Morning Drive
It is always a good idea to open your eyes and pay attention to your surroundings. New niche markets are everywhere. With the remnants of Fay moving through NC this am, it was easy to come up with a few ideas on the drive in.
- Windshield Wipers
- Raincoats
- Waterproof Jackets
- Umbrellas
- Compact, Small Umbrellas
- Galoshes
Of course there are many more possible niches to explore having to do with rain, what came to your mind on the morning drive?
Do the recent eBay changes affect my BANS Stores?
Mark over at thenichestorebuilder.com has an interesting post today about where eBay is headed with the site. While today’s announcements were not earth shattering, they were definitly a paradigm shift. EBay will be attempting to get auction and store sellers to list 30 day fixed price listings in the main site (core as many refer to it). Now eBay has reduced the listing fees significantly on fixed price listings significantly, but they have loaded the final value fees (FVF) the highest that we have ever seen.
My research based on my auction sales for the last 30 days indicates that I could have saved over $2500 in eBay fees with the new format. THat is only true due to the volume of listings we run and the fact that many items take more than one listing to sell. If a seller has a 100% sell through, then the fixed price is not the best listing strategy for them. But, if your auctions do sell at some point during the month, then the savings on the auctions listing fees far outweigh the increased FVF.
So what does this change mean for eBay affiliates? What this means for us is that with more sellers using Fixed price on core, our BANS stores will become filled with fixed price products! There is an option to show “Buy it now” items only within BANS settings page, but I have found a better way to show even more items.
What you want to do is add the show all items including store inventory format variables into your RSS Feed Links.
Caveat, Please make sure you make a copy of the FrontControl.php file ust in case you do something wrong.
What you wnat to do is, find the lines starting with about 2095 that have “$rss_url =” and add the store inventory format varible to the end of the link: &saobfmts=insif , that will allow you to show all fixed price items in your BANS store!
Choosing a Wordpress Theme for our Wordpress BANS Integration Project
You would think choosing a theme would be easier, but let me tell you, it’s not! Since my project site is in a tech niche, I wanted something sleek and dark.
Well I think I found something I like! The WP theme is called Freshy 2.0. This theme is absolutely amazing! The list of features is exhaustive.
Here are just a few of the features:
- Choose from several sub themes without additional plugins
- Left sidebar, RIght Sidebar, both or NONE.
- Top menu highlights at any level
- XHTML Valid
Honestly I am contemplating using this theme for Niche Informant!
If you haven’t checked out the theme, please take the time, you will not be disappointed!
Converting a Wordpress Template to work with BANS Series
Well,
A few days ago Mark over at thenichestorebuilder.com started this series for converting a wordpress template to be used with BANS. I decided to take a domain that I have had sitting around and follow along. Lets walk through the series.
- Choosing a Wordpress Template
- Installing your Wordpress Template
- Preparing for breaking down your code
- Moving your niche store off the domain root
- The default build-a-niche store template
- Build a niche store header.php
- Build a niche store footer.php
- Build a niche store styles.css
- Testing your work in different browsers
- Publishing your work
- Preserving your templates
These are just some of the topics that Mark will be covering in this series. I will also be interjecting my personal BANS and Wordpress experiences when something interesting happens. So please feel free to sign up for the RSS feed and follow along in this super informational series!
Can you really convert a wordpress theme to integrate with BANS?
Well,
Mark has done it again! If you ever wanted to try and add a wordpress blog to a BANS store, or even add a BANS store to a wordpress blog, now is the time! Mark from The Niche Store Builder is actually giving away his secrets to converting a wordpress theme to work with BANS.
This blog series will walk you through choosing a Wordpress theme to integrate with BANS. As Mark’s other efforts, I anticipate this reference will be easy to understand and well worth the time you will invest to watch the videos.
Here is a link to the first post. I will be sure to follow along and I suggest you do as well! I guarantee what you learn will be invaluable!
