Linking To Other eBay Stores

I recently had one niche store that simply did not have a long list of listings on eBay. The niche is in heavy demand and a few eBay store owners had it covered very well. I simply created links in my sidebar and resource pages to those eBay stores with my campaign id code inserted in the link via the ebay tools. This one store does very well for me and has very little products listed. So before giving up on a niche too soon, see if there are stores that match what you are trying to sell and send your surfers there.

Long Versus Short Articles as Content Strategy

Well it is Friday and I wanted to give you this read before the week is out. This is a great article on long versus short articles. get yourself in the right frame of mind before reading it. Another message along this same line is when to add something as a blog post or as a page of content on your Build A Niche Store. Personally on blogs I have attached to BANS stores, I usually only make a paragraph or two post. If you have some info or lengthy content, I highly suggest adding it as a page of content on your store. Blog post are really feel are daily feedings for the SERPS. Also I think the perfect lenghth for an article or page of content is 350 words or better. Personally, I do not think I have written anything over 550 words. But if it takes you more words to increase the number of keyword phrases, by all means do not let a word count hold you back. As you go into the weekend remember, ORIGINAL KEYWORD DRIVEN CONTENT IS KING. Make it a plan to write at least one page of content or one free article this weekend. Most of you fear it more than you should. It is in your head, so put it down on paper or in notepad.

eBay Search Commands In Your BANS Stores

One of the most under utilized features in the Build A Niche Store software is the feature that allows you to filter out items you do not want showing on your store pages. You are doing yourself and your niche store surfers a disservice by not giving them EXACTLY what they are looking for and what you are advertising as being able to give them. Surfers are getting more and more time crunched and want to find exactly what they are searching for in the shortest amount of time.

Lets say you sale blue widgets for example. A default set up in your niche store might show blue widgets, wheels for blue widgets, blue widget cup holders and blue widget accessories. Get my drift? I know you have seen it before. One of the best search term operators is the minus sign. Lets look below:
























you see we have the search term blue widgets and then -(cup), this will throw out anything with cup in the title. Now you can use multiple words separated by a comma and no spaces like this...

blue widgets -(cup,cups,wheel,wheels,red)

This will effectively weed out most of the junk out of the items showing on your store pages. Here is a complete list of eBay search commands to play around with. Start giving your surfers exactly what they are looking for and you likely get them back as a repeat customer as well.

Are You Fighting A 900lb Gorilla?

Plain and simple a 900lb Gorilla is a term used for a website or sites for a specific search term that will close to impossible to unseat in the SERPS. Notice I did not say impossible, but I like to choose my battles wisely and if you are new to SEO and Build A Niche Stores, there is no reason to battle the 900lb Gorilla.

Some good free tools to see if you are against a 900lb Gorilla starts with a simple search of Goggle, Yahoo and Live for a keyword phrase you are competing for. Lets go with the post yesterday and "collectible cameras". Do a search on all 3 engines and take note of the top 3 sites in each.

Google:

www.collectiblecameras.com
www.manfredschmidt.com
www.photolinks.com/Vintage_Cameras_Photography_Equipment.html

Yahoo:

www.collectiblecameras.com
www.collectiblecameras.com/catalog/index.php?category_id=230
www.manfredschmidt.com

Live:

www.collectiblecameras.com
www.greencamera.com
stores.ebay.com/Cupog-Collectible-Cameras

as you can see...

www.collectiblecameras.com & www.manfredschmidt.com have pretty good showings. Now lets see how good. We can use this free link popularity tool to research collectiblecameras.com for starters against 3 of the other sites.

Here is what I filled in below:












Here is the result page:
















As you can see www.collectiblecameras.com has 90 Google links and 1833 Yahoo links. While this is not a 900lb Gorilla it certainly is a 400lb one and will be quite tough to overtake as #1. However www.manfredschmidt.com and www.greencamera.com are definitely in reach according to that data. You can drill down each top 10 from each search engine this way as well. In addition you can use this free tool to see most of the anchor text used as well and the backlinks pointing to these sites as well.

