Yea I know, it appears as though I have lost my mind. I bought BANS. “Hey, didn’t you just buy StoreStacker?” Indeed I did. “Are you stupid?” No, not really. “Are you just saying you bought this shit to make a pitch for it on your blog?” Sort of. But not really. I am pitching it. I have purchased both. “Again, man are you stupid? They do the same thing.” They sort of do. But they sort of don’t.
I listened to Vic a few times on his VLOG talk about setting up BANS. I went to Justin’s site and checked out how he did keyword research. I went to Ebay and looked through the categories and started seeing the potential of the minutiae. How I could target specific categories.
In BANS I can build a website around a specific category. You can get real detailed in the offering on your website. You can niche the shit down man. Ebay is real specific in how they list categories and you can use that to build a very specific site. Just check out the breadcrumbs. It goes deep. And you know you’ll have product to offer. I guess you can do the same with Amazon too.
What I like about StoreStacker is how I can take PLR and build a site as normal, but hang a store off it. Yea you can do the same thing with BANS I guess, but SS allows you to be more general in your offering. I had an existing website where I needed subcategories that just wasn’t offered by Ebay but was in Amazon. For instance let’s say I have a camping tent site. In Ebay there may be hundreds of listings for camping tents. But they might not break them up like 3-season, 4-season, expedition, extreme, 8-person, 6-person, etc., like Amazon will (Maybe that was a bad example but I can’t get to Ebay here at work since we filter it to check).
The problem with StoreStacker and Ebay is the lack of granularity. It’s just not as specific as BANS. At least from what I can tell. But that is it.
I think the power of StoreStacker is you can build a more general store for your content site. I think the power of BANS is how deep you can get in the niche. Obscure stuff too that you won’t find on general online stores. I bought 25 domains specifically for BANS niches over the weekend. Super targeted. No way I’d want to write a 40 page content site on that crap. And no way am I going to put a StoreStacker store on them either. No way I’d be able to because the product is not on Amazon or in Crapbank. The power of StoreStacker will also be when they offer Wal-mart and Shareasale and LinkShare modules.
I’ve done a poor job explaining this. But I can make the case for both. I’ve bought both and like them equally. I think BANS is a bit slicker. It targets one thing and targets it real well. StoreStacker is going to be an engine that is going to have a lot of components that can be added in the future. I won’t be buying domains and building sites specifically for Amazon with SS like I have for Ebay with BANS. But that could change when the new modules get released. I would love to be able to import the datafeeds from all those affiliate programs in Shareasale. I don’t know if that is what they have in mind but if they can get that programmed that will be a monster.
I’m putting a bigger effort into making some money with affiliate programs. You can build these sites in like 15 minutes. I’m not looking to get rich off these stores. If I average a dollar a day per site it will be totally worth it. They are super easy to build. The hardest part is the what always takes time and that is keyword research.
I think both programs are fine. I think if you own BANS and you have a sytem and are making a ton of money, keep doing it. If you want to offer other affiliate products then get StoreStacker. I’ve got 25 BANS sites I’ll have ready to go online tonight. I’ve got 5 StoreStacker sites with a total of 1,500-2,000 products that I am now promoting. Not to mention WPDFI sites that feed me monthly checks from Shareasale. I like Adsense but I love affiliate checks much, much better.
There will be people jumping up and down saying how great BANS is. And another group of fans saying how choice StoreStacker is. Don’t listen to the BS. Both or either will do the job for you. They are both very good software.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks Splork for sharing your experience with these products. I often wondered how each worked and you’ve cleared up a few things for me.
Hi Splork,
I read your blog and just wanted a quick mention to another option out there called incomestores.com
It uses Amazon, Ebay and Commission Junction Products databases.
I am putting up a store here; 1800Shop4Us.com
You can be niche specific or general in your products yo choose.
Just a quick mention.
Mike
Cool Mike. Thanks for mentioning it.
I don’t get why people get so caught up in arguing whether X or Y tool is better. Typically, they each serve a purpose. I don’t know jack about Store Stacker, but from how you described it in this post it doesn’t sound like it serves anywhere near the same purpose as BANS. Another good one is PHP Bay Pro. Smooth integration with Wordpress. It can even list auctions by a specific user. So I use it to set up sites for clients who sell on Ebay. But it can do what BANS does and people do use it that way.
