Random Thoughts

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You know the old phrase “Don’t sweat the details” - Forget that you ever learned that when building your BANS store.  You need to be a detail person and make sure that your website is finished properly.   

First clue to me that a BANS store is not finished is when I see “Your Link Here” or something like that.  These are frequently included in templates that you can download and they’re designed for exactly what they say they are…PUT YOUR LINK THERE!  Find the header file and replace the phrase with something like “Info About Widgets” and make sure your link works.

Another clue that a BANS store is not completed are the words “Store Navigation” or “Site Navigation”.  Every BANS store has these and it’s easy to change them.  These are also terms that are in the header.php file that you can change and it will help with your search engine rankings.  Just go into your BANS control panel, into the template file and search for the words “Store Navigation” and put “Widgets For Sale” or something related to your website in it’s place. 

Build your own store pages – Don’t import the categories from eBay.  Make targeted store pages and use unique meta information on EVERY page. 

Last clue that a site has not been finished is in the general design.  I tend to want to change as much as I can for two reasons.  I don’t want my site to look anything like an out of the box BANS store and I don’t want the search engines to de-list my store as a crappy thin affiliate site.  Go to the CSS file and experiment with changing the colors of the text, backgrounds, borders etc.  Don’t be afraid to use #ffffff, which is white;  People like white space.  If you’re really bad with design, buy a nice looking template.  Search the BANS forum for people making templates or offering design work.

When it comes to marketing, I’m somewhat lucky with building my BANS stores because I do have a bit of background in marketing.  I understand that not everyone has had this experience so it may take a bit of learning to get the hang of the marketing concept.

When you go about building your BANS store, start thinking like you are the customer.  What would you want to see when you land on a website?  What about colors an the overall “feel” of the website?  Does your BANS store have an attractive layout and color scheme?  This may be somewhat subjective, but your bounce rate can help you out when analyzing this.  If you’re bounce rate is 100%, then people get to your website and leave right away.  IF they clicked on an eBay listing, this is great, but if they just hit their back button, that’s not what you want.  Experiment a bit with the design to get your bounce rate to an acceptable level.  For me, my successful stores have a bounce rate of less than 45%, but this could be different for many people.

One thing I have noticed with a lot of BANS stores is that the builders just aren’t thinking in terms of target market.  Who are your customers and what do they want to buy?  For example, if you have a website selling womens shoes, it’s unlikely that a banner promoting software will be all that effective.  A better fit might be a banner promoting makeup or jewelry.

Now for me, I tend not to use banners on my websites as I’ve found that they just don’t convert.  I would rather have someone click on an eBay listing and have a cookie dropped than lose a click to another merchant, but that’s just me.  It might work for you.

It has taken 6 months to get my BANS stores to earn a reasonable amount of money, but it’s finally coming together.  One thing that I figured out a few months ago was that I needed to make it nearly impossible for someone NOT to find my website when they type in my keyword phrases.  For me, I realized early on that because my websites were in highly competitive niches that I wouldn’t likely be able to get these websites in the top ten searches easily.

First you need the basics.  A nicely designed store, content, a blog attached to your store.  Now what?

One effective way to get some traffic to your niche stores is to utilize social bookmarking websites and your blogs RSS feeds as much as you can.  Think about this; When you use Digg to bookmark a website and use a good keyword that doesn’t have a ton of competition, you can get on the first or second page in the search engines within a few days if you’re lucky. 

So why not do that with all the social bookmarking websites?  Eventually you have more than one reference to your website in the top ten positions.  Try Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit just to name a few. 

Next you need to make use of Squidoo and make a lens.  Use your blogs RSS feed on your Squidoo lens for yet another way for people to get to your website (this is assuming that your blog and niche store are integrated).   Don’t forget that your Ezinearticles.com account has an RSS feed as well that you can use on your Squidoo Lens.

Sign up for Zimbio as well and add your blogs.  Then you can ping your blogs and your blog postings will be added to one of their Wikizines.   

Look for other RSS feed websites that let you add your RSS feed.  Soon enough references to your website are everywhere and you have traffic coming from all over.  The best part about doing this is that it actually has made me rank better in the SERP’s because of all the backlinks.   

Now, I don’t want to sound like I know everything because I certainly don’t, but this has worked well for me.

The other day I decided to evaluate what exactly it was that made some of my stores very successful, while others are not.

