Here's my story on my first CJ/eBay site. February 02.01.08 Site launched but I had the wrong PID for the first three days 02.03.08 First commission for $4.62 (I was shocked and excited at the same time) 02.04.08 After seeing $0 commission I thought my first transaction was pure luck 02.10.08 Commission everyday 02.29.08 Commission almost every day except for 3 days (I can live with that) Summary: Very satisfied with what has happened, but weary about next month. I was not ready for this type of a return, especially not being familiar with this type of site and just learning about BANS. The first month totaled $502.85 and I wasn't sure if this trend would continue with such minimal effort (got lucky with some ACRU's this month). March 03.01.08 Data was a day late and just when I was about to get concerned the stats came in for the first day at $26.75 (relief) 03.07.08 I'm comparing month over month for the first 6 days and it's $19.80 in Feb vs $89.94 in Mar (I need some ACRU's this month, keeping my fingers crossed)
That is great for a single site.. and just starting out. Did you already have the domain and good traffic to begin with? You promoting with PPC? Thanks! hanji
I will post the url soon, I'm doing some research and trying to understand why this product is doing well. Even though it's a specific type of product, it's so in demand that I'm surprised that it's doing so well. I just want to understand it a bit more and conclude my research before I share it here, but I will. I tried PPC for a few days, but it was too costly, too many competitors... so I stopped.
Great post mcmuney, good to see someone actually thinking about what they're doing and sharing good news ... instead of 'wht is bans best niche plz' What kind of sites are your getting the 'referring sites' traffic from? Squidoo, social bookmarking etc?
I actually purchased the site from someone, including the domain. The domain was first registered on 1/12/08, so it's very new. But I get an average of 30 unique visitors from Google daily. The search phrases being used to find my site are very unique. I can't image what would happen if I showed up for a popular term. I tried PPC for a bit, but then stopped because the phrases for this product are too competitive and didn't want to spend over $0.15 per click.
I've used blogs, some classifieds, some PPC but stopped because I wasn't seeing any additional results. 03.09.08 For the current month so far, I'm seeing $124.87 ($97.84 New + $27.03 Locked) compared to $97.10 previous month for same period. I'm slightly ahead. I've also placed an order for another niche store. I'm excited.
Good to hear you have success with eBay/CJ. Congrats. I thought you said it was a BANS site...are you paying someone to set them up for you?
Thanks. It's not BANS, but a customized script, like BANS I suppose, which is SEO optimized (I don't know how optimized the BANS scripts are). Anyhow, I did think about buying BANS because the developer I purchased from is not willing to sell the script and I'm paying for an encrypted license. But it's well worth it, the free organic traffic alone pays for itself. I don't know if BANS does the same.
One of the reasons why i didn't buy BANS is because of just that. I am making something at this moment that will come out this week. It's not exactly a BANS alternative but it does has some seo optimization in it that i think is missing in BANS. Because with BANS all the links are like rover.ebay.com/etc/etc and there is no page per product but only per category. Just out of curiozity...what does that developer charge per install?
Actually, this script also uses rover.ebay links, but I have lots of category pages that are listed on google. I don't have unique link to individual products. That would be nice to have as well. He charges between $100 - $400 depending on the type of site and function that you want. I paid $250 approximately for the first one and paid a bit over $100 for the second.
03.11.08 Today I noticed that $614.73 has changed status from NEW to LOCKED. I guess that means I have money coming, right?
yes, depending on how you are paid, you should receive it around 20-25th this month. looking good I would think.
03.20.08 I was a bit concerned about this month since I took a extended weekend vacation to Big Bear. I think I'm slightly behind compared to my first month. Up to the 19th, my current balance is $246 vs $274 last month, but last month I started a bit late, plus I didn't have revenue for several days, so I'm really behind. Anyhow, my account shows that $624.06 has been paid out to me for February on March 19th (I should see it in my bank account soon since I get direct deposit). By the way, I decided to give BANS a try so I purchased it and plan on using it for my 4th site. I should be done with the setup by tomorrow. So I'll have a total of 4 sites, but so far I've actively focused on #1, which is bringing in bulk of the revenue. I will shift focus to site #2 and #3 more next month and shift responsibility of site #4 to my wife. For April, my goal will be to earn a minimum of $1,000 total.
Congrat, for the nice achievement. Honestly if you learn abit of WP + some plugin (phppro for example), you can cut down lot of expenditure. it is not really difficult. promoting your site is more difficult than creating the site.