Content is king.  It is so true.  Although I’m building some rather thin-ish eBay niche stores the bottom line is for long-term success they needed to be fattended up with quality content.

This article about the future of thin sites by Mark Hansen is an eye-opener.  He has some pretty popular BANS sites like ShopFamilyGuy.com.

I just read an article about dangerous domains.  According to McAfee the most dangerous domains to navigate to are “.hk” (Hong Kong), “.cn” (China) and “.info” (information).

The same reason that many BANS users are snatching up .info’s is why they’re so popular with spammers.  .info’s are cheap.  Right now they cost .99 cents for a .info vs. $7-$10 for a .com.

I’m using one .info for one of eBay niche stores to see what happens.  But I’ve read that many BANS folks are having their sites de-indexed by Google.  If the site has quality content that helps the end user, I don’t believe that Google will lay the smack down just because it’s a .info.

Because of the bad rap .info’s are taking, I’m holding back using a lot .info’s for my eBay niche stores.  The savings make it hard to ignore.  You would save over $600 picking up 100 .info’s vs. com’s.   But if in the end your .info’s end up de-indexed and folks can’t find your niche store then the $600 savings is not worth much.

I’ve been busy working on my eBay niche stores the past few days. I blogged about how I had purchased BANS last week but I’ve actually been setting up my stores with WordPress!

Let me back up. I love the concept of BANS but I quickly realized that with the popularity of BANS there would be a lot of BANS stores using the same templates.

Plus you have several folks who are setting up hundreds of BANS sites. Many of those are thin sites meaning they don’t offer much if any quality content. Plus a lot are using the .info TLD which Google is watching. This could be a recipe for a Google slap down the road.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the concept of BANS and the strategy of setting up hundreds of eBay niche stores makes sense to me.

This is nothing new. It’s a concept practiced by Super affiliates like Jeremy Palmer. He manages over 100 affiliate sites. But he is now focusing on sites with more quality content to them over setting up thin sites.

That’s why I like the idea of implementing both those business models–eBay niche stores that are thin (5 pages or so) and a few that are more long-term in nature.

If I can setup 100 eBay niche stores that although thin offer unique content which can provide me a more passive income stream while I nurture those that do best by continuing to add quality content.

100 sites making a few bucks per day adds up nicely at the end of the year. But I also want to work a few of those to make them into authority sites that will still be standing if Google comes down on thin BANS sites.

But to do this I really feel it’s better to separate myself from the other BANS folks who are setting up 100′s of cookie cutter sites. I’ll still use BANS for some sites but I found (via a YouTube comment on one of my videos) a WordPress plugin that allows me to setup a BANS like eBay niche store using WordPress, called phpBay.

Check out the difference between a tell-tell BANS site and a WordPress eBay niche store using phpBay…

BANS

VS.

phpBay

Not only is WordPress my preferred method of setting up my other affiliate sites but as you can see it stands apart from the tell-tell BANS layout. So, for me to be able to use WordPress for my eBay niche stores has me really stoked.

Plus phpBay is half the price of BANS. You also get access to a customer only forum which is very helpful. Wade the developer of phpBay is a great guy and extremely helpful.

My reasons for preferring phpBay over BANS are simple:

• Access to thousands of fantastic free WP themes to ensure niche stores don’t all look alike
• WordPress gets a lot of love from Google
• Very easy to use like most WP plugins
• I love WordPres

Here is my first niche store using phpBay vs this one using BANS.

It’s very thin (no pun intended) since it’s mostly for demo purposes. But you get the idea. It does not look like a BANS store

Only time will tell but I think I’m on the right track. I love researching keywords to find niches and running over to GoDaddy to look for a domain. The entire process of setting up these niche stores is pretty addictive.

Go check out the phpBay plugin. Let me know what you think.

Stay tuned. A lot more to come as I set these stores up.

In March I blogged about how I was going to try my hand at BANS.  Well, I got busy on other projects but finally I’ve cleared time to check out BANS!

I just ordered it and I’m going to check it out.  I did do some domain/ebay research looking for niches and that has been a lot of fun.  Now to add BANS sites for those domains.

Stay tuned.  I’ll post once I install it and get to check it out.  I literally just ordered it and I came here to post this so I haven’t even unzipped the BANS download file yet.

There has been a lot of buzz about the Build A Niche Store (BANS) software.  If you’re not familiar with BANS it’s software  for developing affiliate sites using eBay.  So you can easily create eBay stores in as many niches as you want.  You get a commission for each sale plus $25 for each sign up eBay gets..

I’ve been hearing a lot of things about BANS some good, some bad but I really see a potential here.  The prospect of setting up multiple niche sites and than generate passive income from seems like a great opportunity.

Although I’m focusing more on creating my own products now like Niche Podcasting, affiliate marketing is still part of my business model.  I’m an affiliate marketer at heart.  But it takes a lot of work and effort setting up niche sites.  It seems BANS can really stream line the process.

Since it’s so easy to setup your BANS store if one niche site doesn’t do as well you move on to the next.  Once you pay for the BANS software your only expense will be the cost of the domain name for your new BANS site.  I know there will be other expenses like driving traffic to those sites via PPC or whatever other methods but that is stuff I’m already doing for my affiliate marketing websites.  If BANS can speed up the process it’s a big plus.  I also like the idea of having a living site constantly updated with new products without me having to lift a finger. 

I had been looking at DataFeeds but BANS really seems to simplify the process.  So I’ll be giving it a try.  I won’t start until mid-April.  I’m off to Scotland (yeah) on Wednesday the 26th and I’m finishing writing my second e-book (more on that later).  But I have decided BANS will be my next project.

I will be blogging my expirences with BANS under the “BANS” category so stay tuned.

You can learn more about BANS by clicking this link.