My Best Month With BANS So Far

I don’t want to jinx anything for August, but as of today I have had my best month with my Build a Niche Store websites since I joined last November.  June was really awful and I was worried it would continue through the whole summer.  Or that it was a sign of what was to come from all the economy doom and gloom talk we hear on the news everyday.  July has been great.  I’m not up there with the big boys and girls in earning – yet, but I have paid for my BANS software and domain registrations and hosting months ago and now it is just about all profit.

To what do I owe the turn around in earnings in July.  I have no absolute answer, but I did several things that any one of them could have been the answer, perhaps it was a combination of all of them, or none of them.  There’s no way to tell, but I will keep doing them until something happens to tell me otherwise.

Once BANS offered us the option to cloak our links, I cloaked all of my sites, and I turned off the “now on ebay” feature, replacing it with an eBay banner instead.  After reading a few posts on the BANS forums about whether to cloak or uncloak, I decided to turn the option off and at the same time, I turned on the “now on eBay” feature back on.  I saw a big difference in the amount of clicks, bids, winning bids and ACRUS almost immediately.  It may have been a coincidence, but I am superstitious so I’m leaving it alone!

I also took a break from building new sites in July, except for my Casual Dinnerware Sets store, I did not build any new sites.  Instead, I have been going through my existing sites and adding original content, including articles and new categories based on the search terms people have been using to find my sites.  I have also add a blog to a few and have been adding content through regular posts.  All of this also could have, and probably did, contribute to the improvement in earnings I’ve seen in July.

I’m planning to add another store or two in August.  I am anxious to use the Bans and Wordpress SimpleCSS Template I purchased from Mark Hansen at The Niche Store Builder.  Its another integrated site and makes building BANS stores with blogging easy.  If you haven’t done so yet, check them out.  My Casual Dinnerware Sets site was built using the BANS/Flex template. Notice how the main page is the Wordpress blog with all the store categories in the right sidebar. If you click Store in the top menu, you will see that the BANS store is identical to the Blog.

While I will continue to add more stores, I will also do more work on my existing sites to make sure they stay up-to-date and earning steady income.

Tags: bans, Build a Niche Store, Casual Dinnerware Sets, eBay