I've been looking into BANS, Popshops and now PHPbaypro to create some Ebay affiliates stores. Popshops seems pretty cool, but it seems like maybe it's not as geared towards creating a stand-alone store and even though the basic version is actually free, the more advanced versions carry a monthly fee, which I'd like to avoid. I've gotten pretty familiar with Wordpress, and PHPbaypro is a lot cheaper than BANS, but a new version of BANS is coming out and it seems to get a lot of good press around here. Anyone who's intimately familiar with both (or all 3 for that matter) want to give a brief comparison of these products?
My take on BANS and phpBaypro: phpBayPro requires customization from your parts. As phpBayPro uses wordpress,you need to have basic installation and coding knowledge of Wordpress to make phpBayPro works for you. If you are already familiar with Wordpress, then phpBayPro is for you. If you are a non techcie, and want something be to set up quickly and easily, then by all mean go for BANS. you can read more about BANS from my blog listed in sig. hope this helps.
Take a look at my sig and see if you like those setups. They are stand alone sites, wordpress isn't needed. Still a work in progress though. Other sites I run use the affiliate scripts but not the site creation part. And yes, they are making money, but with any site, you're going to need traffic.
Popshops are $5 per month and BANS is $97 one time charge. I combine them for best results. I have not used PHPbaypro so I have no opinion. I make the most with POPshops but I make a quicker income from BANS Good luck
That's an interesting idea, combining them. In terms of PHPBayPro and cylai's comment, I have enough working knowledge of Wordpress and am fairly comfortable with it, but putting aside familiarity with Wordpress, what advantages would one have over another? Is it just that BANS is easier to use/configure or are there other substantive differences in the way stores are laid out or the way pages are generated etc?
In my case, I began with phpBay and when I saw that I was getting eBay conversions with it, I decided to get BANS as well. IMO, you would do well to begin with phpBay, do all the appropriate seo and promotion for your WordPress site and see how it goes. A lot depends, of course, on the niche you select. This is a way to gain some experience with everything, from which you can decide whether to expand to BANS and PopShops. Take it a step at a time and you'll do fine. I suggest this approach because you'll probably start seeing revenue flowing from eBay before anything else. I haven't yet incorporated PopShops into my eBay stuff, but probably will as soon as I get enough eBay sites ticking the way I'd like.
I have been doing fine using the WP plugin and just recently started sampling proshops into some of my other sites.
I've only been using PhpBay Pro .. which I chose because I need more customization and I am familiar with Wordpress. If you have not much time I think you better use BANS because they comes with several templates.
IMHO, the success of your eBay site is not what you used, but how you used it. Both software got their pros and cons, ultimately it boils down to your marketing skills to make it a success.
If you can code a bit in PHP, I put together a step-by-step guide on how to build an affiliate site using free tools. Check it out below in my signature.
As long as you have traffic they all work. I have only used PHPBay Pro and I am very pleased with it. I researched Bans and PHPBay and chose PHPBay Pro because of the Wordpress platform and it was much cheaper than Bans. I made the script purchase price back quickly and so far more traffic means more income.
Traffic is no use if they are not buying, you need targetted traffic. I suggest that you target brand/models name.
Yes, targeted traffic is key. Without it you won't convert. I should have mentioned that, thanks for the catch.
I use BANS alot and it allows for good customization...you just have to work with it. Ebay is my absolute number 1 CJ program especially now because of BANS which enables you to set up a niche site quickly so your commissions can keep coming.
What's all this about footprints and rover links. Is there something about "rover links" that are against Google's rules?
One day Google might decide to ditch BANS sites and they can detect such sites by footprints. It happened to Traffic Equalizer sites some years back.
I think google already knows to ignore rover links. I have redirect links that I use and all the search engines hit them, I detect it in the redirect and send them somewhere else. None of the search engines follow the rover links though, if they followed them like my other links, they would blow up my logs. I wouldn't be surprised if ebay has a deal with the search engines, telling them not to follow the links. I say that because, just by tthe simple nature of how you generate the links, it would cause ebay a ton of grief if the search engines were following 100+ link on 10's of thousands of website.