Some Tips for Your BANS stores

I figured that I would drop some hints and tips for building a BANS store in this post. The reason why I am doing this is because many of you who are what I call pipe dreamers get discouraged when you build a site and don't get exactly what you were hoping for. These tips can be applied to virtually any site running BANS, whether you are doing it yourself (without the software) or running PHPBAYPRO (which is made for wordpress). If you haven't read my lengthy, indepth BANS review you should check it out.

1. Always write content for your BANS site- A lot of people are tempted to throw up a ton of sites with nothing but ebay ads on them. These people may make some sales but the reality is that mostwon't. Think about it for a second....Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. Let's say you are searching for an ipod. You do a query search for "4gb purple ipod" and in the top ten results, you get one site that lists a fairly decent description and another site that simply lists prices on the front page of google. Which one will you most likely go to?
   
   The reality is that although we as consumers may want to buy something, we don't necessarily want to feel like we are immediately being sold to. And nothing screams "I am trying to sell you something" more than a google description of your site that is nothing more than 50 words worth of prices. Writing content on you site will ensure that Google will pick up the descriptive words and list them in the results...not just the ebay listings.


2. Think about a home page without any listings- I have a buddy of mine that is fairing fairly well with a site that sells wallets. Unlike so many other BANS sites that I see out there in which you get a snippet of text followed by ebay ads, he has gone a different route. When you log onto his site, the home page has a beautiful graphic header and some images of...you guessed it...wallets. On either side of the images, he has a "his" section and a "hers" section. Underneath each of these categories, he lists all the different brands of wallets he is selling. It is as easy as that. There is very little selling going on on the home page. However, when you go to his site, it is very clear that he is selling wallets and you can peruse the different brands of wallets he is selling.
   
   What he accomplishes in doing this is that the appearance of the home page gives the impression that he the site owner, is selling the wallets. I think that this may have something to do with how well this particular site is converting for him.....he has managed to break the "guard" of the consumer by appearing to be the seller himself right off the bat.


3. Do not add contextual ads like google adsense to your BANS site- I kind of mention this in my BANS review. Most affiliates of ebay seem to believe that if you place more options you give the consumer meaning the more stuff you try to sell them, the more money you should make. The bottom line is the more options you give, the more opportunities you give the consumer to move away from the page, thus negating any potential sale. Stay focused, guys. Don't give the consumer any other options other than to purchase a product or back out of it. That means no adsense and no other affiliate products. Just your ebay products.
   
   Besides adding google adsense to a storefront just cheapens the consumer experience in my opinion. On a side site, I actually tested adsense on one of my better converting BANS sites. This site was converting at an astounding 48.7%. I added adsense and that number dropped like a rock down to 22.21%. Although I was suddenly making money with adsense, the potential revenues paled in comparison to what I was making.


4. That said, if your BANS site is not converting well, then you may want to test other things- Not all BANS sites are created equal. The reality is that most of your sites won't produce much revenue. However, not all is lost. If you are getting traffic but aren't getting the conversions (which you should be converting at 25-50%), then you are going to need to ask why. It could be something as simple as you choosing the wrong keywords or not adding the right items to your site. TEST TEST TEST. And once you are converting well, TEST some more.
   
   If everything fails but you are getting traffic, try different monetization methods. Then and only then it might be worthwhile to add adsense or some other affiliate product. The good news is that since your content is changing on a daily basis, the google bots will be there to constantly search your site.


5. Get Backlinks to your site- Don't be fooled by the few SEOer's out there that claim that backlinks don't matter in Google's algorithm. They do. The rule is that the more backlinks you get to your site (using anchor text with your keyword), the higher in the search engine results you will go. A lot of BANS newbie's simply don't understand this concept. They think that once they set up a BANS, the work is over. Not true. After all, you are competing with people like me that actively search for places to drop links to my site.
   
   Once again, what you are targeting has a lot to with the keyword you are targeting. So, the more specific you can be, keyword wise (Court calls this keyword sniping), the better off you will be in SERPS. And don't forget your inner pages as well as your home page. Usually, I will get backlinks to my home page with variations of my keyword. I will gun for the specific keyword on my inner pages. For instance, if I have a page for Taylor 310CE (acoustic guitar), I will make sure I place this as my anchor text.
   
   I should note that you don't necessarily need to do this for traffic as alot of these keywords are so specific and targeted that you will have virtually no competition.


6. Make sure your site is SEO optimized- Use the rule that someone should be able to get from the page they are on to any of your pages within one click. I actually do a little more, like keyword snipe for my homepage by adding keyword specific anchor text on each of my pages. You can also add a little snippet of anchor text at the bottom of every page for each category you have. Internal links will strengthen your position in the SERPS.

That is pretty much it. Building BANS sites are easy and they are currently a remarkable way to operate a turnkey business online. The trick is to do all the things that those guys that make the big bucks do. Once again, if you haven't checked out my BANS Review, you should.

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