eBay still treating affiliates like shit

Well, after I got that email saying my account had been re-activated, I found out the hard way that it's not. I spent 4 weeks on SEO activities for this bullshit. The SEO knowledge I gained was priceless as well as what I'm learning from this experience and that is

1) Do NOT put all your eggs in 1 basket.

2) Always be marketing/promoting more than 1 product. Things that are outside my control can often change when it's not necessarily convenient for me.

3) NEVER promote eBay as the sole source of income for your online business. I know others are making money doing it but fine for them.
eBay has to much shit with them for me to fool with those guys. They're arrogant, heavy handed and don't seem to think much of affiliates.

What to promote? There are literally thousands of products, physical, electronic ie. stuff sold on clickbank or paydotcom. I'll be going into more detail as lately I've been doing strictly cpa marketing and so far so good. I don't regret the last 8 months with BANS, however it's time to make that knowledge I gained pay off. Eventually that'll come to fruition.

Change in direction

Or focus, if you will. when I first started this blog at soggy's suggestion it was to be totally dedicated to BANS and the build a niche store project, which I'm kinda soured on due to eBay's tactics. I still like the product and the business model, I just don't see myself expending alot of energy and effort on it after eBay banned my ass twice WITHOUT speaking with me first and reversing my commissions. Don't play with my money. So seeing as how I'm now basically like F*ck ebay I'll use this blog to talk about my adventures with ppc and cpa marketing.

But first some background, cpa marketing is like the best kept secret in affiliate marketing. Basically what it stands for is cost per action, meaning, you get paid for a particular "action" that your visitors take. For some offers it can be a simple email, or zip submit, for others it's a pin. For other offers, the high paying ones are pay per trial signup or pay per sale. In the cpa game you can promote anything from the free iPhone offers to Baby Phat apparel, to home based business courses and online dating sites. The offers are endless. As a cpa marketer you want to join multiple networks and spread your traffic around. Currently my favorite networks are Market Leverage - Make Money! and revenue loop. Neverblue Ads is up near the top also.

eBay Update

well, after i fired off another email to ebay's affiliate review board they finally responded with what they kicked me out of the program for. SPAM. the funny part is i didn't do it. i was a victim of the infamous gmail hack from 3 weeks ago. epn received an email that the spammer sent from my account. not to mention the fact that they said they'd received some complaints about that account. after showing them proof that my account had been hacked as well as others they reviewed my account and reinstated me.
But now here's the question in my mind: should i promote them seeing how they'll steal/ reverse your commissions over a slight violation without warning? umm i don't think so. once i get $150 off the store, i'm done actively promoting their auctions. i like cpa much better and so far this month i'm up $1100 and i'm just getting started. eBay - kiss my ASS!

CPA, PPC just what is this?

Since I've been having trials and tribulations with ebay, lately I've been doing some CPA marketing and I gotta tell you: I f*cking LOVE it. Over the next few weeks, I'll be blogging more about this since I'm pretty much done with promoting ebay.
Basically CPA stands for cost per action. Thre are companies out there that pay for leads so if someone provides an email or zip code, the affiliate gets paid for that traffic. As a CPA affiliate, the big money is made promoting trial offers and physical products. Trial offers pay VERY well. Over the past 2 months I've been doing basic email submits and to date I'm up $1100. Not bad at all. My goal is to be doing that much per week, then by 1/09 $500/day. At that point I'm leaving corporate america to focus on this and investing in real estate.

Activity Update

Welp, I called Pepperjam to get approved. However my app's been in pending status for the ebay program. I'll be calling their affiliate manager back this afternoon. Now that the site's showing up in the rankings, I need to get my money! They already STOLE a couple hundred from me thatr they "claim" was eared via improper promotions, which is BULLSHIT. But I digress..

It's been awhile

Man oh man, it's been a month to the day since I've updated this blog. Since the last update alot's been going on. Primarily with ebay and their bullshit. I got this email from the earlier this week:

After reviewing your promotional method, we found that you are in violation of the eBay Partner Network Service Agreement. Our records indicate that you have not received a written approval to promote eBay through E-mail. This model is considered a special promotion model as outlined by our network agreement in section (F)(4)(d) and requires a express written approval from the eBay Partner Network or the Advertiser. Your publisher account will be expired immediately, and 100% of your pending commissions will be reversed. You are not allowed to rejoin the eBay Partner Network.

