Understanding the Value of Build a Niche Store Being Sold

I have gotten “Hundreds” of emails in the last 12 hours asking what I think of BANS being Sold. To sum it up… I think its the best move made by Adam and Kelvin in 2009 and a very good choice! When they made the decision not to take it to the next level earlier this year, you could almost feel that a transition was going to happen sooner or later.

It all begs the question… Why would someone WANT to Buy Build a Niche Store?

The Value of Owning Build a Niche Store

Think of BANS for a moment… who was the target buyer of the product? In my opinion, Build a Niche Store was primarily targeted at new to moderately skilled people, who wanted to get into building their own network of affiliates with a minimum learning curve. To that extent, it has become one of the most successful Niche Affiliate Site Building packages in the marketplace and has a very large user base of people who are starving for more information on how to make money online!

Looking at the BANS Auction on Flippa, you can see that they mention over 10,000 customers of the product! To anyone who wants to build onto the BANS product, that is like having an audience of +10,000 people just waiting for you to open the doors to a new store with the EXACT product they are looking for! Assume for a minute someone developed a new version of BANS and sold it for $50. With a sell rate of only 25%, that’s an overnight income of $125,000 – believe me, if the new owner builds the right product, people will JUMP at it!

Who Will Buy BANS – Will it Be Me?

This was a common question in about half of the emails… and as much as I would love to say yes, the truth is, I simply don’t have that kind of money sitting around! I mean, cmon, its a half-million dollars… I saw where someone else posted they were considering buying BANS, but since they don’t know php, it’s not going to happen. Lets be real here, the buyer of Build a Niche Store is not going to be a programmer, blogger, or affiliate website builder… they are already going to have a team of programmers behind them, ready to build a new platform. If you have a half-million dollars of investment capital in the bank for the purchase, you have another $20,000 to get your ideas programmed into a new application.

The buyer(s) of the Build a Niche Store and N1Way systems are going to be seasoned business people, that recognize the value of this transaction is in its existing user base and platform popularity! They will have a solid business plan in place and listen to the needs of the community on what the new platform should do for them.

The new owners will understand that the majority of BANS users are primarily entry level site builders and need a simple to use and quick to launch engine for building affiliate websites with the least amount of learning curve!

What Should the New BANS Look Like?

I can sum this up in one sentence… “Nothing Like it Does Right Now!”

BANS was and still is a GREAT product for its time – but it has suffered from negative press and is somewhat limited in its functionality with all the other options out there in the marketplace.

When the new owners come along – they should recognize that eBay has soured quite a bit of its own affiliate base, and the new product should be rebuilt from the ground up! There are a lot of partner opportunities out there for affiliates and when, and IF Build a Niche Store resurfaces after an ownership change, I would expect to see a GREAT product, built upon a mix of feedback of seasoned affiliates and new site builders alike!

What are Your Thoughts?

Assuming that the new owners may just end up on this post one day… if you could build the next “Latest and Greatest Affiliate Site Builder”, what would it have in it?

Be real… lets give the new owners something to build!

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About the Author, Mark Hansen

Mark Hansen has written 468 article(s) at the Niche Store Builder site.

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. 

Latest Readers Who Commented on This Article

6 Comments »

  • Jake said:

    I agree… just as you’ve said here and just as K & A has said themselves, they are DONE with it!

    I’d much rather see someone take the reigns that was fired up about BANS and looking to take it to another level, than for it to sit like it has been with no direction!

    Reply – Quote
    # 6 October 2009 at 3:34 pm
  • Shawn S said:

    I vote for multiple affiliate platforms…eBay, Amazon, Overstock, etc. all tied into one script. That way you won’t be enslaved to one single program.

    Reply – Quote
    # 6 October 2009 at 7:32 pm
  • Ottidid said:

    If we can weather the storm that Google and Ebay has put our bans sites through, then this new change should make things better for us as well.
    The bans platform has made some changes that were good and some that were not so good, but you are right in saying that it is a good platform for making money that has had a bad rap over the past few years.
    But with the right direction some of us have taken it to a better place with wp and phpbay. But that would not have happened if bans had not been my first direction.
    I hope the new owners will be dedicated to us and try to help us succeed since that will help them succeed too…good luck to all of us..

    Reply – Quote
    # 6 October 2009 at 11:09 pm
  • Ben Johnson said:

    As Shawn said, I would want all affiliate programs built in in a similar way to StoreStacker (except that script sucks), plus:

    1) RSS feed
    2) Ping functionality
    3) A more flexible category navigation
    4) A built in contact page
    5) A privacy policy generator
    6) Improved template editing area
    7) Plugin capability

    There are more I can think of but I don’t want to give them all the ideas :)

    Reply – Quote
    # 7 October 2009 at 4:19 am
  • Chris Peterson said:

    I would agree with the thought that it’s a best move. I like the way you perceive their situation.
    Mark,
    Although a cliche, its a real smart post with the precise reasoning.

    Reply – Quote
    # 8 October 2009 at 5:45 am
  • Sonia said:

    I agree with most here, multiple affiliate platforms, I vote for all of Ben’s suggestions. Right now I’m struggling with one of my BANS sites (built with BANS template not WP) trying to figure out how to save it. For this month so far, it is earning 0 per click – even though there has been winning bid revenue and the sale items are exactly what my niche store products are targeting.

    Since I don’t think optimizing for EPN will be of much help (what else can I do – people ARE buying what I am listing) I want to try another affiliate program. The closest affiliate program that has enough items is with Amazon, but it’s a pain using their tools to bring in related products.

    BANS was too easy. PopShops has some items related to my niche, but would be really time consuming to have to apply to all the merchants to bring in enough items – and that’s if every merchant approves me.

    So I look forward to seeing what the new BANS owners can do. Any improvements would be welcome.

    Reply – Quote
    # 8 October 2009 at 1:54 pm

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