February 10, 2008
OK - So I am going to break the series for second or two and jump in to share something I wrote the other day on the BANS forum in relation to one of the best ways you can build a niche store.
Lead-in. The user had just put up a store and was asking quite a few questions about customizing the look of the store. There is nothing wrong with wanting to customize the look store, but in general, it should be one of the LAST things you do! I personally have 3-4 templates I use to push out almost ALL sites with a 10 minute graphic change to one small section. For me and some of you, making this change at the beginning is not an issue… but for someone just getting into Build a Niche Store or someone with limited knowledge of html, graphics etc, changing the look of your site should be the LAST thing you do!
I have found that the most common mistake of people getting into affiliate stores or build a niche store, is that they hope to buy the script, pop up a store, name a category, dress it up a little… and then just collect the rewards! With search engine intelligence the way it is today, those days are gone… This is no different than any type of business where your results (ie: earnings) are going to be a direct reflection of your efforts! Whether those efforts involve organic research as I discuss here or PPC advertising, which we will discuss later, you still have to make an effort in order to succeed!
Let me explain by comparing this to building a house.
Every House starts with a Blueprint
Just like the house plans, you MUST have a plan in effect for your Build a Niche Store. Up until now, we have been researching and writing things on our notepads or into excel etc. All this info makes up a part of our plan and we need to keep it handy so we can reference through the building process.
Point - Develop your Niche Site Plan!
- Know your neighborhood before building! You don’t want to build a $500,000 home in a neighborhood filled with $50,000 home buyers! (Is your niche profitable and worth your time investment? Research your Niche!)
- Make your Niche Site unique to the thousands before you! Plan ahead with research on how you will avoid the tract home look, where 100 houses look identical to each other! NOT in the exterior appearance, but the nuts and bolts that make your floorplan unique!
- Ask yourself… Why would a search engine promote this site, more than that site? Especially if it is identical!
The Foundation ALWAYS gets built First!
You wouldn’t consider building a house directly on top of the ground, starting with painting the exterior boards first. You have to have a solid, well planned foundation in place. The foundation will have entry ways, exit ways, and strong pillars for supporting the entire structure.
Point - Build your Solid Foundation
Build your Floorplan based on Very Specific Buyers Needs!
When a builder grabs the blueprint and starts laying out a floorplan for a home, chances are it has a set number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, etc. This is done to target a very specific set of buyers and built according to what those buyers are in the market for! If buyers are searching for 4 bed, 2.5 bath homes, they make sure it is built into the home!
Point - Build your Niche Store based on what Buyers Want!
Strategically Position Key Rooms or Areas of the Home!
The most common rooms used in a home are the Living Room, Family Room or Kitchen. Builders always make sure these rooms are interconnected and easy to get to from almost everywhere in the home. Think about your front door… in most cases, it leads right into the most common point of the home and generally the room you always keep clutter free! Access to all other areas can usually be traced to this room! It is highly unlikely you will find a recliner and a 60″ plasma screen in the kitchen…
Point - Build Uncluttered Areas with easy to Follow and Consistent Menus
- Every area of your store needs to have a clear reason of what that area is for. Keep the clutter down to a minimum! In other words, if you build a section for the sale of Jelly Beans, don’t load up the top 3/4 of the page content with reasons why you are selling Jelly Beans! A small paragraph (200 words) about the specific Jelly Beans ON THAT PAGE is ok, but the life history of a Jelly Bean is not! Keep your pages for selling… designed to sell! Keep your clutter (ie: content) in the content pages and link to it!
- Here is a good rule of thumb - If your money making links are more than 1/2 way down your initial screen… that’s a bad thing! A visitor should NEVER have to scroll to find the money making links…
- You may notice a horizontal menu on top of some of my site pages. This is consistent on EVERY page of the site and visitors ALWAYS have a clear path back to the main page. (Usually titled home or “myniche home”) At one point in this series, I will help you all add a horizontal menu to your stores, or at minimum, a common, unmistakable, in your face, ”MyNiche Home” link
All Homes MUST Be Inspected BEFORE they can Proceed to the Next Step!
