Niche Research

One important thing to remember with BANS is that the eBay product inventory is enormous.

Almost every imaginable product can be purchased on eBay and this gives you an inexhaustible list of items to promote and niche stores to build.

Below are listed many great resources that will help you come up with new niches to target.

1. eBay Analysis

Because it's eBay products you will be promoting, the actual eBay marketplaces make a great starting point to see what products are listed, selling prices and bidding activity.

The eBay Marketplaces

Each eBay marketplace has its own category structure which you can use to explore the different niches eBay products cater to. These category structures are not in any sense complete but provide a good foundation for exploring eBay and are used in your store setup area to determine which niche your store targets.

| eBay.com Categories | eBay.co.uk Categories | eBay.ca Categories | eBay.com.au Categories |

eBay Pulse

The aim of eBay Pulse is to show you what's hot in each eBay marketplace. It details current trends and popular items.

| eBay.com Pulse | eBay.co.uk Pulse | eBay.ca Pulse | eBay.com.au Pulse |

2. Internet Shopping Portals

Although the eBay category structure is very large it is not the only answer and by browsing through some of the other large internet shopping portals you can come up with ideas for great niche stores and then go back to the relevant eBay marketplace and check to see if eBay has a product inventory to match the niche you're interested in targeting.

• Amazon Marketplace
• Amazon.com Hot New Releases

• Shopping.com

• Google Products Search
• Google Catalogs

• MySimon Categories

• Magazines.com

3. Large Resource Sites

While not directly related to shopping there are numerous large resource sites which have information catering to just about every niche. They can help you come up with new niche ideas, see what's popular and find out more about a particular market you may be interested in targeting.

• About
• About.com A to Z list

• Wikipedia

• eHow

• How Stuff Works

• How To Do Things

• WikiHow

4. Market Trends

Rather than looking at what the big shopping sites are supplying and the big resource sites are talking about / recommending you can start with the consumers instead. There are numerous places where you can see what's currently hot in the search engines and with Google Trends you can view the demand for a particular type of product over periods of time.

• Google Trends
• Google Hot Trends

• MySimon Top Searches

A Couple Of Things To Remember

Whichever niche you think about targeting there are two requirements that must be fulfilled for the niche store concept to work:

1. Your chosen eBay marketplace must contain enough related products so that you can build a niche store around them. As an absolute minimum you can successfully build a very narrow (ie 5 or 6 page) niche store around a product inventory of about 50 - 100.

2. There must be an online demand for the products you are thinking about promoting outside of eBay. If there is no demand there is no potential for making sales. The best way to check that there is an online demand is to use the keyword research data provided by various keyword research tools which you can read about in the Keyword Research section.

new site

check out my latest bans creation. flatlaptops.com
i did a bit more customization on this one than on some of my previous pages.

Social Bookmarking

Adding social bookmark links to your blog or web site makes it easy for readers to save and share your content. This social bookmarks tool, created by TopRank's Thomas McMahon aka TwisterMC, provides you with several easy to implement options to encourage visitors to your blog to bookmark your posts on the most popular social bookmark and news sites. You can decide how many or how few bookmaring services to display on your blog.

There are also several display options including text links and a drop down menu to conserve screen space. Just follow the directions below and start seeing your blog traffic grow!

http://www.toprankblog.com/tools/social-bookmarks/

How to Choose a Niche

Does it always seem like others find all the profitable markets...while you're stuck slaving away looking for a good opportunity?

A lot of marketers expend their energy and their money to promote a product nobody wants. Or they choose to build a business inside a niche that's too small. Or they pick a large marketplace and find it too difficult to separate themselves from the pack.

Wouldn't you love to have a way to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the market you're choosing is the right one for you to profit from? If so, keeping reading.

Principle #1 for choosing a profitable market is to find markets where people are already selling products profitably. You don't want to be a brand new pioneer in a new marketplace. Let someone else prove the market is profitable for you before you enter it.

Here are 5 ideas generators for markets (all based on making sure someone else is selling into the marketplace first)

Idea Generator #1: Paypal Shops
https://www.paypal.com/shops

You can search through the different categories of shops. When you visit different companies accepting Paypal, they'll even share the number of Paypal transactions that shop has had. You don't have to guess where the money is at or where it is flowing. Look for products or services that are selling with with a lot of transactions.

Idea Generator #2: Lulu
http://www.lulu.com/browse/stats.php?fType=topSellers

Lulu is a site for self-publishers essentially that allow book authors and information product developers to upload their material and they will print out a book on demand. They keep statistics about what titles are selling in what categories. You can get a sense of what’s selling there for small publishers.

Idea Generator #3: Shopping
http://shopping.com/top_searches

Shopping.com has a Consumer Demand Index showing the hottest searches for what people are actually looking at buying. Consider this. People who search on Google are often looking for free information. You can translate some of those searchers into buyers. The research we're doing is showing what people are actually buying!

Idea Generator #4: eBay
http://pulse.ebay.com/

Choose any category in eBay and find out the most popular searches and the biggest eBay stores. What are customers looking for to buy online? eBay (the biggest online shopping destination) shares their stats with you!

