Converting BANS Sites to the eBay Partner Network

I hate to admit this, but I still haven’t finished converting all of my BANS sites over to the eBay Partner Network (EPN). I meant to have all of them converted well before now, but with the death of my father and the entire family coming down with strep throat, things haven’t worked out as planned. Sadly I’ve only converted about 20% of my sites so far.

To make matters even more interesting, my top non-eBay merchant that I promote also decided to change their program provider this month, except they gave absolutely NO WARNING, so I had to quickly move to change all of my links for that campaign.

Oh well, such is life. With my father’s unexpected passing, I’m not going to let any of this ruffle my feathers too much.

So in the spirit of marching onward, the very first BANS site I ever created (that’s still running BANS 2.0 with Commission Junction) is going to get the double-whammy tonight! I’m going to apply the BANS 2.0 -> 3.0 EPN update all in one shot.

Wish me luck!

(Update: all of my sites have now been successfully converted to the ePN.)

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BANS 3.0 Tips and Tricks

Here are some helpful tips and tricks you can employ on your sites that use the Build a Niche Store 3.0 software:

Add a Privacy Policy
Not only does Google give your site more PageRank if your site has a privacy policy, but it’s actually required under both the Google AdSense and Commission Junction terms of service. So if you use either on your sites, you have to have a privacy policy.

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February BANS Update

Here’s my Build a Niche Store status update for February:

• I just got a check in the mail from Commission Junction for $97 and change.
• My pending balance is $29.42 and climbing. At least this is over the $25 payment threshold, so I’ll be getting another check next month.
• I created another new BANS site around

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January 2008 Earnings Update

My earnings have dropped off significantly the past two weeks. I’m not sure what to attribute this to, other than the Christmas shopping season is over. I will definitely be keeping an eye on things, and hopefully this will turn around.

On a bright note, Commission Junction just issued a payment to me. It wasn’t for as much as I had hoped, but anytime you get commissions is a good thing. It’s very encouraging and motivational to keep going. I’ve been at this since September–only working part time–and I still feel like I have a lot left to learn and even more left to implement. So making money where I’m at… which I feel is still somewhat at the beginning stages… is very encouraging. How much more can I make when I keep plugging away and get a chance to implement more and more of my ideas?

Hopefully the sky’s the limit!

On another note, I’ve recently been experimenting with a few different methods for getting backlinks and traffic to my sites. I’m still somewhat in the “experimental” phase, so I’m not quite ready to talk about them. Stay tuned though, because whether the methods succeed or fail, I plan to discuss them here. For the most part, I plan to let you know what I tried and whether or not it worked.

Well, until then…

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BANS Landing Pages

A recent thread on the Build a Niche Store user forum was discussing how to setup landing pages on your BANS sites. This is something I’ve been doing on all of my BANS sites ever since I got started, so I’d like to share my method with you.

What is a Landing Page?

First things first… what is a landing page? (If you already know the answer, you can skip ahead to the next section.) A landing page is a term used quite frequently in online marketing. In a nutshell, it’s the page you want a visitor to “land on” when they click on a link somewhere else. It’s basically the first page you want them to come to when they click on a specific link to your web site.

This is important when you’re dealing with online marketing efforts. Let’s say you have a BANS store selling Nintendo products. Now you write an article at HubPages about how great the Nintendo Wii console is, and provide a link back to your site. If you just link to your main site, someone specifically interested in the Nintendo Wii is going to get a site that’s generic to Nintendo (including the DS, GameBoy, games, accessories, etc). When you’re trying to get a visitor to buy something from your site, you don’t want to lose their focus like that.

So instead, you would create a page on your BANS site that just lists auctions for the Nintendo Wii console specifically. Then you would link directly to that page from that article you wrote, making your Nintendo Wii page the “landing page” for your article.

Landing pages are important for all sorts of marketing efforts: articles, pay per click (PPC), online classified ads, and so on.

Creating a Landing Page in BANS

Okay so now that you know what a landing page is, how do you set one up in BANS. There are probably many ways to do this, but here is my method:

1. I determine how many landing pages I want to setup, and for which products. 

   Other niches will have too many products to make this practical. In those niches you will want to setup landing pages for your most popular products, and/or individual products you’re targeting through marketing efforts (e.g. PPC, articles).
    

   There are some niches where it might make sense to make a landing page for every product in the niche. For example, in the Nintendo niche you might setup a landing page for “wii consoles,” “wii remotes,” “wii numchucks,”etc.