If you have been around any type of building, not just homes, there is an inspection process at every step of the way where a key function is concerned. In a home, they inspect the foundation, the framing, the electrical, the plumbing, HVAC etc etc… Walls cannot be built until all of these inspections have occurred and PASSED! If you wear underwear…. (grin) you have probably seen those Inspector 13 Stickers! I don’t know why… but even our underwear gets checked out! :-)
Point - Step back to Inspect and Review your Work Often!
- As you complete EACH area of your building process, it is good to walk away for 5 minutes… get a glass of water and when you get back, look back at EVERYTHING you have done thus far to make sure it fits with your plan! Are you menus limiting your visitors? Add more! On the opposite hand… If you have 100 MAIN categories… your site is not Niche focused and will likely be harder to get noticed! It is always good to revisit your plan every time you sit to work on your site.
Advertising the Home for Sale!
When was the last time you searched for a new construction home or saw a new construction home being built in your area? A home builder will start promoting the sale of the home well before the paint is finished on the outside! This is done to get a jump start on the sale process and get buyers interested before the final color choices and paint are applied!
Point - Once the Important Building is Completed - Start Promoting IMMEDIATELY!
Paint the House and give it Curb Appeal
People are starting to drive by and see the home… it is getting foot traffic and requests to see more. Lets dress it up and close the deal!
Point - Without Traffic, ALL of your work is for Nothing!
- While the look and appeal of your site is still very important, it is best left for the time when people are already coming to see it! Ask yourself what is most important about a niche store… looking pretty or making money? Of course, you are doing this to make money!
- When building a new template or working on the graphics of your store… ALWAYS create a new folder called “custom”. Upload it into your theme’s folder and use it as a working playground for your custom template. If you used the “Layout-1-left” theme for your store, then take that folder, create a copy, and simply rename it to custom. As you make changes in the custom theme… you can easily switch back and forth in the admin to view your changes. ONLY after it is 100% complete should it be left as the active theme!
- Make your new custom theme flexible enough to use on many sites! With a simple logo and css color change, the same template can be used in many places and still look somewhat different.
Evaluate your Properties’ Selling Value Often!
So we built this beautiful home, marketed it to buyers and still nobody is buying the home! Where did the builder go wrong? Is the advertising too vague? Is the home in the wrong area? Is the home too large for the prospective buyer? Is it overpriced for the market? These are all questions a seller will ask if their real estate is not moving!
Point - If your Niche Store is not Generating Traffic, Something is Wrong!
That’s is for this post folks… The best thing anyone can take away from this is that your success with Build a Niche Store is a direct reflection of the time you invest! The table below represents a fair estimate of how much time each step of the process should take, from a novice to a pro!
BANS and WEB Novice Time Expectations on first site: 17-25 Hours on First Site!
A BANS or Web Novice assumes you have never worked with BANS, never used ftp, never built a website, never done much graphics work, essentially, you are new to all of this, confused as hell, and wondering what you got into! That 17-25 hours is not 1-2 days… it is 17-25 hours spent working on your first site!
Some BANS and WEB Experience Time Expectations on Site Work: 10-15 Hours on First BANS Site or New BANS site!
So, you have installed a few BANS sites or ANY kind of website, a little familiar with ftp, know a bit of html, designed a few graphics, essentially, you are not new to all of this, but you still have quite a bit to learn! Again, that 10-15 hours is not 1-2 days… it is 10-15 hours spent working on your site!
Good BANS and WEB Experience Time Expectations per site: 5-8 Hours/Site
So, you have installed several BANS sites, pretty familiar with ftp, know a good bit of html, designed several graphics, essentially, you are getting pretty good at all of this and starting to feel like a pro! Again, that 5-8 hours is not 1-2 days… it is 10-15 hours spent working on your site!
