BANS Review

If you have somehow made it to this page by accident and have no idea what BANS is, it is short for Build a Niche Store. The Original BANS store is geared toward Ebay and its affiliates and at the time of this writing, is making some people money in the neighborhood of $500 a day, all on autopilot. This is a BANS review and I give the pros and cons of purchasing this software and whether this opportunity is for you.

Obviously, this isn't done from one website. Most of the big BANS affiliates have created a ton of sites, each one geared for a particular product/niche in mind. Some affiliates have as many as 500 BANS stores. Like I said, this is money made all on autopilot once it is set in place.

How BANS works

Basically, what the BANS software does is pull RSS data from ebay and display it on your niche site. For example, let's say that you are in the shoe niche. You create pages for ugg boots and place a little snippet of code with the location number that ebay has set for boots. You then set up the list of keywords for items that you want ebay to feed to your set. In this case, you would probably want to target "ugg" as one of your keywords.

The BANS software will then display all the items that it finds via ebay and list them in a nice and tidy order giving the impression to the viewer that you are an actual store. If you have been an affiliate for any amount of time, you would know that there is nothing better than to get a customer who has searched for a brand name. In all likelihood, these guys are buyers.

And believe it or not, this type of store actually works very well in terms of conversions. Many affiliates are reporting a 50% conversion rate, making this software a proverbial cash cow for its affiliates.

The commission structure for EBAY affiliates

The commission structure for becoming an EBAY affiliate is 50% of all the fees that ebay makes off the winning bids. Plus, if the person doing the bidding hasn't signed up yet for ebay, you will make $25 per sign-up (in the US). In other words, many of the BANS affiliates out there are making a ton of money simply through new sign-ups.
Can I make Money with BANS?-The Realities of BANS

So, I am sure you are looking at this cross-eyed and thinking to yourself, you said that some EBAY affiliates are making $500 per day using BANS. But what are most affiliates making? Well, the answer is mixed. First of all, in order to really exploit BANS, you still are going to have to put your internet knowledge into use. You can't really expect to make a killing using BANS if you haven't researched the keyword in depth. You also can't expect to make money if you can't get your site to rise to the front page of certain long tail keywords. And this is what most amateur marketers haven't really figured out. You will make money using BANS if you have a solid foundation on internet marketing. If you don't, then you had better get to learning (this is true if you are trying to make money online for anything).

However, that said, I will say that you will be surprised with the traffic you get and what keywords are used to get to your site. Just as an example, I selected a niche in the "sports and outdoor" niche and found that many of my visitors were coming from an actual product that was displayed for a day. And that is the beauty of this software. You actually get traffic from the product descriptions themselves and not just from creating content.

In other words, let's say that you have an ipod BANS store. Someone searches for 4 gb blue Ipod. Now, if someone is searching for something that specific, you can pretty much bet that they are searching for a place to buy it. If your site ranks for that keyword (which it could just by default if there isn't many pages indexed), then you have a chance to make that sale. And if they have never signed up for ebay, then you would make $25 from a bid plus a commission if they get the winning bid.

Multiply that by 500-1000 searches on over 100 sites and you get the picture. A BANS store will help you get visitors using ultra specific long tail keywords that would otherwise go unnoticed by most individuals.

Things NOT to do with a BANS Store- Mistakes that people make using BANS.

If you already have a BANS store or are in the process of setting one up, here is some advice as what to do (or not do) when you set up your BANS site.

1. DO write snippets of content before you display the ebay products. Make the content at least 100 words. You can write anything. You can say something like "I search the internet for the best deals for _____......" or whatever. The point is that when someone searches for something, the chances of them going to your site from the SE is significantly reduced if they see just listings of the products in the SE descriptions. Obviously, the more content you have the better, but you want to write just a snippet up top, then display the ebay products and if you want to add more content after this, then by all means do so.
2. DO find sub-niches- One of the biggest mistakes that many BANS newbies make is to simply list a niche like "guitars" and then wonder why they aren't getting much traffic and more importantly, why that traffic isn't converting. Personally, I really sub-niche out. For instance, if I was going to go with the guitar example, I would probably create pages for specific brands....Taylor 310 CE for example. I would then write a little snippet of text talking about how I look high and low for the best prices and then post whatever Taylor 310's are in stock on Ebay. This works wonders for me because even if my site get 2-5 visits a day, I know I will convert at least one of them. The more specific you are, the better the chance you will supply the need for the visitor.
3. DO NOT place adsense, other contextual ads or affiliate products on the page- This is internet marketing 101. I know that a lot of people think that if they load up a page with numerous "money makers" then something, anything, should convert. This isn't normally the case. REMEMBER, you goal as a BANS store owner is to get them to purchase an item through you. In other words, no distractions....no place for them to click to other than ebay themselves.
4. Do Research Keywords- Another newbie mistake that a BANS owner can make is to not take the time to research keywords and competition. In other words, let's say that you have decided to create an IPOD BANS store. You just randomly decide that your primary keyword should be IPOD since that is what you are selling, right? Well, don't expect to get a bunch of traffic from this. Like I said earlier, keywords are especially important (I actually spend more time on my keywords than building content for my stores). You have to think outside the box and find keywords that will not only convert but ones that you can rank well for. Trying to rank for the keyword IPOD will get you nowhere. Remember that you are looking for keywords that will convert.
   