Remember that sometimes it is not the quantity of inbound links sometimes as much as it is quality of the sites linking to said page as well. Further analysis of www.manfredschmidt.com reveals that they have some great yahoo directory links as well as a dmoz listing which really fortifies it's stronghold. You can run a test on the top 20 overall to get a better look at the entire competition. If there are more than a few 900lb Gorillas in a search phrase you would be better off going after a longer phrase or an entirely different phrase all together. Pick your battles wisely and until you are much better at SEO and are making some good money with your Niche Stores, I would wait to battle the 900lb Gorilla. He will likely still be there waiting for you when you are ready.

Follow Up To Content Right Under Your Nose

One of my loyal blog readers asked me to go more in depth on an earlier post I made concerning content right under your nose. Basically what I was trying to convey is perhaps your Build A Niche Store is focused on collectible cameras for example. Now not having researched this niche myself (but it is a thought) I would guess that there are several types of vintage cameras one could collect. That being said, you could simply research the internet for types of vintage collectible cameras and create a checklist of sorts of some cameras that one might be interested in collecting. You could list a dozen or more by name with say model numbers and perhaps manufacturer name along with the year it was made. it doesn't have to be anything too complex or over the top. Primarily the name and model numbers will be great Google food for organic searches and bring in some traffic just on its own. I paused in writing this post to do a quick search for collectible cameras in Google and the first result is a great starting point.

We feature collectible & used equipment by:
Agfa, Alpa, Argus, Bogen, Bronica, Canon, Contaflex, Contarex, Contax, Exakta, Hasselblad, Konica, Leica, Mamiya, Minolta, Miranda, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Retina, Rollei, Sigma, Topcon, Voigtländer, Yashica, and Zeiss.

Now surely you could drill down, with a quick search on Google, each manufacturer. Perhaps even just list the brand name itself and build a couple of paragraphs around these manufacturers. Wiki is also a great source of info as well and the content can be put in your words very easily.

Perhaps you sell a collectible series of something, surely a nice checklist put in table format with model#s would be useful. The content is right there in front of you and you need not look far to find it and perhaps format it in a way no one else has. I hope I have cleared this up a bit for you. Any content is good content as long as it is put in your words or format.

Build A Niche Store Category Update For eBay Cat# Changes

Just got the latest email update on the new category changes for the BANS software. The email was as follows.

Thanks for your patience while we have been working through the
issues we had described in the forum.

The databases for v3.0, v2.0 and v1.3.1 have now been updated to
contain the latest eBay category structure.

For all "new builds" with v3.0 please log in to the appropriate
download area to download the latest complete version of v3.0:

1. For all ClickBank purchasers (the majority of BANS users) please
visit: - http://www.buildanichestore.com/update

2. For all special offer purchasers via PayPal (from Jim Cockrum
and Lynn Terry recommendations) please visit: -
http://www.buildanichestore.com/paypal

You will need your ClickBank receipt number for download area 1 and
your Paypal email address for download area 2.

If you have any problems downloading the updated BANS v3.0 please
submit a ticket to our download support center -
http://www.buildanichestore.com/download

To update your existing store categories please download the
relevant file from below and once downloaded please read the
"READ-ME.txt" file for further instructions:

Updating v3.0 Stores: -
http://www.buildanichestore.com/members/26th-May/BANS-v3.0-Category-Update.zip

Updating v2.0 Stores: -
http://www.buildanichestore.com/members/26th-May/BANS-v2.0-Category-Update.zip

Updating v1.3.1 Stores: -
http://www.buildanichestore.com/members/26th-May/BANS-v1.3-Category-Update.zip

Please note that v1.2 is unable to have a category update procedure
as the subsequent versions of BANS detailed above were built in a
different way.

Kelvin and Adam

Free BANS Build A Niche Store Template

Here is a very Google friendly template I just finished. Please download the file and unzip to your hard drive. Upload the Green folder to your templates folder on your Build A Niche Store server. Log in to you admin section and choose Green template.

Detailed installation instructions and how to edit the header file with your own links is in the READ ME file included in the download. Depending on feedback of this template I will likely do this one in more colors.

BY USING THIS FREE TEMPLATE YOU AGREE TO LEAVE ALL CREDIT LINKS IN TACT AND CREDIT THE CREATORS.


