I've got about 40 custom eBay RSS stores, all getting traffic, and all making sales. Is it time to stop and put some eggs in a different basket? > How many eBay/BANS stores do you have?
I have 1 custom store. Wow 40, I'm guessing you don't do much other than changing the BANS template look. What kind of revenue are you brining in with all those running at once?
Only 1? Why not make some more? I can't stop myself! I use my own custom php RSS script - so nearly all of my stores have a different look (and footprint). My revenue is 'going up', which is all I'll say
Kerosene I love your thought process! I'm on a very similar track myself. Many eBay store fronts, with different templates and footprints. I also roll my own RSS feed and API store fronts. I too have been thinking of working with other affiliate merchants, but all of my initial testing have shown incredibly poor results.. but I have not fully committed on developing a single store front for a affiliate (other than eBay). I've only tested a few products and banners. Also, Kerosene, are you promoting your eBay stores with PPC or SEO or a combination of both? I've been sticking to PPC primarily for now, while my SEO slowly increases. hanji
I get ALL my traffic from SEO (well probably about 90%). I don't get a huge amount of traffic, but my CTR and conversions are pretty good. It's probably time for me to do some reading/research and try PPC again - I've tried PPC a few times for different projects (including eBay stores) and it's never worked for me. So I'm obviously doing something wrong
I sometimes worry about that, too. About 75% of my online income is from BANS. I've been trying to focus on other income streams the past couple weeks. Just in case eBay decides to change their payouts or policies.
You shouldn't even be saying that out loud! My nightmares about clicking my own AdSense ads will be soon replaced by dreams about getting an 'Affiliate program discontinued' email from eBay...
Ha! That won't happen. eBay's affiliate program is growing their business and sending them huge amounts of targeted traffic. It won't come to an end in the foreseeable future. I'm just trying to diversify my income a little more.
Kerosene, you can build mashup sites, like the squidoo.com lenses. You can put CJ Products, ebay auctions, amazon products, adsense, and many more sources of revenue. build blogs (with affiliate links to ebay auctions, amazon products or even cj products), build mini-sites, build bans sites, build squidoo.com lenses! There is a very big world of opportunities, and if you build "thousands" and diversify, you're not putting all your eggs in the same basket.
The mashup site type thing is what I've been focusing on, although my first BANS store doesn't have much other than some related CJ banners because the niche doesn't lend itself to it. Some of the other niches I'm working on definitely do though. I don't think ebay will pull the affiliate program, maybe they might switch to a different affiliate network, but my largest fears with the BANS stores are with Google Adwords quality score algorithm.
It doesn't affect seo. Seo is one thing, subdomains/domains another. If you're after (just imagine) the keyword ipod, then: ipod.domain.com or ipod-something.com That's what you need from the url to the seo.
I'm using subdomains spread over a few domains. Seems to be working fine for SEO. And also makes it easier to share common template objects (graphics, php scripts etc).
I'm starting to make some pretty good money with CJ and Squidoo. I've got a running tally on my earnings over at Captain Squid (link in sig). Earned about $300 in the last 6 weeks or so. Nothing major, but steadily increasing. I've recently added BANS sites to my activities as well, in order to diversify. I've gotten one ACRU from PPC but I ran out of free yahoo money so I'm waiting for the big G to kick in with good ole SEO.
I have used BANS (Build a Niche Store) but I have a new software for creating eBay affiliate websites and it is working good and it is faster to generate new websites.
Is this a script you wrote yourself? Are you sharing/selling it? Any chance of letting us know a url where we can see it running? You've got me intrigued...