Starting An Online Business From Scratch

Ok, enough is enough! It’s time to start putting this Build A Niche Store (BANS) license to good use. No more excuses or screwing around.

My BANS Backstory

When I got BANS back in December, I struggled to get even the first site up. I’m not a newbie to internet applications(FTP,MySQL, Kompozer, etc.)but the original BANS manual left out pieces of the puzzle repeatedly. With the help of Lynn Terry of Clicknewz.com, I was finally able to get the site up and running. With all the other things a three month newbie is trying to learn and do, I didn’t revisit it because I wasn’t seeing any results and it didn’t appear to have much potential. I thought it just needed time to “settle” or something.

Three months after that I realized that it had settled as much as it was going to. I got my first “friendly” reminder from Commission Junction that if I didn’t start making any money I was going to get the boot.

It was around this time that I found Mark Hansen and thenichestorebuilder.com.

The email was about his twelve week series to bring your BANS sites up to snuff and fill in the gaps left by the original BANS manual. He laid out a week-by-week process where readers were to follow along with him in an attempt to save more people from the CJ boot and get them making money with BANS.

I was so encouraged by him I even blogged about it.

What Did I Do?

Short answer: not much.

Transitioning from my eBay store into other internet marketing projects has been hurried and poorly planned. In my defense, an internet marketing newbie has way too much on his or her plate and if they are not diligent about eliminating distractions they will fail.

The income from the eBay store had fallen off sharply which put a real crimp on my ability to invest in other ventures. Even though the actual outlay for Mark’s proposed project was very modest by most standards, I still lacked the needed funds to follow the program even near to the letter. I made the improvements that I could afford to and went back to other projects that needed my attention.

It should go without saying that the store is still not doing anything.

OK Jeff, What Are You Going To Do Now?

Mark was gracious enough to respond to my call for help. He has taken a look at my site and made numerous suggestions. I am going to implement everything he tells me to do. It’s tax refund time and I should be able to invest a bit more to this project.

The first thing I’m going to do is to optimize my categories and create subcategories based on WordTracker data. I am doing that this weekend and will be blogging about it in the next installment.

After that I’m going to finish whatever steps I need to get this store making sales. When that is done and I have a system in place, I am going to get nine more sites set up using the same system.

Final Thoughts

I am very excited to be moving forward with this project because I see tremendous potential in the BANS application. It is good to finally feel like I can stop spinning my wheels and move in a positive direction for building a sustainable income source.

Finally, Mark has reinforced my belief that we all need help and shouldn’t be ashamed to ask for it.

Have you had success with BANS? I want to hear about it. Please leave me a comment below and don’t forget to submit this article to your favorite social bookmarking site if you enjoyed it.

Best,

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