Download Free Green BANS Template

Link Trading Explained

Here is a segment about link trading with other sites and how I do it.

Submitting to Article Sites Should Be Outlawed

Another catchy title, but what I am trying to say is that EVERYONE should be submitting some sort of article to ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com at least once a week. Surely you can think of something to write 350 words on. The beauty of them is that in general they allow 3 backlinks in the bio section that if creatively done with some keywords you are targeting, can help immensely. Even if you point a link to your squidoo or hub pages it can really help. There are tons of free article directories that do not mind if you submit duplicate stuff as well. This is takes no time to do with the free firefox submission trick and the rewards are tremendous for search engine backlinks. 125 words thus far in this post, get my drift. Write your own original and then spin it if you must. Uniqueness is a freind of Google. Just open up notepad and start typing.

eBay Category Changes Blog

Here is a great bookmark to stay on top of all of those pesky eBay category changes. I highly suggest you check in on this blog at least twice a month so you can be ready for any category changes that may impact your Build A Niche Stores.

Google Does Not Care That You Are Ugly

Weird title I know, but never a truer statement. Google does not care how great of a graphic designer you are or all of the flashy colors and CSS edits you can make. Give me a well optimized ugly BANS store over a prize winning designed non-SEOed niche store everyday. People are overwhelmed with graphic designed and "looking good" that they tend to spend too much time on it versus optimization and backlink off site promotion. You will learn design and graphic making over time if you are a newbie, but Google does not care how ugly or pretty your site is. I can take a grey out of the box BANS store and only make SEO changes to it and rank it on page one of Google. (OK, not every time, but with proper keyword research and optimization I can make a solid run at it) Remember from my early post on how the search engines see you website, I mentioned it mostly looks at text and code. I have seen plenty of ugly websites rank very very well. If you are a newbie to BANS or website building in general, do not get caught up with how it looks. Learn the search engine optimization techniques first, the rest will come. Now go build some ugly stuff.

Thoughts On EPN EBay Affiliate Concerns

Here is video blog post number one. I promise I will get better on these the more I do. Make sure to email me any topics are questions you might have for future video postings.

Go Deep With Articles, Blog Comments & Social Bookmarking Post

As we talked in the past about directory submissions, most only let you submit the root domain as a link. Over time you need to be getting as many backlinks as possible to interior pages of your Build A Niche Stores as well. If you are submitting an article to an article directory, most allow 2-3 links in the about/bio section of the article. Make sure you take full advantage of these and link to pages inside of your niche store with relevant keywords for the anchor text of the page you are getting a link to. Make sure with all comments on blogs you try to link to interior pages as well. A good tool when submitting to Social bookmark sites is Bookmark Demon. This tool will help automate this process and help in getting those deep backlinks out there in a hurry. I recently bought Bookmark Demon and have been very happy with it and it has already paid for itself with the results it produces. You never know when one of those backlinks to an interior store page might get a higher PR love from Google when then in fact helps pass that love throughout the rest of your store pages. It also helps in the overall backlink process and appears natural if not overdone.

Directory Submissions Explained

I see a ton of confusion related to link directory submissions and how you actually benefit from submitting to free directories. First of all these backlinks you get will provide very little traffic if any. Submitting to directories helps initially in getting the spiders to crawl your niche store and ensure you get indexed. Secondly by varying your anchor text of the links you are submitting helps slowly increase on how Google and other search engines will start recognizing you for search terms. It is always good to vary this anchor link text amongst 3 or 4 keyword phrases you are targeting ranking for. It is unnatural for a store to continuously show up with backlinks for just one anchor text, so make sure to vary it every 30-40 submissions. Link directory submissions is just one of the many evils needed in starting your climb up the search engines for specific keyword phrases. I hope this clears up some confusion on why you do these.

Build A Free Toolbar To Give Away

Conduit offers a free powered by Google toolbar builder that if used correctly can bring in traffic to your BANS store and also get you some backlinks to your niche store as well. Once you get the toolbar built the way you like it, simply submit it to many freeware sites. Tons of these freeware sites will give you a anchor text link back to your store. You not only might make some cash via the Conduit program, but might generate some traffic as well as getting some backlink juice as well. You win all the way around. Also make sure to put the download link on your BANS store, as you never know what it will produce. Have a great Sunday.

