Are We Having Fun Yet… I’m Not!

June 17, 2008 | 19 Comments

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 stores based on my own interests, and convert them into something more than just niche stores!

If you have ever stumbled onto one of your sites and uttered the words… “I forgot about this one”… you know what I mean!

After spending days reading email, other websites and just thinking about what would be best for the longrun, I decided to look at what already works, and build upon that, sharing my knowledge and resources with others who may be in need or benefit from that information. This blog is a great example of the type of site I am going to build from here forward. So what are my own requirements on this new site or sites?

Anatomy of a Niche Store 2.0

1. The Subject or Niche Topic of the website MUST Interest ME!
   Sounds easy enough… I just have to look into what hobbies or skills I have and decide if I will get enjoyment sharing that knowledge with others!
2. I Need to check if there will be an Audience in Need of My Passion!
   Screw what the search engines are looking for… I need to make sure there are visitors who want to hear what I have to say. I mean, I could talk about sim racing controllers all day long, but if nobody really cares to read what I have to say… does it matter? Some will say… of course it does, you are writing something you are passionate about, who cares if there are readers. Well… as much as I would agree, I do still want to balance out my passion with the possibility of people reading about my own experience and knowledge.
3. The New or Modified Site Needs to be filled with Content I Provide Myself!
   Again, pretty simple to do… I will just reach into my own knowledge about the subject and write categorized content, based on who, what, why and how. If pictures describe something a picture gets the nod! If how-to articles work best… you get the picture.
4. The New Site MUST be scalable to whatever Future Content I want to Provide!
   WordPress as a platform is wonderful! There are new widgets, themes, and plugins created every day of the week to make it a better content management system. This blog runs on the WordPress backbone and is flexible enough to add all types of sections should I desire. In addition, it is simple and easy enough to create a shell out of the theme and use it on other equally flexible formats like BANS, forums, etc.
5. The New Site should use as many FREE Tools a Possible - or Tools I already Have!
   WordPress… BANS… Plugins… Themes… Forums… Directory… All of these tools may make up a section of my new Niche Resource site.  Finding the ones that are no charge is best, otherwise try to work with those I already have!
6. Keep it as Simple as Possible and HAVE FUN with It!
   Here is a BIG ONE… I want to keep my new site as simple as I can, so I don’t spend too much doing things that are meaningless to myself or my visitors! Most importantly, like this site, I want to be able to have fun with the topics and visitors every day!

There you have it… the new site I am developing will become a public work in progress over the next few days and I will share all the information for you here! In the meantime, you should think back over all of your own niche websites and look to find the one that interests YOU the most! Maybe you like digital cameras and know alot about them… heck, maybe you like working in your yard and like to talk about lawnmowers and other things you have done to make your own yard a place you relax! The thing is… make sure you enjoy your new niche market, you are going to be helping others like it too!

The most important aspect of all of this is that you will get self satisfaction from what you are doing. Instead of spreading yourself thinly across many sites you know nothing about, you will start building a resource for all to find useful! In the end, you will still spend just as much time on one site as you have all your others combined, but that one single site will reward you back much more in the longrun!

Mark

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One of my BANS Sites Slapped by Google - Now What?

June 11, 2008 | 31 Comments

You read it right… Google has delisted one of my BANS sites that was showing Google adsense!
Photo courtesy of: ahomeinrichmond.com

The really weird part of the delisting is that the site in question, more than 9 months old, was NOT just a replica of hundreds of other BANS sites, and was rather popular and unique, with more than 400 unique visitors a day! I won’t link it in this post, to avoid bringing further attention to the matter.

In addition to the BANS site, a different site not using BANS was also brought to my attention in a separate email, with the exact same reasons. Thus I do not think this was specific to Build a Niche Store, but may be related to being a weak affiliate site, or what is called a MFA (Made for Adsense) site.

Then again, maybe this is just a knee jerk reaction to a very common email… Read more

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A Few Ways to Fight Burnout and Rebuild your Enthusiasm!

May 27, 2008 | 12 Comments

If you’re like almost every other person involved in affiliate marketing, you try to get as much done as possible in each day or the time you set aside for working. In my case, it only takes takes a few changes in the schedule to completely throw my daily tasks and goals out the window and bump one or two things to the next day, which leads to overload, anguish and ultimately, burnout!