As stated in the ePN Network Agreement, Section (F)(4):

Special Promotional Methods. Promoting Participating Sites and Content using any Promotional Methods other than a Link on your own website is considered a "Special Promotional Method". If your Special Promotional Method is not approved by the Program Terms, you are required to obtain ePN's or the Advertiser's express written permission in advance to use that Promotional Method in that Program. You are responsible for verifying whether the applicable Program Terms allow or approve your Special Promotional Method. ePN reserves the right to request you to terminate any special Promotional Method at any time, with or without notice or cause, and you agree to immediately comply. The following are non-limiting examples for special promotional methods:

1. e-mail, instant messaging, IRC channels or other electronic communications,
2. downloadable software,
3. incentive programs, or
4. distribution of Promotional Content via distribution partners or ad networks,
5. promoting Participating Sites and Content by placing Links in Paid Search results,

You will not promote Participating Sites and Content using Special Promotional Methods unless the Program Terms or ePN approve such promotion expressly in writing, in advance, and you comply with the additional terms in the Code of Conduct (https://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/

Ok, now here's what pisses me off. First, I don't promote through email, so here it is ,they're convicting me without an investigation or even offering proof to back up their allegations. I don't promote anything via email, so now i have a dilemna, keep the niche stores up or close them? part of me is just like "FUCK ebay", but on the flip side i spent alot of time and effort to get my niche store in the rankings. so what i plan to do is get approved with pepperjam and get paid that way. And those fucknuts at ebay took my commissions as well. I sent them an email, but no reply. Big Shock! I'm beginning to hate ebay.

Food for thought

This is a point of view you won't hear in the good for nothing but depressing your ass media. I got this in an email from Ken McCarthy inventor of the System Seminar that's responsible for launching the careers of many rich guys on the net. I will be at next year's system seminar, but i digress.....

Check out his thoughts on the economy. Oh and I agree 150% I'm sick and tired of this "bad economy" shit so I dont' watch tv nor read the left leaning washington post.

I'm sure you've noticed that everyone today
is talking about "the economy" in worried
tones.

"Where is the economy headed?" "The economy is up."
"The economy is down." And on and on and on.

Commentators look for "signs" about where things
are headed. Politicians beat their chests and
present bogus solutions.

Here's the deal for entrepreneurs:

There is no such thing as "the economy."

There's only your market and your customers...and the
whole game of entrepreneurship - the whole game - is
adapting successfully to circumstances whatever they
may be.

So let's face the Big Fear and get it out of the way
right now:

A deep recession, or even worse a full-fledged Depression.

*** Can the worst happen?

Sure it can and all the "rah rah" guys who are telling
you it can't are doing you a grave disservice.

This is reality and in reality ANYTHING can happen
and not all of it's nice.

Frankly, given the insane misbehavior in the credit
and banking industries in recent years, "the economy"
is probably due for more pain.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if
you are a real entrepreneur...and I'll PROVE it
to you right now:

Let's look at a really hard case...

The Great Depression of the 1930s.

Over 25% of Americans were out of work. Bread lines.
The Grapes of Wrath.

Total disaster, right?

Traumatic for many to be sure, but 75% were employed. These
folks continued to buy goods and services without so much
as a hiccup.

Because costs were so low - rents were cheap, salaries were low,
material costs were low - it was a great time to start a business.
In fact many of today's most successful businesses had their
roots in those "bad" days.

Just Google "founded in 1930" and check it for every year
of the 1930s. *Millions* of results come up.

For 1937, in two seconds I came up with Krispy Kreme; Kaplan, the
test preparation company; Saab, the auto maker; and T. Rowe Price,
the stock broker.

*** The so-called Depression was boom times for many

During the Depression entire industries experienced explosive
growth. "Little" ones like broadcasting.

Now, if you depend on a J-O-B and you have a limited skill set
that ties you into one industry, like selling sub-prime
mortgages or making gas-guzzling SUVs, you may be in trouble.

But the issue is not "the economy." It's never "the economy."

