Build a Niche Store Process Series
September 30, 2007 | 5 Comments
As some of you are well aware - I am a big fan of the Build a Nice Store eBay affiliate script. Starting Oct 1st, I will be writing a 15-20 part series with specific focus on how I have applied my own knowledge and achieved moderate success with Build a Niche Store in less than 2 months!
The entire series can be followed from the this main page. If you are not a subscribed reader, I encourage you to subscribe now. I will be posting at least one new page every day, with exception to the weekends.
There are MANY “Do it this Way for Success” eBooks on the web and this will differ in that I want nothing in return! You do not need to buy anything from me, pay a fee to read it, or do anything other than learn…
At this pojnt, there are 15 segments, but that may grow depending on how detailed I become in the information. Incidentally, if you have read ANY of my previous posts… you know I tend to go very deep into the details.
Looking forward to helping everyone - if you have any specific areas you think I may miss, please dont hesitate to mention it!
Table of Contents:
- How to Become a Successful eBay Affiliate
- Discovering Your Niche Market
- Effectively Researching Your Niche Market
- Registering Your New Domain Name(s)
- Hosting for your New Website
- Summary of Publisher Programs you Need to Join
- Uploading Build a Niche Store to your Hosting Account
- Installing the Build a Niche Store Script
- Creating a Niche Specific Directory Structure (Part 1)
- Creating a Niche Specific Directory Structure (Part 2)
- Customizing your Site to Your Niche
- Search Optimization of your Niche Site
- Adding Content pages to your Niche Site
- Promotion of your Niche Site
- Understanding the Needs of your Visitors
- Ongoing Maintenance and Care for your Niche Store
10/15/07 Edit: Added a few more steps in the customizing stages.
Million Dollar Wiki - Have You Got Yours Yet?
September 28, 2007 | 2 Comments
UPDATE: 10/01/2007 - I was given a $5 discount code for ALL TO USE when registering a term on the MDW page. During Google Checkout, simply use “NicheMarketing” in the discount code box and you will save $5 bucks!! Thats a bargain!!
As I was browsing through some of my favorite spots yesterday, I continually ran into quite a few people talking about the Million Dollar Wiki site. Granted, I had read about it over a week ago at a few places, but could not make a decision on whether it was going to be a fad and burn out quickly, or turn into another wikipedia type page. My guess is that it will be somewhere in the middle, thus, I went ahead and purchased two pages!
What is the Million Dollar Wiki? Truly a great viral marketing idea from a College student looking to become the next internet millionaire! As of last night, he has sold 1000 pages at $100 each… do the math, he is well on his way in a short amount of time! From the Million Dollar Wiki FAQ Page:
The Million Dollar Wiki was created by Graham Langdon, a 21 year old senior from the University of Connecticut. Instantly drawn to wikis as a revolutionary platform, Graham started thinking about more practical applications and potential business models. After a concept breakthrough, Graham Langdon invented the pay-per-page wiki business model and transformed the whole idea into the Million Dollar Wiki.
How does it work? Its simple and genious at the same time… you buy a “word” or “phrase”, which is then reserved in the wiki for you, for a minimum of 15 years! The domain registration and hosting have been prepaid for 15 years, thus you are assured maximum exposure for that time! The wiki page you purchase is YOURS to do whatever you want… Post information about your site, your niche, basically anything you want as long as it is not in violation of the terms (No Porn etc)
Some of the more notable’s:
- Own the page for life
- ANY phrase can be yours as long as it is available (MANY Great terms still out there)
- Rent out space on your page
- Deep Google indexing!
- Resell your page when you are ready!
- Use Adsense as you desire
Essentially - this site is already in the explosion stages and while they wont reveal exactly what it is, there is a buzz about some big marketing campaign coming out soon which will push it into overdrive! Big internet marketing gurus like ShoeMoney and John Chow got in the game early with phrases like Free Ringtones, Make Money Online, etc… BOTH of them reported immediate success with their own pages!
It took quite a bit of contemplation before I decided to jump in. It was not the $100/page investment that made me second guess, but finding the right term/terms for the pages! I looked deep inside myself… Did I want one that would help define what I am doing on the web, or should I simply grab a page like “Babes” that gets huge amounts of type in searches? (More than 130,000 daily searches with “babes” in it) I was a bit wary of the content issues I may run accross with Babes, so I chose to grab up both: “Get Rich” & “Niche Marketing” - how appropriate is that? (Will add links once pages are up and running)
Time for me to go and start putting up some content… I will likely write more about this as time passes and I can measure the effect of the wiki page!
Mark
There’s Gold in Your Logfiles - Start Panning!
September 27, 2007 | 1 Comment
Monday, I wrote a small piece on how to build real traffic to your niche site. After reading it through a third time I discovered that I had left out one of the most important resources you can use for farming traffic to your site, your site logs!
Most hosts… OK, ALL hosts who are worth their salt, will provide you with some tool to view your site logs. The logs contain all of the basic information you need in order to see how many visitors are coming, how many are unique, how many pages they are viewing, etc etc. Another great feature within the logs is that you can see the search terms which may have brought that visitor to your site! While there is a HUGE amount of useful info in the logs, all I want to discuss right now are the key words and phrases that drive traffic to your Niche Site.
Read more
Building REAL Traffic for Your Niche Site
September 24, 2007 | 6 Comments
Someone will probably ask me why I used the word “Real” in the title of this niche site traffic generation post. There is a BIG difference between “buying hits” and generating real, targeted traffic through SEO, networking, and other resources. Just ask yourself, do you want to pay someone $59.00 to send 10,000 one time visitors to your niche site regardless of whether the visitor has interest or not, or would you rather spend no money, and work on long term TARGETED traffic? The answer is somewhere in the middle, but for long term growth you will want to focus on what it takes to make ANY website a hit! If you find that one special list of 10,000 people looking for your niche widget, it may be worth testing and tracking your results!
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Update a BANS search query sitewide with phpMyAdmin
September 18, 2007 | 6 Comments
Hi All -
Let me preface this tip with a warning that you should be comfortable moving around in your hosting package as well as the phpMyAdmin tool for modifying your database. I am also listing the directions for Hostgator only, as that is the most common hosting being used for BANS. If you are on a different host, I am sure they have phpMyAdmin somewhere, you will just need to check with them on the location of your database management tool.If you are not comfortable in either of these areas this may end up confusing you more than helping. Which is actually where all of us started at one point in time! Read more
Build a Niche Store Sitemap MOD - Complete version!
September 13, 2007 | 13 Comments
Hi All -
Before I get too involved in explaining this BANS sitemap MOD, I want to state that you should ALWAYS make a backup of your original files before attempting any modifications. I will generally rename my files with a BAK extension to have a working copy in case of emergency (ex: FrontControlBAK.php.)
The reason I created this MOD is to give website visitors and search spiders a single place to go and find all information about the store categories in one location. The sitemap will create a single page that lists all of your categories and the meta description you have completed within your store administration. At this point, I have not included the custom content pages and may not even do so. In addition, the product listings from the ebay feed are not included due to the frequency of change. The sitemap is intended to be a basic contents section, very similar to a table of contents in a book.
That being said - lets get to the BANS sitemap MOD!