As many of you are aware, I still have one section left to complete in the series and that will be very focused on what to do after your store has been indexed and active for a short time. Thus it is still waiting to be completed! I have already contacted the winner of the Grill Auction site and gotten permission to retain access to the site for the future changes which will be dictated by traffic trends.

So… here are the results!

The Winner of Grill Auctions is Ed Akehurst with a total of: 564 referred visits!
Second Place is Rochelle with a total of: 389 referred visits! Rochelle wins full site SEO of one BANS store!
Third place is Otis Jordan with a total of: 165 referrals! Otis wins full site SEO of a BANS store!

Second and third place need to email me at mark “at” thenichestorebuilder.com with the sites they wish to have optimized!

Now for the total site metrics from Oct 15th-Nov 15th… (Not all came from the contest)

• 38,240 pageviews
• 3050 unique visitors
• Average of 12+ pages per visitor! (That’s HUGE!)
• Surprisingly, 49% of all visitors used FireFox and 47% used IE
  This is completely different than several ecommerce sites I manage, where they are usually in the 75% IE, 20% FF range. This tells me that a much higher percentage of the folks out there who are in the field of making money from affiliate style websites are FireFox users!
• The main process page was the landing page 1391 times - some of the referrals of the contest participants went direct to the main page as well and were tracked via the “addone” variable.

Now that the contest is completed, I will continue to make a few subtle changes to the site over the next 30 days. That process will be discussed in-depth along the way to help everyone continue in the optimization of their sites!

As many of you are aware, I have been moving the content of BANS articles over to the Niche Store Builder website. While I will continue to use this site to discuss ways we are earning income online, the Niche Store Builder site is going to focus primarily on BANS and different way to succeed with the product! There is no need to update your links or shortcuts, all will be handled with 302 permanent redirects on this site over the next 30-45 days, just 1-2 pages at a time!

Thanks again to everyone for participating! Don’t check out on the series just yet, there have been several requests for further tutorials, which will be starting immediately!

Mark

Someone will surely ask - why didn’t you just carry your laptop? I truly wish I could have, but my development machine has all the tools and most importantly, my data hard drives. It would be like trying to do the work of a tractor trailer with a wheel barrow!

Anyhow - I am filtering through the list of 350+ emails that came in over the 30 hour span… woohoo, aint it fun!?

I will use some time tomorrow to outline a customization series I will be writing over on the Niche Store Builder site. I intend to transition all of the BANS info to that site over the next 30 days and get the KCF site back to its original focus of discussing ALL different ways to monetize versus just focusing on BANS.

I am also going to write a few indepth articles expanding on keyword research, category naming etc. I think there I may have gone over that info a bit too quickly last time and if I break each section into its own full article, it may be easier to understand in the long run.

Mark

 Just to show the power of how research using wordtracker pays for itself in a short amount of time… lets look at a page that was added to www.grillauctions.com only 4 days ago. The page was: Compare Gas Grill Features, which our wordtracker research showed as being a great choice for an article with 38 monthly predicted searches!

Go ahead… google the term… or you can just click this link and see the results for yourself. The page has gone from non-existent to #1 in Google in just 4 days. EDIT: Page dropped down to 6th.

There are other tools out there to use yes, I will still ring the praises of proper research using wordtracker - it is simply unbeatable! If you were on the fence with Wordtracker, they are running a 15% discount on annual subscriptions right now… Click here to order wordtracker take advantage and use coupon code: us-annual-15 during the order process.

Note - that link above DOES CONTAIN my affiliate code. If you prefer not to use aff codes, just go to wordtracker direct and use the same discount code.

Mark

First things first - had to call my Dad and see how he is doing today! Turns out he is sleeping… so the 15 minutes I was going to talk with him gets pushed back to later this afternoon when he wakes up again! I will be flying back to stay with him again on Tuesday and will stay through the Thanksgiving holiday to turn up cans of Assure for our dinner! I wonder if it comes in Ham or Turkey flavors? (more…)

To go through this section it will benefit you most if your site has been active for 30 days or more AND it is being actively indexed each day. If it is not indexed yet, then search engines are not referring visitors, thus no search terms to look at!