It's where YOU are and what you are doing.

Here's the reality:

No matter how bad things get, they never go to zero everywhere.
There are always big winners in every "economy."

The entrepreneur's job is to go where the action is.

Let's take an Internet example...

In 2002, you could see the tumbleweeds rolling down the
streets of the Internet marketing world.

Practically everyone had bet it all on the banner ad and then
suddenly banner ad prices crashed. It was a definite Depression
in the Internet advertising world... and many were caught
like deer in the headlights.

A lot of people closed shop and left the industry for good.

Then what happened?

At the very bottom of it all, Google came out with AdWords in
the spring of 2002 and the rest is history.

As a result, Google, which in 2001 had less net income than
I did, is now one of the richest businesses on the planet and
they've made it possible for countless entrepreneurs to build
multi-million dollar businesses.

So for heaven's sake, stop listening to all the drivel about
"the economy" and start paying attention to the Google-sized
opportunities that are laying around untouched in every economy.

That's what being an entrepreneur is all about.

*** Learn how Google does it

Speaking of Google, did you know that Google sent one of its
key executives to teach at the System Seminar this year?

Google has a very successful three-legged system to help
entrepreneurs make m'oney online:

AdWords (traffic), Google Analytics (tracking) and Google Website
Optimizer (testing.)

The System Seminar was one of the very first places on earth
you could go to learn the Google AdWords system long before
anyone else "got" it. (System grad Perry Marshall who gave that
early course went on to become of the top world's top AdWords
experts.)

Tracking traffic has been a System Seminar topic literally since
Day One. In fact, one of the students from our early trainings
way back in 1994 was the first online ad rep to provide "clickthrough
rate" data to his advertisers.

This year we completed the loop.

Tom Leung, Google's testing whiz, came to Chicago to show System
attendees how to get maximum profits from every advertising dime
they spend...using the very same techniques that Google uses when
they test.

Do you think Google has a little traffic to analyze?

Do you think they might have a few real world case studies
you can learn from?

Tom surprised us several times, especially when he pointed
out that some of the things taught by the gurus as
"traffic secrets" don't in fact work at all.

The phrase he used over and over was "I'd like to see their
data because our data says..."

I wonder who knows more about traffic and conversion, Google
or the latest overnight Internet Wunderkind?

Gotta be the wunderkind, right? After all, look at all the
cool cars he poses in front in his ads :-)

Seriously...

You missed System 2008 and I'm sincerely sorry that you
did. Not for my sake, but for yours.

It amazes me how many people there are struggling to succeed in
Internet marketing who have never made it to a single System
Seminar.

They're making it too hard on themselves.

Why would you not want to get the training that started
it all and that consistently cranks out more success stories
than all the other trainings combined?

*** Let me make it easier for you

For years, I have never sold the recordings of the
System Seminar. The reasons are somewhat complex, but it
boils down to this: I wanted to focus exclusively on the
quality of the live training.

Now, after teaching this stuff for 15 years and offering the
System Seminar for six, I think I've got the live training
where I want it.

If you missed System 2008, you missed something you will not
be able to recreate no matter how many "guru" offerings you
try.

But that doesn't mean you have to miss the boat.

This year, I'm changing something fundamental about how
I make the System Seminar available to people.

Read why this is going to be your best year in Internet marketing
ever and, while everyone else is worrying about "the economy,"
you're going to be laying the foundation of your new empire.

APPROVED!

eZine articles approved my rewritten article. YEAH BABY! and even better news is that they're going to feature it on the homepage. Know what that means?? submit more articles ASAP.

I also added a links page to my site and will be updating that later tonight with 15-20 more links. My store's getting regular clicks now and I'm curious to see how this will play out once I build more backlinks and rise in the SERPS. I was on the first page of google saturday but it's looking like the site's going up and down in the rankings. So I'll need somemore articles and backlinking.

