Quick recap
As I stated in my earlier blog post “Making Money With My Build A Niche Store“, I am going to be taking a
step-by-step approach to getting my Build A Niche Store, or BANS, seen, visited and making daily sales.
The first step in that process is taking stock of where I am at right now. For this, I’ll let my stats speak for themselves.
Here is a capture of my Awstats from 4/6.
The site has made some progress since the beginning of the year. I have consistently increased my traffic every month. These are positive things and I’m not upset about them.
However, I happen to know a secret. Want to know what it is? OK.
This site has not made one single sale or a penny for me! Not even adsense!
This is NOT the reason we put up sites and spend our time promoting them. It’s certainly not what I had in mind when I fought my way through the BANS manual back in December.
What started this project?
The main push behind this project has come from Mark Hansen of thenichestorebuilder.com. He and his wife have over 50 BANS sites(only about half have been fixed for SEO)and they make consistent four figure income every month. He is one of those rare breed that are buried in work every day and still find time to respond to emails and blog post comments. He didn’t even ask for a link in exchange for his help.
Mark has been a web developer for over ten years and his specialty is Search Engine Optimization(SEO). He got involved with BANS in August of 2007. He has been working on a methodology that will allow a new BANS owner to take their site from installation to making money. His main focus is in making the site unique and search engine friendly.
Where do we begin?
The first step I will be taking and reporting on is using WordTracker data to add categories and subcategories as well as product-specific pages where indicated.
So, stay tuned and hold onto your seats because this small kitchen appliance store is going to make me some money yet!
Best,
Technorati Tags: BANS, build a niche store, build, niche, store
9 responses so far ↓
1 Simonne // Apr 17, 2008 at 8:42 am
In my experience, AwStats report much higher traffic than other counters, so I suspect your traffic was lower than what you saw.
Secondly: maybe it would be worth to remove AdSense and the other affiliate banners, in order to make visitors focus on eBay links exclusively. As it is now, it rather looks like a made-for-ads site than an online store, so I’d leave it without buying or clicking further on the items.
Thirdly: have you built it with some keywords in mind? I suppose you did. It would be great to add some text, in which to use your keywords, so you can attract more organic traffic.
I hope my feedback is somehow useful. I’m looking forward to see you make some money with your store (by the way: the header looks great)
Simonne’s last blog post..Free Blog Layouts
2 jeff // Apr 17, 2008 at 9:04 am
Hi Simonne,
Thank you for your comments.
The stats on my store show that people find me by a product brand and model number. As this series continues you will see how I am optimizing the category and product level pages by KEI and competition. Stay tuned!
Putting text on the store page above the products moves listings more below the fold, doesn’t increase my chance of rating for my home page keyword in any great way and tends to generally clutter the home page.
The adsense placement is a test because they were not generating clicks where they were and another hugely successful BANS builder suggested this to me. I will be reporting on their success as well.
Thanks again for contributing and remember you just got two links for the price of one because I’m using the CommentLuv plugin.
Best,
Jeff
3 Simonne // Apr 17, 2008 at 9:37 am
Thanks a lot for the links, Jeff
In the new version of BANS you can add text below the products, so you won’t push them down.
I’m curious about your evolution. I was just rejected by eBay, so I cannot use it unfortunately. I started some tests with Amazon, so we’d be able to exchange some experience.
Good luck!
Simonne
Simonne’s last blog post..Free Blog Layouts
4 jeff // Apr 17, 2008 at 11:43 am
Hi Simonne,
Yeah, I know about the text below products but the on page ranking potential doesn’t raise any for it.
I have heard from a trusted source that BANS can be used as a ecommerce platform for other affiliate products. You just have to leave the ebay stuff blank.
I’ll let you know if that person has success building their site with it.
Let me know how your Amazon goes because I haven’t had ANY luck with them.
Jeff
5 Simonne // Apr 17, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Thanks for the BANS tip. I’m going to try to see if I can make it work with other affiliate program.
I never focused on promoting Amazon until now, so I barely made any money with them. I’ve built three stores yesterday and I’m eager to see how they perform. I intend to write an article about this test.
Simonne’s last blog post..Free Blog Layouts
6 jeff // Apr 19, 2008 at 1:50 am
Simonne,
Thank you for contributing to my blog.
I’m hoping to get the next installment of this series out this weekend.
Are your 3 stores BANS stores? Are you using another program with it?
Jeff
7 Simonne // Apr 19, 2008 at 4:58 am
You are welcome, Jeff.
No, they are Amazon stores, because the eBay guys are keen on rejecting me. I’m using Affiliate-o-Matic, which is designed especially for Amazon stores.
Simonne’s last blog post..Free Blog Layouts
8 Mike // May 19, 2008 at 10:16 am
Hi Jeff. Interesting post (and series). Do you have any more information on how to set up BANS as an e-commerce platform (for other affiliates)?
I also found that text above and below the products have helped my BANS sites to be unique from other sites that are selling the same product. I keep the text above to a minimum as well so that the products don’t get pushed down too much.
Mikes last blog post..Niche Store Writer Review
9 jeff // May 19, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comments.
I’m working with a colleague to flesh out the details of using BANS for other affiliate sites. Stay tuned.
In the next part of the series, I’ll show the bare minimum edits that need to be made to the store categories to make them unique.
Text at least above the category pages helps make the site more pleasing to human visitors while also helping it stand out to the spiders.
Jeff
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