So lets dive in… (more…)

Along with the winner receiving the Grill Auctions site, second and third place will EACH win a full search optimization of the BANS sites they choose!

Lets start talking about different ways to promote your BANS site… (more…)

Anyhow - I got my business back in order today and I have time again to work on another section of the process series, which is promoting your new Niche Store. I should have a good write up tomorrow in regard to that subject… in the meantime, you are all encouraged to read the latest Build a niche Store review over at the niche Builder site - it offers some insight on how to build out your categories to capture the search users.

Also - do a quick google search for Barbeque Smoker kits and tell me what you find…

When you form your categories around the high KEI terms - you cannot lose!

Mark

First and foremost, thanks to everyone for the kinds words of encouragement and prayers in regard to my fathers health! It is truly appreciated! Even though it has been a challenge to find the time to write each day, I am still deeply involved in the Grill Auction site and spend quite a bit of my free time working on making sure the contest winner has a good product and something I can be proud to award!

The site is still in the indexing process, but now shows more than 34 indexed pages, almost double that of just a couple days ago! In addition, a total of 12 of the targeted phrases now show in the top 20 SERP’s… I expect almost ALL of the category targets to be strong runners within 2 weeks.

The site has already produced both Google AdSense (4 clicks) and a CJ sale for a total revenue of $3.56. Not much I know… but in less than 2 weeks of very much part time and slow development, it is earning money! If I had pushed this site out in 1-2 days after registering the domain, it would be 1 month ahead of where it is now… The winner for this contest will not be disappointed!

I am still waiting for one of my boys to get my Grill Features article in my hands, but I think it is an issue of emails being crossed more than it not being done (Hint… Hint, Ryan)

I have had the combined contest results in my hands since yesterday morning, but have not had a chance to put it onto the screen - Here goes, results are through the end of day, October 31st.

• Ed Akehurst still holds the lead with 377 direct referrals
• Rochelle in second, is gaining significantly with 261 referrals!
• Otis still holds third with 94.

There have been two periods that the videos I uploaded have just killed my bandwidth limit and temporarily shut the site down for a few minutes… a few days, it has exceeded 5 gigs per day! That’s a big chunk of data… but I have made the proper increases to assure it does not happen again!

In case you all didn’t see, I also had a winner of my first Build a Niche Store Review over at the Niche Store Builder site! Once each month, a new subscriber is chosen to have me go up and down their site and offer tips and suggestions for immediate improvement! In addition to the review, I provide detailed keyword and phrase reports on how they should focus their efforts in category building! At some point, I will have a chance to offer this as a paid service to anyone interested in getting it done… I just have not had the time to code the back-end stuff yet.

Happy Reading - Mark

The Grill Auctions site is live and already bringing in targeted traffic! In the 2 short days since my last post, the site has been visited by all three major engines and they continue to come back daily adding more pages into their respective indexes.

In addition, a few quick Google search engine result pages (SERP’s)  for just a couple of our targeted terms shows we are already getting into the mix for business!

• Barbeque Smoker Kits #8 (Google SERP’s)
• Grill Auctions #1 (Google SERP’s)
• Chefmaster Indoor Barbeque Grill #14 (Google SERP’s)

I only listed a couple of the terms, but there are about 12 that are in the top 20 SERP’s with Google already. Why? Because we took the abstract terms (high KEI, long tail key phrases) people were looking for (Wordtracker search results) and created pages in our niche store to fill the void! This alone is the example of how your Niche Store will work very effectively!

So what next? Lets add some content to get MORE visitors! (more…)

On Weds, October 31st… yes, halloween, I am going to pick one lucky feed subscriber over at the Niche Store Builder site to receive a FREE Build a Niche Store review!

What exactly does that mean? Well… in my own infinite wisdom, I will take a detailed, microscopic look at your BANS site and offer very indepth suggestions as to what can be done to increase traffic and sales!

The only requirements for you to be eligible are:

• You must have a Build a Niche Store website
• You must be on the email subscriber list (enter in the upper right corner box)

Once the winner is chosen, you will be sent an email with the information I am going to need to proceed.

Good Luck!!

Mark