Should you Convert a BANS Site to a PhpBay Site?
I have seen this question in my inbox many times… and wanted to share my own process on how I handle it myself!
Also – today is Day 6 without a cigarette! Coffee tastes completely different… I no longer spend the first 5 minutes of the morning hacking up tarballs… and I am just now starting to get focus back into my daily routine! Yes, being distracted was already an issue for me… quitting smoking just made it worse! :-) That’s my NEXT trip to the Hypnotist… LOL
Anyhow… without further ado… Should you convert a BANS site to phpBay?
Is The BANS site Deindexed?
The VERY FIRST question you need to answer and be very real with yourself on… is the reason for converting the site over to something else!
Are you converting the site because it was dropped from the Google index? If you answer YES to this… STOP right here, and realize that a thin site is still a thin site, regardless of how its presented! Converting a BANS site to phpBay is not going to get it indexed in Google, unless you do some serious content building of your own first!
So… IF you answered YES and the site IS deindexed, you need to forget about phpBay or ANY other method of generating revenue, and focus instead, on rebuilding the site with content! If you are not willing to invest 90 days of writing and rebuilding… then screw it, drop the site over to your secondary hosting account and move on… its TOXIC! Hell, maybe you can petition Congress to get it into the TARP (Toxic Asset Relief Program) program and send you a check! Being real. here… Unless you do something really spectacular, your chances with TARP are better than getting it back into Google! :-)
Converting a deindexed site to WordPress and phpBay will NOT get the site re-indexed!
If it Ain’t Working as BANS – phpBay is NOT Going to Fix it!
Assuming your BANS website is in the search index and gets even just a little bit of traffic… I hate to bring bad news, but converting it to phpbay is not going to fix anything! Your problem is not in the engine feeding the eBay listings… its how YOU are presenting them! Instead of spending the $79 or more on phpBay to prop up a failed effort… buy some unique content and build up your site first!
Why do you want to reinvest time and money into a site thats not working, unless you know you have made every effort to make it work first? On the same hand… if you KNOW you have already made every effort to build your BANS site up with unique content on EVERY page, got your backlinks to every page… and its not working, what makes you think phpBay will change things? It won’t!
The BEST Reason to Convert a BANS site to phpBay?!
BANS is a stepping stone in the affiliate website world… for that matter, so is phpBay! Both are really on a very similar level as far as earnings potential and efforts needed to find success. BANS is a standalone application, where phpBay allows you to very easily harness the power of WordPress.
If you have a site that ALREADY does well with BANS and you just want the added power of a WordPress backend, and the flexibility of phpBay… That’s the only real reason to convert!
Just calling it like it is here… phpBay is AWESOME… but converting a failed BANS site to phpBay is not going to make it a success… Just another way to realize failure, unless you are willing to change more than the backend!
Tomorrow… I will shed a bit of light on what is required when you DO decide to convert!
Mark
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Convert Almost ANY WordPress Theme to a BANS Template
- Changing from BANS to PhpBay – Method 1
- Converting from BANS to phpBay, Method 2
- Converting an Existing BANS ePN Site to a BANS PepperJam Site
- 25 Things about Me – and a Cool phpBay Discount Code!
- phpBay Search2Post and Other Goodies like phpOStock!
- Choosing a WordPress Template for your BANS Site
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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.
In my opinion, putting a WP blog on the back end of my good BANS sites has worked best for me.
I am using my own re-written phpBay type software, that uses the same functionality, but geo targets the listings. I find that the blog posts will bring in the visitors and allow them to flow through to the store pages of the BANS site, or through the phpBay style links to eBay for the product listed in the post.
It works best for both worlds!
hmmm.. hahaha.. I want to convert an existing site just because I love the functionality of PHPBay over BANS…
I wonder if PHPBay will ever have an option to search by the Auction ID?
You mention moving accounts to secondary hosting as they are toxic. I’m using Hostgator for dozens of sites, some of which are BANS and have been de-indexed. Does that hurt my other websites because they’re all under the same main domain name as add-on domain names?
I think you make excellent points, Mark, but one additional thing to keep in mind is that Google ain’t the only ball game. I have de-listed pure BANS sites that more than earn their keep from MSN and Yahoo traffic. Would they do better if they had Google traffic, too? Sure they would, but I’m not going to look down my nose at my MSN and Yahoo earnings.
If you fear that your other sites will be “tainted” by being on the same hosting account as a de-listed site (I’m not yet convinced of this), go ahead and move it to another account. But instead of pulling it down, go after the MSN and Yahoo traffic.
