Anyone tried Build A Niche Store (BANS) for eBay instead of Parking ?

[Seabass]

http://www.buildanichestore.com/

I like the concept b/c it is not dependent on Google or Yahoo for success, otherwise I would probably heap it in with all the other MFA programs out there now. This is based mainly on ebay

Has anyone tried this yet? It builds a store for eBay, plus you can add content and adsense, etc... It seems it would be a good solution on carefully chosen domains. On some domains, I can't see it working at all since they don't fit in tightly with any eBay auctions, but others are a perfect match. Many sites look good and surprisingly seem to give some real value to the surfer unlike the millions of crappy automated MFA sites.

Here are some examples I found:

http://www.turboguides.com/
http://www.usgoldcoinauctions.com/
http://www.homegrownsushi.com/

And, after doing a little research it appears many folks are making money doing this. How much? It is hard to say since the info. out there seems limited since not everyone wants to disclose their income, but a few have showed their earnings on various sites and blogs. I could see this working, but all of the working sites I have seen are based on really lame domains.

I just wonder if anyone has tried it on a great generic domain yet, or an expired domain with big traffic, and what were the results - especially compared to parking?
.

 

[timphelan]

Tim - is the free plug-in easy to find on Ebay ?
Can you show a site where you are using it so I can see what it would look like ?

You can find the free plugin here:

PHPBay

Go to products section and you'll see the free lite version at the bottom. There's also a pro version for wordpress and non wordpress sites.

Here's an example of a blog I just sold that uses the plugin:

http://digital-slr-camera.net/

What I like about it is that you can pinpoint a specific niche more easily than bans. At least to me it has been easier. That blog above was getting a growing amount of long tail search traffic and it was directly related to the ebay ads. To me, it's not just the income you make by using the eBay ads, but the traffic they bring to your sites. That's worth money if you ever decide to sell the site.

 

[james2002]

I have

Iphones information

I build it myself and no fees.

Why should I pay $97 for the license? Ebay plug in is free.

Why do I have to pay if I can do it free pretty easy?

 

[bondjpf]

You need to have some programming skills to use ebay api.
With bans you don't have to worry about that . Just setup the store add a logo and some content and SEO and you are set to make money.
In less than 1 hour you have a fully functional site pulling ebay items and no programming skills involved.

 

[james2002]

You need to have some programming skills to use ebay api.
With bans you don't have to worry about that . Just setup the store add a logo and some content and SEO and you are set to make money.
In less than 1 hour you have a fully functional site pulling ebay items and no programming skills involved.

You don't need much skills, IMO. Just sign up with ebay and create list as you like and put the javascript codes whereever you like to put. You can put 3 or 4 different listings as you like.

 

[Synozeer]

I've got several BANS sites on names I used to park, and I'm making more with BANS easily. Even for domains targeting small ticket items, any time someone signs up as a new member to Ebay through your site, it nets you $25, so for many domains that may only make .50 a day, getting just 1 of those a month already makes you a profit.

 

[advaita]

Thanks for the info. Tim but am I looking in the right place ? The phpbay site seems to be saying it costs $49

 

[cdboard]

does BANS only use ebay categories, or can keywords or phrases be used instead

 

[Synozeer]

You can use categories, keywords/phrases, or both together.

 

[Slick Domains]

You can use a furniture or services domain because ebay sells furniture and services also...

Check the categories available at ebay: http://shop.ebay.com/allcategories/all-categories/

I totally understand that, as people sell eBooks, domain names, etc. on eBay. My point is that you aren't going to make much money with BANS for these types of sites usually because people don't usually want to pay shipping on a vehicle or furniture. With eBooks and other services you are usually better off signing up as an affiliate and creating a landing page. : :hehe:

 

[timphelan]

Thanks for the info. Tim but am I looking in the right place ? The phpbay site seems to be saying it costs $49

Keep going down on the products page until you see PHPBay Lite.

This is the easiest setup for an eBay affiliate program site I have seen. You can have a blog with eBay ads up and running in 5 minutes. No programming skills needed at all to set these up, if you know how to install a wordpress blog with plugins. Of course, I recommend keep posting to the blog using different keywords.

When making a post you simply click a button and a short code appears like this: [phpbay]keyword(s), 10[/phpbay]

You change the "10" to the number of ads you want to show up to 100 and insert a keyword where it says "keyword(s)". How easy is that?

I believe the more ads you show the more chances of getting search engine traffic. However, too many on one page may cause the page to load slowly. So, I usually limit the amount of posts per page to 1 or 2.

( I have set these up for others. If anybody wants me to set some up for you PM me. )

 

[1901gt]

Well, i paid for the license. Looking good so far - http://weightlosspromo.com/. :D

 

[Seabass]

I have BANS and I can tell you that you'll make money with BANS if you put a little effort in each store you setup.
A little SEO and some content is enough to get you started.
As for footprint you just need to remove any associations with BANS like in the footer where it says "Powered by a Build a Niche Store".
I'm getting clicks and sales everyday that I wouldn't get if i just put my domains parked.
I've got days that I've made up to $86.
If you want to give it a try, check the link on my sig.

bondjpf - Thanks for the info. I going to buy a copy through your link and give this a shot.
.

I've got several BANS sites on names I used to park, and I'm making more with BANS easily. Even for domains targeting small ticket items, any time someone signs up as a new member to Ebay through your site, it nets you $25, so for many domains that may only make .50 a day, getting just 1 of those a month already makes you a profit.

