May 16th, 2008
I’m starting to have fun with making these Build a Niche Store sites and themes. The latest site I created is focused on The Incredible Hulk comics and collectibles. My first design based on IronMan, was already is a success which is showing earnings from no paid advertising. With the new Incredible Hulk movie coming out next month, we just might see another big success story for Marvel.
Still using Ian’s BANS Themes, I created the Incredible Hulk Comics site using his “baby theme“. When I first looked at his three themes, I wasn’t too thrilled about this one, but I’m actually pretty happy with how it came out. If you are already a BANS user, I recommend picking up Ian’s themes. I’m also hoping he has the time to create a new set.
I made a long screenshot and break down of the BANS Incredible Hulk Comics site and what each section of the page is made up of. The main ebay auctions are all powered and updated live from ebay, and if you select any of the links in the ebay categories section on top, it will produce results for that category within your BANS site. The navigation and content pages links on top are for pages that you create for your site visitors. The search box on the right will search through all ebay auctions and display the results on your page. Along the right hand column you can load your site up with affiliate banners or other methods of advertising. Ad spots available are 120×600, 160×600, 300×250 and a 468×60 along the bottom. Using Ian’s BANS themes, you can easily modify your design to make it however you want.
There is still one more theme in the Ian BANS theme set. I’ll be sure to create my next Build a Niche Store with that theme and will keep you updated. Look for the new theme post and site early next week.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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May 15th, 2008
Say “Hello” to the newest employee of MoneyReign Inc. 
Today FOXY became part of the family and was rescued from Burlington, NJ animal shelter. Not only will Foxy handle MoneyReign, Inc. collections and fraud department, but she also gets paid in bones! Reena and I have been visiting a few animal shelters in the area and were just looking around to see if there were any dogs that we meant for us. After seeing a few dogs, none of them showed the love and affection we were looking for, like Super Rocky Dog! We then were looking through PetFinder and found Foxy’s profile page.
It was URGENT for Foxy to be rescued and adopted, so we sent an email over to see if we could visit her. Lorainne from the Burlington County Animal Alliance www.bcaaofnj.org, got back to us and said she would bring Foxy to us and see how everything worked out. Today we anxiously awaited fro Foxy to arrive, with no idea on how she would act or treat us. Foxy is 5 years old and has a sad and crummy past, but her future with us is sure to be bright! To our surprise, Foxy is perfect and has shown us so much love and affection.
Popularity: 7% [?]
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May 14th, 2008
It been a little over a week since my last post on using Build a Niche Store, and that’s really only because of a lack of free time on my site. Today I decided to take my existing IronManComics.net BANS site and make it look like a real site and not an out of the box BANS site. There are several ways for your to recreate your Build a Niche Store so it doesn’t look like the thousands of other stores out there. The two most popular ways, are to design and create your own template, or simply purchase one from a designer. I called onto my good friend Ian Fernando, who has been playing with BANS for some time now. Ian recently released a few BANS themes from his blog and is selling three custom themed designs for only $37. I used one of his template designs to recreate the IronMan comics store.Below you can see the original out of the box design for the IronMan comics BANS store. The only thing I had modified in the original design was the header image. The new design on the right, not only looks extremely better, but it allows for me to target to niche advertisers and fill the design with more IronMan content. I also added a few more content pages into the site since the original design. There is still a lot more than can be done to monetize the site, I will continue to add new content pages, products and find relevant advertisers for the site.
Out of the Box Design vs. Custom Design. An Amazing Difference!
Earnings Potential
After going live with the IronMan BANS site early in the month, I just didn’t have the time to work on the site like I intended to. As for promotions, the only thing I did was mention it in my previous “Focusing on a Niche Market: IronMan” post. Since then it was indexed into search engines and received some traffic here and there. Right when I had the idea to create the site, I was anxious to work on it and build it into the great resource site and work heavily on the design. Even though I hadn’t touched the site (until today), I was logging into the eBay Partner Network every once in a while and checking my stats. As of today, it looks like the site has earned $10.13 in commissions. Yes, this is nothing compared to anything in the long run… but keep in mind, this money was generated with the crappy out of the box design and with no paid promotion. If you can create a few sites that make $1 per day (like this site), you can earn a few thousand dollars a year with just 10 sites. (1 site X $1 a day = $365… multiply that by how many mini sites you can create). With a little promotion and more custom written content pages, it should perform much better.
