I want to take a moment and thank Mark for all that he has done and is doing, and not just for this 12-week series.
Mark has helped me on many occassions.  He has helped me here on his blog, on the BANS forum, and in emails.  I know I am just one of many that he has helped.
So, here it is:
Mark, thank you for all the time and effort you put into helping other people, including myself, in understanding and getting the most out of BANS and all the other …

I am just about done getting my 10 links per store for last week’s homework. I think for me the easiest way to achieve this will be to focus a single method on each site for each 10-link batch.
That may not make much sense right now because most people are probably still on their first sites or just getting their second sites up but by the end of this series we will have at least 12 sites and need to get 10 links per site, per week. By the 12th …

helpyourdiabetes.com
fishingstuff.ca
I’m a little behind.
Finding things a little overwhelming .
Not well organized.
Domain cost $9.95 Canadian
Hosting with Hostgator 1st month 1 cent found a promo (not sure where)
signed up with clickbank, commission Junction ebay affiliate program.
I had Bans already installed.
Had lots of problems loading second site got lots of help from Mark
Accidentally deleted catagories from site.Got lots of help from Mark
At this point installing Sitemap.
Len

This week – For a reason I will explain later today, I didn’t have the time to shoot any picture! Long story… bad story actually! So what did I do? I went over to eBay and looked at the category list on the left side of the page. I took the first word, Antiques, and typed it into Google Image search… (images.google.com)
Google returned a page of pictures, all related to antiques!

This week – if you draw a blank… go to Google images and type a stray word into the browser, …

Niche Site 1: Mexican Travel Deals (sitemap)
Date of first inbound link: I don’t have any yet, except perhaps the ones above.
Costs: $10 for domain, plus pro-rata costs of hosting and Wordtracker subscription
Earnings: 0
Notes: This site was put on a domain I bought a few weeks before this program began. I had the domain parked and I somewhat arbitrarily decided to turn it into a niche store without having done any research first (note that I did do research in order to build main categories and at this time I also …

Niche 1:  Jeep Bumper
Created 2/14/08
JeepBumper.com was purchased at a Godaddy Expired Domain Auction on 2/4/08.  It was transferred into my name on 2/12/08.  Site was created on 2/14/08.  What I really love about this name is that – it’s generic – it’s aged – screams niche.  On the Page 2 of Google for Jeep Bumper.
Costs:  $ 20.19 for the Expired Domain Name

Niche Site 1 Not Only Ringtones (Not Only Ringtones Sitemap)
(Not Only Ringtones Dynamic Sitemap)
Date of first inbound link: 02/06/2008 from ezinearticles.com
Pages indexed in Google: (as of 02/25/2008) +/- 406
Purchased link on 09/20/2007 and immediately parked URL on WhyPark.com.
Created BANS site on 01/25/2008
Costs: $8.95 total$7.95 +/- domain name
$1.00 +/- to park at WhyPark.com
Earnings: $14.07 total (As of 02/24/2008)
$2.24 from Google’s AdSense (from time on WhyPark.com)
$11.83 from BANS (just one sale and it was niche related)
Notes:This site is one of the many URLs I purchased before I knew what I was doing …

Bills 1st site performance.
 Ok I started two but when I saw the 1st store with a KEI of 1200.000 and 0 competition I decided not to reveal it today. I just got the tools to find this out. Another good reason for Wordtracker.
 I also became a Grampa this week and got the flu so I really didn’t feel like doing much beside getting better so I can spend time with my Grand Daughter.
This is what I have for you today.
Lionel Train Auctions

Niche Site 1  Affordable Knives  (Affordable Knives Sitemap)
Date of first inbound link: 02/21/2008
Costs: $17.00 total
$8.00 +/- domain name
$9.00/month premium membership at USFreeAds , which is HIGHLY recommended!  Unlimited ads, Google LOVES USFreeAds and it’s a PR 5 inbound link!  I use them RELIGIOUSLY!
Earnings: $00.92 total!!! (Updated 03/02/2008)  So, am I the big winner?  Did I get the first sale?
Notes: Submitted to OnlyWire, Digg, StumbleUpon, BANSDir, You-Found.us…to name a few!
Timeline:

02/23/08: Spotted Google, Yahoo, MSN spiders in logfiles, added xml sitemap.
02/25/08: Main page indexed by Yahoo and Google (position 1 on page 2 for “affordable knives” keyword)
02/25/08: Google …

By now, everyone has gotten their first store up and running, optimized the main categories of the store and gotten a group of at least 10 inbound links! Before we run off and start working on a second store, how can we determine if search engine spiders have found our new site or not?
It’s all in your Log-files! Login to your cPanel, click on the “Stats” link, choose AWStats (My own preference), and scroll to the area for search spiders about 3/4 of the way down.