Synozeer - Thanks for the comparison b/t Parking and Build a Niche Store. I like hearing that.

Also, thanks to everyone else who has taken the time to answer my question.
.

 

[bondjpf]

I totally understand that, as people sell eBooks, domain names, etc. on eBay. My point is that you aren't going to make much money with BANS for these types of sites usually because people don't usually want to pay shipping on a vehicle or furniture. With eBooks and other services you are usually better off signing up as an affiliate and creating a landing page. : :hehe:

Hehe, 2 days ago someone bought a BMW and the comission was $59.65, not bad i think.
I think that you can earn some money, even on those high priced items that most people tend to be off because of the price. Remember there's millions of people everyday buying stuff.
Yesterday i got 2 ACRUS (signups to ebay) at $25 each...
I think this is a great way to earn some money instead of parking.

bondjpf - Thanks for the info. I going to buy a copy through your link and give this a shot.
.

.

Thanks. Don't forget to sign up to EPN (Ebay Partner Network) first, you need to be accepted there before starting this.
After that you can go and buy bans or other tool.
Hope you start to make some money pretty soon.
Don't forget to visit buildanichestore.com for tips and help.

 

[Seabass]

Hehe, 2 days ago someone bought a BMW and the comission was $59.65, not bad i think.
I think that you can earn some money, even on those high priced items that most people tend to be off because of the price. Remember there's millions of people everyday buying stuff.
Yesterday i got 2 ACRUS (signups to ebay) at $25 each...
I think this is a great way to earn some money instead of parking.

I'm starting to feel very encouraged! Thanks for the info.

It seems to me that these BANS pages give more value to the surfer than parking pages. Google still can't get seem to get relevant ads on parked domains after a decade in biz and billions of dollars of income. It must be intentional.

I'll make sure to sign up with the EPN first.
.

 

[onewordonly]

I decided to try to see if I could find a free plugin for wordpress that would work on my site to fetch Ebay products. I use Dreamhost to host this website so I had to also find one that used "curl" to get the RSS feed otherwise there is one called multi rss or something that looks good. I eventually one found that worked well for me after customizing it a bit (adding Description). I can insert it as part of the code in the side bar or I can just add a small piece of code in my blog post.

this is my site I used it on: CalgaryTravel.info :p

 

[Seabass]

Hehe, 2 days ago someone bought a BMW and the comission was $59.65, not bad i think.
I think that you can earn some money, even on those high priced items that most people tend to be off because of the price. Remember there's millions of people everyday buying stuff.
Yesterday i got 2 ACRUS (signups to ebay) at $25 each...
I think this is a great way to earn some money instead of parking.



Thanks. Don't forget to sign up to EPN (Ebay Partner Network) first, you need to be accepted there before starting this.
After that you can go and buy bans or other tool.
Hope you start to make some money pretty soon.
Don't forget to visit buildanichestore.com for tips and help.

bondjpf, I just purchased a Build a Niche Store license through your link. I also signed up for the ebay Publishers Network.

I'll post here later when I get some stats and let you and others know how it is going.

Thanks - Seabass
.

 

[bondjpf]

I wish you the best.

 

[GoldenAppleCorps]

I've just completed my first BANS site - see my sig - and am waiting 'excitedly' for the great googlebot to do it's thing. Am going to remove the BANS references from header and footer as advised and also try the free php idea too.

Will let you know how I get on (assuming you're interested of course!).

 

[Slick Domains]

Welcome to the BANSwagon. I think I just topped 30 BANS sites last night (a few need some content added still though).

The income is down a little since the switch from CJ, but the income is destroying what I was making parking domains and gets some pages indexed and stuff. Some of the more profitable ones can usually be sold for 10-20x monthly income.

 

[xman]

This is something worth giving a shot.

$97 for a license and you can build as much site as you want I think is worth it.

 

[bondjpf]

I've just completed my first BANS site - see my sig - and am waiting 'excitedly' for the great googlebot to do it's thing. Am going to remove the BANS references from header and footer as advised and also try the free php idea too.

Will let you know how I get on (assuming you're interested of course!).

Nice site.
Hope those sales start rolling pretty soon.
Please keep us posted on your progress.

PS: To get rid of the text on the logo just go to header.php and replace this:

<div class="headerimg">
<h1 id="title">
<a href="<?php print URL_PATH."/";?>"> <?php print SITENAME."";?></a>
</h1>
</div>


with this:

<a href="<?php print URL_PATH."/";?>"><img src="<?php print URL_PATH."/themes/$temp/";?>images/logo.jpg" border="0"></a>

 

[Seabass]

I made a nice site yesterday and then the DNS reverted the page back to a parked page and stopped my work in its tracks. I had the eBay ads up and was just was just adding Adsense when I hit save and BAM - it went back to the old parked page. It still shows the parked page this morning.

I guess the key is getting some domains "prepped" in advance by changing the DNS entries to not slow you down.

I can't wait to get started on it again. It was looking really nice.

 

[xman]

When you download all the files into your server, do I have to put it in my main domain or I can put it any domain within that server?

I haven't been developing for many years now and I'm just trying to get back in track.

I also noticed in the templates, it contains a header and a footer. Are those virtual header and footer similar to SHTML? I just had a quick glance of all the files late last night and just wondering.

 

[bondjpf]

You can put your files in any domain

 

[xman]

Thanks bondjpf

Since I read this thread I got into it.

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