This post is for owners of BANS or “Build a Niche Store”. If you haven’t purchased it or want to know more – you need to visit this page.
Those of us who are BANS owners received email late last week regarding the re-launch of the BANS web site, sales pages, forum, and the addition of new free templates. These are big changes. I’m glad to see the revamp of the site and sales pages. Everything looks more professional now. I really think a small percentage of potential BANS customers didn’t buy because the previous site and sales pages were a big too much “hype”. They looked a bit like some shafty affilate marketer wanting to push his spammy product down your throat (IMHO).
The 2 additional new things are the forum and templates. First, let me say that I think the new forum looks great. The topics make more sense and everything looks cleaner. Along with the forum comes a new set of rules. I think it’s great that they will no longer tolerate people being degrading, talking down to people, or being disrespectul. However, that’s something nearly impossible unless you have full time moderators reading each and every post (which they do have in place).
The new forum rules also state that you can’t have affiliate links for the sole purpose of promoting yourself. You have to actually have to add some value to BANS and forum visitors. I can see that too. What I don’t understand is the rule about a mandotory moritorium on talking about competing products. Kelvin and Adam don’t want anyone to post a single thing about ANYTHING that competes with Build a Niche Store. Don’t you find this a little weird (and PARANOID!).
First, let me start by saying that I think the new “free BANS templates” available in the forum for download are great! Too bad so many users have paid for templates of similar quality through third party developers for the past few years because the included BANS templates were so bland. These should have been free a looooong time ago.
I guess for me, I think that these new changes are great – but I’m just not as excited as a lot of other people seem to be. Mark the Niche Store Builder is enthralled it seems, and he thinks the “future looks bright” for BANS. I guess I always tend to over-analyze things and go into “what would I do if I owned BANS myself…” mode.
As Mark pointed out in his post, BANS has rapidly gone from 1,500 users to over 10,000 in the last year. On the one hand you can say that it’s been difficult for Adam and Kelvin to keep up with that kind of growth. On the other hand, as an affiliate marketer you think – do Adam and Kelvin even realize the potential (opportunities) they have?
Most online (and traditional) marketers only dream of having a product that they sold 10,000 times and having an immediate customer base.
From the BANS Marketing Perspective –
- You have a product that you sell ONE TIME and offer FREE lifetime upgrades and support for that can be installed on an UNLIMITED amount of domains. Is this a sound business model? Look – you just inherited 10,000 customers who paid one time and will never pay again!
- You have 10,000 customers that have a “base model” product. To enhance it they have to hack the code themselves, or pay a third party developer for themes, add-ons, headers, enhancements, etc.
- You have 10,000 customers that are to some degree “affiliate marketers”. Helping them with other affiliate marketing needs beyond sales and installation of a single script product would foster company growth.
The emails announcing these changes seemed a bit narrow minded, talking about everything being for the good “of furthering BANS as a product” and being an eBay affiliate. I think this misses the boat a bit. First of all – there is much more to being a successful eBay affiliate than creating a niche store with BANS software. I can make money as an eBay affiliate using WordPress plugins like BayRSS, or by using eBay’s own widgets available within EPN. I can even build eBay pages or entire affiliate sites using freely available open source software. It also seems as if they think you can’t be as successful as an eBay affiliate within setting up BANS stores.
It would seem that it would be smarter to capitalize and on the trademark “Build a Niche Store”. The term “niche store” is used by online marketers to describe setting up nearly any type of affiliate site in a specific topic. So are “niche site” and “niche blog”. I can create a niche site using a wide variety of services like goldenCAN, PopShops, Shopping.com, Chitika, Affilistore, NetShops, and a hundred others.
Adam and Kelvin don’t want you to talk about anything that’s “competition to BANS” in their member forum, so you couldn’t mention any of those other products or services there. Doesn’t that seem strange? The members forum is PRIVATE. People that haven’t already purchased BANS can’t see it, so talking about competing products (amongst existing customers) isn’t going to dissuade anyone from buying it. And if someone mentions something that causes a forum member to look into AND BUY a competiting product – WHO CARES! They already bought BANS (because they’re a forum member) AND BANS has nothing further to sell!! Get wise guys, acting this way is a bit like putting your head in the sand.
