Yeah, for some of you BANS owners, it’s been a pretty tough last few months.

I’m knocking on wood here. If you remember right from my initial Build A Niche Store Review, my goal was to build 100 BANS sites. Now I’m thanking my lucky stars that I have AMADD (Affiliate Marketing Attention Deficit Disorder) and only made it to 30 sites before I lost focus and went off doing something else. So far none of my sites have been touched by either Google or eBay. I’ll give you my theories on why that is on down the page.

A Few Theories Why Google Is De-Indexing BANS sites.

I’ve been following a lot of the chatter on forums about this subject as well as receiving a lot of email. This is what I’ve figured out to this point. No one has 100% concrete proof why Google is de-indexing BANS sites. There are a few theories floating around.

1. The BANS program was being used by a lot of spammers. Many of these guys/gals were throwing up huge numbers of BANS sites on .info domains. They never bothered to change anything with the programs, their only concern was to get as many BANS sites up as they could, as cheaply as they could. This left a huge footprint for Google to follow.
2. Most of these same people never bothered to put any content on their sites. They were simply ebay sites with ebay auctions on them. This would be what Google calls a “thin affiliate” site. And we know what Google does with thin affiliate sites.
3. In order for Google to get all the spammy BANS sites, it had to take some legitimate sites along with them. It’s the shotgun approach. Use a huge pattern to make sure you get all of them. Try and limit the casualties but go forward knowing some innocent victims will be in the pattern.

My Theory On Why Google Hasn’t De-Indexed All BANS Sites

Even as far back as when I bought the Build A Niche Store program, there was talk about Google finding the footprint of all the standard BANS templates and possibly penalizing them. It seems this bird has come home to roost. From the start, here is what I did to try and make my BANS sites unique from all the other cookie cutter BANS sites.

• I changed up the CSS a little bit on every site. I made sections like the header and content fields larger and smaller.
• I changed the colors on every site.
• I changed the size of the headers on every site and used graphic headers.
• I DID NOT go out and start sending hundreds of backlinks to my sites. I built them up over time using blog carnivals, article submissions, reciprocal linking and adding one way permanent links.
• I added content to nearly every page plus I used a lot of graphics.
• I never put eBay auctions on my main page. I put content on the index page to make it look as much like a informative content site as I could. Just look at how many BANS sites have nothing more than auctions on their front page.
• On many of the domains that hosted my BANS sites, I added blogs, article directories and forums to many. (mostly just blogs that supported the main domain)
• I never put more than 2 BANS sites on one hosting account plus I paid extra for all sites to have a dedicated IP’s. I’ve read stories of people hosting all their BANS sites with one hosting company. Wow, I can’t fathom that idea. I’m just too paranoid I suppose.
• I only used dot com domains. Of course, these last two items is what I do for nearly all of my affiliate sites, not just for BANS. I want to make it as hard as possible for Google or any other search engine to spy on my websites.

Now, I’m not saying if you do these things that Google will not index your site. These are the things I did to every BANS site I had. I did these things from day one and as I said above, knock on wood, my sites haven’t been touched. In fact, many are still climbing the SERPS.

Is the Build A Niche Store Still Worth Buying?

I’ve had a few emails asking that question. Honestly, I’d say yes it is. But only if you intend to build sites that have a lot of content and you make them unique. If you’re plan is to buy it and throw up a bunch of BANS sites without adding any value to them, I think you’d be wasting your money. Google is on to you.

Alternatives to The Build A Niche Store program

If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a week or so, you know I’m impressed with the PHPBay plugin for WordPress. As I stated in my post Advanced Build A Niche Store Strategies, I’ve been using PHPBayand WordPress to make blogs and stores with eBay auctions. It seems every week that my PHPBay/WordPress stores outproduce my Build A Niche Store sites. Hey, it’s no secret that Google is crazy in love with WordPress blogs. Why not take advantage of that? Plus, to be honest, a WordPress blog and PHPBay combination site just looks much better than 99% of the BANS sites out there, mine included. (hey, maybe Google hates ugly sites?)

Whatever the real reason that Google is de-indexing or penalizing BANS sites, owners using this program need to proceed with caution. If you continue to make sites with BANS, then do everything in your power to make them unique and stand away from the crowd.

I’ve been experimenting for a few months on my Build A Niche Stores to see what would increase traffic and rankings. Other than building links to the BANS store. Don’t get me wrong, without links, your BANS store is dead in the water.

What I wanted was a way to increase my SERPS rankings, traffic and get more pages indexed in Google. I tried several things, but this is what I’ve come up with so far it is working like gangbusters.

Increasing Your Build A Niche Store Rankings and Traffic

What I started to do with my Build A Niche Store sites is add a WordPress blog to them. I choose a main keyword that I’ve been targeting the search engines with then I add a sub-domain onto my site. Then I install WordPress.

For example, let’s say you have a BANS site about Watches. Let’s say your site name is mybanswatchsite.com. When you add a sub-domain, it would look something like this: watchblog.mybanswatchsite.com.

Now, you also have another keyword in your domain name!

