www.affiliateconfession.com

Sometimes it’s better to look at your affiliate marketing efforts in more general than specific terms. If you are consistently finding that what you are doing isn’t working and you aren’t making any money, maybe operator error is the problem.

When I worked as a graphic artist I was pretty well versed in the workings of PhotoShop and Illustrator and it was amazing the things that people in our office consistently had trouble with when using these two applications. I can’t tell you how many times I’d hear the usual groan from another cubicle, signaling someone was stuck in an infinite PhotoShop loop they couldn’t get out of, and I’d walk over, look at their screen for 5 seconds and press Ctrl>{insert appropriate keystroke}, or say, “You’re on the wrong layer” and all would be well again.

Any chance that may be the issue with the latest Adsense optimization problem you’re trying to figure out, or why your site is nearly identical in content and look (without duplicating) than the site that’s on page one of Google for that money making keyword and yours is lost on page 11, or why you end up consistently getting banned from one affiliate network after another? I read in the comments section of a very popular blog a month or so back about someone who was making $50 a day from Adsense by asking all his friends to click on his ads. He had no idea why he eventually got banned because he didn’t think he had done anything wrong!

On a fairly regular basis I get people who want me to look at their Build A Niche Store eBay affiliate sites and want me to help them figure out why they aren’t getting any traffic, don’t have rankings and aren’t making any sales. Instead of answering that question directly and pointing out the obvious reasons it’s not happening for them, from now on I think my standard answer for 90% of those inquiries is going to be, “Would you shop at your own store?” I’ve run across hundreds of these BANS stores that have zero content (no product descriptions) and just think, ‘There’s another store not making any money.’

Sometimes it’s a simple as something I tell my wife to do when she can’t figure out what’s going on with her laptop. “Just reboot” is becoming a mantra in our house when we’re stuck on a problem we can’t seem to solve. Instead of reacting and hammering away at the same thing that isn’t going to solve the issue, sometimes it’s just better to reboot and take a fresh look at what’s going on.

Reacting to operator error just exacerbates the problem, try observing instead.

For some reading this post, it is going to be very basic affiliate and eBay related information mainly because you probably work with these kind of things every day. However, there are people who don’t have eBay accounts, have never purchased merchandise or have very limited experience buying anything online and don’t have much of an idea of how ecommerce or affiliate marketing works.

Lest you think negative of this, don’t, because it is a huge opportunity as there are still hundreds of thousands to millions of people yet to be added to the economy of the Internet. And many of these individuals also want to learn how to make money online, but don’t know what hosting is, don’t know how to build a web site, don’t know how to upload files to a hosting account and so forth. They have no idea where to start. This post is for those people and actually came out of a conversation I had with a friend recently who wants to break into this field.

For someone who wants to get started in affiliate marketing and knows nothing about how any of this works, I recommend the eBay affiliate program known as the eBay Partner Network (EPN) and Build A Niche Store (BANS) to fully take advantage of the EPN.

Here are the most basic sequential steps you take to get started with EPN and BANS. (there are other ways to do this, but these are the steps I have taken or feel most comfortable with)

These are all steps to do after you have either decided on a niche to exploit or have done your own research. (that’s a whole other lesson) In the case of the friend I was talking with a few days ago, she already had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to do and after a little research on my own, it looks to be a very profitable niche. You of course never know though until you get in there and do the work.

Take these steps to build your eBay affiliate niche store:

Get a Linux hosting account at either 1and1.com or HostGator.com. I have used 1and1.com and HostGator is the recommended web hosting service by the BANS developers.

Look up domain names at Godaddy.com. Try and get a good keyword phrase in your domain name without making it too long. I like to use Godaddy.com to look up names because of the suggestions they recommend if yours isn’t available. They are very basic suggestions, but if you don’t know it by now, I like simple.

Purchase your domain name. 1and1.com gives you 3 free domains with the $9.95 per month hosting plan and your domains are $15 extra per year with HostGator’s $7.95 per month plan.

Sign up to be a member of eBay if you don’t have an account already. You need to be a member of eBay to be an eBay affiliate.

Sign up with the eBay Partner Network.

Buy Build A Niche Store.

Read the Build A Niche Store manual so you understand how everything works.

Log into your hosting plan control panel and set up an ftp account. This is a simple operation and instructions for this should be easy to find once you log in to your hosting account.

Download Filezilla if you don’t already have a program to ftp (transfer) files to your web host. This is a great free program that allows you to upload all your files to your online account.

Sign up for the BANS forum because there will be issues with your store or with eBay (get use to it) and the forums are a great place to get help when you can’t figure things out on your own.

Upload and install the BANS software according to the instructions in the BANS manual.

Find the correct eBay category number(s) for your niche and create your store. Also, make a logo for your header according to the sizes for the template you are using (found in the manual).

