October Earnings Update
Written by mbpage on November 4, 2008
Well another month flies by! Life continues to be most interesting in niche store building circles. Google really hates BANS now and I mean really. I created two blogs (with little content admittedly) which were indexed quickly, ranked very well compared to BANS vanilla stores but have since been deindexed.
This proves beyond doubt to me that there is no point wasting time and effort setting up niche stores using Build a Niche Store if you want to rank well in Google. That is not to say you can’t make good money elsewhere.
This months income was another record coming in at what would have been $2600. Unfortunately the £ took a major battering against the dollar depreciating 25% in a week which has meant adjusted earnings of approx $2000. I’m deilighted with this though and now have some great keywords ranking high in Yahoo and improving all the time as I continue link building.
A couple of my no hope older sites have also started to earn after doing nothing for 6 months. I think this reflects the fact that the keyword competition was very strong e.g. home gym equipment but I now have a couple of top ten keyword rankings for gym related terms which are starting to get some traffic. This surprised me as I had more or less written the sites off.
I am confident that Yahoo earnings will continue to rise. I still have probably 20 sites or so that don’t rank well currently but are moving up the order with regular link building. I don’t spend long on this probably an hour a day, so it will take some time yet.
So good old Yahoo is paying the bills but I am not happy at being reliant on this one search engine. As I said Google hates BANS and I really have no idea what it takes to get ranked with Live. All my sites are indexed (many just a couple of pages) but nothing I do seems to make a difference. I treat all the sites the same yet I have one recent addition that is fully indexed, ranked for keywords and performing well. It’s a shame I have no idea why.
So back to Google. To make big money, in my opinion you have to rank well in Google. For this reason I have abadoned BANS and all my new sites are developed with Wordpress, Revolution Themes and a mixture of PHPbay, popshops and other monetization tools. I wish I’d made the transition sooner but then I was still learning and still am.
The big difference is that I have had to bite the bullet and focus much more on content. The problem with this strategy is that it is much more time consuming and there is a limit to the number of sites you can run. I reckon 5. This is a far cry from my 75 BANS stores.
Indeed I have only just launched one of the new style sites. I have another in development but it will be another week before it is ready to launch. These sites are not sales focused yet and until I have 20 pages or so indexed I will not be adding any monetization. As I add content I wil l begin to add stores so each site will, over time, become a super site on a theme and have the equivalent of 10-20 BANS stores.
Because the stores are themed e.g sports they can serve multiple niches in one place. Easier to maintain but requiring a different link building strategy as there is a need to deep link to the store pages. The aim is two fold to get traffic from people interested in the content and to get traffic from people wanting to buy. It therefore has dual appeal and will hopefully, in time, form the foundation for an authority site.
So there you have it. A record month, hopefully another record month to come (first couple of days look good) and a radical change in strategy.
For this reason the focus of the blog will change to cater to a wider niche store building audience. Hopefully I will retain my existing readers. One day, when I’m making 10k per month I’ll put it all together in an ebook and it will be a lot better than most of the crap out there given some of my recent purchases!
13 Responses to “October Earnings Update”
Hi,
On the BNS websites are you adding alot of content on them? Do you think that google does not like them becuase the lack of content?
Thanks
Jeff
By Jeff on Nov 4, 2008
Hey, it’s great to hear you’re doing OK after the BANS wipeout.
I researched BANS early on, and found it wasn’t worth getting into. Needless to say i’m doing well with a PHPBay site. Google seems to love them, being build upon wordpress.
Best of luck with it,
Anthony.
http://ipodmarket.com.au
By Great Deals on iPod Nano Chromatic on Nov 5, 2008
Hi thanks for the update, good to see you doin well. Wondering about this “I created two blogs (with little content admittedly) which were indexed quickly, ranked very well compared to BANS vanilla stores but have since been deindexed.” What type of sites were these? ie was it wordpress with bans intigrated? If so do you think wordpress with phpbay would be more successfull? Thanks Paul B
By Paul B on Nov 5, 2008
@ Anthony
Thanks and thanks for your help with the phpbay plugin. I now have my first international store.
