Earlier this week, Chris, a blog reader, had asked if I get a bit more detailed in how to determine the main categories for a niche store. He also asked about when to know if a site is focused or too broad of a niche. In the video below, I am using his site as an example of how to build both main and subcategories (product pages) on your Build a Niche Store affiliate site.
You will hear and see me using Wordtracker in this video… if you have it, open it …

I have decided to dedicate a Niche Store Performance category that will track the performance of my niche stores used in this series. The listing below represents a time-line of benchmarks and results.
Niche Site 1 Hybrid Golf Clubs For Sale Online (Hybrid Golf Sitemap)
Date of first inbound link: 02/23/2008
Date of last Performance Update: 03/16/2008

Niche Site 1  Affordable Knives  (Affordable Knives Sitemap)
Date of first inbound link: 02/21/2008
This site currently has 12 Different Pages indexed with Google
Earnings: $56.78   Updated 03/19/08
Sales:  16 (15 niche related)

Robots/Spiders visitors (Top 25)   –   Full list   –   Last visit
 

9 different robots*
Hits
Bandwidth
Last visit

Googlebot
279+17
6.47 MB
15 Mar 2008 – 16:08

Yahoo Slurp
52+22
1.39 MB
15 Mar 2008 – 09:57

MSNBot-media
35+7
839.29 KB
12 Mar 2008 – 02:30

Unknown robot (identified by ‘bot/’ or ‘bot-’)
25+4
590.03 KB
12 Mar 2008 – 10:59

Unknown robot (identified by ‘crawl’)
23+6
420.08 KB
11 Mar 2008 – 06:57

Unknown robot (identified by ‘spider’)
12+7
335.61 KB
10 Mar 2008 – 11:18

Unknown …

Niche Site 6 The Magic of Patrick Swayze (Sitemap) (Dynamic Sitemap)
Number of Links Submitted (as of 03/15/2008): 23
Submitted dynamic sitemap to Google’s WebMaster Tools on 03/15/2008
Added to HitDoctor on 03/12/2008: 1
Added to NicheClouds on 03/12/2008: 1
Added to OnlyWire on 03/12/2008: 19
Added to Qassia on 03/12/2008: 1
Added to StumbleUpon Exchange on 03/12/2008: 1

Date of first inbound link: None yet
Pages indexed in Google (as of 03/15/2008): 0
Costs: $7.15 total
$7.15 +/- domain name at GoDaddy
Earnings: $0 total (As of 03/15/2008)
Timeline:
Purchased URL on 03/11/2008
Created BANS site on …

As I started building my next store, I recalled that Cindy had asked how to build categories, based on specific high volume manufacturers or brands. For example, with Hybrid Golf Clubs, it is pretty basic… there are clubs, drivers, sets, irons, womens, mens, etc…
Well, what do you do when the popular terms are very specific to different manufacturers or designers? My newest site is about high priced, Fine Designer Shoes. The video walks through the first step of the process.

Niche Stores Performance: Bill
Lionel Train Auctions  ( Lionel Train Auctions Site Map )
This is my 1st site for this project. It had its 1st visitor 2/18/08
$ Spent $7.50 for Domain
Earnings 2 sales $1.66 and $1.62 commisions
The site is on page one for about 10 different long tail keywords and the bots love it. The bounce rate is %62

11 different robots*
Hits
Bandwidth
Last visit

Googlebot
120+11
3.19 MB
15 Mar 2008 – 07:39

Unknown robot (identified by ‘bot/’ or ‘bot-’)
33+12
1.14 MB
12 Mar 2008 – 12:35

Unknown robot (identified by ‘robot’)
38
1.29 MB
10 Mar 2008 – 17:28

Yahoo Slurp
26+9
849.50 KB
11 Mar 2008 – …

This is an update to my performance in this workshop series.  I’ve been having issues with my PPC campaigns and performance lately (that’s a whole series by itself), so I wanted to check in and post my new stores and an update to those prior stores.  It has been about a month now since I created my first 2 sites.  I have created 2 more websites for this series.  All of these sites, except for Overstock Jewellery (V3) were built on V2.
Side Note:  Are we using V3 or V2 stores going …

As many of you know, the BANS website was down today. In a nutshell, there was a corruption on the Build a Niche Store server that caused the site, forums, etc to be down for quite some time.
Adam and Kelvin are working on it right now and should have it back up ASAP. (its the middle of the night in the UK)
In the meantime, you may see an “Account Suspended” message when you login to your own stores! Don’t fret, this is a result of the BANS News and Recommended …

Hi Everyone – Today, I took the basic BANS template I have sent out a few times and colored a set of 6-8 free bans templates for you all to use on your stores! Just like the originals, I only ask that you leave the credits in the footer, although not required. :-)
Note: These free bans templates use a small search box on the left menu, that code is NOT in BANS 2.0, thus they are BANS 3.0 ONLY templates. If you want to use them in your 2.0 stores, …

Edit: When I wrote this post I thought it was a great idea… turn out it got a site banned from Google. DO NOT DO THIS!! I am leaving the post online only for the recorded value… again – DO NOT DO THIS! 
Long post folks… no video here, just a bunch of words and explanations on how to build 10,000 backlinks to your BANS site in less than an Hour.
Sitting yet?…