My Experiences With Niche Stores
With all the commotion over Max’s recent post Simple New Business Makes $222.73 per Hour, I wanted to give niche store building a shot. A lot of the comments replying to Max’s post asked how he managed to get organic traffic so quickly and what kinds of SEO things he did to drive traffic etc. After building a few stores of my own, my response to those people would simply be “Just try it.”
While my results weren’t as quick to come as Max’s, I have had a pretty impressive amount of success considering how little effort was required. The first site I put up took about 45 minutes for me to install and set up. This was the first time I had ever used the software and I made a few mistakes. I then spent another hour or so doing some quick keyword research and optimizing the individual pages for their specific terms. While that might sound a bit daunting to those of you who don’t have much experience with SEO, all I did was add the targeted terms to the page titles, the links pointing to those pages, and a headline or two (using H tags). That’s it, it’s hardly brain surgery.
That takes us up to about 1:45 in terms of time spent and I finished it off by adding links to the new site from a few of my forum profiles, a couple of blogs, and submitted it to a free directory. All together, I think I had about 5 or 6 links pointing to it with good solid anchor text and that took the total time spent on the site to about 2 hours total.
I sat back and waited for results and unlike Max’s test, I had to wait 3 days before I saw my first bit of organic traffic. I’d guess that’s due to the relatively small number of links the site had but sure enough once the site was indexed, the organic traffic started to trickle in and so did the affiliate income. Once again, my results fell a bit short of Max’s. He made $3.60 per day and while I did have days that I made more than that, my average over two weeks was right at $1 per day. While that’s not going to let me quit my day job or buy a house on the beach, if those results hold, that will be about $365 in a year’s time for 2 hours worth of work.
I didn’t create a video for you like Max did, but just so you know I’m not blowing smoke, here’s a screen shot of the results from one of my sites for the past two weeks.
Now I don’t know about you but when I see numbers like that, I immediately begin to think SCALE. As in, imagine if I could scale this up to 100 or even 300 sites. If I had 100 of these sites set up that’s an annual income of $36,500 for 200 hours (5 work weeks) worth of work! Personally if I were to do this large scale I’d get much quicker in setting the site up (I might even pay a local student to do it for me at minimum wage or something similar) but I’d also want to spend a bit more time building links to the site. With so many people jumping on the niche store bandwagon, I really believe links are what will separate the successful sites from the rest of the pack.
For those of you who would ask if it can be duplicated, I set up another site, and while I had to wait a bit longer this time (about a week) the same results have started to come in. Over the past week I’ve averaged $1.27 a day from that second site, again, for right around 2 hours worth of work.
So, if you were skeptical of Max’s results, I hope this helps open your eyes a bit. Stop worrying about how you might fail, buy the Niche Store Software and give yourself a chance to succeed.
Comments
Max May 15th, 2008
Nice work Ben, glad to hear you are making money with this technique too. I agree, this is a very scalable business with little to no risk. If people don’t have $200 and 10 hours to invest in this type of business, then they probably shouldn’t be trying to make money online…
How is your new business doing? Got anything new starting up?
David LaFerney May 15th, 2008
People scoff at the couple-a-dollars-a-day business model, but It’s pretty cool to make $100 or so month after month from a site that you haven’t really done anything to in a long time. There’s more than one way to do it.
Ben Cook May 15th, 2008
@ Max, I’ve been sidelined by some back problems lately but the next project is still moving along. I’m going through Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula 2.0 course as well which has given me a new idea for one of the projects as well.
It’s not happening as quickly as I’d like but life can get in the way some times.
Ben Cook May 15th, 2008
@ David, you’re exactly right. And not only that, but its easier to take a bunch of sites making a couple-dollars-a-day and increasing that but a buck or two than it is to double the income from a site making a few thousand per month.
David LaFerney May 15th, 2008
its easier to take a bunch of sites making a couple-dollars-a-day and increasing that but a buck or two than it is to double the income from a site making a few thousand per month.
@Ben – That’s for sure. You’ve got to have a viable niche either way though.
Jason May 15th, 2008
And if you really want to make money then you should buy preowned domains once you can afford it. I found a great one that had a PR3 with traffic and im making about 25 a day off that site alone. It paid for the domain name in a week and is still doing great.
Just remember this is the only thing I have done for online marketing and BANS to me is great and very easy. Once you do a couple you can have one done about every hour. There are also some bookmarking software and keyword software that will help speed up get the backlinks. Those are key for the traffic with a new domain because of the google sandbox.
Once you have about 10 sites you start to see some real money come in. Some days are better than others but overal this is by far one of the best buys I have made.
And if you made 100 sites you would probably average around 4k a month or more. Most people that I know that have 100 sites make much more than that just depends how good you get at getting the traffic.
Good luck to all and hope to hear more results from people.
jason
BlogTalks May 16th, 2008
There pretty good results Ben for the time you have put in. How many pages do you have on each site and do you add any unique content to those pages?
This Blog Will Pay My Mortgage May 16th, 2008
How manageable is 100 sites? It seems that if you can set them up so quickly, why wouldn’t you scale up as quickly as possibe?
Ben Cook May 16th, 2008
@BlogTalks, the number of pages is determined by the category or niche I pick. I haven’t spent much time adding unique content to each page. I did add a page title and about two lines of content that is pretty similar across all the pages.
