April 5, 2008
Hi All -
I know… I’m burning the midnight oil tonight! I have just finished another Build a Niche Store site and wanted to post it here to get your feedback on it.
I should start by saying this site has a very customized template! I have however made it flexible enough to modify it for a few additional sites I have in mind for the near future. The good part about it all… is that it will end up being one of my most popular sites in a highly competitive niche… the bad part… it took alot of my time to create, and is somewhat code heavy, should there be a change with BANS.
Site: Designer Shoes for Sale
Now for the list of features on this BANS / Wordpress site:
Work left to do:
Anyhow… I wanted to post it for you all to take a quick look at… In total, I have about 8-10 hours into this template set (BANS and WordPress) and would not recommend it to anyone not familiar with html. It is an example of the work I provide when someone buys a custom template.
Please run it through the paces and help me test it out! Tonight, as of this posting, the site has 13 pages indexed in Google… time to bait the spiders tomorrow morning!
Mark
Popularity: 16% [?]
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33 Responses to “Build a Niche Store Template Gone Wild!”
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Your site is absolutely stunning! Amazing work!
Mark
I think you are right about all you said, It will be a very popular site,.. It is constantly updating the ads as I refresh or click.. good work expressing creativity… with all the Bans updates and Ebay problems …left you with too much time on your hands…and look what you did to occupy this time…good job $$
Beautiful site. Awesome.
But you have a typo. It should be Roberto Cavalli not Robert Cavalli.
Unless you did that intentionally but I wouldn’t think so.
But amazing work.
Virginia
Mark, could you do me a favor? If I send you a mason jar, can you put some of your talent in it and send it back to Mayberry? HA!
Nice Job :)
The store looks amazing - it makes me feel like a dinosaur!
How did you pull over the information from Wikipedia? Is that something a novice could tackle?
I noticed that your “Fine Designer Shoes For Sale” link, bottom right, is not working in IE (”IE cannot display the webpage”).
Denise
@ All - Thank you for the nice words… It was a chore to create, but well worth the time.
@ Virginia - Thank you, just goes to show how much I know about womens shoes!
@ Denise - Thank you for finding the link! It is fixed now.
On a side and FUNNY note, I had to go in and change the WP author name. Sean had noticed that my author name was “Mark”… so under each post heading, it showed the author and category of the post… It looked like:
“Posted by Mark, In Sexy Heels”
“Posted by Mark, In Prada Shoes”
I swear, I was laughing so hard, I spit my coffee onto my desk when his email this morning! I changed the name to Nicolette, which, was one of the names we decided to name my youngest son, until he was a boy! LOL
Mark
There is nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said. Absolutely amazing work. If you are trying to drum up custom template business then what a fantastic way to get it : )
Rochelle
I have been wanting to try my hand at making a 60%/40% type template much like this one, but just keep putting it off. But after seeing what you have done here, well, I need to stop commenting and get busy! Thanks for the inspiration!
Thanks Mark for showing me what BANS is really capable of. I have been working with Joomla for some time and I am very used to a large group of programmers creating spectacular templates for it. (Take a look at http://www.yootheme.com as an example)
The fact that most of the stores and templates I saw when researching BANS looked like all the millions of auto-generated Adsense sites was one of the major reasons I held off buying BANS for so long. The lack of professional template design (from the designers or third parties) is one area that BANS desperately needs.
Mark, would you be interested in showing us how to or creating a mod for the masses that moves the menus into the header and top positions like you have on your shoe site.
I can do content, but I’m not a programmer and can barely get by in HTML. So……………….
Mark, instead of individual custom templates I would suggest that you develop a membership site or store off of this blog where we can buy your templates. You may want to set up an commission based area on that site where other programmers could also sell their templates.
2nd train of thought :)
I really like the general layout of the shoe site. I have been dreaming of being able to bring some other affiliate networks above the fold. (like Performics and Shopping ADs) Now that I see it can be done ……………………
Thanks to everyone who helped get BANS to 3.0 and to Mark for thinking “outside the box” with the templates. Let’s keep this going!!!!
Nice site. What wordpress plugin did you use to automate the blog posting?
Hi Mark
Off topic here as I’m playing catch up on your niche empire series. I’ve been using submitedge to build backlinks. Can you tell me how I can check the backlinks and how long it should take before they are active? Also, out of 100 will a significant number be rejected?
Mike
Thank you all for the nice comments on the new laoyout and template!
@ Paul - I have considered MANY things for this blog/site/forum etc… One of the things I would like to add is a template section where users could post their own templates for sale or to give away. I intend to make a few changes in early May…. thank you for the suggestion.
In regard tot he menus being on top, the ones I use are just styled lists in the template. I have looked at moving the entire structure into both horizontal and vertical flyout menus, but the modifications to the frontcontrol and index would be quite a bit… thus making it somewhat limiting.
@ Matt -
I use WP-O-Matic for the autoposting and a-Links for the text replacement and automatic links.
I actually chose NOT to cron the autoposting yet… so I can add posts slowly for a month or two, then turn on the cron job at that time to auto-add-5-10 posts each day.
