Lately I too have decided not to put all of my eggs in one basket, so I’m really interested to see your thoughts on another type of site. I’m cutting back on my BANS stores, personally it’s just too much for me ot have more than 5 or 6 and be able to give them the attention they deserve. I did have about 20 stores, and they all suffered. Since I cut back, I’m making more money as I started focusing on my best performing stores. The others will ride out their domain life and I won’t renew them. But in light of what just happened to you, I think I’ll remove the adsense from my “terminal” stores.

Hope you get reindexed soon!

I too am interested to hear about your new plan of action.

One question I had, though.

If you were going to create an online community centered around a passion you have are you sure BANS fits into that?

Here’s why I ask:

Pretend you met weekly at a local bar with your local group of NASCAR fans. You talk about what’s going on in the NASCAR world, what everybody thinks about that, etc.

Then, you give a short presentation where you give them free information about choosing the best this or that.

So far, so good.

Then, they ask you “Hey Mark, where would you go to get the best deal on stuff sold by reputable merchants?”

Without any idea who they may be buying from you say “Just look on eBay.”

To me, that’s dropping the ball a bit.

One of the things that visitors come to trust you for is not just WHAT to buy but WHERE to buy it.

That’s one of the reasons I like researching merchants and using their wares whenever possible.

I’m not saying you should drop BANS from the project but if you’re going to build a community-based site, you should consider at least having a rating system independent of eBay’s because eBay’s system really doesn’t mean a lot to non-sellers.

Maybe just a 5 area(clarity of offers, shipping terms, return policy, email responsiveness,quality of goods)5 point system.

Keep in mind, I totally understand the time it would take to do this for eBay merchants and that is the main reason why I would favor using a handful of merchants from another network.

I also understand the huge investment of time and money you have in BANS and eBay.

Thanks for always providing quality content.

Jeff

I just want to thank everyone for the words of encouragement and the fact that I am not alone in the slapping!

While several of my sites have survived the slapping, the common denominator between all those deindexed, were bans and adsense.

The odd part is that I do still have a few sites with bans, adsense, AND a blog, that are just fine.

The only other common factor is that all this started after the post about using a content generation tool, with comparisons into duplicate content. Maybe I brought more attention to myself than I needed to?!?!

The new series of posts on building sites for visitors will be good and very adaptable to existing bans sites as well, so there is no worry about losing what you have done.

@ Trevor:

To check if a site is in the g-dex, just go to the search engine and type:

site: http://www.mysite. com

into the search box. Try variations with both the www and without. If you find even one page, you are OK… if you find none, it may have been deindexed.

Mark

I had Google adsense with a good steady income on my two content websites http://www.ThirdEyeHealth.com and http://www.LifeSip.com but the very month I purchased BANS and added adsense to 30 of my BANS sites, I was slapped by Google by deactivating my adsense account as such!

Never mind, I went on with BANS and am having a much better income that adsense could ever provide me with.

In fact, I was already thinking of using the BANS templates for the ‘content based authority site building’ since the systems it provides us with are simply state of art!

In my opinion a content site on a BANS template is like having the best of both the worlds!

I am 100% with you on your decision to make a site of knowledge and passion on a BANS system.

I also congratulate you for your decision.

I have only built BANs sites on things that I am knowledgeable about… Music, art, and media is my passion… and I have found success in regards to traffic and backlinks in a very short amount of time on my handful of BANs sites… I already have a site on its way to becoming an authority in it’s niche because I saw what was lacking and provided that information in depth, and for free…

I am really looking forward to this upcoming series of thoughts from you Mark, whenever you get on a tangent like this, genius usually follows…

You are that good.

Yes, it shows how dependent we all are on the Mighty G! What will things be like in a couple more years, one wonders?

But their stated aim is to provide value to searchers so I guess only ‘authority’ sites will rank well – or survive. Your decision’s obviously a smart move in the right direction.

Keep up the good work – I’m looking forward to following your progress.

Thanks,
James

I am eager for the details of this new approach. I have had some small success with BANS as is, but I am becoming overwhelmed with focusing on quantity and trying to add the appropriate amount of quality to each one then moving on. I have a tendency to never go back to add more content. I like the idea of concentrating on one at a time, becoming an expert on the subject, and building it out to the max.

I, for one, will not be unsubscribing.

Thank you for sharing all you do with us.

Sherrin