The 10 Essentials for Build a Niche Store Success

August 21, 2007

After working with Build a Niche Store for 30 days now and having a total of 7 functional BANS stores running, I have found there are 10 essential things that you must do in order to have a remote chance at success with the product! All in all, Build a Niche Store is very easy to use and search friendly software for eBay affiliates.

So - you may ask - Mark, what qualifies YOU to tell me there are 10 essentials for Build a Niche Store?

Aside from liking to hear myself talk, or read myself talking… (does that really make sense?) this is just my own experience and observations from using the ebay affiliate software! While I have been in the search marketing and web development business for more than 10 years now, I still learn something new each and every day! I learn these things by reading posts like this, applying what works best for me, and doing my best not to procrastinate in following through with implementation of the changes… but I will talk about that later! :-)

So lets go… The 10 Essentials for Build a Niche Store Success

• 1 :: Commitment to Succeed!
  Before you even consider using Build a Niche Store or any eBay affiliate software, make sure you are committed to seeing the site become a success! Success can be defined in many ways… I like to determine ultimate success in the form of many small successes along the way! Once the site is live - thats a success, once it is indexed… another success, once you have your first sale… you got it, another success! Revisit the Setting your Goals page for a good outline.
• 2 :: Choose a Good Niche Market!
  This goes without saying - It is the driving force that will determine if you are a “On the Beach with a frozen drink” or “Sure - I’ll take the Apple Pie” success with your Build a Niche Store website(s)! I mentioned earlier that I have 7 live BANS sites right now - 1 of them is seeing very good traffic in less than 30 days, but the product is a $20 fad - ok, its the WebKinz… I admitted it! Is it a success? Well, that depends on your own definition! In less than 30 days, the site is generating an average of 3-4 daily sales which totals about $1-2 a day. In all honestly, it exceeded my expectations in such a short time, but is there a real long term potential with this site? Probably not, since it’s a just a fad that will burn out over time.On the other hand - I have another site that focuses on higher dollar consumables! The average sale price is in the $1500-$2500 range and while not as popular as the webkinz site, it is already receiving VERY Targeted traffic in the tune of 50-75 uniques each day. The click through on this site is above 50% to eBay, and we have already had 14  sales in less than 30 days, with the lowest commission being $28 and the highest $64. The point here - choose your market wisely! Which leads to…
• 3 :: Research Your Niche Market Thoroughly!
  Use all the tools at your fingertips! The internet is full of resources for researching and choosing your Niche Market. You may as well start right at the source of what you are associated with, eBay! Once you have a general idea of the market you want to focus on, make your way over to a very useful page called the eBay pulse. (http://pulse.ebay.com/)  This page will give you a view into the popular items in the different eBay categories. Once there, choose your niche category and drill your way down through the subcategories until you find the exact spot you fall into. Once you are there, place a tick in the box for search completed items on the left side and you can see a general idea of how much the items are selling for! The goal is to find the highest paying, least competitive items! Go back and have a look at my post about Choosing a Niche market for a much more detailed review of tools and practices you can use.
• 4 :: Keep a narrow focus on your Niche Market!
  Since taking the small group of 7 sites live, I have seen fairly quickly that some of my niche markets are just be too broad and not focused enough! According to wikipedia: A niche market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector. Following this general definition means you dont want to try and cover too many categories or products with your niche store! Going back to the choosing a niche market post, it will be much easier to find success if you focus on the long-tail key phases during the early months of your website.Back in my retail store management days I ran a Gateway Computer store (Dont shoot yet) - Unlike a best Buy or Circuit City, we only carried one brand of products, gateway. As a store manager it meant that our walk-in traffic was probably going to be considerably lower than the other stores mentioned above. Its pretty simple, if you offer a limited number of products, you will have a limited number of visitors. Some of you may think that was a bad thing, but in reality, it was great! We KNEW that every single person that walked in our door was a buyer or they wouldnt be here! They didnt come to see the refrigerators and just happen over to the PC section, no, these visitors were definitely here to buy something we had and it was up to us to help them with their decision. When you build your niche store, try to focus on that same model - converting 100% of your site visitors into a prospective buyer! Ask youself: Would I rather have 500 unique tire kickers that resulted in 10 sales, or 100 unique “targeted” buyers that result in 50 sales?
• 5 :: Build and Optimize your Store Menus by Hand!