5. Do get links to your site- Another problem that most "make money online" people deal with is that they can't compete with those affiliate marketers that actually build links to their sites. If you aren't building links (through directories or other ways), then you won't rank for the keyword that you want to rank for.
   

I should note that not all BANS sites that you create will make you money. This is primarily why you hear about people operating 300-500 sites. Just like anything else online, you have to learn through tests and trials. As a side note, I have nearly 1,000 sites (not BANS) running right now and maybe 20% of those sites are actually making me real money. The same goes with BANS. You can cut down the failure rate by doing proper keyword research though.

How to Really Make Money Using BANS- What the Top Affiliates aren't going to tell you

Whenever I am perusing forums, I read thread after thread of either people complaining that they haven't begun to make money with their BANS sites or they are asking if anyone is making money with BANS. Below is a short checklist I have devised for you that will show you exactly what you need to do with your BANS sites. Most of my sites can make it to the first page of google within two months time.

1. Research your niche for keywords and competition- If you do a google search for the keyword that you are going to target, what comes up? Are there any BANS sites there already? If so, how many links are linking to them? How many pages are indexed for the keyword? Now, do a "in title" search. How many pages are using that in their title tag? Also, make sure that you are in a sub-niche. The more targeted you get, the better your chances of success.
   
2. Pick a domain name, preferably using the keywords in your domain- Many say that the search engines don't care about a domain name. All things considered equal though, if you are competing with a site that has the actual keyword in the domain and you don't, which do you think will get ranked higher? Yuppers. Keywords in the domain are important. Don't let anyone tell you any different.
   
3. Create unique content for each page you produce- This can be a 100 word snippet before the actual ebay listings. You don't want to create more than that because you want some of the auction items to be above the fold (where the visitor doesn't have to scroll down). Also, you don't have to build a huge store. Usually, my stores consist of only four pages each.
   
4. Get lots of backlinks for your sites using your keyword in the title tag- You can do this by creating sites, such as Squidoo or Zimbio or hubpages or simply by submitting to directories or writing articles for directories. Personally, I do all three. I usually will create 2-5 other axillary sites (like blogspot blogs or yahoo 360 blogs, ect) as well as a couple squidoo pages. I will top it off with regular directory and article submissions. Alot of work? Sure...on the front end. However, 6 months later when you are getting regular traffic with a keyword without much maintenance and making a couple hundred a month, wouldn't you suppose it would be worth it?

That is pretty much it. If you want to make money with BANS, you will have to do the footwork in order to make it work. I never said it would be easy. However, if you follow this list, you should be able to start profiting from BANS pretty quickly.

What you will need with BANS

The software for BANS itself is fairly expensive (around $100). However, there are some other things that you are going to need if you truly want to profit from BANS.

• Hosting account- As with everything else online, you will need a hosting account. I suggest hostgator as they have great support and are setup to handle BANS. If you can grab a reseller account. If you are short on finances, choose the baby gator account.
  
• Domains- Sometimes godaddy will run a special on .info domain for .99 cents. If this is the case now, then you should jump on this. Buy 100 of them if you can. If there isn't a special running on domains, then you will have to be a little more selective on what you choose. Typically, I suggest you purchase 2 a week and build those two before moving on. By the end of the year, you will have more than 100 BANS sites up and running.
• A little knowledge into setting up a database (backend) on your server- You will also need to either know how to setup a mysql database or have someone do this for you.
  
• A fair amount of understanding in keyword research and competition for websites- One of the things that most people who want to make money online don't quite get is the fact that they will need to know not only marketing tidbits but also will need to understand how to rank. Bottom line is that if you can't rank on the front page of google (eventually), then your new 'bread and butter' website won't do a thing because no one will be able to find it.

I would like to caveat this with the statement that there are other ways to make money as an ebay affiliate other than purchasing the BANS software. In fact, a friend of mine was doing it well before BANS actually was selling. The key to doing it is know how to be able to grab an RSS feed (HTML enabled) and place it on your site. He has been doing it for a couple years now. The biggest obstacle to this is the technicalities of doing this (which I will show how to do this later).

That is pretty much it to BANS. Can you make money with BANS? Sure! Is it as easy as some want you to believe? No! Of course not. If it was, everyone would be doing it.

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