Life Update

This week has been a good week. Busy but good. My micromanaging, manic depressive, OCD douchebag of a boss was on vacation. Needless to say the office was peaceful, I got alot done. I also sent out my resume wednesday for another position that's a bit over my head and to my pleasant surprise, they scheduled an interview the VERY next day. I didn't expect to hear from them until next week. I'm pleasantly surprised, it's a straight 9 -5 job, no overtime, no weekends, it's more money, and it's closer to home. I'd be taking the METRO (DC's version of a subway) to get there which isn't really that big a deal. I can park at the subway station and get home quickly. I'm excited, I haven't done project management full time, I'm more of a techie, BUT I've managed a big SOX compliance project at Fannie Mae last year. Now what in the hell does that have to do with BANS and internet business....... Be patient Wilbur I'm getting to it............
See, I've been listening to alot of Dan Kennedy's stuff, ya know the Phenomenon, Wealth Attraction for entrepreneurs, the No B.S marketing letter etc..... and I'm putting it into action and I'm seeing results. The money isn't flowing in yet but I'm seeing the stream rush faster and the momentum's building. It's exhilirating.(hope I spelled that right) One of the things he talks about was "simultaneous as opposed to sequential". In other words, doing multiple projects, implementing multiple systems at the same time to achieve exponential results. My other goals is multiple streams of income. Conventional wisdom says focus on one thing at a time and then move on to the next. A then B then C. Well that's fine, but there's a hidden group of millionaires in this country who's income is literally exploding in RIGHT NOW despite of this "economy". And what they're all doing is launching projects quickly, moving from one thing to the next and implementing multiple systems creating and launching multiple products at the SAME time. One millionaire - Scott Tucker said it best "success comes from a messy kitchen"
Sooooooo in that light I'm planning on moving to another full time position paying more money, so I can invest more in PPC campaigns, build more niche stores, as well as the fact that I've been implementing some cpa marketing campaigns and there's HUGE potential in that. As a matter of fact I just got my first check from market leverage, and while it's not a big check ($105), it's a start. I expect my next check to be double, maybe even triple that. NOW some would say, focus on BANS. Fine for you but I want to accelerate the time that I can tell corporate America to pucker up and Kiss my black ass! So I'm creating multiple income streams. Plus, I'm seeing that so much of this business can be automated, that once the initial system's in place, all that's left to do is scale it. By next month I expect to be earning $150-200 per day in CPA marketing, $200 per month with my profitable niche store with another one under construction that'll hit $200 per month in within 60 days of launching and $200 per month with bum marketing. Conservatively that'll put me at $5100 per month. I can't retire on that BUT, add that to my IT job money, that's more money to invest in ppc campaigns, and it allows me to buy tools to automate my other activities to scale the business. By October I expect to be at $300 per day with cpa marketing. And that's on the low end. It could and most likely will explode faster than that, but again, I'm being conservative. I'll be done working for "the Man" sometime next year "if I" so choose. The only reason I'll keep working is because I like my job, and I'll need that W2 income to buy a house. Once I'm in it, I can leave, but job $$$ is sweet. One of the best feelings I've known is to have a side hustle that pays you just as much if not more than the day job and your money can stack quickly. Now that I don't smoke dro and drink Remy like I used to it's stacking even faster.

Next move- NEW apartment then operation FHA - raise credit score to buy nice home.
Then by that time I'll be able to furnish the pimp pad LOVELY off cpa money.
Oh yeah, I also set a goal to buy myself a Jaguar XJ8 as a reward for making it through the last few years. I owe it to myself as I crashed my Lexus last year and I've been through ALOT since 06. I get knocked down by life and I keep getting up and pushing forward. By 2010 I plan on living the robb report lifestyle. And the results, and knowledge started moving forward when soggy took me under his wing. It was then that I saw results in my actions, had a plan to put in place and the plan's working. even though he's teaching me bans and SEO it opened my eyes to other opportunities and i can use what he's showing me on other projects. SEO is SEO and all sites need it.
I'm also considering setting up shop as a Local Search PPC Consultant for local mom and pop businesses in my area. That's sometime next year once I have some results to show them. But in closing I just want to say a big THANK YOU!!!!!!!! to soggy.
And Luke Sample. These guys are internet marketing genuises. Stay tuned..........