The entire point to this time guideline is that your first sites are going to take you much longer! Once you have the basics down into a pattern and get used to doing it over and over again, you WILL BE ABLE to develop 3-4 new BANS sites every week, depending on your available time!
When I launched www.slickninja.com/ it was up and running within 5 minutes. That includes adding the domain to my Hostgator account and installing the BANS software. I added 3-4 main categories and moved onto something else. 5 Minutes… The template was in my library of templates and only needed a graphic change (See www.earnhardt88.com, same template) that took 5 additional minutes! If you follow the Build a Niche Store Empire in 12 Weeks - You WILL get to this same point!
Mark
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9 Responses to “The Best Way to Build a Niche Store”
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What a brilliant way to explain the creation of a niche store! Very well done, Mark.
Re: “When building a new template or working on the graphics of your store… ALWAYS create a new folder called “custom”. Upload it into your theme’s folder and use it as a working playground for your custom template. If you used the “Layout-1-left” theme for your store, then take that folder, create a copy, and simply rename it to custom. As you make changes in the custom theme… you can easily switch back and forth in the admin to view your changes. ONLY after it is 100% complete should it be left as the active theme!”
I actually set up a test site for myself and work on template changes on the test site. After I am satisfied with my changes then I upload the template to my working site. This way I can make major or minor changes but not confuse any visitors with the sudden, yet brief, changes.
Rochelle
Mark, Please could you explain what you mean by “As you find that most of them repeatedly search for the same features over and over again, build your niche store based on those features!”
I have just decided on my first niche for bans, and am planning out my site very much as you suggest above. (I have built some sites before, just not bans…)
Terapeak was the clincher for me.
But I am not sure what you meant by the comment above…
Lyn, UK
@ Lyn -
Thanks for coming along! What I meant by the statement was…
Assume your Niche is about Jelly Beans.
if your keyword research shows you that there are 15000 daily searches for Jelly Beans and it is quite a competitive market, look one word longer, to Red Jelly Beans, or maybe even Sugar Free Jelly Beans, or Jelly Belly Jelly Beans… and build your niche around the LONGER Tailed Keywords and phrases.
Find the least competitive terms your niche dictates and target those lowest competitive terms.
Read back in segment 2 on researching your niche market for more clarity. But I will also spend a full week or possibly 2 weeks talking about building your store for the buyers and engines.
Mark
Hello Mark,
Thank you for your work. Have a question for you. Both of the sites that you mentioned as examples of fast work (www.slickninja.com/ and http://www.earnhardt88.com) are using trade names in their domain names. Do you think it’s OK?
Thanks,
Mik
@ Mik -
I actually did a bit of searching on the earnhardt 88 site before jumping on the domain name. There are several other sites using the same trade name in their marketing and while it is not justified, I dont foresee any issues with it.
In regard to Ninja - Sometimes, things are worth taking a risk! :-)
Hi Mark,
Great article, I can totally relate to all aspects. As regards the defined estimated times for building the sites, I am obviously on the steady side possibly getting too much in depth in the category research and adding keyword focussed descriptions and addages to all the sub pages. I will be totally honest my firefighting site took me approximately 56 hours to complete. But I love the software and look forward to the further stages of the Build a Niche Store Empire which will help me to work faster and more efficient. Many thanks Mark
David
Good insight Mark. I get caught up into the cosmetics of my site at the beginning - great for using the site for PPC, not so good without any SEO plans. I’m sure most of do - dreaming or visioning what the store will look like before it is even completed.
I’ve created several templates as well from one layout - cuts the development time down. The header and background is the only difference. Plug and play.
The link building part is one of the most difficult - in my opinion.
Can someone tell me how to add new eBay categories?
Hi Mark
I am really enjoying this series and playing catch up as I only joined BANS last week. In the break down you suggest spending 15-30 mins per page of unique content. What is your stratgey for creating a content so fast? It can take me up to a day to create something from scratch in an area I am not familiar with. I suspect you have a few shortcuts up your sleeve which I’d love you to share.
Mike