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!

I think I have found my next online endeavor. I found a way to build nice looking Nice Stores while harnessing the power of Ebay, and their affiliate program. I think I am going to be tackling it over the next few days, and see if I can get something set up. But, let me tell you a bit about the program.

The program is called the Build a Niche Store program, and it appears to be a pretty simple program. First, you have to sign up as an affiliate of Ebay (scroll to the bottom of the page to find the “Affiliates” link), which is pretty easy to do. Looking at the affiliate payout scale, it looks like it could end up being quite profitable. Starting out, you will get about half of the fees generated by Ebay. Up to about $5000 you will get 55% of the fees generated by Ebay. The higher the closing bid over that, the more you will make as a percentage of the fees. Smaller items may not bring in as much, but you may very well make it up in the number of sales that you generate.

Next, you have to go over to the Build a Niche Store Site, and order the program that you will upload to your own server. You will install this program right on your site, which means that you will have complete control over it. That is a wonderful advantage! You don’t have to worry about relying on others for your site, and you don’t have to pay an ongoing fee to maintain and run your sites. You can also run as many sites as you want to run. You can build several stores, and see which ones are productive, and which are not. That is my plan at the moment. I hope to build at least 10 stores, and see what happens. Of course, once they are built, I will have to work a bit to write content, and then drive traffic to the sites.

One of the warnings that I have seen concerning the Build a Niche Store program is that it must be run on a Linux server. It is very hard to get set up on a Windows based server. If you need hosting, be sure to check out Bluehost. They have unlimited space, with unlimited domains. That makes them perfect for this type of online endeavor.

I will try to report back on how my stores are doing. I will post the links to the new stores as I get them operational. If you have used this program before, let me know how it is working for you. Go ahead and post the links to your stores in the comments section if you are running this script to manage your stores. I’d love to see what you have been able to do!

A while back, I wrote a post about how important content is, and how you cannot sacrifice content for the sake of SEO. Well, we should all learn that you don’t have to sacrifice one of those for the other–they are both very important! The goal is to have both quality content, and good SEO so that you can bring in the readers to look at your material. That is certainly a challenge, but one that I need to tackle (and I suspect there are plenty of other readers out there in the same boat!)

I came across a free e-book that I thought I would share with you, which is aimed at helping to improve SEO for your websites. It is written by Brad Callen, who is the creator of the SEO Elite software (which could be a huge help to you in producing sites with high page rank!) This e-book has a tremendous amount of information, as well as resources for you to be able to improve your Search Engine rankings.

Make sure to read the whole book. There are nuggets of information from the beginning to the end. If you are brand new to marketing on the internet, and want to get a jump on the learning curve, this will help you out a lot. So, take a few minutes to sit down and read this great material, and put the suggestions into practice. Brad will take you from just starting out to the point of driving great, targeted traffic to your site.

Get the free e-book by clicking this link: SEO Made Easy.

If you need a PDF reader, make sure to check out my post on the Foxit Reader!

I am always searching the net looking for things that may help me do a better job with my online endeavors. Today, I came across a program that is still in Pre-Launch, which looks promising. Impact Factor is site that offers a tremendous amount of information.  I have not yet had the opportunity to listen to all that is available there, but I intend to do so very soon.  It looks as if there is plenty of information to keep me busy for a while, and it looks as if it is very valuable information as well!  Here is a copy of the information that they are releasing concerning the product itself:

It’s tough to know who to listen to these days. Every so-called “guru”
has their own slant on things, so who do you trust?

Ken McArthur is one person that I trust and over the years Ken has
developed quite a stable of “trusted advisors.” They all have their
own viewpoints and Ken actually LIKES the fact that they don’t all
give exactly the same advice.

After all, each person is an individual and we all work differently.
What works for some, may not work for others.

What you need is a BROAD range of advice from people who really know
what they are talking about and who you can trust.

To build awareness of his new book, Ken is giving away training from
over thirty of his hand-picked personal advisors with all kinds of
specialties to help you succeed in business on the Internet.

Within minutes you can have access to over 100 hours of advice in a
wide range of subjects that you need to know about right now!

