Build a Niche Store Owners Dedicated to the Future!
As many of you know, the Build a Niche Store website and forums have been shut off for a few days while Adam and Kelvin, the developers, take on a rather large transition to assure the community of their dedication to the future.
Over the past 2 years, I have had a plethora of conversations with both of them and even served as a moderator on the forums for quite some time before resigning the responsibility 6 months ago. Kelvin and I have shared several emails over the past week or two in regard to the future of BANS and I just wanted to post about it to let you all know how refreshing the coming changes are!
Viral Growth in a Short Time
When Kelvin and Adam first developed BANS back in 2006, they knew they had something that could useful to quite alot of people, but could not have imagined just how widely popular it would become in such a short amount of time. From my own calculations by registered forum users, BANS grew by more than 700% in the last 8 months of this alone! Imagine going from 1500 users to 10,000+ users in such a short period of time, the support alone must be an endless process!
Earlier this year, they put on dedicated staff to handle support requests, where in the past it had always been handled inside the forums by not only Adam, but the users themselves.
When Supporting a Product outweighs Development!
Adam and Kelvin have made some terrific enhancements to the BANS itself over the past year but in order to maintain growth an visibility in the marketplace, they had to sit down and look at the current business model and develop a plan for the future! In light of the explosive growth of BANS and the support that came along with it, you can well imagine they had no time for enhancements to the product!
This week, later today as a matter of fact… they are reopening the BANS website with a goal of sustainability and growth for this well received product! Kudos to both of them for not just walking away and calling it a big damn day!
The Future of BANS and the Support Infrastructure
If there was one common theme I immediately recognized not only in the emails we all received, but in my personal communications with them over the past weeks, Adam and Kelvin are dedicated to the future of BANS! It’s much more than just a future update now and again however, they are dedicated to investing time into making each of our own experiences with BANS a successful experience!
The BANS forum Moderators are a group of volunteers who devote their own time to helping others on the board and do a damn good job of it! I can vouch from my own time as a moderator that it is a demanding position and the reason I stepped down was that I could not devote the time needed to do it effectively. I have mentioned to Kelvin that I would truly like to help out again, but in a much more focused capacity, like moderating only one or two sections of the forums, versus the entire thing.
The forums are still a great resource for information and help, but you do need to pick through quite a bit of chaff and dodging of affiliate links before finding the answers in alot of cases. In addition, quite a few simple questions can be hijacked rather quickly and scare away newer users.
The Future Looks Bright for Build a Niche Store!
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am sincerely looking forward to the future of BANS. I still feel it is a platform that has OUTSTANDING opportunity and advantages over others in the same market. I mean, where else can you get a 200 paged eBay catalogue loaded and ready to optimize in less than 10 minutes?
Hats off to both Adam and Kelvin for stepping back in, communicating their intent, and dedicating themselves to not only their own, but OUR future as well!
Mark
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Affiliate Network News for Build a Niche Store Owners!
- Build a Niche Store Website is Down
- Build a Niche Store – BANS – For Sale!
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
I liked the forums but the growth caused a large amount of noise amongst the signal.
I know as I got more knowledgeable there was less to learn but it got to the point that it was no longer worthwhile to find the needle, even a golden one, in that haystack.
I’m glad they’re going to refocus the forum and hopefully make it useful for more than just the new people. Otherwise it just becomes a place where the noobs start and then graduate and go elsewhere because they’re tired of reading Jaap’s 134285 messages.
You might like to run over to the forum and check out the New Template Layouts. They are really incredible!
You’ll find the link for templates in the forum, under the header.
Lee
Excellent tip on the themes. This will be a nice refresh on some of my older sites that I am not going to invest in setting them up on WordPress.
Is it really THAT good? I mean, the changes are great – don’t get me wrong, but it just seems like BANS could be SO much more.
John –
Great post!! You bring out many points that we have all voiced at some point or another over the past several months.
I think the most important step of having Adam and Kelvin back in the house, so to speak, is the first step to a great future with BANS.
Mark
Yes, the new forum looks very snazzy and the future of BANS sounds great – I just hope A &K are more in evidence there in the future. There have been times in the past when their absence has been very obvious – and frustrating.
Here’s to a rosy BANS future! :-)
Maybe I’m just a bit dense, but I’ve read Adam and Kelvin’s email and now Mark’s post and I’m still scratching my head. What exactly is changing?
What would make me feel comfortable is a revenue model that would motivate and reward A&K for development. The current one-shot price doesn’t do that. I’d rather pay more (monthly fee, forum fee, etc.) and get more development and support. The current fee structure just does not make sense to me, but I may just be a minority.
Hi Mark
It is really interesting to know what is on the mind of a experience marketer like you Mark, and I am glad to hear that you give the thump up to K&A for not giving up on BANS and move it to the next level instead.
I have learn a lot from BANS but since everything on the net might have a short life, I am looking for other ways to diversify and find others more reliable sources of online income. With Ebay closing BANS stores I don’t want to wait until it happen to me.
Just hope that K&A keep up ahead of the crashing wave.
Mark:
After reading the last few post-day’s worth about people being dumped from BANS, I wondered if you could tell me how you know?
I know you mentioned about a letter sent to some. Is that always the case?
The reason I ask is that my sites have just started to make some money. June was $53.00 and July was $45.00 but Aug. is half over and there is only $1.22 on the tab so far.
Would this be an indication that I have been dropped? According to cpanel All of the sites have been increasing in travel and also time on the pages. Epn is saying that some of the sites have travel and others don’t this month.
I am just wondering if they do this without telling a owner. Also do they drop some of a persons sites and let some stay or do they drop the person and all the sites he/she has?
Thanks for the help.
w.
@ Wlben -
First, if you can login to your ePN account, you are fine. That is how most people find out if something had gone awry… they try to login and get a message stating wrong login or pawword.
It is that point that they contact ePN to be told the account was suspended.
I truly would not worry about it much… just keep on building stores and growing your existing stores.
Mark
The changes for bans humm?. Good for folks who promote it.
Whats the next level ?
I would just like to add I can`t get my head round why 10,000 users would want to try & make a living from this when Ebay or Google can pull the plug on your earnings very risky,very very risky,I found an opportunity 2 weeks ago with nothing to do with the Internet that will make me rich for the rest of my life & will probably only take me 12 months to do it,I would just like to thank everyone that has spent the time helping me with this but its not for me,I would especially like to thank Mark,& Rochelle for all there help.
Good luck everyone you will need it……..Ken……
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