www.theSushiSource.com
www.SG1Store.com

I uploaded a Japanese video to Youtube and posted the link for the Sushi Source in its description and already I am receiving hits from it. So it is possible to maximize on Youtube videos.

As usual these will be added to my BANS Experiment and revenue earned will be reflected in its monthly post.

Geocache-Gear.com
Craftsman.AuctionDojo.com

AuctionDojo.com will be sort of a BANS portal and I will be adding all the BANS sites I use on AuctionDojo.com to the sites frontpage for cross navigation.

I will be adding these sites income to the total bans experiments income in the future.

I started this BANS Experiment with 7 domain names so I could test out this eBay affiliate program that everyone was raving so much about. I set a budget of no more than $150 for everything. I spent $95 on the BANS software and that left me with $55 for 7 domain names, which I got from GoDaddy using a coupon code which knocked them down to $7.15 each.

I used my already existing Hostgator webhost account to host the sites. I used to be a systems administrator for Hostgator back when I lived in Houston, so I know what great service and tech support they have.

Note: If you do not already have a web hosting account elsewhere, I suggest you signup with Hostgator . You won’t find a better webhost out there. If you use the coupon code ‘beach’ you will get 20% off your initial order with them.

The pace was a little slow in the beginning but this was to be expected. It takes time for the search engines to crawl your website and for people to start finding you.

I had a total of 1596 unique visitors to my bans sites and I made a total of $208 in revenue. Deducting the cost of domain names and the software itself, this left me with $58 in profit for the month.

I learned a lot about SEO marketing and niches to invest in and what not to. My biggest hitter was Harley-Davidson-Auction.com with 521 unique visitors and 112 return visitors. It brought in bigger commissions due to the price of the motorcycles. It netted me $128 in commissions off the sale of two bikes and some parts.

My biggest let downs were the ones I was expecting to make the most off of due to the current popularity of the niche, IndianaJonesMarket.com and Transformer-Auctions.com. I expected these sites to do really well due to the recent exposure from the movies. What I learned was even more valuable though. I could not get high enough on the search engines to get enough visitors due to the flooding of the keywords from the movie releases. Combined they earned $8.86 with Transformers site bringing in 139 visitors due to keywording ‘transformer toys’ and Indiana Jones site bringing in a whopping 85 visitors.

What I found is that if there is a current rush or a lot of popularity with that niche, you will never get high enough on the search engines to gain enough visitors. I also learned that specialty items like coin collecting will get you hits but wont earn you commissions worth bragging about due to the nature of coin collecting. No one wants to spend $500 on coin they have never seen before. Coin collectors are skeptics at heart and prefer to see it in person. They are however willing to spend a few bucks at a time on coins from eBay without issue. RareCoinBazaar.com netted me $2.14 but had the highest number of individual sales. Unique visitors for this site was 336.

Lesson learned? Pick a niche that will generate enough sales with larger commissions and that will be easy enough to get higher up on the search engines without having to paying for it.

If you are a BANS user and want to get in on some of that eBay Motors action, then you have probably noticed that the category numbers for eBay Motors are really hard to find. They are not listed on the default page you get category numbers from. So what do you do?

The first step is to goto:

http://motors.listings.ebay.com/_W0QQfcmdZListingCategoryList

Then you hover over the section you want or click on the link… so say we want to get the category number for replica cars, the url would be:

http://motors.listings.ebay.com/Cars-Trucks_Replica-Kit-Makes
_W0QQfcmdZListingCategoryListQQsacatZ7251QQsocmdZListingItemList

The number we want to get is after the ‘ListingCategoryListQQsacatZ’, so:

http://motors.listings.ebay.com/Cars-Trucks_Replica-Kit-Makes
_W0QQfcmdZListingCategoryListQQsacatZ 7251 QQsocmdZListingItemList

The number you want is going to be 7251 .

You can do the same with every category on eBay.

The domain’s I will be using for this test is:

www.XBox360Sales.com – Done
www.IndianaJonesMarket.com – Done
www.theGoonieStore.com – Done
www.Transformer-Auctions.com – Done
www.RareCoinBazaar.com – Done
www.Cobra-Replicas.com – Done
www.Harley-Davidson-Auction.com – Done

I will mess around with the software and Photoshop up some image headers for each site. I will be posting reviews of the software and future revenue made from the sites on this blog, so subscribe to the RSS feeds to stay up to date.

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 are a couple of examples, one targeting the Sushi trend and the other Harley Davidson’s:

Sushi eBay Affiliate Website

Harley Davidson 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