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?
.

 

[Slick Domains]

Exactly - the keyword to the deal is NICHE. As long as there are at least 100 items listed, it could be a profitable niche. Think Targeted visitors.

Well said. If you buy BANS, you are essentially dipping into affiliate marketing, and that is exactly what affiliate marketing is. Find a very small niche and funnel targeted traffic to it. Maybe you only sell 1-2 types of products.

I think what people are missing is that a single store isn't probably gonna help you retire, BUT for the purpose of this thread, we are comparing using BANS to develop your domains vs. parking your domains. Your site doesn't have to make a lot of money to be worth using BANS, you just need to look at whether it is out performing parking your domains. If every store has no sales but 1 eBay signup throughout the year, your $7.00 domain just made $25.00. Now, most domains will get several signups throughout the year, plus at least a few sales every now and then.

I have about 35 stores right now, and plan to be closer to 100 by the end of the year. They alone are helping support the renewal of my entire domain portfolio and have no upkeep involved.

 

[bondjpf]

Well said.
I had a hard time with parking until i found this, now i can pay for my domains and still there's money left to buy other domains or other things...
Also if your domain is not about a niche, you can use it. You never know when a sale or signup will pop up

 

[Billy!]

I cant wait to get started ... 150 BANS sites ... here I come!

 

[bondjpf]

I cant wait to get started ... 150 BANS sites ... here I come!

Good Luck.

 

[Billy!]

I cant wait to get started ... 150 BANS sites ... here I come!

Finally it has taken me all day, but I got my site site up AFL Football Gear

149 more to go!

 

[Seabass]

Finally it has taken me all day, but I got my site site up AFL Football Gear

149 more to go!

Great Billy ..... hopefully your one more person to report if it works or not.

Keep us informed.

 

[Billy!]

Will do, thanks.

 

[urbain]

hi
am trying to get all the info possible about BANS before i get on the wagon too

is it possible to put all the different countries stores in a separate folders in just one domains and have it automatically switch to the appropriated store(folder) by the user country ?

so if yu from uk it load the uk store ,from france it load the french store and so on ?

 

[bondjpf]

hi
am trying to get all the info possible about BANS before i get on the wagon too

is it possible to put all the different countries stores in a separate folders in just one domains and have it automatically switch to the appropriated store(folder) by the user country ?

so if yu from uk it load the uk store ,from france it load the french store and so on ?

Use a separate folder or subdomain.
Feel free to ask any questions

 

[urbain]

-thx for yur reply , so is possible to just put them in folder and have it automatically point the user to the correct country store in the same niche . thats great . gotta get on the wagon then

 

[bondjpf]

-thx for yur reply , so is possible to just put them in folder and have it automatically point the user to the correct country store in the same niche . thats great . gotta get on the wagon then

Yes, you upload each country to each folder.

 

[obi79]

i see google ads on many of these BANS... i don't think it's ok

from Google AdSense Program Policies :
# No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages.
# No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant

 

[Slick Domains]

i see google ads on many of these BANS... i don't think it's ok

from Google AdSense Program Policies :
# No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages.
# No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant

Why? My BANS stores all have original content, so I see no problems. Each page has information above the ads, categories, etc. I think they are referring to "parked" style pages where your site is only ads.

 

[cdboard]

I applied for EPN yesterday, and was surprised to see the activation link in my email five minutes later.

 

[bondjpf]

I applied for EPN yesterday, and was surprised to see the activation link in my email five minutes later.

Good luck.

 

[Billy!]

Anyone making any real money using this yet?

I have 20 sites so far ... created over the last two days, nil earnings yet, apart from .20 cents from an adsense click lol!

 

[SonnyCooL]

-thx for yur reply , so is possible to just put them in folder and have it automatically point the user to the correct country store in the same niche . thats great . gotta get on the wagon then

yes ... i did the same thing for my limited.cd domain ...
Main Page : www.limited.cd -> uk.limited.cd - us.limited.cd - au.limited.cd
problem is i lazy to update my main site ...

 

[Teddy7]

I have about 50 sites since three weeks and earned about 3 Eur. with partydress.us and firstfashion.org

 

[Seabass]

Anyone making any real money using this yet?

