BANS (Build a Niche Store) vs phpBay - Review: which is best?
71My first attempts at building eBay affiliate website were using BANS. You can read about my experience in my Build a Niche Store Review - which also explains what building a niche store means, if you don't know!
As I said in that article, I was concerned the BANS concept wouldn't have "legs". BANS encourages you to throw together large numbers of basic storefronts, with just enough content to disguise them as "real" websites - and I felt that couldn't be successful long-term. Search engines don't like "scam" websites that don't offer genuine content, and they're getting cleverer at recognizing them.
In fact, I've been proved right as Google subsequently "slapped" (deindexed) large numbers of BANS sites! While some BANS users are still making money through other search engines, it's a big chunk out of one's income to lose Google traffic.
Anyway, I wanted to build a real website with rich content that readers would want to come back to, and BANS didn't let me do that easily - so the hunt was on for an alternative. And I found one - phpBay.
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How are BANS and phpBay different?
1. What they do
BANS creates a website where you can list eBay products, then lets you add some content. In a way, phpBay is the opposite - it lets you pull listings from eBay and display them on your existing website or blog.
2. What they cost
phpBay is half the cost of BANS, and there's even a free version (phpLite). If you choose the free version and like it, you can upgrade to phpBay with ease - when I did it, I didn't even have to modify any of the phpLite scripts on my blog posts.
Just be aware that on the "Lite" version, you can't choose the "available to" option for your listings, which is a useful feature.
3. eBay listing options
With BANS, you choose which country you want to list items from. Your listings will show items from that country only.
With phpBay, you can list from just one country, but you also have the option of a dropdown box so your visitor can choose their own country's eBay - meaning that no matter where your visitor comes from, they can use your site.
You can also choose to list items "available to" a country, instead of just items listed on that country's eBay site. That's an important difference for many eBay users.
For instance, a British coin collector might have to pay a lot for an old Indian rupee in the UK, but he could pick one up fairly cheaply from India. A collector of modern French glassware is going to be keen to see glassware from French sellers, not just British ones. In fact, being able to access overseas listings is exactly what makes eBay so attractive to collectors.
I'll give you an example from my own store. When I tried to list belly dancing swords on my BANS site, I got no listings - because there are no sword sellers on eBay Australia. But with phpBay, I specified "items available to Australia", not just "items on eBay Australia", and got a whole page of items!
How do you build your site?
Of course, there is a catch with phpBay. With BANS, you can build your site in a day, even if you know next to nothing about the internet. Everything is spelled out step by step, they have a great forum, and the process is fairly simple. If you're content to add some simple text for your content, you're done and dusted in no time. Then all you have to worry about is driving traffic to your site.
If you use phpBay, you'll need a website or blog to add phpBay to - so if you don't already have one, you have some skills to master.
I set up my site using Wordpress. I found it relatively easy to use, but it took me longer to set up than my original BANS store - and even longer to tweak it! However, I'm much happier with the end result compared to the BANS version, and I'm more confident that I have an idea which will generate return traffic.
I now have three sites, a belly dance directory, a flamenco store and a ballet website. I chose the niches because they're subjects I care about, rather than because they're high earning. Dancers are famous for not having enough money, and we're only a small proportion of the population - but the sites do bring in a small income, and more importantly it doesn't feel like work to maintain them. I can see that if I picked more commercial niches, the income potential would be there.
For more information on what you'll need, and some tips and tricks on being an eBay affiliate, check out embitca's Hub on the eBay Affiliate Program.
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All text copyright Marisa Wright. eBay photograph courtesy of pbo31 on Flickr.
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Comments
Good article, Marisa. Nice balance of pros and cons. Look forward to more articles on your experiences with this.
Very well done Marisa,
great and clearly concise article, just when I needed it. Though I still don't know where to go????
Inspirepub, I agree that I'm undecided about the earnings potential. That's one of the reasons I favour phpBay. It gives me the best of both worlds - I'm having fun developing the content, while still having the eBay affiliate store running in the background.
Good article, Marisa.
Interesting Marisa: what's the key difference of the paid version of php versus the lite version? I think the main advantage of eBay is that it isn't Adsense: therefore you diversify your income streams!
Lissie, the paid version has a host of extra features which I haven't even attempted to understand. But the feature I bought it for was that "available to" option. My target market are actively looking for product from overseas that can be shipped to Australia, so BANS and phpLite simply couldn't present what they were looking for.
Ah you got the comments working again: you're right that is a very handy feature particularly for obscure items such as swords and dance gear!
