Next Week, Wordpress Template Week

I have had quite a few email concerning Wordpress templates since I posted a recent favorite of mine. I wanted to let everyone know that next week will be dedicated to Wordpress templates and the editing of them. I will break it up into several days and try to be as thorough as possible. Check back starting on Monday. I am starting to put a few things together now.

Saturday Around The Web October 10th

Happy Saturday everyone. I hope everyone had another fantastic week. Below is my weekly around the web links of some great post and articles I have read this week. Enjoy!

Chris Brogran has a great little post on How to Blog Almost Every Day. I live to blog everyday as this very blog shows.

Louis Gray shows Distributing Quality With Impact, Intent as far as using syndication goes.

Sage Lewis from Search Engine Watch explains why affiliate links should have a nofollow tag attached.

Matt Cutts addresses in a recent video: Which is better: an HTML site map or XML Sitemap?

Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz once again overloads your senses with a post on: Terrible SEO Advice: Focus on Users, Not Engines

Jill Whalen from High Rankings, recaps the above Fishkin post on Search Engine Land.

Name.com Offering $5.99 .com & .net Domains Today

I just saw on Twitter that Name.com is offering new domain registrations on .com and .net domains for $5.99 all day long. I have used them quite a bit myself and they are a great domain registrar. Also they offer free domain privacy on new registrations as well. I plan on picking up about 10 or so new domains myself here in a bit. The .net REALLY is a great deal as they are usually a bit higher. Do not worry about it being .net unless you are truly worried about branding. If it is a site that predominately pull organic traffic or rank traffic, .net domains are just as good as .com. Go get you a handful today at this fantastic one day price.

POP Peeper Email Notifier Client

I have a ton of email accounts that get quite a bit of usage and I do not like forwarding messages into one email address. I like to keep each account separate and monitor accordingly. For the longest time I have used ePrompter. This did the job for a number of years until recently when it stopped working with Yahoo and Gmail.

I have now come across POP Peeper and used it for a few days. Man do love it. It is easy to set up and you can color code the accounts to easily let you know what email is from what account at a quick glance. This sits down in your task bar and alerts you whenever a new message arrives. It is a huge time saver for me as well. If you monitor multiple email accounts, give this great free email notifier a try.

RIP Meta Keyword Tag

Yahoo has now officially confirmed what many of us have come to speculate already was in effect. They no longer give any relevance to the meta keyword tag. Google, Bing and Yahoo all now ignore the tag which affectionately over the years had been called the spamming tag. I myself up until recently stop using the tag after many years of filling it in as habit. Now none of us have to worry about it all. One less thing to do when optimizing a page. Thanks to sonjay from the BANS forum for providing the link. RIP Meta Keyword Tag, you wasted a ton of my time over the years.

Should You Still Build BANS Sites?

I received 2 almost duplicate emails in the last 2 hours asking whether or not BANS users should continue to build niche sites in light of Adam and Kelvin having the platform up for sale. The short answer is, yes. Why wouldn't you? If you haven't advanced to Wordpress yet or just a ton more comfortable with BANS, use it. It could be 2 weeks or 2 months until we see any new version of BANS. Even when and if it is upgraded and improved in all likelihood it will be easy to upgrade from the current platform. If not, the hardest work you would have is just rebuilding and copying over the content. Sure, depending on the amount of sites you have it will cost you some time to do this, but it will also cost you time if you sit and do nothing.

If you are truly still freaked out about all of this and want to wait, at least do something productive like planning out your next site on paper as discussed in the N1Way BANS guide and get your content written. If you still have time, head over to Wordpress.tv and start brushing up on the Wordpress platform. It is not going anywhere anytime soon that I know of.

The one thing I blogged about a little while ago is that the life of an affiliate marketer is always changing. Platforms come and go, platforms get upgraded, new affiliate programs are launched daily and current affiliate programs will always change terms sooner or later. You have to be fluid.

In closing, if you are most comfortable using BANS, then use BANS. Should any problems arise, they will be temporary ones. Do not let someone else's game plan alter yours. If you do, you are in for a long, hard road in this business. Remember, be fluid.

Build A Niche Store Platform For Sale

As you should know already, Adam & Kelvin have officially put the BANS platform up for sale on Flippa. While I have known it was going to happen for a while, I did not know when only that it would likely be soon. Adam and Kelvin as they mentioned a while ago have taken BANS as far as they want to take it. Now it is time for the right person to take it farther. I have already had a few emails asking my opinion on it and really there is not much to say. It is their baby and they are moving on to other things the last I heard. Many may think I have something to do with BANS from an employee stand point, but I merely donate my time and try to give back. Sure, I get some traffic to this blog from BANS, but this blog has never been my main stay, never will be. I build niche sites, this blog is merely an outlet to help others and keeps me conditioned to both writing and marketing.

The BANS platform is a great opportunity for someone who is well versed in PHP and affiliate product feeds. While I have considered buying it in the past, I am just not fluent enough in PHP to take that on. Also after long consideration, I it does not fit my long term goals of what I do or want to do. Whoever buys it, needs to be married to it, just like any business. Just like everyone of you should be with your niche sites. There will be a ton of bridges to get across before dime one of profit is to be made, but it is there for the taking I truly believe.

As far as me remaining a moderator, it all depends on if the new owners want to keep us. I don't know why they wouldn't, but stranger things have happened. Rest assured this does not affect me one bit. I will continue to do what I do and blog as I always have.

To Adam & Kelvin, thank you for an awesome platform. I remember the early days. BANS opened up a whole new world to me. I had been a webmaster for a long time, but rededicated my efforts to learning how to do things the CORRECT way, the MODERN way. I wish you nothing but success with all you have planned and hope I helped ease your load along the way.

Now, back to my list that I am way behind in completing today. Below is the email you should of already received.

After much deliberation BANS, N1WAY and a host of supporting domains
and project concepts have been put up for sale.

We've done as much as we can in niche site building and are looking
for an enthusiastic individual or team that wants to build on the 3
year foundation we've put together.

If you are interested in participating in the auction then you can do
so at the following url:

http://flippa.com/auctions/76177/BANS-N1WAY-Plus-Big-Bag-Of-Goodies-In-Niche-Site-Building-Market

Once the sale has been completed a final email containing details of
the new owner and any associated down time during transfer will be
sent out.

Kelvin and Adam