Converting WordPress Templates to work with BANS
What is “niche tasting”?
I mentioned in an earlier post that I have used my random niche generator to do some “niche tasting”. Let me explain for those who do not know what niche tasting is. Niche Tasting is similar to domain tasting, domain tasting is where a webmaster will buy 1000 or more domains and throw adsense on them and then return the domains that do not show a profit before the 5 day waiting period ends. Google has essentially removed adsense fromt he equation with their new rules, but the practise is still going strong with other means of monetization.
Niche tasting is a process where we set up pages on an existing domain that contain keywords and possibly links to actual offers that we track conversion on. If certain niches/keywords convert, then you have a winner!
My favorite affiliate program for niche tasting is the eBay affiliate program from CJ. eBay can provide a purchasable product for just about any niche imaginable.
Easy steps:
- Set up “Niche Tasting” PID.
- Make sure your links have a niche or keyword specific SID.
- Create the necessary pages with additional tracking.
- Wait a reasonable amount of time before checking server logs.
- Remove successful niche pages, and build out those specific sites.
- lather, rinse and repeat.
Now you may want to isolate your niche tasting to a domain that you would not care if it tanked. I would not want to tarnish a good domain since you can’t be sure exactly how Google will react to the sudden influx of unrelated content.
Please comment or share this if you found it useful!
Introducing my Random Niche Generator!
Well,
After reading posts about BANS - Build A Niche Store from several different blogs, I was inspired to register this domain and make my personal niche finding tool available to the public.
I have been using this tool for about 2 months now to find random niches and even do some “niche tasting” on another domain I have. The tool pulls an eBay category from the database and then using the API pulls back the top keywords used by bidders when searching in those categories.
I currently have the tool set up to return a maximum of 100 keywords. Essentially if the category gets a lot of searches, then you will likely get 100 keywords back. However on many categories, you get far fewer than 100.
I do have plans to enhance this tool, so shoot me an email, or comment on this thread if you have any feature suggestions.
YSM Now Allowing Publishers to Link Directly to Advertiser!
Yahoo! Search Marketing Becomes More Publisher Friendly
After more than six months in the making and much customer feedback and testing, we are pleased to announce that Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) has recently updated its editorial policies and will now allow U.S. publishers to direct link to their advertisers. In the past, YSM’s editorial policy prevented publishers from linking directly to their advertiser partners and required that traffic be sent first to the publisher’s Web site. The new policy eliminates this restriction and opens a much broader search marketing opportunity for publishers.
Yes fellow affiliates, you read that correctly! YSM is now allowing affiliates to link directly to their advertisers!
Let the Sales Begin!
Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.
Finding niches through everyday surroundings.
The importance of being OBSERVANT
As an internet marketer looking for the next great niche, you have to be very observant. By paying attention to your surroundings you will start to see tiny targeted niches everywhere. Now the truth is that many of these niches will not pan out, but there will occasionally be the diamond in the rough!
Here are some “Observations” from my morning drive…
- Deer sticker on back of pickup truck - hunting, taxidermy, bow hunting, hunting clothing.
- Geese on a pond - Paintings of waterfowl, waterfowl figurines, Duck Decoys.
- Rodeo sticker on truck - Souvenier Rodeo buckles, Western Shirts, Chaps, rodeo gear, tack equipment, cowboy hats.
- Paint work truck - Ladders, Paint, Paint supplies, detergent that removes paint from clothes.
As you can see I was able to come up with 4 broad niches with some good starting keywords in my 30 minute morning drive.
What niches do you notice on your morning drive?
Hello world!
Hello,
As many of you, I have been bitten by the affiliate marketing bug. I got into affiliate marketing about 2 years ago writing some scripts that used the eBay API to get current product data. After a year of making a few bucks a month I started focusing on learning more about choosing the right niche. This blog is where I will be sharing my thoughts on Affiliate Marketing and niche research as well as websites and techniques used to attain success.