Free Directory Submission Software

I might have two post today time permitting but wanted to knock this out just in case my day goes long. I know many of you are on a tight, tight budget and all can't afford the link submission service that I use. Here is a great video on how to turn firefox into a quick and free form submitter for directories. You can use that along with this list of over 500 search engine friendly directories that are free and do not require you to provide a reciprocal links back. Also if you are that tight on cash, I expect you to sit there and submit to every last one of them. I would vary your anchor text and descriptions about 3 times through that list.

Instant Niche Business Profitability Research

Often times new instant niche business BANS users jump right into building a niche store without knowing if it is even profitable or enough of the items are being sold. I highly suggest you research your niche products using Terapeek and get get an idea of the average selling price and monthly sales volume for each item you will be focusing on. After finding the eBay average selling price you can visit the eBay calculator site and insert the average selling price in the opening and closing price boxes and then uncheck the include PayPal fee checkbox and click on calculate fees button. Take the end calculated number and times it by 55% and this is what you stand to earn on average per sale. I usually shoot for items that will average more than $25.00 per sale on eBay. Also you you want to take notice of how many items are selling during a 7 day period. Hopefully the number you are looking at is over the 50% rate with at least 200 listings per week.

Build A Niche Store Budget

You need to ask yourself before going any further what your attitude is towards Build A Niche Store and niche store building. Are you in business or are you just dabbling in it? If you are truly dedicated to the process then you need to start treating your BANS stores like a business and get out of the shoe string budget attitude. If you are treating BANS like a $97.00 script then read no further.

If you have decided that you are treating your BANS projects like a business, you need to budget in cost and tools for success of each store. Now not all tools are needed and most are free, but many save you tons of time going forward. I only promote tools and services here that I use and stand behind. Many you will never see as if it is junk, no need for me to suggest it to you. Free or not. I buy my share of products, but can usually can tell real quick if I need it or not.

Lets look at cost associated with each store.

1. BANS script - $97.00 - Hopefully you have already bought this as it is the basis for everything we do here. The more stores you build, the more value you get out of it.

2. Domain name - $7.15 - I use Godaddy as it is friendly and I have yet to run in to any problems with them. You can figure on spending this amount on every new store you build, so budget it in.

3. Hosting - $110.00 - for year with Hostgator for unlimited domains and reliable service. The more stores you build, the more value you get out of it.

4. Directory Submissions - $15.00 per store. The Package is designed to submit your site to 100 High PR Directories and your choice of ten unique anchor titles & ten unique descriptions. This is not mandatory, but a huge time saver and well worth the money.

5. Wordtracker Subscription - $329.00 a year and well damn worth it as one great niche found can easily earn it back in one month. This is not mandatory, but will play a great role in your success at uncovering niches.

6. USFreeAds Gold membership - $10.00 a year. Not mandatory, but a well written ad will bring in traffic via Google. You do not get backlink love, but if you can write at least a targeted ad or two a week it will produce.

7. Other tools - $300.00 - Some good tools come down the line all of the time and it is good to budget this in as a yearly cost.

The total is $868.15 for one store. I know you are thinking that is alot, but after the initial cost the only thing you will need to buy is more domains a directory submissions for each if you so decide. Being how domains are so cheap, at the very least you should be able to build 20 stores in 4 months. 20 stores when targeted and promoted correctly will bring back that investment in no time flat. So less than $1000.00 and the best opportunity to earn a residual income forever. Working from home in your own spare time.

Get serious about this thing and it WILL produce.

Move around and change BANS store search feature

I highly recommend that everyone play around with not only moving the BANS store search feature, but also changing the type of search bar as well. There are many types of formats you can use that are already included in the Build A Niche Store software.

If you open up the header file you will notice the statement below:
search()

You can change that to any of the commands below:

searchnoadvanced()
searchnotitle()
searchbasic()
searchside()
searchsidenoadvanced()
searchsidenotitle()
searchsidebasic()

You can also adjust the size of the attributes in the styles.css file as well. It is listed in the #search category of the styles section.

