BANS Today

Free BANS Templates

Written by mbpage on August 19, 2008

Sometimes I’d like to post more often but I refuse to produce content just for the sake of it. I only write when I’ve got something worth saying and I hope that’s appreciated. I have kept away from the BANS forums recently due to the negative rumors that abound. I prefer to keep focused on what I’m doing rather than worry about the latest “BANS is finished” story. Thats not to say I hide my head in the sand but negative stories can consume time more than anything else I know.

Anyway I popped over and found that Kelvin and Adam have released some really classy BANS templates and what’s more they’re free. Dave (Soggy) and Mark (meetmydomains) are working on creating versions that support wordpress integration so to me the futures never seemed better.

If you haven’t checked out the new templates yet make your way over to the BANS forum and check them out.

Tags: BANS, Build A Niche Store, integration, templates, Tools

Developing BANS Templates, Adsense & Commission Junction

Written by mbpage on April 9, 2008

One of the first sites I developed has now been indexed by Google and I decided to use the opportunity to place adsense on the site, a couple of CJ banners and develop the logo and template.  As a quick aside it may be worth mentioning that I was taught not to add adsense until after the site had been indexed.  It supposedly increases the frequency of googlebot visits to your site if you do it this way and helps with your ranking.

I’m very pleased with the results which you can check out for yourself here.

I got the template from Mark at thenichestorebuilder. Mark’s generosity is quite incredible and you’ll see him mentioned a lot in this blog. If anyone is going to help me make it is Mark.

This was an interesting exercise as it was the first time I have put adsense on a page. Google makes this very easy you set up your adblock choosing size, colors etc. and paste the code block into your chosen template. I strongly advise anyone using adsense to match it with the site colors. I use a fantastic free little utility called Pixie to help me do this. It is absolutely brilliant. If anyone knows of another tool that can do the same thing with fonts please let me know.

I then added some CJ banners for a couple of stores. This was a little more complex as the formating was off. I did my first ever HTML tuturiol courtesy of w3schools and soon found out how to position the image so it displayed correctly - I surprised myself as I was pretty nervous playing with code.

This was swiftly followed by first Photoshop experience in banner building. Again I am delighted with the results. I need to learn a bit about shadow effects but that’s just being picky at the moment.

I now have a total of 9 BANS sites developed to a phase 1 level and 1 at phase 2. This being the example above. I am on target to hit 12 by the end of this week after which I will develop 1 new site a week and start to develop the others. My intention is to spend 1 hour per week on each site for the next 3 months or so.

I am only making sales on one site at the moment and my income stands at approx $30.00

Tags: BANS, Build A Niche Store, Tools