafeedr. The competition is growing exponentially and creating minimal bans skeleton stores just wont cut it.

I think most people who purchase the Build a Niche Store script have no concept of the amount of work involved in creating a fully fledged store. I didn’t – and building a great store isn’t even enough. You need to learn, understand, practice and apply SEO techniques as well. Building the initial store is probably 20% of the work. Leave it there and you will only make, at most, 20% of the potential money. It’s probably more like 5% to be honest. Without a fully fledged SEO campaign, on and off page, you’re screwed.

I say screwed because what will happen is new stores will ride high(ish) in Googles index for up to the first six weeks after which they will fall back through the rankings. Without an SEO campaign stores slide into oblivion and dry up. My own Coach Designer Store made approx $60 in the first month of its life and then made no sales at all for the next two months (this despite an SEO campaign). It has only just started to rise in the rankings again this month and looks likely to earn about $50. I think this site has the potential to make $250-$300 per month so there is still much to do.

I am still submitting it to directories (SubmitEdge and DigiXmas) and link building but I still have article marketing, social bookmarking (using tools such as Bookmarking Demon), forum comments, blog comments at my disposal which I haven’t implemented yet.

I have in the region of 35 stores and each store could keep me busy for one day per week at least,  and that’s a full time day, not a couple of hours when I get back from work.

What I’m saying here is that the time commitment to succeed and make thousands per month is significant. If you work full time and build niche stores in the evening it’s going to take a couple of years or longer before you can give up the day job. I’ve pretty much built niche stores full time since the end of March and I’m making about $600 per month at the moment. If I extrapolate that I have already invested more time building stores than someone with a full time job is likely to be capable of in the next 2 years.   Now I do expect my earnings to increase significantly over the next 6 months, not through adding more stores although I try to add a couple a month, but as of the ongoing investment in SEO of those existing stores.

My intention in writing this lengthy post is to demonstrate what it takes to succeed. It isn’t hard but it is time intensive and it requires commitment and a trust in yourself that you are doing the right thing. The BANS forum is a great place to learn and there are some really great blogs (such as this one lol) passing on some great tips, strategies and advice.

The goal of becoming a day job killer is one of life’s greatest prizes if it takes you 5 years is it worth it? If you knew that in 5 years time you could be your own boss and work the hours of your choosing would you put forth the effort? Darn right you would. That’s what this is all about and whilst there are no guarantees it is better to commit to the journey than to think about what might have been.

Well we’re just a week shy of Christmas and so far this month my sites have generated $5250. Is this niche store business worth it? I think the answer is obvious. The game has changed a lot since September and BANS is highly vulnerable to being deindexed by Google. I currently develop new sites using phpBay pro but I still experiment with BANS.

My objective in publishing this article is to demonstrate that the work I’d done and the effort I have put in has paid off.  If I can do it then so can you. Let me state again for the record that I only started with BANS at the end of March and had no knowledge of keyword research or seo.  I had no knowledge of code (still don’t really) link building, article marketing  etc. etc. I was a true novice and still consider myself to be one.

So how did I get to where I am today?  By being willing to learn and being willing to fail.  I was also prepared to invest in tools and services to help me accomplish more in the same amount of time.  I reinvest 25% of my income each month and have done since day 1 when it was more like 100%.

I think I can safely say I will make $6,000 this month which is 10 times more than I earnt in July this despite the fact most of my sites were removed from the Google index.  Just imagine what could have been achieved over the next couple of years if I could have kept them in the index.  It’s mind boggling.

Happy Christmas.

Well I guess I should apologize for not posting anything worthwhile for the last couple of weeks. I’ve been flat out building my first corporate website for a friends business and despite what I said in an earlier post, I’ve built another 8 or 9 stores.

August was a record month earnings wise coming in at around $800 but I can’t help feel a sense of disappointment. I have invested 5 months of 60 hour weeks in BANS and a measly $800 is not a lot to show for it.

I am in this for the long haul but I grow more nervous with each week that passes having come across a number of reports of de-indexed sites and canceled EPN accounts. The thought of 5 months, and rising, work counting for naught is not a pleasant one.

Putting the negative to one side what happens next? Well I think I’m going to set a target of completing 75 stores by the end of the year. I currently stand at 55 so that could be a big ask but I can put them up pretty quickly now.

The major change I have made this month includes a paid subscription to Terapeak. The jury is out on its value as eBay appear to offer restricted views of the data but it is a bit of an eye opener. I will provide an update on this product once the stores built as a result of the research are a month or two old.

The end of September will mark my first 6 months with BANS and I will go through my basic store building strategy then encompassing everything I have learned to date. This should be a valuable post for anyone new to BANS and a big time saver.

My main objective now is to devise a strategy to start ramping up site visitors. I’m a bit stuck here as I have optimized my site pages, submitted to directories and employed an active link building campaign. What else is there to do? Well content is an obvious one but everything I read says do more link building so rather than content for the site I’m moving to article marketing.

I’m going to use Article Marketer for this purpose. I have had mixed experience of them to date and find their editorial policies as bad, if not worse, than ezinearticles.com but the distribution is excellent and results in many backlinks per article.

I have also decided to get Stompernet’s SEO Course as I still feel I’m missing something in terms of off page activity. I have no proof for this other than unsubstantiated reports of traffic claims and earnings. I know though, that my long term success will be dependent on my keyword ranking in the serps so this is where I will focus much of my attention for the next 3 to 4 months.