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.

As I mentioned at the end of December I am not proposing to post specific numbers any longer.  I started this site as a permanent record as much for myself as the many others who now read the blog whenever I make a post.    It was to document my internet marketing journey from hopeless newb to super success lol.   I thought it would take a couple of years to generate an income sufficient for my needs (actually I’m not even sure I thought it was possible) but, in the last two months, I have generated more than I ever made as a senior manager in full time employment (and that is after expenses).

So I have become living proof that anyone can make the transition from interent dummy to success in a pretty short space of time.  It took me 12 months from the day I started researching to get to where I am today.  I settled on BANS as the most likely way I could make money at the end of March2008  generating £7,000 from my endeavours in December.  Didn’t do quite so well in January but I doubt many did.  It was still pretty good though (acutally it was very good).

I’ve launched a coaching program which aint cheap at £999 for 6 1 hour sessions  (I am a qualified coach by the way) to cut through the crap and accelerate the speed that those struggling to make it can succeed.  The program is full  so if you’d be interested in using the service let me know and I’ll add you to the waiting list.   The next slot will probably be available towards the end of the month but maybe the middle of March.

I remain concerned that I only have the niche store model generating most of my income and I have explored some other money making models but I haven’t found much I can get excited about yet.   If you know of any worth looking at let me know.

This year I have been trying to optimize my working week so I can focus on what makes the biggest difference.  I had built a number of new stores but I have decided to freeze development for a month or so whilst I revamp my existing stock.  I have a large number of poorly performing stores and should be able to dramatically increase earnings by focusing on some off page seo stuff which I am allocating 2-3 days per week to.   Yeah I know I outlined a different routine in my last post but they say internet marketing moves fast right?  Obviously I provide an update on how things progress in this regard.

That said, I have been making extensive use of the need-an-article.net service which I can highly recommend.  Unique articles cost just $5.52 each and are just wonderful for submitting to article directories.  It takes me about an hour to write one of these so if I charged for my time the cost of me producing one would be about $45.  To paraphrase Brian Tracy, if you want to earn $45 per hour don’t waste your time performing $5.52 per hour tasks!

Having had an article produced you need to submit it to as many article directories as possible.  Again, this is a truly thankless task which needs to be automated.  I currently use Article Marketer and after a sticky start with them I now distribute all of my stuff via them and am happy to recommend them to anyone.  Try them out using the free account option but the paid service gives much wider distribution.

It’s been a less than interesting start to the year and I have found it challenging.  Deciding on the most effective course of action with 80 plus websites is no easy matter.  I have a dozen websites that perform consistently well so should I spend most of my time on these trying to generate even more traffic?  On the other hand I have about 10 websites with very high EPC but very low traffic.  Should  I spend time trying to generate more trafffic to these?  Or, should I focus on building new sites to replace those deindexed by Google or building links to deindexed sites to help them rank better in Yahoo and Live?

There are variations on a theme as well adding to my confusion about how to effectively manage my virtual real estate.  The obvious answer is that time needs to be spent on all these tasks.  What I want to do is spend time on the most profitable tasks but these are impossible to determine.  As a result I have split up my week along the folowing lines.

Monday – am Outsouricing (Project Mangement, New Requests etc.)  pm Authority Site building

Tuesday – am New site (Niche, keywords, site plan, domain purchase etc) pm Half day Off (nice theory).

Wednesday – am Publish Content & link building. pm New site build.

Thursday – am Authority site development.  pm Publish Content and link building.

Friday – Stats day (plan week ahead, awstats, logs etc.).

It’s a work in progress at the moment and I’m sure things will change but for now it’s the best I can come up with.  How do you allocate your time?

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.

Yep it’s finally happened I’ve hit the wall.  I think I’m on track for another record month, will I certainly am with the sterling depreciation v the dollar which I incorrectly reported last month had put downward pressure on earnings.  Can’t believe nobody pointed that out.   A sterling fall means more pounds for my dollar earnings lol.

Anyway I’m now juggling too many balls and I don’t think I’m going to get past $2,500 per month without outsourcing some of the work.  As I stated before my goal is to turn this into a $100,000 business within the next 2 years.  It seems the most sensible route is to outsource a lot of the content production so I’ve added a couple of proposal requests to Elance and I gotta say there are some dam good people out their charging very reasonable rates.

This leaves me free to focus more on building the other two or three supersites I’ve got planned, monetization and the seo and link building side of things.  In one way I’d rather write the content but I can’t see me trusting anyone enough to build links at this stage.

If you wan’t to build a business you need to outsource.  When you, or if you have hit the $2,000 per month mark I encourage you to reinvest a proportion of your proceeds to take the business to the next level.  One thing I am aware of from reading countless posts and forums is the number of people who claim not to be able to afford relatively low cost investments that would grow their business.

When  I was only earning a couple of hundred bucks a month I was still trying new scripts, tools and plugins which cost money.  Don’t be a cheapskate – remember you can make money without cost in this business e.g. montetize a squidoo lens – no cost other than your time.  There isn’t another business opportunity on earth that enables you to do that.  To try something similar on main street you would have to take huge financial risks so don’t worry about a couple of hundred bucks even if you lose it.