In reference to Sydney Johnston’s post regarding Build A Niche Store

Sydney Johnston is a person who’s opinion I have always admired and if you have been online for any length of time you have come to know Sydney as an expert in the online auction market.

I think this may be the first time I disagree with her about a product, and it’s not because I’m an affilaite of the product. If I don’t agree with a product, I won’t promote it, it doesn’t matter how much money I stand to earn.

Bottom line, Sydney has missed some key points and doesn’t have all the facts correct about the Build A Niche Store product.

Another problem: You have “A Choice Of 28,926 Niche Affiliate Stores To Build” This means, there can only be one of each of these 28,926 topics. Now, that’s not a bad thing – we don’t want 49 identical stores. But the thing is that if I build my own stores, I can darn well build whatever I want without getting permission from anyone else. You do NOT need the permission of the owners of this software to build as many eBay stores as you wish, with as many different products as you desire.

I’m not sure where Sydney has based her assumption that a BANS owner is restricted in any way in regards to what they can build. When you purchase BANS you are free to create what ever store from any of the categories from eBay. Even if there are other BANS users who have created stores based on the same categories. With a BANS license you are also allowed to create an unlimited number of stores on as many domains as you like without having to purchase another license. The only restriction I remember reading is if you were to sell one of your domains with BANS installed on it, you either have to remove BANS or purchase another license. As long as you are the owner of the domains you can create as many stores as you like.

I haven’t been through Sydney’s training courses to know what she teaches so I can’t comment on what her instructions are regarding eBay’s affiliate program, but I have been an eBay affiliate for more than two years and have had decent success with it, so I am neither new or a novice to using eBay’s affiliate program or building websites for that matter.

The key points to a BANS website is in the ease of setting it up and the shear volume of targeted auctions that can be set up in a matter of minutes. There is NO way I could ever come close to duplicating what can be done with BANS if I were to stick to eBay’s affiliate tools (for which I have used over the years)

eBay’s tools must be implemented manually on your site (unless you’re a developer and create your own tool such as BANS) they are Javascript based which doesn’t lend itself to search engine indexing and to be honest they just take far too long to set up wen compared to what you can do with Build A Niche Store.

As an example …

In a matter of 5 minutes I set up the following website

Bargain Baby Lots

Which is a basic default install of the BANS product. If I wanted to try and duplicate the number of auctions that are dislpayed on that site it would take me months of manually placing links from eBay’s affiliate tools, and then after putting in all that work nothing from eBay would be beneficial in search engine optimization.

I also set up – Bargain Strollers where I created a custom template for the site.
With a BANS install, every auction displayed becomes fresh content that gets indexed as keywords for your site, and when you use BANS as a way to integrate content or implement it into an existing website, you will have the ability to earn from eBay’s affiliate program much faster than doing it the way Sydney is suggesting.

Do you HAVE to have BANS in order to make money from eBay’s affiliate program? NO

Can you build websites without using BANS? YES

However, just as it is with any TOOL, a tool is designed to make what ever it was designed for EASIER, and BANS does just that, it makes earning money from eBay’s affiliate program Much Much Easier and produces better results.
Regarding Sydney’s comment about traffic … again I think she’s missing the point here.

Sure, if you’re new to online marketing or building websites you WILL need learn how to generate traffic, but there are many ways to do that and a lot of great help in the BANS forums as well as a number of places Online.

BUT …

If you’re not a newbie and you KNOW how to build websites and generate traffic then you have by far the best advantage and SHOULD get a copy of Build A Niche Store. You will understand the concepts and power behind the product, and the BIG picture is to build sites that utilize the eBay affiliate program and allow you to get them up and running in the quickest way possible. As an experienced online marketer, with your knowledge you can generate traffic that much faster.

I’m really not trying to pick on Sydney here, like I said I hold her in the highest regards and have respect for what she has done in the online auction community, but in my opinion I would rather get things done quicker and have better results than stick to a slow and tedious process for which I have done and don’t care to keep doing.

I think the money I spent on BANS was well worth it, in fact they could easily charge more for it and it would still be worth it.

If you’re interested in the eBay affiliate game, you need to see for yourself what can be done.

and YES, clicking here will take you there via my affiliate link

Enjoy . . . Scott