Things that would make BANS a “must-have” product and driving force for affiliate marketers
Consider this my “BANS wish list” and an open letter to both Adam and Kelvin…
Changes I would make if I were in charge of BANS
- An update adding BANS features now available in the current eBay API, like the ability to “Find Popular Searches” and “Find Reviews and Guides”
- Addition of a BANS API allowing developers to officially write BANS plugins and add-ons
- Online Marketplace for official plugins and add-ons to be sold, in addition to premium themes
- Creation of free integration plugins so BANS could be used in conjunction with open source software such as WordPress, Mambo, Drupal, Joomla, Noah’s Classifieds, MediaWiki, Aardvark’s TopSites, etc.
- Addition of a Certified Consultants directory so you can pay for BANS expertise for setup, enhancements, or custom add-ons and themes
- An expansion of the “Build a Niche Store” brand, creating products for sale to create niche stores as an amazon affiliate, or using datafeeds, or tying into other API’s – like Shopping.com, YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us, Yahoo Search, or numerous other ones
Again…this is merely me thinking, “if BANS could be everything I wanted – what would that be…?” Hopefully in the future we will see great things, and who knows – if we’re lucky maybe they will listen to just one of my suggestions! Are you a BANS owner? What do you think?
John –
You make several points that I cannot agree with more!! I think all of us have a Wish-List for BANS that would enable ti to do quite a bit more of what we need for the future…
The first step, was getting Adam and Kelvin back into the game. I think the huge growth in such a short time enabled them to do more than just BANS over the past several months and this current change was a message that they are committed to the growth, versus just sitting on the sidelines.
Hopefully, we can see some of their plans coming to a site near us in the future!
Great post!
Mark
Mark – The Niche Store Builders last blog post..Showing the Right Ads to the Right Visitors!
Great post.
Cheers,
Duane.
I just recently found your site (sites actually) and have been reading some of your posts and I have to say, I am very impressed with your writing. You give a lot of great info and a lot of good insight on your views of why things are.
This post on the BANS update is an excellent example. I agree with you 100% that the BANS guys could be doing more, but I think this relaunch is in preparation for some of these things. They must be considering ways to monetize their list better. Right now the only thing they have is the “Built by” link at the bottom of sites and only if it is not turned off. I think you will be seeing a lot more from them in the near future.
Again, great work here and on your other sites. Very helpful.
Steve at Home Based Businesss last blog post..The Secret to Making Money with a Home Based Business
“Creation of free integration plugins so BANS could be used in conjunction with open source software such as WordPress, Mambo, Drupal, Joomla, Noah’s Classifieds, MediaWiki, Aardvark’s TopSites, etc.”
Amen! The fact that there are still scripts out there that make it HARDER to integrate is amazing to me!
Web Design in Miamis last blog post..Miami Web Design
I appreciate what Kelvin and Adam are trying to do with BANS. The feeiling I got from the first email was that they were trying to weed out the riff-raff in the forums and the feeling I get from looking over the new BANS site, coupled with the email, is that they are thying to do the same with regard to people buying BANS.
There are a lot of hideous BANS sites out there and allthough there certainly is somewhat of a learning curve associated with BANS, you can tell there are too many people that have a BANS site that probably shouldn’t.
I think BANS is a great comprehensive product that if used correctly can be a very lucrative addition to your income. Sure there are competing products, that ought to be able to be discussed in the forums, but I think it’s one of the better options for those that aren’t technically inclined to get into the guts of things.
@Steve at Home Based Business – thanks for the kind words. My only hope is that BANS expands to become a product and business model outside of just that one script.
@Affiliate Confession – I can appreciate what they tried to do when BANS first came out, creating a script to put up affiliate sites easily with eBay auctions…and it was apparent that they put the script together for their own needs (to create niche stores) – and then decided to sell it.
now, after roughly $1 MILLION in sales from BANS they have the ability to take that product and brand to the next level, I just don’t know (marketing wise) if they even understand what they have. It’s like they have some strange unspoken loyalty to keep BANS what it is in an almost stifling way.