  Once you have decided on your niche market, there is a good chance that you will have many categories and subcategories that you really dont need! Using the target phrases from your niche market keyword research, get down and dirty in the administration and eliminate the MAIN categories you have no interest in. You may ask… why not just leave them? Going back to the Gateway Store analogy - you really want your visitors and search engines to think you are an authority on “Your Niche Market”, not a superstore for bits an pieces of everything, and oh yeah - you also have info on ”Your Niche Market” items. Be the expert… Once you have your primary categories - go back to your Niche Market Phrase Research and grab your list of long-tail phrases to start renaming these generic categories! Spend a few hours today and do the MAIN categories only - save the first level subcategories for another day! (For more info, see the Search optimization for Build a Niche store page)
• 6 :: Dont be Afraid to Change the Default Templates!
  While the default templates that come with BANS are good, there is always room to improve! There is no way the ebay affiliate software can fit 100% of everyone’s needs and still be packaged as a super-easy to use product! If you have even minor experience with html, you can make a big difference! No experience at all presents a few small challenges, but all can be worked through by asking a few questions - the BANS community is very willing to help new users get situated! The system works with 3 main files, a header, a footer, and a style sheet.
• 7 :: Develop Inbound Links with Targeted Anchor Text!
  Commit yourself to this statement… “I will spend 15 minutes a day, every day for the first 30 days, finding and requesting/posting at least 1 inbound non-reciprocating link!” This could be in a free directory, it could be on a friends website, it could be anywhere! Preferably, the site will be somewhat related to your niche market and indexed by the search engines.If you post on forums, add a link to your signature. If you send alot of email, add a signature to your emails.The point is… you want to get the word out that the website exists - it is much easier to get a search engine spider through your site if they find it naturally through another website!Once you have a single site up and running - use the footer to post links to your other niche sites! Dont go crazy with cross linking, but take advantage of any chance you get to post an inbound link!Take careful consideration of the anchor text in your links. Anchor text is the actual text that is displayed, in other words… if you have a niche site about Harley Davidson parts, you want those words “Harley Davidson Parts” to be the text that is clickable in your link. “Harley Davidson Parts - Click here” is just not going to get you any link weight! See the SEOMoz search engine ranking factors for more info on anchor text.
• 8 :: Make at least One Change Every Week!
  How can I stress this enough? Imagine if you walked into a store every day for an entire month and nothing ever changed! No new products, no new layout, no new employees etc etc… eventually you would quit going because nothing ever changes! If, on the other hand, they had new products every day or week, they had new and exciting ways to let you see those products etc, you would probably come back more often, excited about what you will see that is new!The search engines work in the same fashion. Once they find your website they unleash a spider, or more commonly called a “bot” into your site to look around and index the pages. Each time it finds a new link it follow it and goes to the next page etc. It is a cycle that never ends… unless you never make changes!BANS is VERY search bot friendly in its native form because your content is coming from a very dynamic source, ebay. That being said… it wont hurt to add a new page every month! In the beginning, you can just go back and optimize the remainder of your subcategories, as time goes on… this is where your site logs come in very handy… which will be discussed in the next essential step to succeed with Build a Niche Store!
• 9 :: Review your Site Logs Weekly!
  Site traffic logs contain some of the most valuable information you could want! Aside from how many visitors come to your Niche Store, you get to see the terms they used in search engines to get there! You may be surprised to see many terms that you didnt even think of…. but since the search engines dig very deep and apply weight to word combinations, you will likely discover several new phrases that can be pursued!For Instance, while reviewing the CarolinaCloseout.com site logs, I found many referrals for Wholesale Gymboree Closeouts. I had not even looked at this term as one of the site targets, but since I was getting traffic on the phrase I decided to turn it into its own category. Now, the term ranks very well on all search engines and delivers BUYERS every day!Take your time with your site logs, but dont get too involved on a daily basis… watch for trends in your traffic and patterns in your search phrases. Once you spot a pattern, exploit it to its fullest! (Revisit anchor text etc…)
• 10 :: Dont give Up!
  The hardest part of developing a Build a Niche Store site is the time it may take to reach success! You may see results in as little as 30 days and depending on your niche, it may take several months. The most important thing to do is continue trying! Dont give up if you dont get rich in 90 days… nothing is that easy!I suggest starting one store per month for a full year (may be contradicting an earlier post). Spend the entire month focusing 50% of your efforts on the new store and 50% of your efforts on existing stores. If you have a new niche to focus on each month, the developed sites will begin performing as time passes and you will build a nice income within the end of the first year! What you do from there is up to you…

My next Build a Niche Store installment will focus on addition monetization sources for your BANS site.

Mark Hansen

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