How to Fight Burnout and Maintain Pace for your Daily Goals!

When was the last time you started the day with a list of tasks you had every intention of completing and actually got all of them done? For myself… its been months! On Thursday, I actually set my first goal of the day to rebuild my daily schedule from scratch so I can focus on a prioritized schedule, assuring myself I get the most important tasks completed before I work on anything else!

1 - Walk Away and Stay Away from your Work every Now and Then! 

The very first goal I set was to walk away from my PC for a weekend and I cannot tell you how well it worked! When you get involved in affiliate website marketing, it is just too easy to work day and night, or at least, every free moment in your day! There is ALWAYS something more you could do with your websites and the process never ends… Its almost like gambling at a casino, you have to start with a time limit, or each day just goes on and on!

On Friday afternoon, Kim and I went to her sisters house for the weekend and had one of the most relaxing and fun weekends I can recall for quite some time!  On most weekends, we still have our laptops in front of us, or at least within an arms reach. As many who received email from me today already know… I didn’t even see a PC this weekend and it felt great! Today, I started the day with an almost clean slate of to-do’s, aside from answering email. Which brings me to my next tip for fighting burnout…

2 - Don’t Look at Your Email, Unless you Intend to Answer them at the Same Time!

This seemingly small task, is one of the areas I can improve on the most! Currently, I have more than 80 emails “starred” for follow up in my GMail. The way I have gone through email up until this morning… was to quickly read them, then go back and answer them after all new emails were read. The problem comes once you start answering emails. New email, or replies to your reply, continue to come in and further bump the originals down the list. For each new email, a new response…. its a never ending cycle and in most cases, some emails inadvertantly fall through the cracks. Starting this morning, I am testing a new way of sorting and answering my email.

1. Open email and first things first, filter out emails that do not need a reply!
   These may be link submissions to the Hit Doctor directory, pingbacks, etc. This will generally clear more than half of my morning emails in one fell swoop…
2. ONLY read email when I have set aside time to Answer!
   Once again, this sounds like a simple task… but its not! From today forward, I have set aside several time periods in each day to do nothing but read and answer email! As I have been writing this post, I have watched more than 15 emails arrive in my account. In the past, I would saved this post, jumped over and read them, answered several, then come back to this post. This completely throws my train of thought out the window and is a dis-service to both the email recipients and you, the blog readers!Now would also be a good time to apologize to anyone who may not have received a timely reply. I hope to alleviate this from ever happening again by following my own guidelines.
3. Close EVERY other application on my system until I am completed!
   If you run an IM app such as Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger etc, it only takes one quick message to completely abandon what you are doing! Having an image half completed in a graphic application or a bit of code that is in need of a few more lines can also be a distraction! From now on, when I open an application to complete a task… it will get done BEFORE I look at anything else!

3 - Create a Daily List of all Tasks!

I downloaded this cool little application this morning called RainLendar Desktop Calendar. I am using the free version which puts EVERYTHING I need to do that day, right in front of me on my desktop. I am able to schedule recurring tasks and set reminders just like I would in Outlook or any other calendar application, but this stays on my desktop and right in front of me. As I complete things, I can cross them off or completely remove them from the list, but still have it on record in case I need to revisit in the future.

4 - Prioritize ALL Daily Tasks

This sounds a whole lot easier than it really is! As you grow your affiliate business and have tens or hundreds of websites to keep up with, you will find that there is something to be done on at least one of them every day. I worked in the office of a friend a few years ago coding a customized Air Charter management System for his growing business. With each new module we added to the site, I would provide an estimate of time-to-completion. We found this estimate had to be doubled every time! I would estimate 40 hours of coding to complete, and the subsequent discussions, changes, modifications and overall wasted time would always double and sometimes triple the time it actually took to get it done!

The list of tasks you have each day, grows with each new website you add to your portfolio. For me, I took ALL of the maintenance type tasks like finding an inbound link, adding 1 new page to a BANS site or adding a new post to a blog, (Not this blog) and moved that to the end of my days with the lowest of priority, aside from reading other blogs. If all else fails, these are not do or die tasks and can wait an extra day or two if needed. On the bright side, thay are also fairly quick to get done and should be an easy task to maintain.

