How I make money with ebay affiliates stores
Posted by Jean-Baptiste Jung on Sep 20, 2008 | 54 commentsMany people on the internet wants top make money online with their websites. Of course, there’s adsense, but I tested another system that provided me many more money: Ebay affiliation with a totally automated affiliate niche store.
Making money with ebay
As I said in the post excerpt, many people wants to make money online and earn an extra income with the money provided, for exemple, by Google Adsense. Even if Adsense can be a nice money maker, don't expect to make a living only with adsense money (Or your websites might be very, very popular!). Reaching the bar of the $100 payout per month is already not bad at all.
Therefore, all isn't lost for the blogger or webmaster who wants to make cash online. I tried various techniques last months, and the one that provided me the most money was Ebay affiliation. Ebay affiliation is very simple: You register as an ebay affiliate, ebay gives you a code, you display the code on your website, and when someone click on your link and register on ebay, you earn XX dollars.
Creating an ebay affiliate niche store
I know what you're thinking: Yes, the comisison is generous, but people must register AND buy something for me to make money. For sure, if you're just going to display a 125*125px banner, chances are that you'll never make any money.
The solution is to create an affiliate niche store, focused on a category of products: Graphic novels, vintage guitars, ipods...There's a lot of choice on ebay. The affiliated niche store is a classic onmline store, but you're not selling your own products, you're selling ebay seller's products, and earn generous comissions.
How can we create a store like this one? If you're a good web developer and if you have a lot of spare time, you can use Ebay API. The other solution – that I chose – is to use BANS, (for Build a niche Store) a php script made especially for creating Ebay affiliate stores in less than 30 minutes.
Building a niche store and make money with ebay
Sadly, BANS isn't free. It will cost you $97. Sure, open-source softwares are the best, but happilly BANS licence allows you to create as many stores as you want. You can purchase BANS, and build 150 stores if you want. For exemple, a friend bought BANS 2 weeks ago and created 3 different stores. In less than one week, he already had his $97 back in ebay comissions.
Create your ebay affiliate store in 4 easy steps
- Signup on ebay and become an affiliate
- Buy BANS to create your ebay affiliate store
- Publish your store online
- Advertise a bit, and wait for comissions to come
Anyone here already tried BANS, or plan to do it soon? Let me know what you think.
Click here for demo and more info
Inspires me to start a niche store with my mother’s paintings.
She has been unable to have an exhibition for sometime now and the paintings are cluttering up her house.
If we can sell them online it would be a win=win situation.
I’m still playing with the idea of creating my first BANS but I wasn’t sure if I would spend $97 for a script. It’s surely a good alternative source of income.
Anyway, I have taken the first step of joining eBay affiliate and at this point of time, the rest is not in my top priority yet.
Yan
Well said! I have 37 BANS stores (at last count) and they definitely make a little extra income each month for me. I made my $97.00 back in about a month and use the rest of my profits now to pay for renewing my domain names (almost 300 and counting!).
I definitely recommend BANS for people looking to generate a little extra income.
@Kyle: 37 stores? Wow! But since BANS licence allows you to use the script on different sites, you’re totally right! BANS is indeed a very good source for an extra income, and I plan to create more stores soon!
interesting revenue alternative. i too though balk a bit at the $97 price tag, but i think i’ll look into it more. the idea of setting up a niche store is fascinating.
heard tht phpbay is another solution for this, I would personally make stores based on apis than buy these custom stores.
And do you drive traffic to it from ppc ?
@The Anand: I heard about phpbay too, but never tried it. And yes, some traffic come by ppc. Having ads in google search results is very good for traffic!
Yea, affliate success depends on how much targeted traffic you can pull in by spending as less as possible
Interesting… I’ve been an eBay Powerseller for several years and never even thought of this… will definitely look into it, thanks jbj
You’re right. nich topic or content is the key to succesfully on ebay. We must have ebay affiliates store that discus something niche.
I make money online selling products on eBay that I don’t even own and that’s pretty cool. I looked for a long time to find something that would work for me which didn’t need a lot of programming. I am just not skilled at programming and that’s where BANS came in.
I have 6 BANS sites now and plan to add a few more shortly.
I made over $580 from BANS last month and over $1200 this year.
