I personally would not take the approach shown in the HVAC example for the very reason that it’s appeal is to the information seeker, and not to the shopper, IMO.

I think Bans is a good platform for what it’s supposed to be, but people just put up a store with ebay, adsense and affiliate ads and no content and expect to get organic traffic.

You can make content pages within Bans or only have a few products and more content on each page.

Like the HVAC example, it’s got plenty of content and long tail possiblity, people looking to learn about HVAC systems will find the site and may or may not buy something.

People looking for Cheap HVAC systems are looking to buy, not; to read information. You’ve got to put products in front of them as soon as possible. IMO

Bans works if you do it right.

It takes work, but it will be worth it.

I agree adding a blog may make the store unique, but you may take a different approach. I’m looking forward to your progress.

This is going to be a somewhat lengthy reply so please bear with me. It hopefully will be useful as even though I only have 5 BANS sites, I will share what has worked and what hasn’t.

I have only 1 BANS site built on the BANS platform at the top level. This site has bombed miserably. I have 10 high quality unique article written around low competition keywords and Yahoo currently shows 99 inbound links to the domain. Yet it gets around 5 unique visitors a day and is basically no where to be found in the Google. Yes it has AdSense.

The other 4 are much like Mark is doing except I’m using XSP instead of WordPress. I have a header created that I use for both platforms so even though I’m a non-techie, I can keep the pages looking the same. On the home page on XSP, my nav menu consists of links to 5 unique articles and a link to (“product keyword” store). I simply create a folder called “store” on the server and put BANS in this. And this is where my “store” navigation link leads. These store pages use a standard BANS template with very little modification and only a small amount of unique content at the top of the listings.

3 of the 4 sites I’ve built this way are doing way better than I ever expected and the other is doing OK;. I have AdSense all over these as well.

My takeaway is that even though this is a very limited sample, I have much better results with BANS if I don’t use it at the top level. Remember that the store with BANS at the top level actually has twice the unique content of the other stores, but doesn’t do nearly as well.

As far as AdSense goes, I don’t think it’s the problem, but it may be the trigger that causes a review sooner.

One other thing… I do pretty extensive research but try to focus on keywords that indicate the visitor is in a buying mood. Once I pick my keywords for the articles, I run them through this free tool:
http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/oci.aspx
to help determine if it is indeed a commercial keyword.

I’m definitely going to try using WordPress at the top level next like Mark has done here to see how this goes.

Ned

Have you tried integrating Blogger into your sites and posting with Blogger. You have one dashboard with all your blogs in one place. I’ve only seen one autoblogger script for Blogger and it wasn’t free. But I have a couple of sites that I use blogger with. Then for some price comparisons or malls, I integrate it with Goldencan.

bodybuilding.americanfitnessstore.com is my best sample.

I’ve done bans stores on a couple of wordpress sites, but it’s more of an after-thought and they don’t do much money-wise.

Instead of making a complete WP and bans as a extra, why not add content to the Bans software. You’ve got above items, below the items and you can have complete pages with no items and only content.

What about just adding more content to a bans site, take adsense off and concentrating on ebay or affiliate banners if you want something in the sidebars?????

There are thousands of ecommerce sites that don’t have that much content.

To get your store site started how often will you be posting to the blog?

Was WebHVAC one of the sites Google de-listed?

Randy