New sites, custom template work, and adding to this blog are all high priority items. 

5 - The ONLY way to get your Daily Tasks Completed is to Focus on Them!

Again, it sounds too good to be true and just plain common sense! Just like answering emails, when I focus on one of my tasks, I MUST eliminate all other distractions during that time period! If I am writing a blog post… I cannot be reading email. If I am reading email, I cannot be thinking about my next or partially completed blog post!

When I sit down to get something done… closing everything else and avoiding distractions (Including a cell phone) will help me get things done much quicker and more efficiently. (I hope)

So… the bottom line on this post…

1. Take a Vacation and forget about work for a few days!
2. Don’t look at email unless you have time to answer them!
3. Create a Daily List and Follow it!
4. Prioritize your Daily Tasks!
5. Eliminate Distractions to Focus on your Tasks!

I would be truly thrilled for everyone to share how they prioritize their daily activities and share any tips you can to help us all avoid burnout.

Mark

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Tips for Making your Build a Niche Store Load Faster

May 22, 2008 | 8 Comments

Does your site load too slow or do you just want to Speed up the Load Time for Build a Niche Store? In this post about The 20 Reasons you will Fail with Build a Niche Store, we will look at tips for speeding up your page load time!
Image courtesy of: http://blogs.cisco.com/sp/2007/11/

Website speed used to be quite an issue with many users still using dial up internet access. Today and throughout 2008, it is predicted that broadband access in the US market will increase dramatically due to a broadband stimulus bill passed by Congress, designed to make it more affordable and accessible to everyone! (read more) To most webmasters, this means the struggle to balance great content with small file size is quickly diminishing, but what about search spiders, don’t they prefer fast loading sites also? My own understanding was YES… but according to a Matt Cutts (GoogleGuy) post :

As long as Google can load your web pages, it doesn’t really make a different whether the pages load in half a second or 5 seconds

…it makes no difference! Now, if your server times out… that’s another story as nobody can access the site!

Checking your Website Load Time

Rochelle from Niche Store Strategies recently asked, How can we check our site speed if we are on a Broadband connection? In order to see how quickly your site or pages load, there are several resources you can use:

1.  Website Speed Checker - I have used this utility for many years! Not only does it show you the speed with different connections, it also shows you which components of your site are hogging those resources!
2. Alexa - While Alexa offers some detailed stats on your site, it will only have complete stats if visitors were using the Alexa toolbar.
3. Firefox Plugin - While I have used it… it just seems too cumbersome to me!

Aside from the few listed above, you can probably find many other sites to help you find out how long your site loads. Dreamweaver and other html editors actually have tools built in to give you a good idea. Again, my favorite is the first link over at: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/index.html

In order to understand the speed impact, it may be helpful to know your OWN connection speed. Head over to the Speakeasy Speed Test and choose one of the servers closest to your home. In my case, I chose the Atlanta Server and my speed results were as follows:

• Download Speed: 3087kbps (385.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
• Upload Speed: 504kbps (63 KB/sec transfer rate)

Seeing this reminds me I need to call my ISP and complain that I am not getting the speed I pay for! LOL I also see that I should be loading pages approximately 55 times quicker than a dial-up 56k modem. (56k modem runs at approximately 56,000 kiloBITS - kbps, or 5.6 kiloBYTES - KB per second)

What do I Look For?

For this example, I am going to use 2 of my own sites:

1. Wifi 3.0 Products - This site is not new, but is one of the default BANS templates with little to no optimization.
2. Cabinets for Sale - One of my 12 week series sites with a custom template and header graphic.

Go to the Website Speed Checkerand plug your own domain into the url box. I used the Wifi 3.0 domain first just to see the load from an out of the box site. Even with no logo image, the site comes in at more than 170,000 KB, most of which are the eBay thumbnail images! Aside from those, the main image (which is currently blank) is almost 24k by itself. If you are using BANS out of the box, there is not much you can do with the html page size… you can however exercise some control over the images!

The general goal in the past was to get below 25kb in page size, which is on the far left side of impossible if you plan on using ANY images! Sites in the 75kb-100kb are the norm now and many are MUCH higher due to the targeting of visitors. In other words, if you are promoting a site selling $500 items, chances are good your target visitors will already have broadband also. If on the other hand, you are promoting a penny item, you may want to keep design to a minimum!