Congratulations! BANS is definitely a nice source of income!
People ACTUALLY make money via affiliate route, interesting, I have been trying for almost two months now and I have invested close to $ 3000, to earn less than $200. I am about to five up on it. MAYBE i’ll try one last time with info from here.
If I succeed I will post my comments back again.
Is there any demo versions of BANS in order I can try it before I buy? Is it an SE friendly script?
@mamuelek: You can click on screenshots to see the front end, sadly I don’t think you can try the backend. BANS is pretty good optimized for search engines, I have very good traffic from Google, for exemple.
@kyle: wow! great job.. that is a lot and im sure you have great income now. Im planning it as well.. i hope I will succeed on these. BANS is definitely great and reliable just as long as you are giving your 100% on it, it will surely grow.
I dont really understand hwat BANS does that I can’t do as a programmer, can someone please explain?
@Philip: The answer is simple: Nothing. A programmer can easily create this kind of script. But not everyone is a programmer, and even programmers can be busy sometimes…It’s up to you to choose
@Philip: anybody can do it as long as he has an eye for marketing. it is really a great help. you should try it too..
I looked at BANS too, it seems like it is a good way to get a store up, like others here, I am hesitent because of $97 price tag, I wonder how this compares to StoreStacker and other store builders.
I used BANS for a while, but I find that phpBay and WordPress are a much more flexible and SE friendly combination. Many BANS sites get dropped by Google and any income just dries up. I have converted almost all of my old BANS sites across now.
With phpBay and some additional, specific plugins from a great phpBay user your sites self build and are geo-targeted. This combination makes global affiliate marketing from a single site easy to setup and earn with. As a bonus, the author of phpBay PRO has a pre-release version of phpZon PRO (a brand new Amazon affiliate plugin) available for only $30.
Is the BANS license unlimited?
@Popular Technology: Yes, it is
I just stumbled across this blog and thought I would leave a comment about BANS. I started with BANS a couple months ago and made my money back the first month. I did my niche research and made quality sites. Lately thin sites have been getting deindexed by Google. The key is to have quality sites with content. Another option is to use WordPress/BANS templates. There are many people in the BANS community, including myself, who convert WP templates to work with BANS. This way you have WP in the root and BANS in a folder. BANS is the first affiliate program that I have made decent money with. However it is not a get rich program, you need to put in the work to see results.
Good article. But not all people understand the use, need special knowledge to manage the script BAN. How about the security of the site. Who is responsible in case of piercing. This full risk.
I like the bans software but I think success depends on a lot of factors including what items you target on ebay and how much work you put in building traffic and links. If you want to get an idea of how a particular site might do you may want start by looking at setting up a wordpress/phpbay site up with the sitemap and seo plugins and see what kind of traffic you can generate.
Bryan is right, but the thing about bans is if you do not use it right your site will get de-indexed. The first thing you need is a profitable niche, one that doesn’t have another 1000 people working the same thing. Say your selling golfing supplies, and you make a store with over 100 pages of products, and your thinking mmmm…google is going to love this. Well guess what, you and about 1000 other people are working golf, and you barely have any original content, then you are slapped with duplicate content, then you are de-indexed in a couple of months. I have over 30 bans sites, half of them have been de-indexed, the other half have not. The first two months I started using bans I made barely a hundred bucks, i’ve made 500 this month and thats including my 15 de-indexed sites. If you are working a popular niche then you better offer more than just ebay product listings..you better have content. everyone likes to say phpbay and adding wordpress to your bans will help you stay indexed, this is bull. if you want to make a successful bans store, you better make sure your home page is different then someone else running the same niche as you are. Bans is really all about the niche, and all about getting good links just like a blog, if you treat bans like you treat your flagship blog, then you have a good chance of not getting de-indexed. And remember, the sign up commissions are going to make you serious money if you know how to target them.
Hi there,
I am from Germany and I like the idea of the BANS tool. Unfortunately the software does not support the German affiliate program (as far as the statements on their website read). Anyone experienced with trying this lets say for another European market or even overseas to be delivered to Germany?
Thanks in advance…
@inservo: I come from Belgium but I promote the US program. English site = more clicks, and more sells!