@Paul
Yes they were wordpress with BANS integrated. You can see one of the sites at http://www.bestcheapsatnav.co.uk. The reason for my switch to PHPbay was that I developed a store back in May which is still fully indexed, ranks and makes good sales.
Also, PHPbay URLs look like they are part of your site which I believe, and I might be wrong, provides an extra level of security.
I was very disappointed that the sat nav site was deindexed as it has content and I was/am updating it a couple of times a month.
I don’t know how long the new strategy will work. I think Google would like to see an end to affiliate sites no matter how much content they have.
By mbpage on Nov 5, 2008
I enjoy reading your blog. I must say you are up front and a great help to some of us who are still learning the affiliate game.. glad to see you posted your de-indexed site.. bestcheapsatnav… What will you do with your de-indexed sites.. will you dump the domains or just leave them to expire?
Would it make sense to try and revive your bestcheapsatnav site seeing that it is a wordpress site.. could you use PHPbay, Popshops etc. instead of BANS… This site has quite a bit of content so I have to agree that Google does not like BANS…
Looking forward to your remarks..
Dave
By Dave on Nov 5, 2008
@ Dave
I intend to keep the site. It is only about 6-8 weeks old and ranks in Yahoo, although, Yahoo only accounts for about 7% of traffic in the UK so it’s earnings potential will be limited. My US stores do much better in Yahoo.
I will be building a new tech store later in the year which well encompass things like sat nav, cell phones, laptops. These super sites are easier to maintain and create content for and in the long term should rank better.
Also phpBay allows you to geo-ip target so a US visitor looking at a UK store will see US auctions.
Hope that helps
By mbpage on Nov 5, 2008
Which Revolution themes are you partial to.. which ones do you think will be easiest to modify..
I find the Revolution Church theme does not work in Firefox..
Looking forward to your remarks..
Dave
By Dave on Nov 6, 2008
@ Dave
I bought Revolution One themes before the change over but I have just developed a site using the new lifestyle theme.
They are all easy to modify once you understand how Brian puts them together. I couldn’t have mastered it though with access to the forums.
By mbpage on Nov 6, 2008
@Jeff
Sorry I missed your comment it was in the spam filter.
Yes Google classes them as thin affiliate websites and doorway pages which is has declared war on.
The only way to stay indexed is to have a balance of content v store pages.
Wordpress is the ideal solution as content can be added in the form of posts which have much wider reaching distribution than static html pages plus Google likes wordpress so sites generally rank better as well in my experience.
By mbpage on Nov 6, 2008
“They are all easy to modify once you understand how Brian puts them together. I couldn’t have mastered it though with access to the forums”
Did you mean ” without access to the forums”
So it would be worth while to have a membership ( Revolution2) in order to access the forums etc..
Thanks…
Dave
By Dave on Nov 6, 2008
@ Dave
Yeah that was an unfortunate typo. The cost of support is measly for such a great set of templates.
I have no hesitation in recommending Brian’s service.
By mbpage on Nov 7, 2008
Finding the right template has also been a chore for me.
I found templates that are BANS/Wordpress but have found nothing phpBAY/Wordpress ready.
For someone with limited programing knowledge finding an easy to modify theme seems like a big obstacle.
I will look at the Revolution Lifestyle and church themes.
Any other start themes you would recommend?
I was wondering if you have your new sites look more “blog” like or “store” like or a combo of both.
Thanks!
By Sean on Nov 15, 2008
@ Sean
There are dozens of free wordpress themes you can use. phpBay does not require a custom template (whereas BANS does).
If you are just starting out I’d refer you to my earlier post phpbay tutorial. Also check out my Wordpress category posts as there are a couple of links to excellent Wordpress guides.
Unless you have a reasonable understanding of Worpdress and code I wouldn’t start with revolution. Whilst the front page effects you can generate are awesome they will be very confusing for newbies.
I should point out that I am not a coder or tech geek but after using Wordpress for the last 6 months I do understand it pretty well now. Best way to learn it? Start a blog like this and build a phpBay site.
By mbpage on Nov 16, 2008