2. I check to see if eBay already has a sub-category for the product.Sometimes an individual product is so popular, it will already have it’s own sub-category in eBay. Other times the product has it’s own category, but you can break it down further by model number.

   An example of this would be the TomTom GPS navigation system. It has it’s own sub-category in eBay, but you could create separate landing pages for the “TomTom GO 720,” “TomTom GO 920,” “TomTom ONE XL,” and so on.

   Just be sure to do your research so you’re only setting up landing pages for individual products that have a high sell-through volume on eBay.
    

3. Create a BANS store page for your landing page.
   
   Once I have identified what landing pages I want to create, I go into the BANS admin area and create a new store page for each landing page. I fill out all of the information on the page so that it looks nice (title, meta info, etc.). Make sure to give it an H1 title in the content area. Enter in the category number from eBay that your product appears inside of, and then enter in your product name in the search query field.An example search query would be: (tomtom,tom tom) 920 -(antenna,screen protector,charger,mount)

   This sample query will pull up any product listing from eBay that has either “tomtom” or “tom tom” in the title, has “920″ in the title, but does not have any of the words “antenna,” “screen protector,” “charger,” or “mount.” So the query would pull up a listing titled “Brand New TomTom GO 920 GPS Navigator,” but it would not pull up “TomTom 920 Car Mount.”
    

4. Test that the landing page works in BANS.
   
   The next step I take is saving the page and viewing it in my BANS site. I’m looking to make sure it’s pulling up only the individual products I want. If any wrong products appear, I modify the store page’s search query until I have it right. I also make sure the title of the web page and the content I added before the product listings all look okay.
    
5. Add more to the page to increase you conversion rates.This step is optional. Once you have completed steps 1-4 you have a good enough landing page that you can be confident if someone clicks through directly to that page, looking for that product, they’ll find what they came to find.

   However I like to add more value to the visitor and increase my chance to make a conversion. What I do is head over to Commission Junction to see if there is an advertiser selling the same product, to possibly add an affiliate to them within the content area of the page.

   Or I frequently go to Amazon and see if they have the product listed there. If they do, I’ll add a link in the content area of the landing page (above the auction listings) that says something like “Amazon’s Retail Price: $295.” This does two things…

   First, it gives the visitor an option to buy from Amazon, and if they do I’ll earn a commission from Amazon.

   Second, it gives the visitor options and information. Think about how you shop for products… you compare prices! How does your visitor know they’re getting a good deal buying an auction from eBay if you don’t show it to them? A lot of people get cynical about the prices at eBay (especially around Christmas… Nintendo Wii prices ring a bell?), so I like to show them what a great deal they’re getting in the hopes they won’t click off my site and go somewhere else to find that information.

   Here’s a real story from one of my BANS sites: I setup a landing page for a product that sells on Amazon for around $325. You can get the same product on eBay for a little over $200. I put a link at the top of the page with my affiliate information (of course) that said “Amazon Price: $325.” Now I setup a PPC marketing campaign for this product at Google, and did really well making my eBay commissions. Wouldn’t you know it, though, that I got a few sales over at Amazon too!

   Here’s the real kicker… my average commission for this product at eBay was like around $3.50 for each one sold through my site. Amazon, on the other hand, gave me 4% of the $325 as a commission for each sale there. That’s a $13 commission for each one sold at Amazon.

   So by adding the Amazon link to my landing page, not only did I give my visitors more options and buying confidence that they were getting a great price, but I actually converted some of them through Amazon for even higher commissions than I get from eBay!

   Now like I said this step is optional, and it is labor intensive. You have to go to Amazon or CJ, find the product, build your affiliate link to it, and then put that link in the content section of the landing page and make sure it’s all formatted properly. However for really popular products or products I’m specifically targeting through marketing efforts, I find that this step pays off in the end.

Well there you have it. Those are the steps I use to build landing pages on my BANS sites. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment.

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January Mid-Month Progress Update

I just wanted to give an update on some of the commissions I’ve earned so far this month through my Build a Niche Store sites. After the first 13 days of the month, I’ve earned $39.40 through my Commission Junction account. That brings my CJ balance up to $72.71 (when you include commissions from last month). I also earned another $13.01 from Amazon’s affiliate program through one of my BANS sites, when someone clicked on the Amazon ad on the page to buy the product.

So just from BANS alone, after only half the month so far, I earned $52.41, with a total balance of $85.72.