1. Niche - I started looking at my successful stores and noticed that all of them are in highly competitive niches which are fairly broad.  I know this goes against the whole “micro niche” philosophy, but that’s how it has worked out for me.  Surprisingly, I just closed down any of my stores that were in a tight niche because of poor performance.

2.  Blog -  All of my successful websites have blogs in wordpress, in the /blog directory.  I try to post at least once per week.

3.  Articles - All of my successful stores have articles on Ezinearticles.com and about 4 other article directories.  I am getting backlinks from people publishing my articles on their websites.  I’m not talking about a lot of articles - maybe 5 for each website.

4.  Blog & Forum Comments - For my successful websites, I have commented on blogs and made a few forum posts in niche forums.

5.  Directories - Whether they work or not, I have these sites listed in about 100-200 directories.

6.  Squidoo Lens - These sites have a Squidoo lens.  Not huge lenses, but ones with a few articles.

7.  Social Bookmarks - I have utilized social bookmarking sites like: Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Propeller, Zimbio.

8.  Content - These websites have content.  Not as much as some  niche stores, but most store pages have content, and I’ve written 3 or 4 good quality articles for the content pages.

9.  Listings - All of my sites have listings on the front page, but not many, maybe 2.  They act as more of a teaser and I sort the listings in BANS so that certain hot items at low prices will show up.

10.  Style - My sites don’t look like BANS sites at all.  I change almost every color including borders and backgrounds, and I change how the sidebars look.

That’s about all I have noticed about my stores that are performing well.  I hope this helps in your success with BANS.  If you would like some help, send me an email under my contact section and I will get back to you.

Hi Everyone!

Welcome back to Random-Thoughts-Blog.com. Did you miss me? I’m sure for anyone subscribed to the RSS feed, one day back in April, it just didn’t work and you just quit reading.  Back in April, after almost 100 posts, I decided to take my blog down not knowing if I would return.

If you’ve read some of the older posts, you’ll know that I am a full-time-unemployed guy trying to navigate my way through making money online.  I have not worked in a regular job since January of 2008 when we moved to a new city for my wife’s job relocation.

Since that time I have tried a number of different ways to make money, including blogging.  Some of the things I tried were successful, while some were not.  Thankfully, I had backups of my blogs database before I took it down and was able to bring it back online in no time with a brand new look.

So What Happened In April 2008 To Make Me Take My Blog Down?

To be honest, there wasn’t some catastrophic event that made me do it.  I just came to the conclusion that I was running out of content to write because I hadn’t experienced enough or learned enough about making money online that would qualify me to talk about it.  There are lots of blogs out there where people talk about how to make money online, but they themselves are making very little.  I decided that I needed to “walk the talk”, so I just pulled down the blog and that was it.

It was too bad that I did pull it down because it was really starting to get some decent traffic, but I’m glad I did.  After that I spent my days learning to make money with Build A Niche Store (BANS).  Once I saw my first earnings, I was hooked and I saw the potential income that could be made with BANS.  I devoted 12 hours per day to building and maintaining my BANS niche stores.  In total, at the height of my small BANS empire, I had 21 stores.

Once they stores were built, I set out to grow the traffic to these stores, which proved to be no easy task.  Good, quality buying traffic was what I was after.  Anyone can stumble a few blog posts or store pages and get some traffic, but I wanted quality traffic.  I worked day and night and my earnings started to climb.

Now, I’m not going to be one of those guys that shows screenshots of my affiliate accounts, since I think it’s tacky, but I have made some money.  I’m not talking about huge, buy a Ferrari kind of money, but decent earnings which have been growing each month. My goal with my BANS stores is over $5,000 per month, which I have not hit yet.  Actually, I’m not even close, but the growth has been at 75-100% each month, so it might not be as far off as I think.  Realistically, to give you an idea, last month I was fairly close to $1,000.

If you’ve ever considered buying BANS I would warn you.  IT IS NOT A GET RICH QUICK SCHEME.  The eBay Partner Network (EPN) has made it very difficult for affiliates looking for quick and easy money to operate.  The goal with BANS is building high quality, unique websites that dominate their respective niche.  This takes a lot of time and effort, but the rewards are worth it.  Along the way I have dropped a number of stores, some with hours and hours spent in development.  I’m down to 14 stores, each with a blog and I am in the process of turning them into high quality websites that add value to a customers buying experience.

