Check here for news about the Auction Zeal web site or ideas for new tools. Our goal is to provide tools and ideas for finding niches for auction stores and other types of Internet Marketing.
Are you struggling with your online money making efforts? I did too at first, then I found and applied some key secrets of the "big guns" online. The most important one is to give your visitors what they're looking for (duh!).
Traffic does not equal sales... it simply means people are coming to your page. The quality and relevance of your website traffic is always the most important thing.
The guide goes on to give an of a website selling healthy dog food that was optimized for the keyword "dog" (perhaps an extreme example). That site would get traffic for people looking to buy a dog, looking for tips to keep their dog from barking, even those looking for their local dog pound! You'd get less traffic if you targeted the keyword "healthy dog food" but the traffic would be highly targeted.
You can get yourself a free copy of the guide here. It has some good information if you're stuck and don't know where to start. It also uncovers some misconceptions that the more experienced marketers may already have formed.
They've totally revamped their site and their forum to make both quite a bit more user friendly. The BANS forum is a great resource as you work on your sites. Although I'm not as active over there as I probably should be, I've gotten some great tips over the last several months.
I also noticed that they have produced a new group of templates. These templates are very easy to use, and they make some great looking BANS sites with just a little work. Here's an example of a site selling discount wedding decorations that I built using one of the new templates. I think it looks great, it's highly SEO optimized, and it only took a few minutes! Here's another sample site that the guys at BANS built.
I'm excited at the possibilities that these new templates provide!
Although this isn't exactly about BANS or building BANS stores, I posted a new Squidoo lens today about more general tips for internet marketing. Many of the tips, like mentoring and quality content apply to BANS sites just like the do to Internet marketing success in general.
I've been busy updating my BANS sites with some fresh content over the last few weeks, and the search engines really seem to love it. If your own traffic is tapering off, maybe it's time for a new article or two. Even though the eBay items change enough to keep your sites fresh, nothing helps your search results quite like fresh content.
Need help building headers for your BANS website? Here's a YouTube video that shows one of the methods I use. It's easy, and you can use it to make some nice looking headers.
I mentioned this on the Wealthy Affiliate Forum, but I'd be remiss if I didn't tell my readers here about my offer. If you haven't read my Squidoo lens or the posts on the WA forum, I'm offering a really nice bonus for those who purchase BANS through my affiliate link.
Here's a section of the latest post that gives some more details:
Good news and bad news.... After months and months of working my fingers to the bone slaving over my computer keyboard ( ), I wrapped up all of the finishing touches to the 2nd bonus this afternoon. If you've already bought BANS, you'll be getting an email shortly with a link to the updated (and final) version.
So, for those who already own BANS and wanted a copy, I'll have something packaged up for you this weekend.
What's the bad news? It's not exactly terrible, but I mentioned it before: now that this is finished, I'm going to pull bonus #1 and not offer it any more. But, since this new bonus has taken me so much longer than I originally planned, and because there's real value in it, I'll do this:
The cleverly hidden offer... Between now and Saturday at midnight Central, if you buy BANS via my link (see below), you'll get both bonuses with a whole bunch of extras thrown in. After midnight on Saturday, bonus #1 goes away for good.
If, after 24 pages and 345 replies, you're still on the fence, here's what's included in the two bonuses:
Bonus #1 The method I used to make over $100 in the first week from my first BANS site. This has been used by others with similar and sometimes much better results. Read the early posts in this thread for details... Bonus #2 A step-by-step method of automating the sales and traffic on your BANS sites. You won't make as much with this method initially as you can with the first method, but these sites are truly automated once they get going. You want more money? Just set another one up. It also includes details on how to make your BANS sites look their best; many BANS users struggle with this. Extras Sorry, I'm not going to spill the beans here, but you'll be pleased by all you get.
What's an offer without testimonials? Here's what others have said about the package: Bonus #1
His secret is very simple, but VERY helpful. I do recommend it. I debated getting this through my own link, but opted for his. I am glad I did.
I earned my first BANS commission in 72 hours. It wasn't much, but I thought that was pretty quick to already be getting traffic that earns commissions.
Once you get going, this is soooo easy. Money well spent.
Like someone said here, it really works!!! ... And for people who want to buy BANS, go through Kent's link, it is worth it!
Today I wake up to another couple of leads, one has been confirmed resulting in another $25 commission. Also another $3.11 in adsense brings my total to a nice little $65 in 5 days.
I really encourage anyone who has knowledge of IM to consider the BANS strategy and purchase from Kent. You have brought something to my attention that has focused me sharply Kent and I want you to know how much this thread has helped me get out of my "rutt" and I thank you dearly for showing us this. I really needed this kickstart. So anyone who considers BANS please buy from Kent. He deserves it just for posting this awesome thread.