Now that small amount of money isn’t going to go very far, and I did have some expenses along the way also (such as web hosting fees). However… and this is the really good part… I’m just getting started here folks! You see I only have four BANS sites up and running, and have only actively promoted one of them. I’m still learning proper online marketing techniques, and so I really believe the sky’s the limit.

Sure, for the amount of time I’ve invested, I could make a ton more cash moonlighting at the local convinience store every evening, but it wouldn’t be as much fun. I’m having a blast learning about affiliate marketing, trying and experimenting with new ideas and strategies, and see how some things work and some things don’t. And even though my CJ balance isn’t that huge, there is a sense of accomplishment whenever I login to check my stats, and see that earnings balance tick upwards by a few more dollars!

Besides, the owner of the local convinience store is probably going to expect me to show up at a certain time, on certain days, without exception. As an affiliate marketer, I can set my own hours and my own goals. If it’s been a tough day at work, and I just want to relax in front of the TV or play with my daughter, then I can do that. If I want to spend 6 hours in the evening working on my affiliate marketing, I can do that too. It’s completely up to me!

As I said, the sky really is the limit. I could probably get a second job making $10/hour… working for the man… burning myself out for a little extra income. Or I can have a blast running my own affiliate marketing business… answer to no one but myself and my family… and potentially earn thousands of dollars each month doing it.

Like I keep telling people who ask, at least I’m trying something that could better myself and my family. Compared to playing video games, or watching TV all night, or going out to drink at the bars three times a week… even if I fail at affiliate marketing (and I won’t) at least I went down swinging… making an attempt to better myself and succeed.

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Build a Niche Store (BANS)

I’m having trouble sleeping, so I’m going to write my first post on Build a Niche Store (BANS). Build a Niche Store is a software package that allows you to setup websites featuring products from eBay. Considering the millions upon millions of products sold on eBay each year, you can create BANS sites around practically any niche you like.

(Click here to see a sample Build a Niche Store web site: http://www.hellohdtv.com.)

Here are the top reasons why I like Build a Niche Store so much:

1. BANS takes advantage of eBay’s affiliate program. This made it easy for me because it gave me access to eBay’s extensive product selection, as well as eBay’s name recognition. (The affiliate program is managed by Commission Junction.)
2. BANS makes it easy to create e-commerce websites. I work in IT and know how to create websites, but I don’t have the time or desire to spend dozens of hours creating each new website. BANS makes it easy for me because whenever I want to create a new store, I just install BANS onto the site and do some minor tweaking. Then that’s it… the store is setup and done.
3. BANS works because I’ve made money from it! This is not something I can overemphasize. As I’ve gotten into affiliate marketing, I’ve tried many different programs, software tools, etc. Not many of them have actually worked. Yet I’ve consistently earned commissions from my BANS stores every month since I started with it.
4. The BANS user forum. I frequently visit the forum, and get everything from help and tips on using BANS, to general marketing advice. The forum is so good they could probably charge a monthly subscription for access, but they don’t as access comes free with purchasing BANS. Of all the websites and forums I’ve explored trying to learn about affiliate marketing, the BANS user forum is one of the best I’ve found.

There are many other great things about Build a Niche Store that I won’t mention now because I plan on writing in more detail about BANS in the future. For now just know that while BANS is just a tool and not a silver bullet, it’s one of the easiest ways I’ve found to earn affiliate commissions online.

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Commission Junction

1. The first kind is managed and run exclusively by a merchant. Amazon Associates is a good example of this. The only way you can sign-up to be an affiliate for Amazon is through their associates program, and if you sign-up, you’re only an affiliate for Amazon.
2. The second kind is an affiliate management portal. These are basically companies that manage affiliate programs for merchants. Commission Junction (CJ) is an example of this kind of program. When you sign-up for CJ, you’re not actually an affiliate for any merchants. Within the CJ site, you then apply to be an affiliate for various merchants. CJ will then manage the relationship between you and the merchant, and pay you any commissions that are due.

If you’re just starting out, I suggest you get an account with Commission Junction. This way you’re all setup and prepared to apply to be an affiliate for merchants as soon as you’re ready. CJ manages affiliate programs for some major merchants (eBay, WalMart, etc.) so it’s a good one to be signed-up with.

When you sign-up for the first time you have to provide your web site address. So you’ll want to create a web site somewhere. A free site or blog is sufficient to get started, so you can just do that.

Once you’re signed-up and apply for various merchants, they’ll review your sites (you can add more sites after you’ve created a CJ account) so you want to develop some good ones later on, but just to get a CJ account, any old web site should do.

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