July 28, 2008
There has been alot of questions from everyone in regard to WHY you would use BANSwith WordPress. Honestly, the choice is really your own as to whether it will be a benefit or not, but let me use this first post of the week to help you decide!
1 - Look and Feel - Widely Supported Templates
WordPress is likely the most widely used blogging platform out there, therefore you will find thousands of WordPress templates on the web that will give your site the exact look and feel you want to achieve without having to get into the code and building your own template. Two of my favorite places for finding themes are:
Aside from these two very complete resources, there are many places that supply their own templates for you to use as well. Some of the more popular are Blog oh Blog themes, and Dosh’s Adsense Optimized themes.
In addition to all of the free themes on the web, there are many very popular commercial themes available that will take the look of your site to the next level. One of the most popular commercial themes, Revolution Theme, is designed to give you the one of the most flexible platforms for both news and content. Just this past week, a reader wanted the ability to use the theme with BANS, the result can be seen here, as it was just launched on Sunday!
Showing that BANS can be adapted to ANY WordPress theme can also been seen with the very popular Chimera Theme on more than 50 sites since it was posted last week! There are just a couple examples here, and here. As I code more themes for BANS, they can be found on the BANS WordPress Templatespage. I have also started an eBook on the process for converting a theme to BANS, watch for it to be released soon.
2 - Posts are INSTANTLY Broadcast to the Web
Using a service such as Ping-o-Matic, every time you write a blog post, it is broadcast to every news source you designate! There are many people who do nothing but watch Google trends and capitalize on the hottest trends of the day by writing posts about them - AS THEY HAPPEN! How long do you think it takes for a BANS content page to be indexed after you click the save button?
3 - You Create Useful Content instead of a Thin Affiliate Site
With most BANS sites you have one simple goal… bring in a search or PPC visitor and send that person to eBay for the cookie planting! Guess what… Google and other search engines will eventually stop sending you traffic! Sure, building a community goes AGAINST what most of us had in mind when we originally bought our copy of Build a Niche Store, but at that time, search engines loved BANS right out of the box! In just over 1 year, BANS became very popular and has sold more than 12,000 copies (estimate based on forum registrants) that allow you to build an unlimited amount of sites! If each owner builds just 10 sites, with 100 pages per site, that is more than 12 Million pages of duplicated content from the eBay feed on the web! If you doubt the future of thin affiliate sites, go back and read: Thin Affiliate Websites are Dead There are links to several resources of how search engines view them…
Google and other search engines want to send their traffic to relevant websites. The way to become one of those sites is by providing unique content that is in line with your niche over and over again! The easiest way to do this is through a platform like WordPress that gives you the ability to write a post in less than 10 minutes and relate that to the section of your site that also offers the items you blog about. After you do this over a period of time… you gain authority in your niche NOT because of your BANS store, but because you took 10 minutes out of your day, several times a week, and provided information about your niche market!
Search engines are not the only platforms that like unique content - people, your target visitors, like it too! When was the last time one of your niche stores received a backlink naturally? WordPress and blogs in general are content machines driven by the author, you! People LIKE to link to good content and by providing your visitors compelling content, not only will they link to it, they will continue to come back for more!
4 - WordPress is Simple to Use and Widely Expandable!
Have you ever tried to add an rss feed to BANS? Have you ever tried to add a YouTube Video or even a simple product feed from another advertiser? If so, you know how long it took to do the first time! With WordPress, there are literally an endless supply of free plugins available for you to do almost ANYTHING you may want with your site!
Want to add a YouTube video to a post? Head over to the WordPress plugin directory, grab the plugin and insert the video ID. How easy is that? There is no need to learn any php or html code, no need to ask for help anywhere and wait for a reply, it is quick and simple! Some of the wordpress plugins are a perfect for the types of content sites we want to create as well!
Literally anything you may want to include in your niche site can be easily added with a WordPress plugin! There are more than 2000 (yes thousand) plugins available at WordPress and likely many more that are not even listed!
and… the most important reason
5 - Search Engines LOVE Blogs!
Sure - this may change, just like the the way they loved BANS in the beginning! But the one thing that will keep your blog in the good with search engines is that you provide unique content that changes regularly! Like mentioned above, add a content page to your BANS site and see how long it takes for that page to get traffic… Now do the same thing on a blog!
Just take a look at the post I wrote on Friday about thin affiliate sites, in less than 3 days it is already ranked in the top 5 in the Google engine! I did not write the article to target that specific phrase, but since the article is very relevant and this site is a trusted source for affiliate website information, it ranked immediately!
Blogs are “Newsworthy”… the nature of the beast is that they are updated far more often than a static site and usually on the latest of trends in a niche market. That single ability to provide the freshest content to visitors is likely the main reason they are so loved by search engines!
The Bottom Line…
I am not going to sit here and tell you that everything you want on your BANS site cannot be done within Build a Niche Store itself, because it can! BANS however, is best used for serving up an array of proiduct listings from the eBay feed… everything else was added after the fact.
WordPress on the other hand is a content machinethat was designed from the ground up, to serve as a platform for publishing content on the web in the quickest and easiest environment possible! The plethora of resources supporting WordPress is endless to help you get the most out of your website!
When you combine one of the best eBay affiliate software programs with one of the best content publishing systems on the web, you have the perfect match for a strong site that will stand the test of time!
In my next post, I am going to talk about some of the features you want to look for when choosing a template for your WordPress site with BANS!