@ Tao –
Good to see ya man… Adding a blog to the back of an existing bans site definitely works as well!
@ Jake – do you mean like “Item #249568465523″ ? Do people really search for the ID number?
@ Home Warranty – Its my own belief that the opportunity for a negative impact is real. I move toxic sites to their own account…
@ Beth – I agree 100% with you on the topic of MSN and Yahoo! :-)
I would not however take the time to convert an existing deindexed site to anything else, and simply let it live or die the way it is. If it works as is… move it to the toxic account and let it do its thing!
If I was going to take the time to redevelop a deindexed “niche” however… I would do it on another domain, and eventually 301 all the other traffic to the new one.
Mark
Mark,
Could you explain how to move a de-indexed site to a ” toxic account ” if you have an account with Hostgator.. ( Baby Croc) could you ask Hostgator for a different IP address.. how does this work.. curious to know..
Thanks
@ David –
Thats a completely separate post… but to put it into 3-4 basic steps…
1 – Move all site files to new or other hosting account.
2 – Set original database to accept outside connections (in cPanel of original host) or export the store database from old account and import it to the new one.
3 – Change the cont.php file on new account to reflect correct connection info.
4 – Update DNS at domain registrar.
Mark
@ Mark – referring to the item #… not i’m not talking about the person searching for the item #, i’m saying, being able to build an item in a blog post and CHOOSE that item to show in the blog post by using the item # of the auction… EPN tools has that option and I would LOVE to see PHPBay use it.. that way if I want to have a featured item for a particular auction, i could plug in that #, like you can with the EPN tool and show JUST THAT AUCTION!
With PHPBay you can set the “main settings” to pull auctions from a particular seller, but you can’t even do that in an individual post..(i don’t think)
I just think it would be great to be able to pull an auction to your blog post by using the auction ID OR the seller ID, instead of just keywords..
make sense?
@ Jake – I gotcha now!
I actually use the editor kit to do that exact thing… so that when the auction expires, it uses a search term to show other items instead of an expired screen.
Not perfect for sure though!!
This should be VERY easy for you to do using a custom field in WordPress!!
Hit me in an email and I will help you with a solution.
M
I converted a site or 2 to Wordpress & phpBay because it’s just so much easier to deal with content when you have a CMS.
If you want pages, make pages. Want a blog, do a blog. Embed phpBay tags all over the place and use the widget. Good stuff.
I have a phpBay tag maker on my website for those interested. I made it for myself but it’s open to the public.
Ahh Mark, how you read my mind :-)
Obviously I am glad to have you posting this little mini-series, since you and I have been discussing this matter for a while now.
I am *Very* anxious to get my hands on tomorrows post about how to do this conversion!
Hi Mark,
First things first… as always that is a great article. I have some bans sites left over that were deindexed from google and now make me more money from Yahoo alone. No point in chaging them as they more than pay for themselves year round and I dont really need to do anything with them.
I think I will be building a few new ones using phpbay as that is what all the cool kids at school are doing ;)
The reason I wanted to comment though is to congratulate you on the whole no smoking thing. The first few days are always the hardest and funnily enough I too am on the 6 day mark! After 15 years of smoking 20 a day!!!
Keep it up, mate!
Keep up the great job at NOT smoking Mark. I haven’t smoked in 5 years now and I still get distracted but I don’t crave smoking.
I have thought about converting from BANS to PHPbay but wasn’t sure that would solve my problem. So thanks for the post and clearing up some of the things in my mind.
I know my BANS sites are not nearly as content based as they should be so I will just continue adding more relevant content.
Mark
I have very few BANS sites left now, it’s a shame in many ways because I enjoyed building a BANS site. On the other hand I found that I got lazy with BANS and my sites were always less successful than my phpBay ones, maybe because Wordpress is so great for niche sites but mainly because I didn’t put as much work into BANS because it was easier not to.
in my opinion, if the BANS site is earning then leave it and move, leave the site bring in a nice steady income. If you have BANS sites which are not making money, ditch em.
Ben :)
Eager to hear part 2 of this series Mark!
On this same topic though: I finally decided to teach myself to migrate blogs from one hosting account to another, and found a really nice plugin that made it pretty easy.
Called WP-DBManager.
Allowed me to import the wordpress backups without having to hassle with phpmyadmin what so ever!
Thinking of highlighting it in a post over at Niche Store Journey soon!
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