@ Mike -
For my own submissions, I still see approvals coming in every day for sites submitted 30 days ago. In total, I would estimate 10 out of 100 require verification before being accepted… click a link in email and it is accepted. I have not been declined by any…
With directory submissions, it may take 30-60 days or MORE to see these inbound links in search engine indexes… they are mostly deep links versus front page directory links, so it takes a bit longer to be indexed.
Mark
On that note about directory submissions…. I’ve submitted 3 sites to Submitedge.. the order showed to be completed on 3/25
If i click on the report is shows the directories it sent to..
BUT at the top it shows an email ID that is a GMAIL email address and i didn’t setup a GMAIL address.. is this why i’m not getting any emails??????
well…. I feel like a DORK! I just used the login and pass provided by Submitedge and logged in to that email account and there are a huge # of emails… I had NO clue that’s what i was suppose to do.. I guess missed that part.. DUH!
Nice site Mark. showing off a bit with the WP inclusion. just kidding.
So how many BANS sites do you have now?
JeffLeft…..Uh, I think I may have done the same thing!
Jeff,
Wait, which email are you talking about with regard to Submit Edge?
Is there a “submit edge” email?
@ Jeff -
I have always used my own email address or an address of the site I am submitting for this.
Mark
Well, when i sign in and when i signed up for submitedge i provided my normal email address… when i sign in and go to edit presonal details.. MY normal email address is the one that’s listed..
if i view the details of my order, then scroll down to the bottom and click on view..
it brings up the report and shows all the directories the site was listed on.. at the top of that page it shows a EMAIL ID and a passord .. for GMAIL .. so i have NO idea how that got setup because i didn’t do it.. and my email address is in the preferences so i don’t have a clue.. but, at least i got the emails!
Jeff - thank you for posting this. I have been checking my email everyday since 3/31 and was getting no email for 4 sites submitted. Just clicked the view link at Submitedge and discovered I also have a gmail account set up that I did not do.
I have my personal account in my profile, and listed a website email for each site submitted. I would have never figured this one out.
Sherrin
Wow….I’ll have to go check that out because I was in the same boat Sherrin was in. I’ve submitted about 5 sites to Submit and I haven’t gotten one email!
…I’m almost afraid to go look….
Hi All -
in regard tot he submitedge gmail account, it is my recollection that they create a generic account and forward all of the email to your regular account. I could be wrong though…
In all of my submissions with them, I only recall getting a few confirmation emails. I also seem to remember that they submit to more than 100 directories to overcompensate for any that may not get listed.
Again, it does take a while to find the links in engines as well. Use yahoo or AlltheWeb to search for backlinks, Google will not list them right away.
Mark
Yeah, Mark’s right. I took a look at my gmail that they set up and there weren’t any emails that I had to respond to in order to get my site listed.
In fact, I had an email that was already clicked on….probably by a Submit Edge staff member…that was to confirm my link. I clicked on it anyway and it said “link already confirmed”.
…not a big deal at all!
Boy am I glad I asked this question. I have just checked out the gmail accounts and it’s email city. I am now very relieved.
Mark, sorry I didn’t comment on your superb templates. I have just completed a new store http://www.coachdesignerstore.com using one and it looks great. I am hugely indebted.
I hope I’m not out of line here but I have started a blog to document my own BANS journey. It lists tools and resources (such as Mark’s) I have found that make a real difference for me. Hopefully you’ll all find a couple of nuggets.
You can check it out at http://www.banstoday.net
Mike
Wow, this is spectacular! I wondered what a good WP/BANS site would look like and boy is this it!
I’m curious though about a couple of things. The first is, do you actually write blog entries about shoes every day, or is this info pulled from elsewhere? You mentioned scraped info - I thought that was a no-no since its easy to get busted…
The blog topics list doesn’t seem to sync up with what appears when I clicked on the titles. For example, I clicked on Sexy Heels, Star Spotting, Oh No They didn’t, and Fashion Trends and got the same blog entries each time. And none of them had to do with the topic title. Something to look into, since the titles looked quite interesting!!
A beautiful site!
@ Alice -
Thanks for the nice comment… you are very correct aboutt he categories being somewhat off fromt he articles. As I progress with the site… I will narrow the focus of each section much more closely. The purpose at this early stage was to get “some” site related content into the categories…
In regard to the scraped content, several posts are actually pulled from Google news. While it would be much better to write my own posts, there is no real “penalty” for remixing articles, just less relevance.
Mark
Thanks Mark. We definitely want to hear all your brags on this site…
Wow! I never really understood about using a Wordpress blog as an addition to a website, and didn’t know it was possible to add content automatically - you blew my mind! I feel like I just crawled out from under a rock. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned - but this takes the biscuit. Awesome! I’m so excited!
Wow.. this is amazing Mark!! 4 thumbs up!! :)
This inspired me alot. Right now, I’m still strugling on marketing the sites… :)
Thats a great looking site. Good work Mark!
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