Bonus #2 (with extras)
I received the bonuses and am extremely glad I did. I am not an experienced marketer but think the bonuses would help anyone.
If you are an experienced marketer and already know how to bring in cash on a regular basis, then purchase BANS through clickbank. On the other hand, if you want to find out Kent's technique for optimizes your chances at getting good traffic and a monthly income flow, then buy BANS through Kent - the more information the better. His stores sell and the more stores the better. My stores sell, but, now that I have read his bonus, I know how to make my stores soar.
If you are seriously interested in getting BANS.. I will vouch for Kent.. and buying it through him. You will be glad you did.
The PDF from Heaven
I just went through the bonus pdf and I will pm Kent shortly with feedback.
I wanted you all to hear my opinion on Kent's bonus.
I have been playing in the online marketing field for the last couple of years off and on. Kent's bonus package which teaches you how to setup a network for each BANS store (which can be applied to any type of web site) is by far the most useful that I have come across, especially the steps needed to gain traffic.
Kent, you are by far the most trustworthy marketer I have come across and I consider you my #1 mentor.
Folks, Kent has put together a top notch pdf on how to create a network system for each of your BANS store. It won't cost you a cent to gain the desired profit and traffic, just plenty of hard work which is what will set us apart - how hard are we willing to work. The harder you work, the more benefits you reap.
When Kent gets ready to sell his Bonus pdf - be sure to buy it. He doesn't just tell you what you need to do, he offers a step by step hold your hand approach which makes it easy to understand the steps involved, the sequence of events, and he offers all the tools needed to do this, all free.
God Almighty, I may just be free at last from the drudgery of a 9 to 5 job (or at least within a year anyway.)
Just wanted to thank you for the BANs info! I have my first site up and I'm starting the [process]. Super easy set up and your ... strategy is great! I would have been struggling with traffic without that. ... Super fabulous information! This has been a fun project so far so fingers crossed there's also a pay out!
I never realised I'd get so many freebies from you, it's great.
You bonuses are great Kent, glad I purchased BANS via you.
You're bonuses are amazing, good quality stuff I will actually use!
Great information would help a new Bans user get up and running fast.
Definitely buy from Kent, you'll get so much extra, you'd be crazy not to.
This is a great, fully complete package of tools and information to help you get started with BANS. There are tools to start working on ideas for the site. Then it takes the BANS set up instructions to the next step so you can not only set up the site, you can start driving traffic!
Ok, this is starting to sound too much like a sales letter, and that wasn't my intent. It just feels good to be someone's #1 mentor...
BANS is a great way to get out of the thinking rut and start doing, and you can't make any money until you do something. If you've tried other marketing methods and are looking for a kick in the rear, this may be it; BANS certainly took my success to the next level (almost over night). The funny thing is that once you find success, it tends to follow you around. My brother told me that I seem to have the midas touch, and I assure you that I didn't have the touch of gold last summer.
But, if you're just starting out, you really should start out in the 8-week course first! Once you've gotten your feet wet a bit, then you can come back and take a look at BANS. For that matter, as I've said more than once, I wouldn't buy *any* product until you've made your first sale. Otherwise, you're just chasing the next dream...
If you think BANS sounds like a great product and want to save a few bucks, just replace my Clickbank ID with yours (no hard feelings here).
And for everyone who was waiting on a stand-alone version of the bonus, it will be ready *very* soon...
Kent
P.S. The last time I did one of these long posts, no one could find my affiliate link. I assure, I'm not hiding it.. So here it is again: http://wulfster.nichestore.hop.clickbank.net/
P.P.S. Send me a PM with your order details and I'll send you the bonuses.
OK, the You Tube video is working now. I tried to use Yahoo Video, but for some reason only the audio would play. Don't you love technology!
Anyway, let me know if you have questions about the video.
I realized that I got in a bit of a hurry in the video when doing the SEO changes. In addition to changing the "Page Name" to change the link that shows up in the navigation menu, I'd also change the "File Name" to something that matches the keyword ("bluetooth-accessories" in this example).
If you found this post from You Tube and want to learn more about BANS, you can scan through my posts below, visit my Squidoo lens, or just visit the BANS site directly.
Based on some questions over on the Wealthy Affiliate forum, I put together a video to show how to set up filters or eBay queries on your individual BANS pages. Unfortunately, You Tube is down for maintenance right now, so I'm going to have to find another host.
One point I did want to make though is that although you can filter the results on each page, you can't filter every page at once. There is no high-level filter that works for each page, but I don't really think you'd want one.
Hopefully that will make more sense once the video is up, because I go though the process in a good deal of detail.
