Hello everyone! Last time we asked ourselves if we have what it takes to become a Niche Store Builder. Today I would like to take our discussion one step further. Now that we have (hopefully!) established this:
Where do we go from here?
How can we build a game plan for our Niche Store Journey?
First we must make some choices about how we want to run our business…
Niche Store Building is difficult work, but has great reward for those who put in the time and effort. This is something that I am currently working towards, just as you are. One question that I, like all other Niche Store Builder’s have faced is the dilemma:
Quality Vs. Quantity
This debate has some very differing views between veteran Niche Store Builders.
Some will swear by the fact that in order to be successful with Niche Stores, you must spend the time and effort to make them unique, quality sites with useful content and relevant information in abundance.
Others will tell you that visitors do not care about a fancy site template or 20 unique articles on your site, only about finding what they want, and finding it fast. So just get your Niche Store up and on it’s feet as soon as you can and worry about optimizing it a few months down the road.
So which path is the right one?
That is a question that I cannot give you an outright answer on. My personal opinion on the matter is somewhere in the middle, but leaning towards Quality . I feel that in order to be successful in Niche Store Building, you need to have a good number of sites out there working for you (unless you happen to “strike gold” with a smaller number). I also feel however that if you have dozens of stores, and they are all very generic and add little value for your visitors, you may get small bursts of commissions, but on the whole you will under-perform other sites that offer more value than yours.
Let me put it this way: I would rather have 5 fully optimized, content-rich Niche Stores than 20 cookie-cutter sites with little to no content.
Of course, as with everything, there are exceptions to the rule. There are webmasters out there who will throw up dozens of very bland BANS sites and manage to get great results through a combination of SEO and other marketing means. To each their own!
What has worked for you in your Niche Store Journey? Have you chosen to build a massive empire of BANS sites that are all relatively simple? Have you focused your efforts on a few stores and customized and added useful content to them? Are you getting the best of both worlds by spending large amounts of time customizing MANY stores?
I would love to hear what does and does not work for you!
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Congrats on your new blog.
I want to share a thought with you. I don’t believe in building cookie-cutter BANS sites, but I do tend to generate at least 10 BANS sites a month. All of them use my optimized templates as the base frame.
Once they go live, after a few months, you will notice that some stores out-perform the others by a big margin. Then I select these stores to be optimized even more. I found this method work great for me.
Quality vs Quantity? I don’t know. I like the formula to be Quality AND Quantity. You can do both with a goal plan.
Good luck.
Bo Bangs last blog post..BlogRolled – Make Money with Your Blogroll
Good points!
I agree, Quality AND Quantity is by far the best solution… *IF* you have the time and energy to devote.
Lately with my BANS sites I have been able to get the formula down to where I can get one site live per day if I really put my head down and work.
Now that does not include any marketing or link-building, just the site, with my initial optimization, custom header, etc.
I plan to also incorporate your suggestion of seeing which stores produce a month or two from now, and focus on their SEO and marketing the hardest.
Glad to have you here, hope to hear from you more!
How many links do you try to initial build for you BANS stores? My stores do great in the SEs at first, but then the traffic dies. I have a hard time building links to them.
Freds last blog post..5 Great Firefox Tips
Hi Fred, thanks for your question.
I think that link-building is one of those things for BANS stores that you can never do too much of. When I launch a store, I immediately head over to SocialMarker (or SocialPoster) and get as many bookmarks as I can, followed by at least 50-100 directory subs.
That is all in the first day of the launch of the store.
I will probably write a blog about linkbuilding soon, since I have found some great resources to help out with it!
But I would recommend to you: when you think you have done enough… Do more!
Hi there
I’m going to try the strategy of Bo Bang
What I’ll do is put a bunch of stores out there and then based on the initial results, push the ones with potential further with new content, linking etc.
Although I’m going to develop a logo that can be modified for each new store. Currently my store looks ridiculous.
@ Jonk :
While I agree that this is not a poor idea, my only concern is this…
How are you supposed to determine which stores have “potential” if they are not even given a fair chance at initial success?
If you throw 20 unoptimized, plain BANS sites out there, it will be very difficult to gauge which ones are most deserving of full time attention.
Out of those 20 sites, if you choose 2-3 to fully optimize based on those initial results, you may be passing up a few stores that (if they had been properly optimized to *Start* with) may have been excellent money makers for you.
I agree with Bo as well, building stores and then revisiting them down the line is a solid plan, just make sure you at least give each store a little bit of love first so they are not totally hosed before having a chance!
Jonk,
I never said you should put a bunch of stores out there and see what sticks. That is not going to work. You might be wasting your time and resource big time. All of my initial stores are “carefully” researched and given my full initial attention. I intend to make money with “all” of my BANS sites. Among these sites some will perform very well. Then I invest even more time and resource optimizing the ones with more result. AND carefully watch the rest of my stores and keep optimizing them according to my schedule.
Bos last blog post..Download Firefox 3
{ 1 trackback }