I usually like to put mine on in the right hand column and use the location of where the current search form is for some long tail keyword phrases. Play around with the different commands to see the different ways you can display it.

eBay EPN Bot Clicks

I wanted to let everyone know that eBay EPN has confirmed that they still are having problems with bot clicks on affiliate links. This is not really a surprise and really not that big of a deal in my opinion. You should be watching your server stats for the most part anyway. Do not get so caught up in the clicks as much as monitoring where and how many uniques are getting into your niche store. If you have an optimized page and are bringing in relevant traffic or organic traffic, your store WILL convert. I have many, many stores across several niches and they all convert. Some way more than others. Let me also say that it is not in your best interest to read the EPN forum everyday. There are many conspiracy theories posted everyday and if you start reading them and other threads, you will start to believe them. Plain and simple ... If you think EPN or BANS does not work right, I highly suggest you check your link structure and make sure links are formatted correctly. If you are convinced you are structured correctly and still think EPN and BANS does not work correct, I highly suggest you move on to something else. I hate to be so harsh, but many of you need it. Drive traffic and build backlinks. Don't get caught up in everything else.

Build A Niche Store Quick Start Guide

I see new people visit this blog all the time and wanted to review some quick traffic building tips to get those newbies and perhaps some first time visitors a recap of getting that new Build A Niche Store some quick backlinks and get them earning money. I do these very techniques myself with a new store.

1. Submit a free press release
2. Social bookmark your site
3. Start a Kaboodle list
4. Submit to link directories
5. Write a few US Free Ads
6. Write 3 free ezine articles
7. Trade off links with like sites
8. Comment on Blogs

These are just a few things, but if done right, will really jump start your traffic with your new store.

Keep Those Niche Stores Small

I see tons of Niche Stores that use the whole category tree as their store. I highly suggest your store be only 5-6 pages of niche items. Two reasons. First, you can spend more time on each store page optimizing it out for the phrases you are shooting for and making them look less out of the box. Having a store with tons of store pages takes a while to optimize and usually I see that most are only half completed. Second, it is easier to promote smaller store individual pages quicker and get the whole site indexed quicker with the SERPS. Remember, you should be micro niching until you are able to compete with the big boys. It is very hard to get a whole electronics niche store ranking good in the SERPS. Take the time to really search out your niche and build a complete store around it. It is easier to work on and maintain and will likely produce faster results as well.

Anchor Text

When getting backlinks to your BANS stores, your anchor link text pointing back to your stores is very very important. I highly suggest choosing three or four terms you are trying to rank for in the search engines and rotate them in submissions to link directories, social bookmarks and free articles you submit to article directories. Anchor text gives the search engines a better definition of what your site or page you are linking to is about. Good anchor text and a properly optimized page of your store can go a long way in getting you higher rankings. Also it is good to slightly very this text, as Google wants it to appear natural and in a natural world not everyone that links to you would use the same link anchor text. Also important is the anchor text in your OWN store pages. Make sure not to just use the default eBay page settings. Use text you would like that page to be known for in the search engines. If I were to do anchor links for this blog, they might look like this:

BANS Blog
Build A Niche Store Secrets
Niche Store Tips

***Bonus Post*** Everyone Twitter

Thought I would also add a bonus post that I slowly am becoming accustomed to Twitter. It is good to use to keep in touch social network wise and even post about a new BANS store you have. I am not a huge fan of tinyurl, but have been using it with Twitter. You can follow me here.

New Build A Niche Store Blog Feed

I am happy to say I have finally switched over to Feedburner. Gives me a ton more tracking ability and other neat features. The new blog feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/bansblog you should be forwarded there if you were subscribed to the other blogger feed. Also I know many of you have been affected by the eBay category changes. I suspect Adam and Kelvin will be addressing this very soon. You can make changes in the mysql database, but I highly advise you know what you are doing and you should backup the database first.

Expired Domain List Finder

As you progress and get more comfortable with building more and more BANS stores, you might want to start looking at some expired domain names that may have some backlinks or age authority. Here is one place I look at daily. Fresh drop is a great little tool to play with. I have used them before and love it. Most are being sold through Godaddy so that is a plus as well.

