I’m guessing many of you are students of the Vic’s school of BANS website building and promotion. The idea is to build tons of BANS sites and promote them with BMD, Directory Submitter, Article Submitter and now Fast Blog Finder. All fine activities to occupy yourself with, but have you taken a look at the bookmarking sites lately? Have you seen the links that come through? I have to laugh. Tons and tons of BANS sites.
It wouldn’t surprise if these sites start getting banned out of the bookmarking sites. I can’t say for sure they ever will but it’s not like it doesn’t leave a big ol’ stomping footprint. And unless you are providing other content in the form of articles or whatever, the site is essentially a duplicate of the eBay experience anyway. I would argue it offers very little value to the web experience. It doesn’t have to be that way but who takes the time to do much more than write a paragraph introducing their “store”? And frankly I’d be surprised if Google didn’t dismiss them as the shit that they really are. And yes, I build BANS stores. I’ve made a few beans from sales coming from the stores. I continue to build BANS stores. But I also recognize shit when I see it.
Anyway, you can see how BMD and BANS are affecting the bookmarking sites. I did a spot check on a couple of those BM sites and the “new” listings or “recent additions” read like a BANS parade. We’ll end up killing this technique from overuse too. I have far more confidence that BMD will remain worthwhile than BANS sites.
BTW, StoreStacker is going to become more useful with the ability to add video and RSS. I see much more potential for a useful site coming from StoreStacker than from BANS.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I can’t use BANS because ebay won’t take me as an affiliate (they do not seem to like us Spanish for some reason…), so I’m signed up and waiting for Storetracker because at least it uses other sponsors as well as ebay (Amazon, yeah, but you never know…).
I must admit to feeling a bit jealous of all those people getting their BANS sites up, especially as I reckon I could make some good ones rather than some of the crap I see out there. But never mind.
Had the same thoughts as you about all those BANS sites in the directories (and linked to from the Article sites). It’s only a matter of time. I just hope some people can make real money out of it before it all comes crashing down.
So keep on building and making the odd few beans while you can
I’m in the same boat with BANS…
I built up about 25 sites and the more you build the more you realize that these BANS sites aren’t really providing much of a user experience – or as you so eloquently put it… yeah they’re basically shit! I’m not building them anymore and I’m not particularly motivated about promoting the ones I did build. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google banned them soon…
Call it … The Death of BANS. Go ahead and start a pool… how long before that headline hits your email inbox?
I’ve been adding the StoreStacker stores to Wordpress blogs for a while now too and continue to do so. Pretty much I’m just building WP Blogs and adding shit to them… That seems to be my philosophy these days… pretty intrigued by PHPBayPro as well but I’m already not a big fan of eBay commissions.
I’ll tell you what I’d like to see out of SS… I’d like to see a feature that would allow you to import listings from your store directly into one of your posts and also maybe have some listings displayed on your sidebar as well. Kinda what PHPBay Pro does I guess but I want to be able to offer more then just eBay stuff.
At this point I think I see more value in building a site with PHPBayPro rather then a BANS site (if i just wanted to promote eBay stuff – like something used). At the very least with a PHPbayPro Site you still have a WP Blog on your home page so if PHPBay doesn’t work out you can just deactivate the plugin and try to promote something else… wtf do you do with a BANS site besides start all over again if Google bans BANS… I’m really sorry about that.
How are your SS stores doing?
I agree with you. I do think that BANS is going to get slapped as being “thin affiliate” sooner or later, no matter if you add a keyword stuffed blurb to every page or not. I’ve been building more product based niche blogs anyway since they’ll give me more long term flexibility.
@Zania – eBay hasn’t been approving affiliates in some countries either due to business operation laws in that country, which is probably why Spain and Italy are being excluded, or the high level of scamming in a country, which is why most of Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia are being excluded.