Once you have the provided list of files and sizes, you can quickly identify where to optimize!

How do I Optimize my File Sizes?

The first thing to look at are the LARGEST images! In the case of the Wifi 3.0 site, I can see that the logo.jpg file, even though it is blank, is more than 23k in size. I can reduce this easily by going to an online Image Optimization utility, placing my image url in the source box and letting it do its own magic!

In this case, since it is a single color file, there are no real gains in file reduction. Using the logo from the Buy Cabinets site however, I can reduce me image size from 16k down to 7k, without any image quality loss!

1. Place URL of logo in url field
   (I used: http://www.buy-cabinets.com/themes/sepia/images/logo.jpg)
2. Click on Optimize
3. Right-click over the top image (Your original logo) and choose SAVE to your hard drive with a unique name. This will be your backup image!
4. Review optimized images starting at the bottom. Most often, the highest gain in file size equals the lowest quality image. I chose the 2nd from the bottom with a value of Quality: 20 and almost 55% in image size reduction!
5. Right-click over the top of the optimized image and save it to your local hard drive.
6. Login to your BANS store and replace the original logo with your new one!

The next thing to consider are the number of auction listings your site displays. More products equals longer load times! I try to stay as low as possible while still showing a satisfactory amount to keep the visitor looking! Anywhere from 10-20 is a good number to stick with… I truthfully think you are wasting space showing more than that on a single page anyhow!

The third and most often overlooked load time killer are banners that come from other domains! On the fine designer shoe site, I use several banners from a third party affiliate company. I have seen these banners take 5 second or longer to load themselves, which also delays the overall page load time! I have an option to save the banners and load them locally, but I would sacrifice some of my click tracking capabilities. I have notified the affiliate manager and hopefully, we can get that taken care of!

Can I OVER Optimize?

Yes… humans are visual by nature! We LOVE to see pictures! Even though search engines prefer text, if you remove all images in order to make the site load quicker, your page views will likely suffer at the same time!

Always consider your target audience! Chances are pretty good that those shopping online are broadband users or are shopping from a workplace versus a dial up from home. You may not need to optimize at all!

On a completely separate note…

In my reading romp last night I stumbled over to Alan’s site, Affiliate Confession, and found out that he won a great contest earlier this week! Along with the brand new Macbook Air he won, he was sent an extra Nike Golf Polo from Market Leverage which he is giving away to one person.

The best part of all this is just how easy it is to enter! You just visit his site and leave a comment on his post about winning the contest! He is going to randomly choose a winner next Weds. around noon.

Win a Nice Nike Golf Shirt

I have mentioned Alan and his blog in the past and today, he has been added to my blogroll… His site content is right up our alley as he is both an Affiliate Marketer and a BANS user! Now you have a chance to get a free shirt! What could be better?

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Warning about Buying Expired Domains - Don’t Buy Into a Bad Neighborhood!

May 20, 2008 | 8 Comments

Last week, I posted about eBay not paying attention to its Affiliates and the problems they are having with the new EPN changeover. Browsing the eBay EPN forum shows that the winds of changed have blown in and they actually have what appears to be some fairly senior representatives, answering the concerns over on the EPN forum. I encourage ALL of you who think your site may be having issues, to go and post on the forum, so they can address the issues. One of the most important things I read is that eBay have enlisted a third party company to validate and track the entire EPN tracking system to ensure there are no issues!

Notables:

1. eBay and Adsense are not conflicting, they are two completely separate processes and unrelated!
2. Promoting stores, or even your own stores and listings is ENCOURAGED!
3. eBay has acknowledged that a small percentage of affiliates are reporting issues - they are working on a solution!
4. ANY verified issues will be corrected with a MakeGood payment!

Now for the topic of this post…

Warning: If you Buy Expired Domains - KNOW the Domain History and Don’t Buy into a Bad Neighborhood!

As I was going through the EPN Partner Forum last night, one post really caught my attention! The poster was banned from the EPN for quality issues on his site… guess what, it is a BANS site! As you can imagine, I immediately went into overdrive to see if I could figure out why the guy had not only his site, but his entire account shut down! This was the email he received:

Dear Partner,

Thank you for your participation in the eBay Partner Network.