99 Build A Niche Stores On The Wall

Kind of a catchy title, is it not? Lets look at the dynamics of it and break it down into bite size digestible numbers. Let's be modest and humble that every Niche Store you build will earn $300.00 in a year in commissions. That's right ONLY $300.00 a year for a $7.15 domain name. Let's break it down even further. That's $5.77 a week. Even smaller, $.83 a day. Will some stores earn more? Of course, some much more. Some a little less. Now lets multiple it out by 99. That's $29,700 a year. Now can you build 99 stores a year? Perhaps not! But once again the more you build the better you will get, the more you will see what works and what doesn't work. It took a good 20 stores for myself, before the light came on in my feeble head. Now surly through EPN and Google Adsense you can get a store earning an average of $.83 a day. Right? The society we live in breeds instantaneous results. You have to be long sighted in this business. Put the blinders on and build and promote, build a promote.

Godaddy BANS Store RSS Feed Problems

If you host with Godaddy, you probably need to check your stores pronto. Several members of the Build A Niche Store forum are reporting outages. As I have warned in the past, Godaddy should be used for domain registrations only, nothing more. I highly suggest you get switched over to Hostgator pronto. Adam and Kelvin specifically built the BANS platform for Hostgator and I host several of my stores there. When leaving Godaddy, I highly suggest demanding a refund for time left on your hosting plan. Even if they can credit your account for future domain name purchases. Every day you are down can cost you dearly in the search engines. This should be an urgency to you if you are serious about your business. Here is a post on how to transfer over those stores from Godaddy to Hostgator. Now go move those stores.

How Long Does It Take To Make Money?

I see this question pop up from time to time on the Build A Niche Store forum. It is unpossible to answer not knowing what you are doing, what niche you are promoting and how you are promoting it. I will tell you if you have defined your micro niche the right way, submitted to link directories, traded links with like sites and written a few articles for the article directories you should see results very quickly. Remember it is not how fast as it is building a niche store that adds value and is authoritative. Do not put time limits on it. Build, promote, learn and move on to your next site. Do not over analyze things as you will learn as you go.

Google Stop Words

Google uses a list of stop words that are pretty much ignored if you you use them in a search with another word. Here is the list. Now I am not saying do not use them in the title of your niche store, but if Google ignores them and you need the character space, do not worry about leaving them out. I do however use them in my meta description tag as I have more characters to work with. This is not a major concern for SEO, but one you should be acquainted with none-the-less.

Ebay Wordpress Plugin from PHPBay

I am slowly becoming a Wordpress freak. As usually I am late to the party on such things, but have had some security problems albeit my own faults in the past. Now I am very comfortable with it. As long as you are performing the updates and monitoring your server, you should have no worries. I have mentioned in the past about the free eBay plugin, but I highly suggest you now consider the pro PHPbay version. It is very easy to install and makes a great add on feature for any stand alone blogs or blogs attached to your Build A Niche Stores. I am finding myself writing more and more thanks to this blog and although I am not very good at it, at least it is proactive. The new PHPBay is compatible with the new eBay EPN affiliate program and you will be glad with the results it produces.

Google update complete, Time for more backlinks

As many have seen, it appears Google has finished it's latest update of PR and rank shuffling. A ton of my niche stores really benefitted from the latest update as all of my hard work is showing up. Now is the time for YOU to make a big push towards the next update. It is like a fresh clean slate and you can get a ton done if you start now. Go out and get those traffic trades and backlinks started now. Get to writing articles for Ezinearticles. It is a great resource for back links and quality traffic. A great read here on backlinks as well.

10 Reason Why BANS Does Not Work

1. You don't work it.

2. You don't work it.

3. You don't work it.

4. You don't work it.

5. You don't work it.

6. You don't work it.

7. You don't work it.

8. You don't work it.

9. You don't work it.

10. You don't work it.

I hope you appreciate the time I put into this post, the problem is not with EPN or BANS, it is with you.

DO NOT CLICK HERE TO BUY THIS!