Build A Niche Store - BANS

My latest affiliate marketing project has been creating BANS stores. BANS stands for Build A Niche Store and they are basically eBay powered eCommerce stores. So all of the products in the store are actually current eBay auctions. You make money through BANS stores by becoming an eBay affiliate (through CJ.com) and then using your CJ eBay affiliate code (PID) in your BANS store. This is all easy enough and is explained thoroughly in the BANS manual.

My BANS store website: Buy cheap iPod >>>

You will need your own domain and web host to run your own BANS store. I recommend using Fast Domain Hosting as you can host unlimited domains with the one account. You get your first domain free with your web hosting account and then you can also buy more domains (and thus build more BANS stores) for just an additional $10 each! (Privacy is included free of charge.)

Having set up many BANS stores now I have learned that there are a lot of positive things about them along with a few negative things.

Positive Features of BANS Stores:
+ Very high conversion ratio. It’s easy to make sales with BANS because the products are so cheap and because the eBay brand name is so strong.
+ You get paid for all eBay purchases made by someone who clicked through on your links for the next 7 days. Even if they buy something that has absolutely nothing to do with your store, you still get credit. For example if I have a store selling wigs and someone clicks through on wigs but ends up coming back to eBay a few days later and buys a pickup truck then I get credit for that pickup truck purchase! (as long as they hadn’t clicked on any other affiliates’ link in the mean time.)
+ You get $25 for new eBay sign ups. It seems like everyone has an eBay account by now right? Well a lot of people do, yes. But so far I’ve experienced that about 1 in 10 purchases through my stores ends up being a new eBay sign up. This amount may go up or down depending on your niche.
+ The stores are very simple to set up. They can create many pages with just a few clicks! Although I recommend trying to narrow your niche down until there are not too many pages created as that becomes messy and spammy looking.
+ You can monetize these stores in other ways, not just through eBay. You can add AdSense, and other affiliate links to your BANS stores. If you get real creative you may find many ways you can make a lot of money with the BANS store template.
+ There is a great BANS forum only for BANS users where you can get a lot of helpful hints and information on how to make your BANS store profitable.
+ Free upgrades. They are always working on making the software better.
Negative Features of BANS Stores
- Low commission payouts. The biggest negative by far is that many of my commission payouts are quite small. Many of them are less than a dollar in fact. The commissions are based on the price of the item bought. If the item is very cheap then you will get a very low commission. This is made up for somewhat by the new eBay user payouts and the extremely high conversion rates.
- You will need to edit each page individually to get it perfect for SEO purposes.
What Does a BANS Store Look Like?

Here’s an example: Buy cheap iPod >>> (this one doesn’t have a lot of categories yet as they are being created manually.) Most BANS stores include a fancy header graphic although I have found they are not entirely necessary.

How Much Does BANS Cost?
The software costs $97 currently. I made that amount back pretty quickly so I’d say it easily pays for itself.

Build A Niche Site