BANS stands for Build A Niche Store and in short it is software that allows you to setup eBay affiliate sites very quickly.  After a couple installs you can have a site up in running in about 10 minutes.  However, I would suggest against launching a site with thin content a generic meta tags right away.  Interested in BANS but don’t know where to begin?  Here is a brief run down on how to get started.  Some steps can come before others so this isn’t set in stone.

Register With eBay Partner Network

I would recommend registering with EPN as soon as you decide to you want to setup a BANS site.  Lately they have been slow in their acceptance of the US applications.  The sooner you get them in the better.

Find Good Hosting

This is probably one of the most important steps in creating a BANS site. You may be thinking to yourself that you want to setup a site for cookie jar auctions and wont don’t need to change your hosting. Once that first sale goes through you will be chomping at the bit to set up your next 10 sites. I had GoDaddy shared hosting and it ran ok for what I was doing before BANS. I had a personal site for family pictures and I was a web noob when I bought the hosting about five years ago. After setting up my BANS site I was having problems with GoDaddy and noticed my sites were loading terribly slow so I decided to make the jump to HostGator. Switching to them was the best decision I made. GoDaddy was easy to use but HostGator was just as cheap and my sites loaded a lot faster. I also like to the use of cpanel which you don’t have with GoDaddy.

If you are currently under contract with a hosting company give BANS a shot with your hosting and see how it runs, you could always change later.

Choosing Your Niche & Buying Your Domain

I’m not going to give a lesson about niche researching; heck I’m still learning it myself. However, I want to highlight some pointers to use when choosing your niche and finally buying that all important domain. First, it seems success in the site may depend on how interested you are in the niche store you choose. If you choose a to start a niche store on Precious Moments, but don’t have a clue about them and don’t really care about them, how often are you going to update that site and how much time are you willing to put into it? I’m not saying people don’t have success with niches they aren’t interested in or don’t put the time into niches they are unfamiliar with. In order for a BANS site to flourish it needs content. So decide how much time you are willing to put into a site about Precious Moments and how much content you can create.

Once you have have your niche picked out its time to buy the domain. My favorite place to buy domains is GoDaddy. What they are lacking for in hosting they make up for in domain purchasing. Also look around the web for GoDaddy domain discount coupons. When buying a domain it would be nice to find one with some keywords that match your niche store. If you have a watch store you probably want to find a domain that includes words such as watches, cheap, discount, store, shop, bargain, outlet…etc. In some if not most cases, especially for popular niches, your first .com choice will probably be taken. If that is the case try a .net or .org of that same sequence. Most people try to avoid buying a domain that isn’t a .com, .net or .org. If you can’t find the domain with those three try a different sequence. For instance if discountwatches.com/.net/.org are all taken try buydiscountwatches.com. Try taking multiple sequences of the same words and mixing them up or add additional words to the same domain.  Another thing to avoid is adding too many dashes to the domain. There are different theories out about this. I wont register a domain with dashes and those who do say don’t have a domain with more than two dashes in it.

One final WARNING! don’t register a domain that you think may have trademark issue.  Basically anything that is a name brand can’t be in your domain name.  Lets take the watch store for example.  You can have watchstore.com but not rolexwatchstore.com.  If all else fails just ask someone.  Nothing worse than not being able to get a refund on a domain you can’t use.

Buy BANS

Yes, you have to buy it but it is well worth the money.  If you are skeptical, type BANS into google and see how many people are praising it.  For some it is the first affiliate they have actually made any money with.  How many people have google adsense on their page just to get a few pennies per click?  With BANS you pay the $97 and you can setup as many sites as your heart desires.  Many people couldn’t believe how easy it was to setup their first site.  I find many people on the forums whose first site ever was a BANS site.

Setup Your Site

This is a very important step in your BANS creation. Having a site full of good content, the right keywords and proper meta tags is the key. A thin site may take a long time to get indexed or may never get indexed. There is a ton of great information on the BANS forums that discuss the ins and outs of creating and marketing your site.

Have Fun

Until the money starts rolling in this is the only thing you have to hold on to. BANS is a great affiliate software program that gives users an opportunity to finally make some money online.

This post is tagged Affiliates, Build A Niche Store, Domain, eBay, GoDaddy, HostGator, Hosting, Niche Store