I mean – I’ll give you an example. I’ve been working with Mark the Niche Store Builder on some of the WordPress and BANS integration stuff. I remember when I first found he could write themes for WordPress that integrated BANS – there were some threads in the BANS forums talking about why this was good and absolutely everyone on that thread wanted BANS to work with WordPress. Kelvin, I believe, posted on that thread that they wouldn’t work on it, or support it, and he treated WordPress as a “competing product”.
That’s insanity! How in the hell is WordPress competition when (if I own a blog) I want to “add” BANS to my domain and “integrate” it into WordPress??? That’s just so sad – to see someone so close minded like that. To be able to market to the millions of WordPress blog owners and the potential BANS sales it would make (to existing Blog owners that didn’t think it was a good fit for them stand alone) is an incredible market.
And another example – you talk about the “guts of things” and how the average person that isn’t technically inclined enough to dig into code (and how that makes BANS attractive). Well, that’s exactly why BANS should either create an API for plugins or at the very least partner with somebody like popshops.com or NetShops to provide additional content (and products) for BANS stores. That’s where BANS become a “niche store brand” for multiple affiliate income streams and not just a script locked into only being an eBay affiliate.
Just had to add…
Not to mention all the hosting, wordtracker, and various other monetized links in the bans admin pages.
If I was a betting person, I would imagine the demand for a better way to integrate with wordpress is around the corner somewhere. I mean… BANS is great for getting the ebay affiliate store up, but after that.. its a challenge to add other things affiliate marketers want.
Mark
Mark – The Niche Store Builders last blog post..Showing the Right Ads to the Right Visitors!
I still think BANS rocks, but having more features and flexibility would certainly make it more useful in a niche site. I have several BANS sites up and a few of them integrated with WordPress, sort of. The successful sites are still the ones with the most backlinks, not the most content. Having the ability to add Amazon links makes no difference to me, but having a method to integrate with WordPress would be nice.
Regarding the profits, 10,000 customers does not equal $10 million in sales when selling through Clickbank. Commissions and fees right off the top take over half of that. Good point though Mark about the back end affiliate links.
Steve at Home Based Businesss last blog post..The Secret to Making Money with a Home Based Business
lol – A tree digs down before growing up.
You’ve both mis-interpreted and mis-quoted me although I do understand why you see it the way you do.
Time will tell aye. =
I think is is nice that we have a good system for posting ebay on our sites using BANS. The commisions are ok. Yes, I would also like to see some improvements to BANS like the Find Popular Searches” and “Find Reviews and Guides.
But one of the keys I’ve learned from the rapid growth of BANS, and Google cracking down on BANS.info is that I shouldn’t put all of my eggs in one basket so I’m ready to move on to other areas of product marketing like Datafeed Studio and Affilistore.
Some really good points there. It does sound paranoid about not being able to mention (PHPBAY) any other products (PHPBAY) on the forum…
I’m still not sold on BANS. I was looking forward to some updates to the software – specifically improved SEO and integrated blog. That would be well received. A complete CMS and BANS site all in one… oh, and multi-country capability with IP targetting!
I can only dream… (PHPBAY)!
🙂
Anthony.
Anthony – i-phone-store.coms last blog post..Create Free Ringtones for your iPhone – In Garageband
@Kelvin – thanks for stopping by…but a little more detail – or any hint at the future would be nice! =)]
@Anthony – BANS has IP targeting, multi-country capability, and even us zip code targeting. PHPBay just increased their price to $79 (not worth it). Buy BayRSS instead – $37.
Did the old forum allow affiliate links to placed in signatures?
Doesn’t that just allow people to misuse the site?
James
.-= Quick Home Sale´s last blog ..An independent review of the Find a Property Website =-.
signature links are quite common, and much like article marketing – it’s allowed in most forums to encourage people to participate.