@ThisBlogWill… so far it looks like 100 sites or more would be quite manageable. I’ve been setting up these sites, building a few links and then forgetting them. I’m definitely going to be scaling it up as quickly as I can.
Jason May 16th, 2008
100 sites is not hard to manage at all with bans. The key is to build as many as possible now giving them some anchor links. I would recommend to have 3 targeted keywords on each site with each being its own page.
Then for content I would recommend to put a short paragraph at the top and then have a nice keyword rich article at the bottom of each page. Remember the site will be keyword rich do to the fact of all the products listed on your site will have the keywords usually. So your going to rank well at first then get dumped into the sandbox once google figures out you dont have anchor links coming to the site.
The key to ranking high is to have high ranking links to your site. So when you find a blog that has a high pr then remember to write that one down and make comments on that site linking it to your sites. There are software programs you can purchase that makes this a lot easier and faster. But until you make some money you dont need to buy them just yet.
The key to everything is just getting your sites built and then you can come back and tweak them to be better. Just get them done now so that you can go through googles sandbox and slowly work your way out of it again by getting anchor links.
Try making 25 sites first then go back and start tweaking them. And adjust what you did on those 25 sites to your next 25 and so on. There are a lot of internet marketing pro’s out there now that are making these bans sites or paying some college student to crank them out for them.
Just remember the key is to build man and not to build one and sit there and just look at it. I see a lot of people on the BANS forum that build one and wait for it to bring in money. 9 times out of 10 your first couple of sites will not do well until you figure the program out and niches to pick. Once you figure everything out then you can come back and fix what you need to fix.
Good Luck!
Jason
Steve May 16th, 2008
I like this idea. I am going to give it a try and create on site per day for the next week to see how it works out. I will follow your steps and report back on how it goes.
Thanks for the great info.
Mike Huang May 16th, 2008
Seems like these eBay Niche stores are flying the online business. If only I knew how to do some photoshopping to get the sites up
-Mike
Serena May 16th, 2008
Thanks, Ben, for posting your results! I’m also interested in trying this out; it’s just a matter of doing the research and finding a few hours to invest. I often wondered how a person could manage dozens of sites, but now that I understand the idea a little better, it seems possible. I’ll be following any further discussion.
CanMexDave May 16th, 2008
Jason you speak of “There are also some bookmarking software ” and you spoke of backlinking software. Could you please advise as to the software. I have been away from marketing for several years and getting back into it. One thing I do know is tools to automate things like submitting links and articals to directories are key, not talking about bots, but programs where you key in the sites and forms are filled then you can view and enter if no mods needed. The catch thingy has taken care of bots. Thanks in advance.
Jason May 17th, 2008
Bookmarking Demon
Directory submitter
article submitter
These are the different programs that I have used that save time. I didnt list before because I didnt want to act as if I was trying to sell something.
I would get only what you can afford. You can do everything manually but that takes time. These programs just help you do every a lot faster. I started with bookmarking demon first then when I made enough money I bought the next and so on.
The key for your site to get good traffic is the anchor links in the long run. You want to get as many high ranking anchor links as you can to your sites. And remember this is not going to happen over night but just think if you work on it for the next 8 to 12 months you could be making several thousand a month.
This is something that has been done by a lot of people now and they will tell you that in the forum for BANS. I am on the road to that myself and even thinking of quiting my day job and doing it full time so that I can make even more sites. This is by far the easiest way to get started into internet marketing and then once you make some money you can get into flipping sites like Max or other projects. The best thing with BANS sites is that they continue to make money once you set them up. So you can just forget about them or you may get busy for a few weeks and your current sites continue to make money no matter what you do for the most part. You just cant beat that kind of income.
I may start a blog with my step by step path of what I did to make money with BANS. I will make sure that its linked to this blog because I dont want to take anything away from it. Max has very good articles and you def want to make sure you continue to read his advice.
If anyone has any questions I would be happy to help.
Jason
Terry Tay May 17th, 2008
It’s great that you were able to get some ok results with the niche store Ben. Every dollar counts and when you multiply it, it definitely adds up. Are you going to do more sites? 100 sites? or what are your plans?
~Terry
Sell More Art Online May 27th, 2008
Would anyone be willing to share how much they are earning from their BANS sites. I have 2 of them and have earnt about 5 dollars in 2 weeks.
CanMexDave May 27th, 2008
Hope someone can help me regards BANS. I signed up for the Ebay Partner network as suggested before buying the software and was refused. Now the thing is this, they do not provide any email address to contact regards asking for further info. I have been all thru their site and you must enter user name and password.
The email claims I have an account however user name and password do not work. I have tried this 3 times with differant email address’s. I am not sure if I am refused because the domain is parked (I plan to use BANS software to develope) or if its because I live in Mexico. So if anyone has a contact address, or any suggestions please let me know.
Has anyone else had problems?
Sell More Art Online June 10th, 2008
Regarding to the directory submitter above, which tool would you use for this and why? Are there any that can get you penalised?
John Miller July 21st, 2009
Is this online business still profitable $222.00/hour? I just got into this thread.
Uwak August 6th, 2009
This week I visited many blogs and a variety of topics, information in your blog is very interesting and useful, thank you.
Rocket Spanish August 9th, 2009
I really liked BANS. It’s a solid program that has been around for years.