Here is the first of MANY BANS templates for WordPress that will be released over the coming months. This template has been tested pretty in-depth with BANS 3.0 EPN and version 2.5.1 of WordPress. To learn more about the template click on the BANS WordPress Template post from a couple days ago.Note: This template package is designed to work on NEW SITES hosted at HostGator for now. While it is still an easy process to modify an existing site to work with this, I prefer to skip over that process …

Hi All -
Lately, if you log into your Google Webmaster tools, you have seen this dreaded warning next to your sitemap file:
All the URLs in your Sitemap have the same priority.
All the URLs in your Sitemap are set to the same priority (not the default priority). Priority indicates the importance of a particular URL relative to other URLs on your site, and doesn’t impact your site’s performance in search results. If all URLs have the same priority, Google can’t tell which are more important.
Sonjay, a Moderator on the BANS forum and …

June 2008 Build a Niche Store Review for The Hybrid Car Store
Site: http://www.the-hybrid-car-store.com/
Target Niche Market: Sales and Information about Hybrid Cars
Date Reviewed: June 24, 2008
By: Mark Hansen
Overall Niche Store Score: 4.6 out of 10 (10 being the best)

Domain Name: 8  (Has target words in domain name)
Domain Age: 1  (Active for only 1 month)
Niche Specific Site: 5
Site Indexing: 8 (36 indexed pages in less than 1 month)
Use of Unique Meta-Titles: 1
Use of Unique Meta-Keyword Tags: 1
Use of Unique Meta-Description Meta tags: 8
Public and xml Sitemaps:  10
Use of Targeted Articles and Information: 2
BANS Default Menu Optimization: 2

Over the past weekend, I decided I was going to do what I have put off for quite some time. Developing a fully integrated WordPress theme and BANS Template that work seamlessly together!
The result can be seen at my testing ground of: http://nsbth0620.trybans.com/
This will end up being the first of many themes I am going to work on making available to you all for your Build a Niche Store websites!
So – What makes This Theme Different than Others?

Over the past few days, I have been working on refining one of my existing BANS sites into more of a complete content and niche store solution. The first thing you will all notice is that it’s really NOT that much different than what we have already been doing!
In my post from Monday, I asked if we were Having fun with Build a niche Store and by the look of the replies, there is really quite a mix of opinion. All of the comments were very good to read but there were a few that …

Feeling Overwhelmed – Too Much Work to Do?
Believe me… I know the feeling all too well and in the coming days, we are going to Make Building a Niche Store FUN Again!
Several weeks ago, I posted about just how many of my niche stores had been lost in the shuffle and abandoned, due to having too many to keep up with. In recent light of having several removed from the search index at Google, I decided the Best Long Term Strategy for me, is to hand pick a few of the …

In the past 48 hours, I have received more than 500 emails from readers expressing concern over the future of BANS and condolences over the loss of so many websites from the Google index. Now that I am out of the panic zone, I want to step back through one of my last posts, and clarify just a bit…

Adsense and BANS don’t Mix! 
As you read the other day in my post about a one of my BANS Sites Slapped by Google, I have watched several others very closely. Today, I have found 23 additional sites deindexed. The ONLY common factor between all of these sites are that they made use of an adsense block. Many of them had privacy policies in place, thus eliminating that specific reference as the problem.
23 BANS site with adsense… 23 BANS sites deindexed in the last 24 hours!
At this point, I dont know …

I Need to Diversify my Marketing Efforts! I wouldn’t by any means say that all my eggs are in one basket, but in light of the past couple weeks… I think it may be time to do a little extra something, that is far less likely to be affected by constantly moving bar set by search engines. I am going to deliver EXACTLY what they say they want!
I am going to Build a Website for Visitors!

Have you signed up with PepperJam yet? If not, What are you waiting for? Become a PepperJam Publisher Today!
Since the PepperJam Affiliate Network announced they will be in a partnership with eBay and the eBay Partner Network, there have been several questions regarding how the new system may benefit an existing ePN publisher.
I took several of those questions and sent them in to Mandy at PJ. While every question we have cannot be addressed in an email, I think she answered the most pressing questions in a way that is very easy to understand!