UPDATE: Dropped like a stalking boyfriend

Earlier this week I attempted to log into my epn account to check my bids and clicks. I had my browser set to remember my password, and it didn't work. I clicked the forgot password link and....... NOTHING HAPPENED. I was slightly pissed as I'd made some money and was thinking it may have disappeared. To add to my frustration, the epn folks didn't bother to send me an email so I figure I'm screwed. Well I contacted Soggy The Man-The Myth and he told me to fire off an email to them which I did. It was curse word laden so I saved it as a draft and sent off another, more civil, PG email asking what happened. EPN replied back today saying that there'd been some "suspicious bidding activity" at my store, whatever the f*ck that means.
Anyway, they said my account is active again and I'd receive my July earnings in the next pay cycle. I hope they haven't hosed any other money I may have made as my site is on the first page of MSN and Yahoo for 3 of my keywords. I'm also ranking higher than ebay in organic search, so I'm moving up. Once my articles go live in ezine, that should push me even higher. Stay tuned............

Is Ezinearticles anal retentive? or maybe OCD?

Or could it be that they're really thorough? Who knows, I haven't come to a conclusion on that. What I do know is that they kicked back one of my articles saying it was "too" keyword optimized. Apparently they have a ratio to determine how many times a keyword should appear per 100 words. Blah blah blah. To me it's bullshit, but I've got to edit my article to get it in their directory. The article sounded right to me. It's not like my particular keyword was used every other friggin word. But whatever, I'll edit it today and get it resubmitted.

In other news I've got another niche I'm going after and I'm not telling. I'm buying a domain today and will begin construction on it. To speed the process I may do some PPC as well as soggy's SEO program which works like a charm. It takes some time to see results but you will see results with patience. Now here's another question with my new store, should I do a regular bans with a custom template or will I go with a wordpress niche store? As it stands I'm leaning towards a wordpress store powered by the bans script. Why? Wordpress has 50 million themes, it has built in SEO features, Google likes it and finds it quickly and there are tons of SEO plugins to work with it. We'll see, I have a couple days to make a decision.

The joys of article marketing

I love article marketing. Especially when I DON'T have to write the articles. One of the biggest lessons I've learned about running a business, a real business is to outsource what you A. don't like doing, B. aren't good at doing, C. low dollar tasks that don't add to your bottom line so you can focus on MARKETING, MARKETING and more MARKETING. Writing articles was something that I really don't like doing, so when I found out that there were services out there that provided that, I was onboard. I joined www.need-an-article.com and so far I've been pleased. I send in a request for an article and it was finished that same day. As a matter of fact, later that evening when the system load was high. So far I'm pleased with them and will be using them more and more in the future.

The results are in!

The tedious work of optimizing pages, and links in the store have paid off. I'm on the front page of MSN for 2 keywords and yahoo for all 3 of my main keywords. It feels good to see some results of your hard work pay off. I'm looking forward to building more stores once i'm done with this class i'm taking. I'll be finished in 2 weeks and will have more time to devote to the store. I was considering purchasing an SEO book but after doing this work, i realized something: that can wait, i learn best by doing and seeing things pan out. The critical lessons I learned optimizing my site will be applied to all other sites i do, BANS or not. I feel as though I got a college education on search engines and how to get in them in the past 4 weeks.

I'd imagine that over the next few weeks organic traffic will begin to increase which will lead to bids and sales. As of last month the store made $46.48. Just think 2 more months like that and I can quit my job! sike, just kidding. it's paid the bill and then some and this was made on 196 clicks. So far this month I've had 50 clicks in ebay partner network and it's still the 1st week of the month. We'll see how much better this store does. My only wish was that I picked a tighter niche, but it's all water under the bridge now. I have to work with what I've got and the next store will be centered around a tighter niche which less "seo savvy" competition.

Let the Backlinking Begin!