With phpbay, you are limited by your imagination. I realy like the shop in the front and blog/articles based on long tail keywords in the background... to bring traffic in the shop.
There are many ways to put content in the wordpress. I like to create content in txt files and use another tool in the market to post in scheduled manner.
Don't forget that it is wordpress + plugins... No limitation. Really
I didn't know any of this. Wow, thanks so much for the work. I have to read this again and the Build a Niche Store Review.
An excellent review, Marisa. I am interested in BANS, but it does seem to have a limited shelf life. I like the idea of trying phpLite for free, and it could fit in well with my existing content websites.
P.S. I love your belly dancing site! It shows what can be achieved with thought and effort using a Wordpress blog, without any expensive web design software.
Thanks Caspar, glad you like the site!
I don't necessarily agree that BANS has a limited shelf life. I have been really pleased with my BANS sites, and the traffic they get continues to grow. I do think that a lot of people bought BANS and then threw up loads of pretty awful sites thinking perhaps that they'd make money fast. Perhaps they did make some, but poorly designed sites usually don't have legs. I put thought, research and energy into each site and provide visitors with real information, not just stuff for sale. That has paid off for me, and I continue to create more BANS sites.
BANS can be expanded and is a good starting point. If you are selling as an affiliate you should ask yourself if your site has added value for your niche. That will bring potential buyers back again and again. Content is still KING.
Hi Marissa
Thanks for your tips on making money from ebay.
I was interested in the fact that you are a dancer and are looking for ways to supplement your income. I am a dancer too and slowly building my own website.
Once I have sufficient organic traffic I will look at ways of converting the visitors into an income stream - which is the other way round from the BANS route.
One possibility is the phpBay you talk about, so thanks for that.
A friend of mine, who is advising me on my money-making online schemes (who knows lots and runs several websites), says one way is to put simple links on your site which go direct to ebay (you get these directly from the ebay partner affiliate scheme). One of his sites has about 1000 unique visitor per day and he makes around $150 USD per month from ebay and about $700 USD per month from Google ads.
Do you think phpbay would improve the ebay earnings?
My own site has a facility for online discussion and I would love to do mutual links with you and make some useful pages for dancers to read about how to supplement their earning.
My site is only new but I think it's going well so far.
Would love to hear from you
Odette
ps. I am only able to build my site myself because my friend advised me to use a program called SBI and taught me how to build pages. That wasn't a plug for SBI, it was just in case anyone wondered. It's quite hard and time consuming (long term) - but fun. I love it.
Welcome Odette, nice to hear from another dancer! To be honest, I don't expect my dance websites to be big earners - although it's a niche market, it's also a small one. And we all know that dancers never have any money! For me it's a hobby rather than a business.
Two points I'd like to make - one, gaining a readership and making money are not directly related. It's been demonstrated again and again, that your regular readers won't buy from you. It's the new visitors who land on your site because they've been searching for an item on Google - they're the ones who will buy. So don't think about "converting" your readership to buyers, it won't work.
I'm also concerned to read you're using SBI. Do you understand that if you decide to stop using their service in the future, you will lose your whole website and all the work you've put in? People seem to get passionate for and against SBI, but regardless of the rights or wrongs, it's NEVER a good idea to set up a website that you don't control yourself.
Running all my websites costs me about $100 a year. I don't know how much SBI is costing but if it's more than that, you should be asking yourself whether it's worth it.
I had never heard of phpbay before, so thanks for teaching me about something new. I have never tried BANS, but heard a lot of bad things about them as far as the search engines. That makes me scared to even try them.
I have a different system that I use, but not for Ebay. However, I can do a lot of different other stores and gear them towards my keywords and niches. The stores can be either put onto your web site in php, or you can get a javascript feed which you can add to your web page in nothing flat. As mentioned above in a comment, content is key. You must provide content that people need in order for them to come back to your site. If your content is helpful, they will buy from your store. Just throwing a javascript feed into a page will not get you page rank, because that feed is hosted somewhere else besides your own web site.
I am working on packaging my system for Clickbank. Hopefully in the next couple of months I will have it done. (If I can shake off my fibromyalgia and fatigue long enough to get it done!)
Like you, Marisa, I don't believe in paying big money for my web sites. I teach people how to build web sites for free at " Web Sites Free For Beginners " http://websitesfreeforbeginners.blogspot.com
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Inspirepub says:
17 months ago
I am yet to be convinced there is real money in being an eBay affiliate, but I definitely agree with you the BANS model has a limited lifespan!