I can’t agree more, splork. People are killing the bookmarking sites, and soon or later that will results in deindexing from google, or some sort of penalty for the bookmarking sites and the bookmarked sites. People just listen to everything, and they don’t think well. It’s time for a stop on this.
I’m now using other methods arround the bookmarking sites, that will prevent my poor sites from being penalized, if the bookmarking sites will get a penalty (and we know they will). Fortunally there’re other sites and other methods. It’s possible to make a good ammount of money with ebay affiliate in just one site, but not with BANS. I have programmed my own script, withe the power of wordpress behind, and i’m getting superb results.
The Death of BANS. That’s funny. But yea it’s coming with a shiny new ebook attached to it.
I too am attaching SS to XSP sites and WP blogs I host. SS is not a blockbuster either but I have made a couple of sales from Amazon which have been encouraging. One thing I like about SS is the RSS feed it generates. You can do some fun things with that for promoting the site.
It’s funny, after I bought BANS and started working with it, I got motivated to build more WPDFI sites. I agree that product based blogs are fatter than these BANS sites. I make some good sales with datafeeds and WPDFI. I should have bought 10 domains instead of BANS and built more datafeed stores.
@Frank
Yes, that could be one reason… I have trouble everywhere I try to register. It’s a pain.
Even Hostgator made me wait 3 days while they checked me out. They told me it was because ‘we get so many false sign ups from countries like Spain’ – they don’t get any from the US?
@Dinheiro – I don’t think that Google will penalize you for having links to your site from scuttle sites or major bookmarking sites, they’ll just not count them. If that’s the only links a site has, it will disappear in SERPS.
In terms of booking marking sites no longer being effective… this is what many people claim has happened to article directories and web directories. Yet we all know that they still do work. You just need quite a lot of them.
There’s way too much scaremongering in this business. Just keep focused and get links from as many sources. That’s what I’m doing. I try not to get side tracked by too much about speculation. I just care about results.
I think BM sites are effective. I just think that the days of bookmarked BANS sites staying effective is probably numbered.
I don’t do much bookmarking of BANS sites outside of a few scuttle runs when they’re first created. I try to go for strategic high PR back links, instead.
I don’t think of BANS as anything more than a way of “canvassing” for Ebay. They’re gateway sites, and getting hung up on user experience on a site that people shouldn’t be staying at for more than 30 seconds to a minute is a bit much, I think. I agree that flooding BMing sites with BANS submissions is a weak tactic that will probably die sooner rather than later. Then everyone will just move on to the next tactic.
It’s always better to roll your own. If you don’t learn how eventually, you’ll be stuck in a world of being forced to buy the next best tool for the job and barely clearing much in the way of profit after you’re done spending your money.
I just did a check of a few scuttle sites for kicks tonight. I was doing a BMD run for a few of my sites and wanted to make sure I wasn’t duplicating the listings. The few that I checked are nothing but BANS listings. How much value can this be anymore? If ever?
BANS has no user experience. They are like Ebay portal sites. Utter crapola.
“BANS has no user experience.”
Isn’t that the whole beauty of the system? I had read a bunch of stuff about putting relevant content on the BANS site, making neato templates, hiding the EBay logos, even hiding/changing the text of the individual ads. It hit me after reading (don’t hate me…) Blogger Unleashed that I was expending a huge amount of time on a site that I don’t want the users to see.
As long as we drive customers to Ebay, I don’t think BANS will die out so soon. We don’t actually sell any of the items in the store and as far as Ebay is concerned, we really don’t take that much money from them when we make a sale. We just split the ad fees with them. Of course, if the “clicker” is new and they buy, we get that fat ACRU fee.
How is anyone else’s ebay script any better or worse than BANS? They all serve the same purpose and Ebay is more than willing to let us drive traffic to them. I use the Ebay tools all the time to create links on my site.
You *do* have a point about the Scuttle/BANS technique. It may eventually get caught. Of course, other techniques like automated commenting are out there. If BMD blows up in our face, something else will come along.