I have 20 sites so far ... created over the last two days, nil earnings yet, apart from .20 cents from an adsense click lol!

Billy!..... you must have been busting your ass. 20 sites already? It took me a few hours on my first one getting the categories and other small stuff worked out. I can see now I could go faster, but 20 sites that fast is pretty darn fast.

I actually have been reorganizing much of my business lately so I have not got around to hitting this full speed, but my first site made $1.96 yesterday with eBay and Google --- and that is still double the rate it was making in parking.

Do you already have direct navigation/expired traffic going to your 20 new BANS sites, or are you counting on being indexed in the engines?

 

[timphelan]

I do think using BANS and adsense can be a problem if you aren't adding some content on each page. That can be hard to do if you are instantly setting up a site that has dozens, hundreds or thousands of pages. Just having eBay ads on pages, without other content can possibly get that site banned by adsense.

This is another reason why I like the wp plugin approach better. It kind of forces you to add some bit of content, and will likely get you traffic for a longer period of time. If you are just setting up BANS sites without content as an alternative to parking domains, the traffic will stop after a while from my experience.

i see google ads on many of these BANS... i don't think it's ok

from Google AdSense Program Policies :
# No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages.
# No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant

 

[Seabass]

..............If you are just setting up BANS sites without content as an alternative to parking domains, the traffic will stop after a while from my experience.

Why would the traffic stop if you are coming from parking? Coming from parking you shouldn't have too many indexed domains.

I'm currently over 85% direct navigation on my domains so Google can't take that away from me (I'm sure they are working on it ) , but I can definitely see your point about having content on the domains. Besides, it's really not that hard to spend a little more time on the domain to make more money and not give the surfer another crappy experience similar to MFA sites.

I'll have to go and try to hack WordPress and try that out too - so as to have a comparison. There have been several posters here that have noted they prefer WordPress for various reasons. From what I understand...... WordPress was not intended for sites, but it is flexible and users have been able to make it do what they want in regards to creating sites.

DomainNameWire.com uses WordPress, but Andrew there advises using XSitePro to develop domains. I have a copy but still have not used it. I think the only way I will get to developing more sites is to redirect our efforts away from domain purchases. :]

Here's a really cool article from DomainNameWire about how you can develop your domains really fast using the XSitePro platform. It just goes to show there are several ways that struggling domainers, lower-earning domainers, or even successful domainers can pull their earnings upward. "Struggling Domainers", who'd of thought in 2008 it would be worse?

http://domainnamewire.com/2008/03/18/how-to-develop-your-domain-names-fast/

XSite Pro also has an active forum on their site in which many folks have spoken of successes. It's an interesting read too.

Ron Jackson's www.NameNewbie.com was created with XSite Pro, as an example.

From what I have seen...... and I have been looking...... the three main easy ways to develop sites fast are BANS, WordPress, and XSite Pro.

The WhyParks and Evolandings of this landscape have had some issues with Google so I am simply just watching them for now. Plus, I don't like how they look.

Update: I just sold 12 scrap books on my fishing site using BANS.... go figure. :kickass:

 

[metronome]

wait a minute,
you MUST upload all of the folder in the bans in order to geo target the ebay campaign??(eg, upload ebay uk folder to uk.domain.com, ebay us folder to us.domain.com or domain.com/us????)

I thought you just have to upload one folder to let's say ebay us to public html of domain.com, and then when someone from let's say canada go to this domain.com it will automatically change to ebay ca....

 

[bondjpf]

wait a minute,
you MUST upload all of the folder in the bans in order to geo target the ebay campaign??(eg, upload ebay uk folder to uk.domain.com, ebay us folder to us.domain.com or domain.com/us????)

I thought you just have to upload one folder to let's say ebay us to public html of domain.com, and then when someone from let's say canada go to this domain.com it will automatically change to ebay ca....

Yes all folder because ebay categories are different from country to country.

 

[timphelan]

Yeh, that traffic won't stop. I just meant the search engine traffic. XSitepro is another good option.

Why would the traffic stop if you are coming from parking? Coming from parking you shouldn't have too many indexed domains.

 

[Rich]

I've heard a lot of success stories with phpbay and wordpress. But you can build a nice custom affiliate site with Joomla and a rss reader/plugin, for free.