There are many advantages to adding a sub-domain to your Build A Niche Store site. Here are just a few.

1. Increased rankings. Google loves blogs, especially WordPress blogs. Expect your post to get indexed faster with a blog.
2. Easier Content Creation. What I started doing was featuring some products from my BANS site on my blog. I then link from my blog back to the page on my main BANS site where they find many of the products for sale. Let’s say you had a post about fake Rolex watches. You’d create the post on your WordPress blog then link back to the category on your Build A Niche Store site that had all the auctions for fake Rolex watches. Now you’ve also created one way links with anchor text AND directed visitors to a place where they can by fake Rolex watches.
3. Easy link building. Blogs just naturally attract backlinks if the content is anywhere near informative. But the real advantage of having a blog as a sub-domain is that you can create one way anchor text links from the blog back to your BANS site. This will give your BANS site a boost in the Google SERPS.
4. More income streams. With WordPress, you can add a few plugins and actually increase the income your Build A Niche Store is capable of making. For example, on my Build A Niche Store blogs, I use the PopShops WordPress plugin and PHPBay plugin. I have several BANS sites where the sub-domain actually makes more than the main site. Let’s go back to your Watch blog. With PopShops plugin, you can feature new Watches from merchants on any affiliate network where you’re a member. (don’t forget to sign up with the merchant first!) Then at the end of the post, you can add ebay auctions from PHPBay. Your giving your customer many ways to buy from you and little reason to click off of your website!

Think this out. With WordPress as a blog on your Build A Niche Store sub-domain, you can do many, many things that will enhance your main site. Don’t be surprised to see your sub-domain actually make more than your main site. The sites I have PHPBay on are really outpacing my Build A Niche Store only sites.

What do I blog about on my Build A Niche Store Blog?

Anything I want!

Seriously, I will do product reviews, special deals from merchants, hot auctions on eBay, coupons and I even search article directories about articles relevant to the content on my BANS site. At the end of the article, I put the PHPBay auction in and sometimes even some new products with PopShops. This is all good stuff! 

PopShops is also adding a nice stream of income for those Customers who come to my sites but want to buy something new rather than play the eBay game.

Currently I’m playing with 3 other plugins to see if they can help my Build A Niche Store or not. I’ll keep you updated on those results!

Tools Used In This Strategy

• Build A Niche Store Program
• PHPBay WordPress Plugin
• PopShops WordPress Plugin

Maximize Profits From Your Blog With PHPBay

PHPBay is a WP Plugin that pulls current ebay auctions off of ebay and puts them on your WordPress Blog. This Plugin works just like any other WP Plugin. You download it, upload it to your WP Blog, activate it in the Plugin Menu, choose the keywords you want the Plugin to pull from ebay and then publish the Post or Page.

It only takes a line of code to get this program up and running so you’re blog can start making money. This plugin is customizable. There are several parameters in the line of code that you can change to get PHPBay showing specific ebay product auctions on your individual blog post.

To insert the code into the blog post, all you do is switch from the Visual editing mode to the Code mode and just insert the line of code into the post. You can also modify Sidebar php and other php files if you’d prefer to have ebay auction results in other areas of your blog.

PHPBay’s Performance

PHPBay has been performing very good on the blogs that I’ve implemented it on. In fact, the targeted ebay auction results are pulling in more than Adsense! This is why both PHPBay and BANS are known as Adsense Killers.

PHPBay also increases the blog post’s SEO capability. 

Another excellent feature of PHPBay is that it comes in an API for PHP driven websites. This will be a huge boom for php driven websites, especially if they’re relying on Adsense for income.

PHPBay or BANS – Which One To Choose

I like and use both of these excellent programs.  If you have a network of blogs you should use PHPBay so you can monetize your blog with ebay auctions. Many PHPBay users are finding the commissions from ebay auctions pay a lot more than clicks on Adsense.

If you’re starting a new site, I would use the Build A Niche Store  program. If you’re a PHP programmer, look into using the PHPBay API version.

Unlike the BANS program where the program automatically installs the Main Category you choose with the option of also including sub-categories, PHPBay needs you to include the code into your blog post or other blog file.

I believe both of these programs should be in your arsenal if you’re serious about making money online using ebay auctions.

Special Offer For AffiliateWatcher.Com Readers

In my review of the Build A Niche Store, I mentioned a special offer for AffiliateWatcher.Com readers.

I’ve written a Special Report titled “How To Maximize Your Earnings With Ebay Affiliate Programs”

To get this FREE Special Report, all you do is send me an email through my Contact page after you purchased either BANS or PHPBay program. Include the transaction details so that I know you purchased the program. Once I’ve verified that you bought the program, I’ll send you this Special Report.

What’s in this Special Report?

This FREE Special Report will show you how to optimize your BANS or PHPBay site for maximum profits. I’ll show you how to SEO optimize your sites, where to find Free and low cost places to advertise your sites, what steps to take and what steps to avoid when setting up your sites and show you a few secrets that I use on my site.

Click here to learn more about PHPBay.

Click here to learn more about the Build A Niche Store.

Ebay affiliate program | PHPBay