BANS Today

Wordpress Ranking Power

Written by mbpage on October 20, 2008

As I only build BANS stores to on a sub folder of a wordpress blog these days it has been very interesting to observe the differences compared with the traditional BANS on the root approach to things.

My findings thus far make interesting reading:

Worpdress backed sites generally index faster and in more depth than BANS stores.  Typically just 7 days without any submission via webmaster tools or, in most cases, any backlinks.  Just ping the first post and you’re away.

Wordpress backed sites have vastly superior ranking power with Google and Yahoo.  The majority of my traditional BANS sites have struggled to break through the 100 mark on Google (even with good content) before eventually being deindexed.  With wordpress many sites rank within 100 within two weeks of being indexed and today, I have achieved my first ever no. 1 ranking in Google.  What’s more it’s in a niche so competitive I thought I was mad for trying.

For my mind there is no doubt that Build a Niche Store fronted by Wordpress is the only way forward if you want to build a sucessful niche store business using the BANS script.  Yes it’s harder work as it takes a lot longer to configure wordpress and bans to work properly together, but believe, the results are worth it.  In a way, I’m also glad its tougher because it means fewer competitors which is great news for those of us committed to generating big profits.

Want to know how to make money with Wordpress and BANS?  Check out Marks blog over at thenichestorebuilder.com.  Mark is the man.

Disaster Day - Part 2

Written by mbpage on September 26, 2008

The lack of site updates as been due to my Italian vacation which came at a very opportune time given that I needed to let the dust settle following the deindexing of the majority of my sites by Google.

I look forward to the day that there is a legal challenge to this practice.   If a site is profitable then as far as I’m concerned it adds value to the customers that use it - period.  I find it outrageous that Google can arbitrarily make the decision to deindex a site and hope someone out there has the resources to bring them to account in the future.  As ever it’s the little guy that suffers and it feels like I got fired from my own job!

That said things are not as bad as I feared.  Given that my BANS history is less than 6 months I handn’t really bothered checking stat reports that closely.  The deindexing caused me to look at this and I discovered that 90% of my traffic is coming from Yahoo.  As a result earnings and traffic have largely been unaffected so far.

This was a pretty big revelation to me.  I have a number of keywords now ranking on page 1 in Yahoo and some of my sites are beginning to make decent returns as a result.  When I think I could have multiplied traffic and earnings by a factor of 8 if I could have ranked with Google then it becomes pretty easy to see that BANS can be very very lucrative.  That’s pretty darn exciting.

I will be testing a new strategy over the next couple of months which I hope will satisfy Google and avoid the deindexing problems I’ve suffered.

Watch out for my end of month post because you’re going to be surprised.

Build a Niche Store Earnings Update - September

Written by mbpage on September 11, 2008

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.

Build a Niche Store Secrets - Research Yes Forensic Investigation No

Written by mbpage on June 13, 2008

Todays Lesson learned, number 5 I believe, is getting to grips with niche store research or not depending on your preference. 

When I initially started to look for niche stores to build there was plenty of advice available.  All of it seemed pretty good but no matter how hard I looked I coudn’t find a niche that ticked all the boxes.  Either search volume was too low, competition too high, too many other BANS stores, not enough demand, poor sell thru rates and so on.

I’ve just built my 35th store and that is the first one that I’ve identified  that met all the criteria mentioned above.  Lets see if it becomes a top performer over the next couple of months!

So where does that leave us?  Well, in the beginning I spent a couple of days looking for the perfect store and getting nowhere.  In the end I just built a couple, one did great the other not so great (too small a niche).

I’ve made several attempts at in depth research since but all it does is dampen my enthusiasm for the project so I’ve cut things right down and now all I do is this:

• Browse ebay categories in search of inspiration
• Pick one I like
• Go to terapeak and check out sell thru rates - I look for greater than 40%.
• Check out average sale price - I’m looking for items that regularly sell in excess of $100.
• Check out current auctions and look at bidding activity - Is there something happening or is everything dead.

Thats it.  It takes me about 10 mins and the evidence suggests it works pretty pretty good. Not the most scientific approach I admit, but, importantly it keeps me moving. There is one final check in relation to keywords but I’ll cover that in the next post.

