How To Create Profitable Ebay Affiliate Websites

Ebay Affiliate Program - The Good, Bad & Ugly

I’ve used the ebay affiliate program in the past to make some decent money.  The benefit of using ebay is that the content changes on a regular basis plus ebay pays a high percentage of profit back to its affiliates.

The downside in the past is that you had to stay on top of the code and make sure it showed relevant auctions. On some days I’d check one of my websites where I was using the ebay affiliate program and it was spot on. Other days, my site was showing auctions for everything from lingerie to collectible dolls from Japan! (the site is an industrial tool site)

When the ads were showing relevant auctions, I’d make pretty good money. When they weren’t, which was often, I wouldn’t make a penny.

I hoped that AuctionAds would change this, but I’ve had the same problem with AuctionAds as I did getting the code directly from ebay.

Eventually I got tired of fighting with the code and quirky nature of the ebay affiliate program and stopped using it. I’ve also removed all AuctionAds from my sites as well.

Create An Ebay Affiliate Site In Minutes

I kept hearing about a program, or script, called BANS on the DigitalPoint Forums. It was getting rave reviews from those who had used it. I was still skeptical because I know some of the Forum members would stretch the truth to make a sale.

So I researched this program. It’s called Build A Niche Store or BANS for short.

It’s a PHP script that creates webpages that have specific ebay auctions on them. It can even create normal HTML pages within your site.

What BANS does is create an entire website. It uses several templates that come with the program. One of the features of this script is that you can use it with your own templates by inserting a little PHP code. (which the user manual describes in detail)

I found BANS a lot easier to set up than I had originally thought it would be. I’m not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, so I was a little worried. However all the reviews I’d read stated the program was simple to set up and use.

And it was.

My first site took me about 30 minutes to get installed and set up the basic functions. My installation time for new sites has now been reduced to 10 to 15 minutes per site since I’ve became familiar with the script.

The templates that come with the script are customizable. You can choose the color and layout. If you now the basics of CSS, you can change quite a bit on the templates. The possibilities are nearly endless!

Getting Started With the Build A Niche Store Program

Before I go any further, I will tell you that you’ll need a CJ PID number (which you get when you joing CJ) and be approved by Ebay. These are simple to obtain, so I’ll not spend time on them.

Once you have the site installed and live, you can then begin to customize each page. BANS works off ebay category numbers. Once you’ve picked a main category, the script will even show sub-categories off of the main one if you want it to.

If the Category you choose is a big one, you could have literally hundreds of pages created within minutes.

I first used BANS on a site of mine that is 3 years old. I have never been able to nail down the niche for this site because I picked too broad of a subject when I first built the site. I’ve been wanting to make a change to the site, so once I had the BANS program, I wiped out the site and started fresh.

Within 30 minutes I had a basic BANS site up and running. Over the next several days, I created a custom logo and customized my Auction pages (which is important if you want you pages SEO’d, which in itself is important if you want free organic traffic from the search engines!)

Since this site was several years old and ranked fairly good for several search terms, I had early traffic. Not a whole lot, but enough that the site started making money within 3 days.

I wish I could say that about every site I built!

I then proceeded to make another site with a new domain. I was curious to see how long it would be before my first sale with a spanking new domain.

Again, I had BANS installed on the new domain within 30 minutes. In about two days, I had a hot new content rich website with fresh graphics ready to go.

I had the site indexed in Google within 4 days.

Then, the first sale happened on the 6th day. Not a huge sale, but a sale none-the-less!

That site is about two months old. I got all of the pages indexed and it’s ranking for some top keywords in its niche. (it’s a small niche so this wasn’t an Earth shattering task)

I’m now making some good change off this website.

More websites followed. (I have 7 BAN sites currently) My goal is to have anywhere from 50 to 100 BANS sites within a year. I’m concentrating on small niches and I’m working on each site making anywhere from $300 to $1000 per month. With the results I’m seeing so far from this program, I should reach that goal fairly easily.

Features Of BANS

One of the things that sold me on BANS is that it’s so customizable. I don’t want my sites to look like everyone else’s. I can also drill down to specific products and choose how many products per page are shown.

Furthermore, all auctions are relevant since they work off of category numbers and not “keywords”.

The other thing I loved is how it created sub-categories automatically. That is a huge, HUGE, time-saver…and money maker!

Other Features of the BANS program include:

• Choose between 1 and 100 products per page
• Up to 3 layouts per page
• Customizable SEARCH feature embedded into your website
• Ability to display or not to display auctions on your front page
• Product content is keyword rich and read easily by search engines
• Ability to add my own content
• Ability to add other affiliate programs to the websites. This allows you to add other affiliate programs to increase your sites profits. Many other BANS owners use Adsense. I used related Affiliate Programs to my websites theme.
• Content is automatically updated 24 hours a day as the auctions change…no need in constantly screwing with code
• Pages that BANS create are URL search engine friendly
• Ability to change the Title, Description and META tags of each page. Helps make your website more focused and unique.
• Member forum where you can find support and many answers to your questions about making money from this program.