After a thorough review of your account, our team has determined that your account has been generating traffic of low quality as gauged by our internal measures. We wanted to bring to your attention that our team has decided to terminate your account on May 21, 2008. We ask that you please remove you affiliate links within 7 days. You will not be compensated for any traffic associated with your account after that date. As stated in the eBay Partner Network agreement, all pending payments will be complete within 90 days. Please note, you are prohibited from rejoining the eBay Partner Network.

As stated in the ePN Network Agreement Section (L)(3)(i):

(3) Termination by ePN or an Advertiser
i. ePN may terminate this Agreement and your account, one of your websites, your use of a Promotional Method or your participation in a certain Program at any time for convenience in its sole discretion upon 7 days notice. An Advertiser may terminate your participation in its Program or your use of a Promotional Method at any time for convenience in its sole discretion upon 7 days notice.

Regards,

The eBay Partner Network Quality Team
 

Talk about getting sideswiped! I can only hope the guy didn’t have 100 BANS sites going, which would be completely devastating! After reading deeper into the forum message, it looks like the domain itself has been active for some time, but the traffic coming to the site was either incentivised or worse, driven by pornography, warez and cracks for software, ie: A Bad Neighborhood! In the domain owners defense, he had the domain sitting around doing nothing… and decided to put up a BANS site to see how it would work. It was the existing bad traffic that brought the entire thing down…

Steve H from eBay Responded with a few Tips!

Hi,

This is Steve Hartman and I run the eBay Partner Network team. Since I’m ultimately responsible for our decisions around low quality traffic, I thought it would be appropriate for me to answer this one directly. We’re taking action on the lowest quality traffic which in this case only affected a very small percentage of publishers and was specifically related to low value ACRUs. The reason that we’re taking action is that we want to keep paying our affiliates competitive rates for valuable traffic….

Which continues with:

While I’m on the low quality topic, we’re also spending a lot of time and energy on catching and kicking out people who are trying to fraud eBay Partner Network. I’d honestly use 0% of my team’s resources on this if I could as I’d rather spend more time helping our good affiliates build their businesses. However, there are people out there who are trying to steal money from eBay, which is also money that we could pay to the rest of you who are running legitimate businesses.

To wrap it up, thanks to all of you who are building strong affiliate businesses on eBay Partner Network. I’m looking forward to sharing success with all of you and I’m going to have my team take the appropriate actions to make sure that we have the best opportunity for that shared success.

Thanks
Steve

Further down, another forum poster asks him: Is there any way you could give us an example of what you mean by “low quality traffic” and how some are ripping eBay off?

His Response:

The traffic quality question really has to do with whether your affiliate marketing is having its intended effect and is driving incremental bidding & buying activity on eBay, as well as engaged new ACRUs. The clearest example I can give of low-quality traffic is an affiliate site that drives ACRUs who sign up, place unsuccessful bids, and actually never engage and start buying on eBay. A more general example that we have seen which has resulted in low-value traffic to eBay is when affiliates buy bargain-basement untargeted ad network traffic to their sites and then provide links to eBay.The few resulting bids/BINs/ACRUs that we see from this type of traffic generally do not appear to be incremental from traffic that we would see without this type of marketing.

We’re taking action in very clear cases of non-incremental traffic, so if you’re helping to point people to listings on eBay that will interest them, you’re doing fine.

To answer the question at a high level on how people are ripping eBay off, cookie stuffing and manufactured ACRUs are two of the most egregious examples I can provide.

Hope this helps,
Steve

What does all this mean to us?

1. Don’t buy an expired Domain without knowing the domain history!
2. Don’t click your own links and signup under a new name to check if ACRU is working!
3. Don’t ask anyone to signup to check ACRU, unless they are going to buy something!
4. Don’t buy traffic from the 5000 hits for $20 gimmicks you see!
5. Never offer Incentivised Clicks to the EPN! (ie: Click here and signup for eBay, bid on one item and earn $10)

Most importantly, eBay has no issues with BANS stores running as they were intended to do! If you continue to build sites and drive traffic based on the needs of your visitors, you will be perfectly fine!

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