Since I've gone through the process of optimizing my store for the search engines, it's now time to start building backlinks. Soggy hooked me up with a guy on the BANS forum who has a social bookmarking service. So far my pages have be reindexed as well as the front page of the store. Good news. Also, organic clicks are beginning to come in as well. I expect to keep rising in the SERPS as the backlinks increase. I realize that I'm in a tough niche and have been considering doing some ppc to increase targeted traffic. That's just a thought. Lately I've been reading up on SEO and PPC. I bought Perry Marshalls Ultimate Guide to Adwords and I'm hoping it gets here today. The prospect of getting targeted traffic to the store for just a few cents a click is tempting. However I do see alot of other competition in my niche doing the same thing. These are important lessons that I can't begin to put a price on. My biggest wish was that I identified a less competitive niche to go after. Fortunately I've got a few in mind and will run these past Soggy. He's turning out to be a great mentor. Check him out at Soggy's Blog
I thought that being in IT would give me an advantage in Internet marketing but it doesn't. The thought process is different, but once you learn the process, it's pretty straightforward. The hard part is making sure you're doing the right thing and getting good advice. There's alot of shitty advice in the BANS forums, one reason why I haven't been there in awhile. Like my mom says, you can't eat from everyone's kitchen. Words to live by..........

Slow going

It's been slow going updating the store pages. mainly because I don't want to write shit, but original content is key for this portion of the exercise. It also led me to a revelation. I have too many store pages. My previous theory was the more pages the better, kinda like the big store theory. But in retail sales are tracked per sq ft meaning you've got to make money on every inch to the store in order to pay expenses and make a profit. Well in the case of BANS, you only need a few high traffic "aisles" aka store pages. By optimizing those and getting organic search results it can push your profits upward. Plus it's just a flat out pain in the ass to have to write content for 20some pages. BUT its the path I'm walking. I'll go ahead and finish it today so I can move on to the next phase of the project and that's getting those all important backlinks.

More work on the Niche Store

The work continues on my BANS. Alot's been accomplished over the past week, yet there's still more. Last week, I rebuilt the outer shell of the store, changed the template, optimized each page for my keywords and set the store pages up to reflect the content in the link. Meaning, when you go to the batteries page you get - yep you guessed it Batteries. Now my mission is to write a short paragraph or 2 for each store page keyword optimized describing what can be found on that page and giving some background information. This is tedious work, but once it's done it's done.
This past week I haven't done much work on the store as I haven't gotten much rest due to job duties and after work obligations. So after getting home at 10 pm after having been gone since 7:30, I basically don't feel like doing shit. And I haven't. I'm making up for that today. Once this is done, the next task will be submitting to the directories. Now truth be told, I'm not hand submitting these, I'm going with a company to do it for me. It's too tedious and not worth my time. I'm a big believer in outsourcing low $$$ projects in your business to others so you won't get bogged down in the details. so I'll probably go with submitedge. I've used them before and they're pretty good. After that's done it'll be good to get some backlinks, and next up for that will be articles for backlinks. Well, I have about 7 more store pages to do a writeup for so it's back to that work. Enjoy your Sunday.

Globat support sucks ass!

I'd been using domainsarefree to register my domains at 3.99 a pop. I figured I'd save a few bucks. But now it's causing me headaches as they cancelled one of my accounts and of course no one knows why, they keep asking for my credit card number to activate it.
Can you believe this shit? They cancel it and need my cc number to activate an account they hosed. Not only that, it's damn near impossible to get anyone on the phone. I was just on hold for 20 minutes and the line mysteriously disconnected. Trust and believe I will be using godaddy or some other registrar in the future. And it's not like I'm using them for hosting, I'm with hostgator and they rock. I'm going to see about getting a discount with them as I plan on registering another 30-40 domains this year. And I had planned to register one for my next BANS this week. Not with these numbskulls!

Do yourself a favor, DON'T fool with these clowns. Use another registrar, or go with hostgator for registration and Hostgator for hosting

Links are SEO'd - hopefully

This SEO stuff is taking longer than I expected. It's also more work too, but the rewards will pay off. It's already paying off in lessons learned. I've had more than a few aha moments while doing this. In the short term, I'm seeing more visitors in the pays 3 days than the site's seen in any 3 month period, and I'm talking all of my BANS, all 4 of them. I'm tempted to log into epn (eBay partner network) to see how many clicks and bids this store's gotten. But I'm going to hold off and keep working on making this into a high traffic site. I've emailed soggy for him to check it out and see if I've overlooked anything.

Lessons Learned: a well thought out keyword strategy can speed SEO along drastically. Link Descriptions are VERY important as are link names. This improves your score in the eyes of the ever so present search engines. Having a mentor, the right mentor/coach even in an informal capacity is a necessity to anyone serious about business. In my opinion you can't afford not to have one.