Add titles, meta keywords, meta descriptions and H1 title tags (in content titles at the top of your pages) and product descriptions for every page on your site. Depending on the size of your site you can do all this in an afternoon or for larger sites it can take several weeks.

Continue to add content pages on an ongoing basis.

Once you get your store in working order, it is important to stay connected to the BANS forum for some time so you can understand the process of how your store works by seeing what other people are doing or are having trouble with. You can also get inspiration and ideas from other BANS users for new stores.

These are just the most basic steps to get your store up and running, but beyond this you need to promote your store which you can learn about in this post, and in this post.

Good news for all those having trouble with their Build A Niche Store affiliate sites and the eBay Partner Network, BANS will now work through Pepperjam Network! That means you can now build a BANS niche eBay store (currently only available for US stores) and completely bypass EPN so all your tracking would go through Pepperjam.

An email went out to all current BANS users this past Friday announcing an update from the Build A Niche Store developers. If you already own BANS, you can you can switch current stores to Pepperjam Network with an update if you choose to make the change. You can also download a complete version of the US Pepperjam BANS store set up as well. However, all new BANS buyers will be directed to download the current BANS EPN store software and if they want to build a new Pepperjam store from scratch or make an update to Pepperjam, they’ll have to go to the update area for the correct files. This is being done because Pepperjam is currently only able to support US eBay affiliates.

If you set up a store or update a current store to work through Pepperjam and then decide you want to change back to EPN, there is also an update to be able to convert back.

If you use BANS and want things to stay the way they are through EPN, then these updates aren’t for you. This is only an option for BANS users as the eBay Partner Network is staying put. eBay wanted to expand their reach and attract new affiliates and therefore formed a relationship with Pepperjam Network.

I won’t be updating any of my BANS stores at the present time, but will be working on a new store shortly that I will run through Pepperjam just to see how it works and be able to report back. In fact I’m going to go grab a new domain name as soon as I hit the publish button.

If you aren’t currently a BANS user you can get Build A Niche Store here.

And if you don’t belong to Pepperjam Network, you should because they will surpass Commission Junction someday and you’ll be left in the dust. You can join Pepperjam Network here.

May is turning out to be a very good month for my Build A Niche Store web sites and the eBay affiliate program. The final numbers won’t be in until Monday or late tomorrow, but it looks like earnings for my BANS stores should be around $900 for the month and earnings for the best performing BANS store around $650.

I did spend some money driving traffic to one of these stores this month, but only to the tune of a little over $100 and it has apparently paid off fairly well. Last month my top store produced $246.68 in revenue and I spent a whopping $2.90 in PPC traffic, this month $101.97 has been spent on PPC and revenue is at $629.44 for the same store. PPC search traffic this month has produced 304 clicks to this store resulting in 314 bids and 97 winning bids. Last month with virtually no PPC traffic, there were 139 total bids with 53 winning bids at the same store.

A little closer examination needs to be done on organic search traffic versus paid traffic to see where the real gains are coming from, but initially it looks as though paid search is paying off for this Build A Niche Store site. I’m working on another BANS site that I will be trying some paid search on, the earnings probably won’t be as significant for at least one reason. The store I’m sending paid traffic to right now is based on products that sell for between $500 and $1,000 and sometimes even more.

It is questionable as to whether paid search would work on a BANS site with items selling for much less than $300 to 400. The reason being is that you earn about 2% for a sale at eBay and earning anything much less than $10 per sale is hard to make work with PPC. Of course there’s always the chance of selling multiple items and earning a few $25 new member bounties which would make paid search worthwhile. The new store I’ll be sending search traffic to will have items ranging from $100 to $300 in price so it will be a little experiment to see if this theory holds true.

One last note is that the store bringing me good returns with PPC is a fully built store with substantial content in both articles and content on auction pages so I’m getting very good quality scores from Google on the pages I’m sending traffic to. PPC probably won’t work on pages that have nothing but auctions.

You can get more info on Build A Niche Store here.

Some days the the eBay affiliate program pays off in big dividends. Sunday was one of those days. Too bad this isn’t a consistent amount, but earnings for my Build A Niche Store sites came in at $278.01 for a single day and earnings for my top performing site were $273.52 and that was on 40 sales for a single site. But as big of a payoff as it was one day, it’s back to normal the next as you can see from the chart below:

Sunday’s earnings from eBay were 20 times what Monday’s earnings were, coming in at $12.04. Yes, consistency would be great, but at least from this example you can see the potential earnings you can get through eBay and BANS. Now, this isn’t some anomaly where The eBay Partner Network is paying back for missed commissions (even though some are wondering if they’re getting things right) because after downloading my eBay affiliate report for Sunday and spot checking some of the winning bids, these were all auctions than ended on Sunday and were paid for on Sunday.

Build A Niche Store really works.

Tags: ebay partner network, ebay affiliate program, build a niche store, bans