Well, I have had the BANS software for a couple of days now. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it, but I do have my first site up and running. I was amazed at how quick and easy it was to get set up and running. It only took me about an hour to read through the manual, and install the first site, and have it customized just the way I wanted it. That even included finding a picture and creating a custom header logo.

I have not had a lot of time to really start trying to get traffic to the site, but I am hoping that Google will pick it up soon. I picked a niche that seems to have a lot of searches, so I am hoping to optimize the site to bring in a lot of free search traffic. I have been working (along with my wife) to create some content for the site. I think that will be an ongoing part of the process…much like writing a blog. Content is king…or so they tell me.

As I have been researching the BANS concept, one thing that I kept seeing was that the process can be very addictive. I think I see what they mean now. There are so many great options available, you will be tempted to jump in and create another store. I have several in mind already, and I am sure it won’t be long before I am back at it, trying to get another site set up.

I have been reading a lot of promising accounts of using the BANS system, and I am hoping that I can duplicate it. Many people set up 20+ stores, and then try to optimize them for the search engines. That is my goal right now. I am shooting for 20 stores, all optimized to draw in search engine traffic. I am going to try to refrain from paid search for now, at least until I see what kind of conversion rate I can get. If it is high enough, I will certainly consider using the paid search engines to bring in a bit more traffic.

You will probably get a lot of updates around BANS for a while, as that is what is consuming my “online” time for now. I hope this information will help you get started!