Top 10 mistakes new BANS store owners make

10. Unsatisfactory hosting
Lets face it it, if your site is not up and running or you are constantly having errors, then you are not making money. I have over 80 stores hosted with Hostgator and have never had a problem that I did not cause myself. This is crucial to your success and one of the biggest decisions you will make regarding your business.

9. Improper store installation
Many new BANS store owners are usually new to site building as well. There is a manual included with your download and I suggest you use it. My father says it best. "Read the F'ing manual!" Take it slow and follow it step by step, if you have questions then just ask for help in the forum.

8. Too broad of niche
If I had a dime for every xbox, ipod or baby store I have seen built by newbies, I wouldn't need to build any niche stores myself. If you are not a SEO expert then you do not even try to compete with the big boys in these niches. There are plenty of free keyword tools out there that will help you drill down your niche. Four word key phrases are perfect for newbies and will get you earning money just the same. Instead of widgets, think red tall fuzzy widgets.

7. Hurrying with site completion
New BANS store owners are in such a rush to get the store live, they do not take the time to optimize each and every page of there store. This is not a race and as my father always said, "Do it right the first time, so you don't have to go back and do it again." Take your time, folks.

6. Not monetizing properly
You might not know it but CJ offers affiliate programs that might just match your niche. Not everyone that comes to your store wants eBay items. Give them other places to go that you can earn a commission on. Amazon and Google ads are also a must for newbies.

5. Out of the box stores
Change all of those default store titles and navigation text. Make them fit a keyword. Do not just throw up a cookie cutter category. This only takes a little time to do and can help in the search engines.

4. Canonicalization
Don't confuse the search engines. Tell them if if want to be www or non-www. Do not take the chance of Google thinking you have 2 main pages. This is very simple to do and should be done first thing.

3. Knowing your traffic
You need to be on top of where you traffic is coming from at all times. Google offers free webmaster tools and analytic programs to make this a breeze. You need to be on top of who is linking to you and how people are finding your site. You can often uncover other keywords that will help in tweaking your store.

2. Checking CJ stats every five minutes
This will kill motivation very quick. Get in the habit of only checking at the most once a day. Every other day if possible. They update in the evening, there is no reason to check 50 times in the morning. BANS works. Build it and they will come.

1. Building one store and waiting
You need to think of these stores as outlets, the more outlets you have the more opportunities to make income. Do not sit on one store and watch it grow like grass. It sometimes takes six months for a niche store to seed well and start producing nicely. Start planting a bunch of seeds now, it's a beautiful site when they all start popping out of the ground.

Don't give free directories a second chance

Let's face it, submitting to directories is not a fun job. I use directory submitter standard to go through and submit. On the flip side while I go through and am submitting, if a link is down or they have switched to pay or claim to being backlogged, I simply hit delete and will not go back. If they claim to be free, they better be free. There are a million of ones out there that will gladly take your submission, so do not waste anymore time than you have to. I feel we are doing them a favor of having our quality sites listed. Directories are really only good for a little backlink juice. You are not going to get much traffic from them. My rant is over for the day.

Press releases for your niche store

So you have just finished that new store and have submitted to link directories and acquired a few other backlinks, now what? I like to put out a press release on my new stores. There are tons of free places out there to submit a press release. I have been using PRLog as of late. It gets spidered and you never know what kind of traffic it might bring and who might pick it up. This is also a good way to get your site crawled and indexed by Google if nothing else. It is very easy to do. I make sure to make the press release at least 300 words and keyword generated. Here is a great tutorial on how to write a press release.

Niche store backlinks with Kaboddle

Rochelle has a great tutorial on getting a few backlinks to your BANS store with Kaboodle. I would use it to really help with internal links into store pages other than linking to your home page. It's easier to get backlinks to the front page with directories, so use this wisely and title your link text to match the store page or item your are linking to.

Only 6 more days until the release of Build A Niche Store version 3.0! Hurray!

Article spinning

While we await the new version of BANS 3.o I will throw a few tools daily at you. For those that are looking for an article spinning tool, you can play around with this one. Make sure to run it through Copyscape and check for grammatical errors when you are done spinning. Please let me know how it does for you.

More on passion

I posted recently on having passion in what you do. I found another great post on it from Aaron Wall today as well and wanted to share it. He shares some great thoughts on it as well.

.net is fine for Google

Sorry a little late tonight as I am a big football fan and have been watching the NFL combine results. There is a bit of confusion on whether or not .net domains do well in Google. Well I am happy to report I have 2 domains right now ranked on Google on the first page of results for the search term I am shooting for. Of course I suggest a .com if at all possible, but there is nothing wrong with .net if it fits your store and keywords.