I guess what I’m saying here is don’t over anal-lyze (if you get my drift).  With 35 stores I have stores that looked like they’d fly perform like dogs and stores that I thought would suck that made sales from day 1.  It’s virtually impossible to predict.

Build a Niche Store Secrets - Keeping Records

Written by mbpage on June 3, 2008

In case I was a bit vague in my first post of this series I want to repeat that if you wish to build niche stores that generate organic traffic i.e. free traffic from search engines you will not make huge profits over night. It is a slow process that can be achieved but it will take approx 6 months if you are able to work on each store for 1-2 hours per week. Obviously things will take longer if you can only spend an hour per month on each store for example. I’m not posting this to scare you but rather that you understand this is not a get quick rich product. It’s a slow burn and you will be rewarded for patience persistence and hard work.

Lesson Learned 3

I wish I’d known when I started is Keep Records - that’s an exciting one isn’t it. Yes keeping records is boring as hell but you will get in one hell of a mess without them. I think I built around three stores before I started losing track of things.

I am currently developing my own system of record keeping but until it is ready hop over to Mark’s site and grab a copy of his worksheet to tide you over. Mark is a top guy and whilst your there I’d recommend you sign up for his RSS feed as he posts some great info.

This sheet records all the key information to your store and you should use it to make notes on actions taken to develop stores. It helps keep track of links, articles, content, bookmarking, directory submissions, store pages and the status of your store.

Boring it may be but good record keeping will be critical to your success. Ignore this lesson and you will lose your sanity once you have more than 20 stores.

Build a Niche Store Secrets - Lesson Learned 1

Written by mbpage on May 27, 2008

I have named this series Build a Niche Store Secrets because everything I will reveal is what I wish I had known when I first started building niche stores. The biggest challenge with starting a series like this is choosing a starting place. What is the number 1 most important thing to get right? Truth be told there are many and in reality you have to learn as you go along and then go back and incorporate changes into existing stores. If you wait until you learn everything you will procrastinate forever and that is no way to build profitable virtual real estate.

I have around 27 stores right now and looking back at the first half dozen or so I put together reveals a catalog of things to change, do differently etc. So where would be the best most number one place to start be?

Believe it or not I’m going to choose no. 20. That’s right it wasn’t even on my original list. Lets call it awareness.

To succeed with BANS you have to be aware that it is a slow process. Whilst most stores enjoy some quick early sales failure to build on your initial work will lead to sales drying up. I estimate that each store requires 3-6 months of graft to reach it’s full potential (maybe longer). BANS success has four basic requirements:

1. A Unique Store
2. Good Keyword Selection
3. A Link Building Strategy
4. The regular addition of new store pages

By unique store I don’t mean something nobody else has thought of; I mean it shouldn’t be an out of the box BANS store. You know that gray template and the standard store pages that match ebay product categories. If you just put up a store like this it will be no different from many others and it will not make many sales.

You should know what keywords you are targeting - more info on this in a future post - but let’s say for example you are selling GPS. You wouldn’t want to target GPS as your main keyword because it is too general. However something like Cheap GPS or Used GPS is more likely to be used by someone looking to buy and therefore makes for a potentially better keyword with less competition.

By far and away the most important aspect of succeeding with BANS is links. Building links is the main criteria for determining your ranking in the search engines and for generating traffic. Get to no. 1 in google for the term “used gps” - not necessarily as hard as many would suggest - and you will make good money.

Finally you should be constantly developing existing store pages and new store pages based on your keyword research and by reviewing the search stats of you hosting account.

Please do not ignore the importance of what is written here because it isn’t very long or doesn’t appear very detailed. This really is gold.

• If you do not create a unique store you will fail.
• If you do not understand keyword research you will fail.
• If you do not understand how to build links effectively you will fail.
• If you do not develop your store pages and add new store pages you will fail.

On the other hand if you master all four of the basic requirements you will generate good profits regardless of how competitive your chosen niche is. As I said above though be prepared to give it time and work hard on each of your stores for an initial 3 to 6 months.

Needless to say I will cover each of these four requirements in more depth in future posts.