I created my own BANS sites using ASP.Net (very easy to do), but my problem is putting actual content on the site, like real words. My sites did OK in the beginning, but I stopped promoting them and they have died off. I need to do some link building for the holiday season.
I have heard alot of negative comments lately about BANS. Such as that Big G doesn’t like them and is out to search and destroy them.
As someone above said the trick might be to add in original content and lots of it. But still i don’t think i will try it. I prefer creating a blog and then adding in a (store page) using the Wordbay wp plugin.
I’m not experienced with BANS, just relating what i’ve heard and read in various blogs about it. But regardless of what tool or software you use, there is no doubt that the eBay partner program is a very good one.
Have you tried StoreStacker? I’m thinking of buying it over BANS
I’ve heard about BANS before, but the problem I have is that sure… it might take hardly any time to set up the store, but then the problem comes with promoting it.
I mean, there’s no point having the store up there if no one is going to be visiting it… and that’s where I think a lot of people don’t realise how much time they’ll have to devote to it
I’ve heard a lot about building ebay affiliate niche stores recently but until I read this post, I didn’t really know what it was all about.
Your post is simple and easy to understand.
This niche store thing is definitely something on my future to do list.
That’s a good explanation of BANS. Ebay changes the seller and buyer rules so much that I haven’t looked into being an affiliate with them (afraid that they’d be constantly changing that soon) other than a couple of Ebay modules on Squidoo.
Interesting idea. I often create niche sites. I have thought of using the ebay api, but I guess I could drop 100 dollars to save a few hours
Why dupe people in this manner? Very few make liveable money on ebay anymore. Maybe two years ago, but not anymore. I had a friend who made good money selling antiques on ebay, but those days are gone. And who has time to advertise on ebay and keep answering inquiries and running to long ques in the post office for a mere 1-200 profit on a month…?
Ebay is overrated. And all their fees add up (with pay pal fees and ebay fees, its really overpriced)
I was so happy to find the real legitimate opportunities which guaranteed money from the comfort of my home. As there are so many scams on the web which are bogus.
your post is really very useful and preety understandable.
I read about ebay affiliate niche stores recently but until and unless I found this post, I really didn’t have any idea what it was all about and what it does.
I have no experience with BANS at all only relating what I read in various sites/blogs about it
I am thinking about this niche store thing in coming future untill and unless I got some extra bucks to invest here.first of all I need to have quality sites with content.
well,thank a lot
As a beginner, I’m starting with Adsense on my blog for monetization. But seeing probloggers like you who do not have any adsense ads, I get a little confused. I suppose it’ll change when my blog grows as well.
BANS is a little bit outdated method, there are many better ways to make money on Ebay. For example I run a website about photo cameras and there is a special section where my visitors can order a camera from Ebay. The website brings me more than $1300 per months. I recommend you to try this method too.
I took a look at Bans 2+ years ago and wasn’t too impressed but I haave heard a lot of good things since.
I have used phpbay and I thinks it’s great - I have used this on a number of sites and generated a little revenue. If you take a look at my site you’ll see exactly what you get. The pages listed in the top left I set up. he pages listed as ABOUT…. in the bottom left are mostly generated by site visitors. The eBay in the right column is just a group of products.
I can use phpbay entirely from within wordpress and in 3 ways:-
1 - use as a sidebar widget to have something on each page.
2 - use to generate new PAGES (THAT’S HOW i NORMALLY USE IT)
Am only just getting into Ebay as a potential affiliate this weekend, hope there’s room for one more
Normally i use art schemes which offer good commisions, but can put this alongside them too. I already have some blogs with good content, which i find crucial for standing out from the crowd. Do people have suggestions for finding Ebay target markets? My expertise lies in art, but am happy to use domain enclosed for wider purpose.
In terms of click throughs, i have found that inline small tables of products wrapped by decent relevant content does best, and Google seems to prefer that too
Your blog review was really understandable and I managed to get the inspiration of starting my own account. I hope that this would help me specially with the way our economy is running right now.
cool find. Thanks saved this
wow well done. cool!
I used to have an ebay account, but things got scary. These days it seems that a lot of changes have been made to protect buyers and sellers (and not just feedback ratings, either.) I just might join up again.
Very well thought out and informative. I’m sure many others enjoy reading this too, but are just a little scared to post - anyway - thanks again!