Since I felt like I was neglecting the Pressbook Collector site, I decided to clean up the colors and fonts a bit. There weren't a ton of changes. I just tried to match the colors on the site with the colors in the header (as much as possible).
I also changed some of the fonts in the CSS file to make it look more like the inside of a pressbook. Hopefully it looks a little bit better. I'll start working on a bit of SEO next.
I was looking through my Commission Junction stats for yesterday and noticed that the Pressbook Collector site had its first sale. I'm not sure where it came from though because I failed to add any kind of hit counter to the page. That's either a sign of encroaching senility or of having too many irons in the fire!
The Commission Junction stats show that it's had fourteen clicks through to eBay and the one sale. Even more encouraging is that the sale was for a pressbook:
Ok, so the commission was only $0.83 on this one item, but since I haven't done any SEO work on the site yet, it should give an indication of just how powerful BANS can be. Someone was probably searching for Pressbooks in a search engine, found the site, clicked one of the items, and bought something.
Since I forgot to add a hit counter to the site, we'll never know for sure. I'm going to remedy that right now though. If this is all old hat, just skip the rest of the post; for the rest of you, I'll show how I set it up.
I use Statcounter for all of my hit tracking. Some people prefer the high-level analysis that you can do with Google Analytics, but I like the granularity Statcounter provides. Heck, they're both free, so I suppose you could put both on the same site. Since adding them to your sites works the same way for both, I'll just walk through one here. Again, I'll assume that you're using a BANS site (since that's the gist of this thread).
First, set up a free account at Statcounter if you don't have one already. Once your account is set up and you have logged in, click the "Add New Project" link on the main page: Fill out the name of your web site, its address, then choose a category and timezone and click "Next." Congratulations! Your project has been created! OK, so you still need to configure it and get the code (I don't know why they get so excited at this point). Click the "Configure & Install Code" arrow to move to the next step. I almost always choose an invisible counter, but you can use your judgment here. Just choose one of the display options and click next again.
It will ask you where you want to install the code to help you make it a bit easier. Just choose the option that says "No, I want the default install guide" and click "Next" again.
Now here comes the fun part. You'll see a bunch of code in the middle of the screen: If you click inside of the box, it will highlight all of the code for you. Then copy the code to your clipboard (steps 1 and 2 below the box of code tell you how to do this if you don't know how). Now you need to insert it into your page.
Switch over to your BANS admin page (log in if you need to), and click on the "Template" link on the left menu. Once that loads, choose the "footer.php" link for your chosen template (see 1 and 2 below): Now it gets really ugly! Not really. This is pretty easy. Inside of the code window, scroll all of the way to the bottom and find the last two lines that look like this:
</body> </html>
Click in front of the "<" on the "</body>" line (use your arrow keys if you aren't sure that you're in the right place), then paste in the code you copied on the Statcounter site. If you don't know how to do this, hold down the control key on your keyboard and type the letter "v" (if you're a Mac user, you're on your own since I don't know the keystrokes). Then make sure to click the "Update Footer" button at the bottom of the page: That's all there is to it. As you get visitors to your page, you'll see them show up on the Statcounter site. Their free service only saves 500 visitors per site, but I've found that it's enough to get a good understanding of traffic patters of your visitors.
On another note, I'm taking a few days off from work over the weekend, so I'm going to try to finish up the pressbook site. It's very close already, but I'm not satisfied with the page colors. Then I'll start some SEO work to see if we can start getting some real traffic.
I'm going to be changing the pages colors to match what I did in the header. If you aren't familiar with how they colors are defined on web pages, it can be a bit intimidating. In basic terms, they are defined using the amount of red, blue, and green in the color. That's easy enough, but they are defined using hexadecimal which begins looking like some type of alien language for the uninitiated:
#ffcc22
Here's how it works in a nutshell (without worrying about all of the math). The first two characters are the amount of red, the next two are green, and the last two are blue. The higher the number, the more of that color there will be, and each digit goes from 0 to f with f being the highest (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f). If you want all red and no other color, you would use #ff0000. All green would be #00ff00 and all blue is #0000ff. The other two of interest are black (no color): #000000; and white (all colors): #ffffff.
If you're lost, don't worry. You don't really need to know all of this. Most graphics programs will tell you the RGB values of a color, and there are some handy color-picking tables available on the web.
In my case, I want the background parts of my page to be the same green as the background of the header. Looking back at my image editing software, I see that it was #75bb4e. I'll make the following edits in styles.css to set this color (only the changes sections are shown):
Similarly, I'll update the test portions of the page to be the aged white color: #efece5. That's in the following sections. You may not want to make all of these the same color, but it works for the look I'm going for. To do this in CSS, change the colors marked in green below; you can remove the red lines and these sections will get their background color from the page itself:
Now I just need to find a darker color of the antique-white for some of the other sections of the page. I'll mess around with it a bit and show what I did in the next post. For now, here's what the site looks like:
This is probably going to be too much detail, so if you already know how to edit CSS and change colors on web pages, you'll probably want to just skip this post. If it's over your head, there are tons of HTML and CSS tutorials on the web; Google is your friend.