Idea Generator #5: Magazines
http://www.magazines.com

If a magazine can be supported and has been in business for a while, that means that people are paying for the magazines and advertisers are making money. The magazines are supported by advertisers. If there aren't enough advertisers in a marketplace to support a magazine, I'd be very nervous about entering that market.

You're notice the whole principle behind all these ideas generator is that we're following the money trail. If others are making money in the marketplace, then it's passed step one of the marketing process. If there aren't proven winners already, I'll pass on the market. And I recommend you do the same.

65 tips for increasing traffic to your site

Please note this is from DigiPoint and the user Jason Green's thread

65 Tips For Exploding Your Traffic!

1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know – there’s a good chance they’ll link to you

2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your site

3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.

4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).

5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic. Everyone will link to you saying your wrong

6. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers

7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature

8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage – no point losing visitors

9. Have an opt-in form – trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page

10. Review a product or company – if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)

11. Write articles and submit them to article directories

12. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)

13. Use PayPerClick Traffic (e.g Adwords, MSN Adcenter, YSM)

14. Add an RSS subscribe button/link in a high profile spot on your site

15. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site

16. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site

17. Use a Tell A Friend Script on your site so people can email their friend about an article on your website.

18. Submit a blog to a blog directory

19. Submit you RSS feed to RSS feed directories

20. Mention your website in a post on Craigslist (don’t spam)

21. Optimize the titles of your pages for keywords people will search for

22. Buy links to your site

23. Buy reviews about your site on other people’s site

24. Buy banner space on other websites if you can get a good ROI

25. Send articles to ezine publishers with a link back to your website

26. Do a big viral push for a piece of link bait, post it in forums, social bookmarking sites like digg, email bloggers, and get a few people to vote for you on social bookmarking sites – this little push could start a viral chain reaction!

27. Have a link to your site on community sites like MySpace and FaceBook

28. Use a traffic trading system like BlogRush

29. Purchase misspellings of competitors domains and redirect your site (be careful of trademark infringement)

30. Create a freebie product to give away (ebook, software, whitepaper etc.)

31. Submit your site to the hundreds of free directories – use the viles-silencer list

32. Do a group feature where you get other website owners in your niche to participate – maybe asking them all an opinion on something.

33. Hold a competition for the Top 50 in your niche – 1 month later post the results and let everyone know who featured – watch them link back to say what there position was.

34. Pass out business cards when you go to industry events in your niche

35. If you have a product start an affiliate program and start approaching affiliates

36. Submit videos to video sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Include a link in the description and within the actual video.

37. If you have a product send it to website owners to get reviewed.

38. Look at a big website within your niche and ask to write some guest posts for them

39. Create pages with links to your site on places like Squidoo and Hubpages

40. Place classified Ads on eBay with a link to your website

41. Use an autoresponder on your mailing list to keep people coming back to your site

42. Exchange links with a few related sites in your niche

43. Network! Email other site owners, phone them up, go to industry events and get yourself known. If they know your face they will likely talk about you on their site if you do something interesting.

44. Many forums have a place for you to advertise your site once – find them and do it.

45. Purchase advertising in other people’s mailing lists and newsletters

46. Create an Amazon profile and start submitting reviews

47. Create profiles on MySpace and start networking in groups that are interested in your site’s niche.

48. Conduct a survey and publish the results – make sure you let people know about it.

49. Get your hand on a load of PLR content for your niche. Add a commentary to the top, create a unique title, and post them all to your site – lots of new content and lots of new traffic.

50. Create a cartoon mascot for your site – then hold a competition for someone to create the best game for it – pay the winner a decent amount.

51. Make sure you have a memorable domain name that is short and catchy.

52. Use a well-searched for keyword within your domain name to help rank for that keyword.

53. If you sell a product ask someone else who sells a product to list your product with theirs, and you’ll do the same for them – split commissions on sales.

54. When you write a new article on your site – link to as many blogs as possible – they will likely see your site in their pingbacks, website stats, or Technorati. They will visit your site and possibly subscribe to it and link back at a later date.

55. Get your RSS feed syndicated to different sites like Zimbio and hubpages and Topix.

56. If your site is popular and has quality unique content then apply to get listed in Google’s News search.

57. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google (not great but might help)

58. Use your robots.txt file to stop Google indexing certain directories and pages on your blog (such as archives) to avoid duplicate content issues).

59. Create a couple of small 10 page sites related to your main site. Offer links on these smaller sites in return for links to your main site (this is triangular reciprocal linking).

60. Get yourself known as an expert and get featured in offline magazines, TV and radio stations.

61. Use an auto-translator service to translate your site into other languages – put it in a subdirectory and watch foreign traffic come in.

62. Make posts about sex (don’t have to post anything rude) – and watch the porn surfers find their way to your site through Google.

63. Post about celebrities current events if it relates to your niche – there’s always a lot of people looking up celebrity stuff.

64. Write good headlines/titles – good titles get more clicks.

65. Get some stickers with your domain name on. Go out and stick them on strangers and say “My Website Yeah, Check it out.”

see here for the original thread

Additional ways to make money with BANS

In addition to commission from ebay sales on your BANs site, you can also participate in other affiliate programs . It is always a good idea to diversify your revenue streams.