More SEO, of the link rewriting variety.

Tonight I'll be doing more keyword research and optimizing my site. I'll also be rewriting the descriptions. I expect this to take awhile. However it is encouraging to see the number of visitors increase. Although I have to take into account some of those visits are me and Soggy checking things out. Once it's more together I'll post the link to it. It's not quite ready for public consumption yet so hold your horses.

Soggy's got some slick templates at his blog too. I meant to post the link friday but forgot, here it is Soggy's Templates

Remember fellow BANS and future BANS owners. Change that default template ASAP!

No Store Page Left Behind

Last night I began the arduous task of customizing my store pages at HRS. Why, they weren't optimized and used the same site wide title tags which is a big no no. It's the sign of a thrown together plain jane out of the box BANS that'll make a whopping sum of not much. I did some keyword research and made some interesting discoveries along the way. And these lessons will be with me when I set up my next niche store. It's got to be keyword based on what people are actually searching for, not what I "think" they're searching for.
What I did was pick 3 keywords that were getting a good amount of searches, with avg competition and changed the title and description tags to match them. This took alot longer than I expected and was somewhat tedious, but the good news is, once it's done it's done. The next go round it'll be much much easier and will go faster.

Lessons: Thou shalt customize all niche store pages.
Thou shalt master keyword research and use tools to get it done faster.
**I will be renewing my subscription to NicheBot ASAP
Just what is nichebot you ask? It's a sweet keyword research tool that pulls from wordtracker and other databases and combines them into one interface. It's cost effective as you don't have to subscribe to the other services and it's VERY affordable.

SEO Action

Today was another good day, or has been a good day so far. Anyday I learn something that can put $$$$ in my pocket is a good day. I worked on one of my BANS,
Radio Sales
and in the process I'm learning to optimize it for the search engines.

This morning I did the following:

1. Added robots.txt - basically this file tells the bots what files and directories to index, or more importantly NOT index.

2.Optimized it for my keywords. That is after deciding which 3 keywords to optimize it for. I basically changed the title, added the keywords and adding it to the meta tags

3. Updated the sitemap with priorities for each page. Google in it's infinite wisdom doesn't like the fact that all your pages can be just as important as the others. setting priorities is important and alleviates those pain in the ass errors you may sometimes see with your sitemap in google's webmaster tools.

4. Added a privacy policy. I also created an email address specifically for that.

5. Tested my homepage at SEO Test
which is a really cool tool to see how well you've set your site for your keywords.
For my 3 keywords I got a score of 38,38 and 35 so I'm pretty well optimized. Which is a drastic improvement over my original scores which was 1,1 and 1.

6. I added a javascript hit counter which tells me how many visitors I get and where they came from. Very Nice!


Lessons: SEO is very important, more important than how a site looks in the beginning. Next, original content with your keywords embedded naturally is also important for improving your rankings as well.

More SEO Action

Today I got up early around 6 or sound and got cranking online. Mainly just to familiarize my self a little more with the BANS interface and code. I'm glad to say I'm beginning to find things alot easier, which means the next SEO project with BANS will go much quicker. But, I will say this, I might stumble and fuck up in the beginning but when I learn something I get it downpat, cold and move swiftly into the next skillset. I learned to fix copiers on 1 week of training so once I get this I will blast my income into the stratosphere, but first things first- crawl, walk, run, Win Gold Medals. (Thats' not mine, it's a quote from Sherman Ragland)

In any event, Soggy gave me a list of things to do today and while it took me awhile longer than I wanted, I got them all knocked out. I'll post about them in a few because I'm still synthesizing what I did, and how it can help me. Once I've made sense out of if I'll write it down more coherently. Why? Because this is my template for future projects and I dont wanna write some shit that makes sense now, but none 3 weeks from now. Kinda like those notes you take at seminars.

One thing is apparent, I'm getting an SEO book and printing SEO posts from forums to read on my long commute to work. This is a very important topic to anyone who wants to make a business online. Kinda like marketing is to the offline entrepreneur. Any businessman who doesn't learn marketing is well, a dumbass. SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) are my next topics of study or shall I say mastery. Later for all that creating products shit. That will come later. Too many business models gets a man unfocused, and with me, since I have a short ass attention span, it's very easy for me to get distracted and try something else. That might be why I've only made $30 the whole 8 months I've had BANS. Hmmmmmmmm something to think about. Well this is my Phenomenon year and I'm taking focused actions (whether I understand it or not) and implementing quickly. I gotta go do laundry.
See ya in a few.