I use both, and maybe I’ll check out Store Stacker if I ever run out of steam for what I’m doing already.
Hey Splork – just a warning to anyone considering BANS. Since eBay has moved from CJ, they are rejecting applications based on country of residence, even if sites target US or UK customers.
There’re a bunch of posts on the BANS forum from people who have BANS sites but have now been rejected by eBay Affiliate Network. So anyone thinking of investing in BANS better apply first to eBay if you’re not from US or UK.
While we’re all throwing out tools that do the same thing, I’ve personally had the most success with Mony Tree, followed by BANS.
Looking forward to see your results with BANS Splork.
Chris
Scotch, excellent point. Definitely make sure you can get accepted to the new Ebay affiliate program before buying BANS. If you don’t get accepted, keep applying or buy StoreStacker and work Amazon/Crapbank until you do. Or you could work WP blogs with WPDFI using datafeeds fom Shareasale.
I also heard that you should tell ebay that you are publishing on hubpages rather than list any of your own sites. Seemingly they like hubpages.
I bought StoreStacker and am still on the fence about it. I hate that it’s so hard to change the template – but my real concern is updating the listings. So far, we cannot incorporate cron jobs and it looks like the only page that updates is the homepage, not categories.
That means for each category, on each site, we have to remember to manually run an update every few days (sometimes the auctions that are pulled are expiring the next day).
So I’d like your opinion – how are you planning to handle this updating and do you think it’s a serious issue?
I want to like StoreStacker – but it just keeps bugging me if it’s worth having to keep up with each category.
Check out the latest ebay module. There is a cron file in there.
In a way I bought SS for the potential as much as for what it offers right now. Being able to use offerings from Shareasale and Wal-mart and Amazon and Linkshare, etc. could be pretty awesome. I’d rather take a chance on $97 now and make a few sales with Amazon products than want the product 6 months from now when they priced it at $197 (guessing) or have to pay a premium for the modules I want. I have to figure the first 1000 will get some kind of break when the next modules are released.
The product isn’t perfect. BANS is on ver 3. SS is pretty close to offering what BANS does and it’s been out 2 weeks, plus you can use Amazon and Crapbank too. I wouldn’t let buyers remorse get to you just yet.
As far as the templates. I would be surprised if they don’t come up with a way to import templates into the system in some manner like their blog system. I’m with you about the templates. It’s kind of a bummer. But it’s not a big deal. Choosing the right keyword to get the visitor to my site and then have them clicking out to the store so my cookie will get embedded on their system is all I’m after. People will follow links to get to what they want to purchase, whether the site is pretty or not.
I’ve hung a few (SS) stores off my main sites, re-did some internal linking and have gotten a couple of sales from Amazon. Despite the shitty commish it was at least a $1 I made that day. If I can make a $1 a day, per SS store then I’ll be happy.
What I have to do now, which I don’t feel like doing at the moment, is going back and doing some real keyword research, write some content on each page and promote the shit out of it with BMD. As well write an article for the directories and submit a few links for the directories, not to mention make a few comments.
But today, I think I’ll build 5 hubpages. I’m just in that kind of mood.
Thanks for taking the time to give such a detailed answer.
BTW, I’m not sure how I found your blog, but it’s actually one of the first I’ve subscribed to a few months back. I’m not really drawn to negativity – but I couldn’t help but like your blasting the 7 people reading your blog – anyway, I found your bluntness to be a breath of fresh air and I like the way you respect your moods.
Thanks again.
Quote: “I’d rather take a chance on $97 now and make a few sales with Amazon products than want the product 6 months from now when they priced it at $197 (guessing) ”
Looks like you made a shrewd decision Splork – StoreStacker is already closed to new customers and you now have to sign-up for the re-opening ‘FIRST ALERT’ list. It’ll be interesting to see the new price, but your guess sounds reasonable.
Today I am sick of BANS. There is a bug or something with the software that is not letting me add new content to the site, i.e. the database. Sometimes it’s a problem and sometimes it is not. What I do know is I have spent probably twice or three times as much time with effing BANS sites as I have with StoreStacker sites. For every BANS site that gives me grief as I go through adding article content, I simply delete it and upload SS. Onto the main domain. I have not had one bit of trouble with SS, though I like the templates from BANS much better.