One program that I recommend is Linkshare. Linkshare is partnered with many big name retailers including WalMart.

Check out Linkshare here:

2 news stores

Check out these 2 new ebay niche stores:

http://www.findaburialplot.com

http://www.baseballhobbyboxes.com

These were both created using the BANS software. It is simple to setup a basic store front, and once you get the hang of it you can churn out store after store.

A New Way To Make Money With eBay

When you hear "eBay" and "money" in the same sentence your probably think of becoming an eBay seller.

You place product listings in the eBay marketplace, buyers bid, you pay your eBay seller fees and what you have left is your profit margin.

There is, however, another way to build a business which still revolves around eBay but which doesn’t involve you selling a single thing in the eBay marketplace.

This "other way" opportunity is based on the eBay affiliate program and a great tool which makes entry into this opportunity not only possible but also super easy. This tool is called "Build A Niche Store".

Now if you don’t know – an affiliate program enables you as an individual internet entrepreneur to promote the products of a company in exchange for a commission on all sales that you refer.

You are basically operating as an internet middleman and connecting internet browsers to particular products and companies through you own network of websites and marketing methods.

If we return to the eBay affiliate program, eBay actually invites you to promote all of the product listings in the eBay marketplace and in exchange for your efforts will pay you up to 75% of the revenue they make from each sale you refer plus up to $35 for each new active eBay member you refer.

You can have a read about the eBay.com affiliate program here

What this means is that you can earn up to three quarters of eBay’s revenue simply for connecting people to the products listed in the eBay marketplace.

Not only do you get to partner with the best branded marketplace in the world, you also get access to and control over ALL of the products listed in this marketplace. The eBay product inventory becomes YOUR product inventory and yet you do NOT have to stock items, deal with customers, organize shipping or process refunds.

You are no longer limited to selling only those products which you can buy and sell for a profit margin. You can choose ANY niche market and promote those eBay products relevant to your chosen niche outside of the eBay marketplace, funnelling targeted traffic through to eBay and into your own affiliate commissions.

Golf clubs, sewing kits, laptops, dog collars, diamond rings, Florida real estate…

If you know eBay you know how BIG it is – there are NO limits.

At this point you might be thinking - well this sounds interesting but in reality is there any money in it? Well, here’s the shocker – eBay's top affiliates make over 1 million dollars a month. That’s right – 8 figures a year without stocking, selling or shipping a single thing!

Now eBay does provide some basic free tools to help you succeed as an eBay affiliate and build an affiliate business BUT it has been the development of a tool outside of eBay that has really opened this up as a legitimate business opportunity.

The tool, as I mentioned earlier, is called "Build A Niche Store" and what it enables you to do is build eBay affiliate websites targeted to any eBay niche you want. These act as the medium through which you funnel targeted visitors to eBay.

Here is an example, targeting Boxing:

Boxing eBay Affiliate Website

As you can see, these are professional looking websites that contain all of those eBay products related to their target niche inside a searchable store format, each of which automatically contains your eBay affiliate id.

These stores then automatically update as new products are listed for sale and old listing expire from the eBay marketplace and the software has built in development features which enable you to create new store pages, add content to these pages, create content pages, modify your template etc etc.

Basically, in the space of about 10 minutes (once you are familiar with how the software works) you can create a fully functional eBay affiliate website targeted to the niche market of your choice.

Your store content is all search engine friendly which will provide the foundation for attracting targeted traffic from the search engines and you can then use the development features to attract more targeted visitors which will in turn mean more eBay affiliate commissions.

It really is a brilliant concept and I’ve been hearing great things about the guys behind the project and the member forum which you get lifetime access to when you purchase the product.

Build A Niche Store comes with a step by step user manual which will walk even the most technically inexperienced through setting up their eBay affiliate website, 9 professional template layouts which can be customized (from inside your admin panel) to match your target niche, lifetime member forum access, comprehensive product support and possibly most importantly – an UNLIMITED domain license which means you can build as many of these niche websites as you want for the small one time fee.

Think about how many niches eBay caters to!

How big could your eBay affiliate business be?!

This product gets my full recommendation – check it out today…

Click
Here To Read More About Build A Niche Store

A Great Way To Make Money With eBay

When you hear "eBay" and "money" in the same sentence you probably think of becoming an eBay seller.

Well I have a surprise for you because it's the eBay affiliate program that's taking the web by storm at the moment and a great program called "Build A Niche Store" (or BANS as it's nicknamed) which enables you to really dig into and profit from this hugely under-exploited money making opportunity by building super targeted, traffic pulling, money making eBay affiliate websites at a few clicks of a button.

I'm not going to drown you in the details as the BANS site covers everything you need to know but suffice to say that this is going to BIG over the next 12 months and now is the perfect time to put the groundwork into your own portfolio of money making eBay affiliate websites.

It's only now and then that a really great product comes along and this one is getting rave reviews. Check it out!

Click
Here To Read More About Build A Niche Store