This is NOT overnight riches

Affiliate marketing is NOT the road to overnight riches.................in the beginning. Why? The learning curve is steep, you have to learn How to drive traffic, SEO, SERPS and how to get a better ranking, creating good, original content and a whole bunch of other shit. There's tons to learn regardless of what model you choose. My suggestion- pick 1, roll up your sleeves and expect to put in a few months work without making much if anything. Then once the proverbial light comes on, you'll start to see the results of your actions, you can get more done faster, more sites = more profits and the Phenomenon that Dan Kennedy speaks of will begin.

I've decided that for me, this is my year and come hell or high water I'm going to take, and am taking MASSIVE ACTION to implement and implement fast suggestions on getting better at it but it takes time and practice and more important than learning what to do is they why.

I had another discovery

Last night while going through some keyword lists, I had another discovery- while looking at keyword stats, I was focusing on the totally WRONG stats. I was focusing too much on competition and not the actual monthly searches. WRONG WRONG WRONG. The competition really doesn't matter that much. The mere fact that they're there means there's obviously "gold in them thar hills" so to speak. Damn the competition, focus on monthly searches, start in the middle of the road with a good amount of searches and start with those keywords and optimize the tags and page for each.

BANS facelift

Today I gave my one of my niche stores (aka BANS) a much needed facelift. I thought it was doing well but after reading what a pro said about it, it was pretty shitty. I didn't put much effort into it and after looking at it and thinking it over, it showed. Plus it was getting like NO traffic. Only the google bots were nice enough to stop through. I'm not sensitive, so I said f*ck it, this has got to change NOW. Fortunately Soggy was cool enough to give me a template to use and I uploaded it. (He's got some pretty slick templates over at
check 'em out sometime - like umm now. Well not now, finish reading the post) I also changed my adsense block to match the site. Personally I think it looks 10,000 times better. Keep in mind it's a work in progress, but it's coming along. By this time next week I think it'll look alot better than now.

Sooooooooo what did I learn through today's exercise? BANS defaults are USELESS. CHANGE THEM ASAP! And when thinking about it, it's like a new pc. I've NEVER accepted fresh out of the box installs without tweaking them and making them my own. This should be no different.

My goal

My goal is to replace my day job income online over the next 1-2 years. Between affiliate marketing and real estate I believe, no, i KNOW it's possible. But I'm taking baby steps. So far I've broken my goal down to smaller, incremental steps.

1. make $1 a day from each BANS (Build a niche store).
2. make $5 a day from each BANS.
3. build a new BANS each week after becoming proficient at SEO and driving traffic to it.
4. 1/09- make $100/day online
5. 6/09- make $150/day online
6. Run 20 profitable BANS.

I'm also interested in learning ppc, creating my own info products etc. But first things first getting this BANS to $1 day is objective #1.
I'm sticking with BANS and focusing on that and I will make some money with it come hell or high water. To find out more about BANS and how you can make some money with it visit: More on that later. For now, it's Friday night and I've got some keyword research to to. I gotta get this done early so I can watch the Dallas Mavericks Summer league game tonight. One of my homies is a sports agent and his client just got invited to play for the Mavericks so I gotta pull for my folks. After that I'll be right back online. Work now and play later. In case I didn't tell you, BANS is paying for my trip to Brazil next year. I'm flying 1st class and I plan on being there at least a week. You Dig!

The Preamble

This blog is a journal online of my adventures with Build a niche store. Here you'll see the good the bad and the ugly as I build a business online and push my site - www.hamradiosupplier.com into profitability. I feel as though this is a new beginning after flailing around for a few years bouncing back and forth between different business models, buying and downloaded countless ebooks, I've finally found someone to point me in the right direction while I look over his shoulder. I believe this will shorten my learning curve. I'll also talk about affiliate marketing and how to get started, or more important how I'm moving and progressing.