BANs and Other Scripty Things

Driving traffic to your web site or domain is one of the more tricky and time-consuming elements of any online marketing strategy.

Many domainers and marketers jumped on the bandwagon of BANS - "Build a Niche Store", which essentially builds a site based on a particular niche, by scraping content from sites like eBay.

For example, say you owned the domain name "cheapcellphonebatteries.co.uk" (which as at the time of writing was unregistered and available), you might load up your BANS software and create a niche store selling nothing but cheap cell phone batteries.

In order to get your content, you'd simply enter the details of the products you wish to sell on your site and the software would automatically load and update all auctions relating to cell phone batteries on eBay - or any other auction site that you might use.

You'd then add in your Google Adsense, Yahoo or other pay per click ad code and upload your site.

The problem with this is simply that any template driven software system that takes the work out of webmastering is likely to leave a great big visible footprint that Google can spot a from mile away.

It seems that BANS bubble is about to burst. Google have indeed cottoned on to BANS software and in typical fashion, have decided that it's on the undesirable side of the fence, along with just about anything else that is capable of earning a webmaster or domainer revenue from little effort.

Ebay too seem to dislike the practice of domainers and webmasters from actually profiting from their affiliate programs and have been expiring affiliate sites since around August. See this thread on the Ebay forums.

As regular readers of my blog already know, I don't really participate in many affiliate programs and certainly steer clear of the cookie cutter web sites that will earn me money in my sleep.

I do have a Google Adsense account and it earns me a few extra dollars each month, though to be honest, the amounts have been declining for many months now, as I don't update the sites on which I promote the program that often.

BANS sites are actually a great way of promoting products, but like anything else, the key has to be using regularly updated, original content in addition to showing the products available on the auction sites.

It seems that you should also, where possible, amend the templates that come with the BANS software, including if you can, the names of css files.

Google and Ebay know what they are looking for, so your job as a webmaster, is to make sure that they don't fins it on your site.

Though I don't use them myself, I would do if I felt I had relevant domain names and enough time to devote into customisation of the scripts and preparation of original content.

However, my question as always when these software products come along is simply, "could I make more money by promoting big ticket services that I can provide myself or for people I know?"

The answer to date has always been a resounding "no".

I know that flies in the face of the typical domainer approach of earning a passive income, but to be honest, I like working a little for my money - it makes me feel fulfilled.