First things first. I chose the layout-2-both BANS template for this page. There are a few things that I don't like about the template that I'll change first. The first is the line between the header and the body:
It isn't going to work with my design, so I'll edit it out; you can use the BANS editor for all of these edits. To remove it, just delete the following lines from the CSS file, styles.css:
Next, let's get rid of the title that overlays the header. The BANS headers all have an image on the right and a blank space on the left. The default templates use this blank space for the title of your page. I like to do it myself in the header, so this part can be removed. It's in the header.php template file. Look for the following section and remove it (don't forget to save):
You can see that the default image width for this template is 968 pixels and the height is 180 pixels. My image is 968 by 334, so I have to change the height to 334 in two places:
After a bit of trial and error, I think I've got something that I like. Since I was trying to go for the feel of an old pressbook, I used just a couple colors and desaturated the images to black and white. It didn't look old enough until I added a bit of tan (for aging) to the whites and then faded the blacks to a dark gray. I'm fairly pleased with the results:
I'm going to use the green color for the page background and then the light color for the background of the test areas. When you are making your own graphics, you'll want to remember to make it the right size for your templates header or you'll have to make quite a few changes. My template's header is 938 pixels wide, so I stuck to that width with this header image. To get it to show up, just save it as JPG, upload it to the images directory for your BANS template, and rename it to logo.jpg.
Here's what it looks like with the header (and no other template changes):
Ugh! The header is cut off at the bottom, there's a title on the header that I don't want, and the rest of the page is still the default grays. Time for some template changes.
I finally got some spare time, so I'm going to work on the graphics for the site. I think I'm going to go for the look and feel of one of the movie pressbooks. For the older ones, the pictures are usually printed in monotone and then some of the text might be in a second color (or sometimes not). Here are some images I found that I'll start with. All of these came from Morgue File:
The trick is going to be to put these together in a meaningful format (and I may not use all of them).
Although I'm not sure how much time I can devote to this new site the rest of the week, I'm going to try to do something every day. Today I went to the Morgue File to find some public domain images as a starting point. If these don't work out I'll search for some cheap stock images.
Maybe tonight I'll work on a header.
I should also mention that the initial keyword research looks pretty grim, but if people are buying on eBay, who knows. The keyword data in general is a bit behind the market.
Ok, I ate dinner, fed the dog and cat, and built the pressbook website. I'd consider it a preproduction site at this point, but it's usable as it is. I've seen many BANS sites get published that aren't much more than this:
This took about ten minutes to set up. To get started, you just FTP the BANS software to your new site, connect it to your database by following on-screen prompts, then do a little configuration. If you choose a single category from eBay, which I did, the site navigation is all set up by the software. After filling out a few fields and choosing some default settings, your site is ready.
I'm going to spend some time on the header and look and feel of this site, and by the time the DNS entry is up and running, it will look much better.
Since I already have web hosting on Hostgator and their Baby package allows unlimited domains, I'll set up the new site there. It won't work until the DNS entry is created on 1 and 1, but I can go ahead and get it ready on Hostgator anyway.
I just did an add-on domain for the new site on the c-panel tool for my host:
Now that the site prework is done, I'll set up the database for BANS. It needs a MySQL database for each site, and it's also pretty easy to set up in C-Panel:
Just create a database by giving it a unique name. Remember that Hostgator adds your user name to the beginning of your dabase and any users you create, so is your user name is "billy" and you create a database named "wigitstore" your real database name is "billy_wigitstore."
While you're in the MySQL Database admin area, create a new user (and password) and link it to your new database. The BANS manual shows how to do this, but it's right on the C-Panel form.
Now that the prework is done, I'm going to get something to eat and come back and set up the BANS site.
Ok, so what can you do with these niches? I'm going to show you step-by-step how to monetize one of these niches using a tool called Build A Niche Store (BANS).
As I pointed out in the previous post, one of the hottest niches on the list was Movie Pressbooks:
Doing a little digging, I found that PressbookCollector.com is available. I just registered the name on 1 and 1 Internet, and the DNS setup will take much longer than it takes to set up the site in BANS. As I set up the site, I'll add more posts with the details.
), I wrapped up all of the finishing touches to the 2nd bonus this afternoon. If you've already bought BANS, you'll be getting an email shortly with a link to the updated (and final) version.