Since that time I’ve also made money with Clickbank and niche blogs and I will tell you about that another time.  Also, I launched an article writing business which has been going exceptionally well and keeps me very busy.  If you’re in the market for quality content for your website, stop by NicheStoreContent.com

So now that I’m back I would love if you kept reading.  I will give you info on how it is that I’m making money online, what’s working for me and what is not.

Stay tuned!

Today I am interviewing Bill, from TheBlogEntrepreneur.com.  He’s a relatively new, yet fairly successful blogger with an beautifully designed blog…Check it out today!

1. Do you have a fulltime job or are you a fulltime blogger?

I have a full time job. I am a Sales Manager for a Fortune 400 company and I am one of the few that are blessed enough to love what I do. I love it mainly because of the people that I work with. I have a great team of guys working under me and I would hate to lose that aspect of the job. I would like to continue to grow my online empire to the point where I would have the option to enjoy the freedom that it gives. I have a ways to go before that becomes an option as my job carries a lot of benefits and perks with it that I am not prepared to give up at this point.

2. How long have you been blogging and did you have any other internet experience prior to starting TBE?

I have only been what I would call a blogger since about December 1st of 2007, just about 4 months. Prior to that I screwed around a little bit with a blogger blog here and there but probably didn’t have even a half a dozen posts on all of them so I don’t really even count them.

I have been dabbling online now for a few years and have been on the internet since childhood.  I have a varied background and can usually talk intelligently about most aspects of the online world.

3. Although you have only been blogging less than six months, it appears that you have been quite successful. What steps have you taken to achieve this success?

I simply made the choice to become successful at it. I know that sounds kind of simple but it really is. Most people fail because they choose to fail, they aren’t willing to invest the time, effort or energy to make themselves successful.

I started out by reading blog after blog after blog. I remember the first one I ever read was Yaro Starak at Entrepreneurs-Journey and I loved it. Yaro is an awesome blogger and I found myself really engaged in what he had to say. After kind of getting the lay of the land I dove in and worked at it. I spend as many as 4 to 5 hours a day working on my blog and that’s after working a 12 hour workday.

I don’t often put that much time in now but I did at first when I was learning how and what to do. There’s far more to being successful than just being a good writer. You need an attractive blog and you need to market your content like a madman. It’s tough starting out and it’s still tough 4 months later. I am still a newb and have a long ways to go compared to some blogs.  I will say this…it’s been FUN! I love it and I look forward to spending time researching and writing articles. If you’re in a niche that you don’t look forward to being engaged in then you won’t last.

4. Have you made an mistakes in getting started that if you could, you would go back and do differently?

Yes a LOT of them. Actually, no I don’t think so because everything I screwed up has taught me something. I would have preferred to have a custom theme designed for me right from the start but all the tweaking and playing I have done with mine has taught me a ton about Wordpress.

I think I was fortunate that I found a niche that I love, even though it’s absolutely saturated. If I could give advice to someone else I would say that you should pick a blog topic that you love and that you can be passionate about.

This will allow you to be a much better blogger than if you are writing to try and make some money. That will wear you out and it will show in your writing. I think the ONLY thing I would do over again, is start earlier. I’ve been considering a blog for years but never prioritized it right. My wife has been blogging for a while and loved it but I found it much later than she did.

5. What are your thoughts on affiliate marketing? Do you do any affiliate marketing and if so, what are your favorite programs?

My thoughts are affiliate marketing is a great way to earn income. It sounds like it’s easy and most of the affiliate programs make it sound easy, but it’s very hard.

The Internet marketers all make it sound like they are making thousands a week and that if you aren’t then you’re doing something wrong. Reality is very, very few people make a sustainable income from AM. It’s very possible, but most people aren’t willing to invest the time to get good at it because they think it’s going to be easy. When they find it isn’t they end up quitting.

My favorite programs have been Ebay and then smaller affilate programs like phpbay and BANS. I am getting working on developing another site that is going to be centered around blogging and blogging tools, themes, plugins that kind of thing that is going to be primarily an affiliate site.

6. Looking into the future, do you have any quantifiable goals that you would like to accomplish in 2008? (traffic numbers, rss, alexa etc)

Yes of course. If you don’t set goals then you are treading water. I will be very disappointed if I am not looking at 20k visitors per month, 1000 + RSS subscribers and an Alexa that is sub 50k. I would also like to have a PR4 or higher and be generating about 5k a month by the end of 2008.

If I had the luxury of being able to work online full time then I don’t think this would be too terribly hard as I have some neat niche sites and some good ideas, I just lack the time to get it all done.