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12 Responses to “5 Reasons You Should use WordPress with BANS!”
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6. PR ranking. All my WP-BANS / BANS-WP sites went from PR0 to PR1. My home site that was HTML coded two weeks ago, had a PR 0 rating. I ripped it all out and put in WP within 1 week it went to PR 2. Got to Love WordPress!
How does BANS/WP compare to PHPBay/WP?
PHPBay is a native WP app so it seems it would integrate easier than having to buy extra stuff to make BANS and WP kinda sorta integrate.
I think we can all agree BANS kinda sucks as a CMS hence the struggle to integrate one with it.
@ GB -
I know exactly what you are saying about using the phpBay plugin. The same can be accomplished. I think one of the big reasons that I DO LIKE BANS in this situation, is the ability to keep all your bans files in one single directory, versus mixing your listings into your posts. Should the search engine decide they simply hate any content with eBay affiliate links, you only have to get rid of the store portion and still have all your own content in place to move to the next step with.
I have not done any side by side testing to see which converts better, but having the ability to update one single section (BANS store) should there be a change like went through with the ePN changeover, is important to me.
Of course, I do plan on talking about phpBay during this as well… but want to focus on something most of the readers already have in their arsenal at the time.
In regard to buying extra things to make BANS play well… the only thing you really need is the ability to convert the WP template. From that point, you are simply “wrapping” wordpress around your BANS store.
The ONLY mod to BANS are the theme files in 99% of the cases I have tested.
Mark
Hi Mark,
I’ve been avidly following your posts on improving our BANS sites with more usable and worthwhile content in the form of a blog and I have purchased your BANS flex theme for a new site I’m about to put up.
In the meantime, I have taken the plunge and added a blog to an existing bans site I have. This site’s been up 2 months and I’ve earned over $100 both months from EPN.
Whilst I have LOTS of work still on the integration particulary getting the blog to at least look a bit like my BANS store, I am keen to develop this in detail.
I had already started to add content pages on my BANS store and I’m wondering now, should I move the content (from original BANS store) into the blog and in corporate it in posts and categories etc. or should I just leave it where it is and start fresh on the blog.
I would appreciate your comments on this.
Cheers
Shelley
This seems a much better argument for phpBay/WP instead of BANS/WP. You can just run everything in WP without having to manage extra elements. For store pages, you just use a hierarchy of WP pages with whatever structure you want. You can also mix in auctions in regular posts as well, where you may not necessarily want to dedicate a page in your hierarchy too. Check out Frank Carr’s site at http://Optempo.com for some good examples of that, though he’s using eBay widgets instead of phpBay, but the principle is the same.
Mark, I purchased one of your bans/wordpress templates and love it. I know that the store and the blog are integrated, but the fact that they each have their own backend takes a little getting used to. If google loves wordpress and crawls the blog often, is the store automatically going to benefit from this?
Mark,
I’m starting a new bans store site, and want to do it right. Am I understanding correctly that it is better to have the wordpress installed on mysite.com with bans in a folder (mysite.com/bans-store) as opposed to the bans store being on the main site? (mysite.com with blog in folder mysite.com/wp-blog).
Thanks!
Adrienne
@ Adrienne -
For ease of use, I feel it is better to have the blog on the root versus BANS.
If you read some tips from Matt Cutts, he actually suggest putting a static page on the root of your domain and everything else into its own directories.
ie:
mysite .com (static page containing anything you want)
mysite .com/blog/ (Blog pages)
mysite .com/shop/ (store files)
etc etc etc…
This provides the easiest way to make changes to the site without affecting any other portion of it. It also provides the biggest opportunity for link relevance as people will link to the subsections of your site versus linking to only your home page.
Mark
Mark,
Live Search gave me an answer to this question this morning also! I checked my stats there, and all of my bans stores have only one page indexed. I have another site, (non-bans) that I set up the end of May, and ALL of the pages there are indexed with Live Search, as well as Google and Yahoo!
Thanks for your quick answer!
Mark, how difficult would
mysite .com (static page containing anything you want)
mysite .com/blog/ (Blog pages)
mysite .com/shop/ (store files)
be to set up using your bans/wordpress themes. I wasn’t aware you could make the front page of a blog into a static page. If you have the blog set up in a “blog” folder and the bans store in a “store folder” what would be powering the static page?
@ Shelley -
To me… the trick to turning one of these BANS/Blog sites into a success… is going to involve forgetting I even have a BANS store onsite!
By blogging about the subject… the visitors will come, finding what they wanted. The BANS side of it is just a benefit of their visiting the site!
Approximately 6 weeks ago, I completely pulled a store that was point & click BANS. (June 19th to be exact: post) I added a blog to the root of the domain and started writing one unique article each week or two…
The content pulls in the visitors! In less than 6 weeks, it has gone from 10 daily visitors to around 35 daily visitors, not huge growth by all means, but the visitors coming are shopping! In July, the site is at $208 in earnings compared to $11 in the entire month of May.
I am convinced blogging is what changed the traffic and buying pattern.
@ Mark -
The biggest benefit is that your blog content is indexed and delivers visitors. The store is “Just There” as another area for those visitors to find what they were looking for.
@ Mark G -
I will be covering this before the end of the week… Not difficult though! You just add a redirect to your htaccess… if you decide to redevelop the structure, you change the redirect or create a static page and talk about what your site offers.
Mark
Mark