$10.13 in Earnings with No Paid Advertising… Small, but with residual potential…
I was excited about the idea of putting together an IronMan site to take advantage of the hype surrounding the movie and it’s massive earnings potential in the beginning, but now after playing with the site and design a bit more, I’m even more so. The addition of seeing that the site is actually earning a few bucks is pretty cool too. If nothing else, it just makes for a fun side project that makes a few dollars. Depending on your niche area and interests, you should easily be able to create a few Build a Niche Store sites and earn some residual dollars. It will be interesting to see if the site can bring in any new eBay members ($25 commission) and bidding activity since it allows for a 7 (bidding) to 30 (new member) day cookie on all eBay activity.
UPDATE: Incredible (Hulk) Build a Niche Store Themes
Popularity: 10% [?]
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May 12th, 2008
I previously wrote two posts on “Quick Tips to Improve Your Landing Page“, but what if you want to target towards specific products or services. Are you going to send traffic from your ad campaigns to your home page and hope for the best, or should you setup individual landing pages and campaigns for each product? Below I have included a few tips for you to use when building your product specific landing pages and campaigns.
1.) Don’t Sending Traffic to Your Home Page
Everyone loves to send and receive traffic to their home page. Unfortunately, when paying for search marketing, this is usually not the best scenario. When you send traffic to your home page, you are usually giving your users too many options and most will get frustrated and immediately leave. Instead of sending potential customers to your home page and offering several products, create multiple landing pages and ad groups based on different products. Not only will you provide your customers with what they are looking for, but you should also see a dramatic increase in conversions.
2.) Tell Your Customer What they Want to Hear
How many times have you gone shopping and asked a salesperson a direct question about a product, then they go on to tell you everything else about it and not what you wanted? If you are going to create landing pages to promote individual products and services, make sure you make it quick and easy for the customer to find what they need. Always provide a title, picture, description, specs, dollar amount and an easy to fund “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button. These are the most obvious fields everyone is looking for. If you have more in-depth information to offer, you may want to add additional pages or provide it below the actual listing.
3.) Repeat the Search Term on Your Landing Page
Sending your targeted traffic to a landing page which points them to a product or service they are searching for is excellent. Being able to further monetize that page is even better. If possible, try and incorporate the “search term” that was used in your advertisement, and have it re-appear on your landing page. Additional methods for increasing conversions and order sizes, are to include related products.
Quick Case Study:
I went to Google and did a search for “buy flip camera“. The first listing was for Amazon.com, who are one of the best (if not the best) in landing pages and converting sales. Before setting up your landing pages for product specific items, take a look at some of the big retail sites like Amazon.com, Buy.com or WalmArt.com. All of these sites are very clean and to the point, providing the buyer with the basic information they need, then more specs and user reviews when you scroll down. The call to action on all of these landing pages it to buy the product.
Amazon.com Success: Title, Product Name & Picture, Price and Add to Cart
Once you have created your product specific landing pages, continue to test and compare what’s working and what could possibly increase your conversion. Remember, if you are currently converting 3% of your customers to a buyer and can increase that 4%… you are looking at a 25% increase in sales. Your landing pages and testing are key to your success.
Popularity: 8% [?]
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"With great power comes great responsibility".... my Uncle Ben told me that. Haha, just kidding! I'm Zac Johnson and I've been making money online for over 10 years now. In short, I started making money online while I was in high school... but my passion for marketing and making money goes back way earlier than that. I created ZacJohnson.com to help motivate you to start making money online, and live the life the you always dreamed of.