Imagine this …

“44 Complete Conferences including ALL of These ‘Need-To-Know’ Subjects”…

- “How To Stomp the Search Engines”
- “How to Build Search Engine Optimization That Works”
- “How to Write Effective Copy That Can Double Your Profits”
- “How to Make Amazing Profits From Niche Markets”
- “How to Create Products That Sell”
- “How to Get Reciprocal Linking”
- “How to Make Yourself the Obvious Expert”
- “How to Brand Your Brilliance”
- “How to Make Money From Blogs”
- “How to Get Free Publicity For Your Products and Services”
- “How to Build Your List By the Thousands”
- “How to Make Money From Affiliate Programs”
- “How to Take Joint Ventures Beyond the Basics”
- “How to Create Bread and Butter Niche Products”
- “How to Use Multi-Media to Increase Your Sales”
- “How to Use Booklets For Increased Profits”
- “How to Make Your Book a Best-Seller on Amazon”
- And many more …

All of these presentations are from top-level Internet Marketing Experts
like …

Nathan Anderson, Phil Basten, Kevin Bidwell, Anthony Blake, Mike Chen,
Joel Christopher R., Holly Cotter, Jason Cox, Willie Crawford,
Paulette Ensign, Michael T. Glaspie, Carl Galletti, Rosalind Gardner,
David Garfinkel, Frank Garon, Randy Gilbert, Darryl Graham, Sid Hale,
Doug Hudiburg, Jack Humphrey, Andy Jenkins, Gary Knuckles,
Dr. Jeffrey Lant, James Maduk, Jason Mangrum, Jane Mark, Ken McArthur,
George McKenzie, Paul Myers, Dr. Neil Shearing, Anik Singal, Jeff Smith,
Damon Smith, Kim Thomas, Peter Twist, Bryan Voiles, Ramon Williamson,
and Eric Wyson.

What’s even better is that it doesn’t cost a cent. You can grab instant
access to these materials and be learning about a wide range of Internet
Marketing strategies within seconds.

So start getting ready to build your business right now at:

http://www.kcjmarketing.com/Recommends/ImpactFactor

By the way, Ken is also including a great 48 minute live recording
with Ken and Brendon Burchard worth $97 all by itself, so don’t
wait a second!

As you can see, that was designed for an email list, but I thought it would be just as beneficial published here.  You can go over to Impact Factor, and sign up for free, access all the great audio files and learn a lot about how to run a business online.  I think it is certainly worth your time!  Good luck!

If you have turned on the news anytime in the last 3 or 4 years, you know just how big of a problem identity theft can be. We have heard time and again about companies that have “lost” the records of their credit card customers. That means that all of that data is floating around out there, where crooks can get a hold of it, and use if for their own dishonest purposes.

This can also be a huge problem for people who do a lot of work, or shopping online. We have a tendency to order products (informational products, or real products) online to help us with our online businesses, and we often enter our credit card numbers without even thinking about it. Most of the vendors online are completely honest, and on the up and up. But there are certainly scammers out there who will use the information that you enter into their web form for stealing your identity.

That’s where LifeLock comes in! LifeLock provides protection against identity theft, and guarantees their service up to $1,000,000. You may have heard the advertisements for this company on the radio. It is the commercial where the owner is giving out his Social Security number, just to show that he has enough confidence in his product to know that scammers cannot do anything to steal his identity.

You can make sure that your information cannot be used later for stealing money, making fraudulent charges, or opening new credit accounts by enrolling in this service.

Here is a quote from their website, explaining exactly what it is that they are able to do for you:

First, we ask the credit bureaus to set free fraud alerts on your behalf. Usually, this is done through our automated systems and the alerts are set within an hour. From time to time there may be a hitch and we have to do the first one manually, usually because they have a different address on file for you. If this happens, we’ll tell you right away and do what needs to be done to get the alerts set. (In case you’re wondering, we don’t charge anything more for this and our Total Service Guarantee is still in effect from day one.)

Second, unless your circumstances change and you tell us not to, every 90 days or so we ask the credit bureaus to do it again. You can do this for free if you’d prefer, but we make sure it gets done and that it gets done right. That’s where the oil change analogy we were talking about kicks in.

Third, we request that your name be removed from pre-approved credit card and junk mail lists and we keep making the requests as they expire. Statistics show that this is one of the many ways that thieves hijack identities. Plus, all that mail is just so irritating. Many of our members tell us that this alone is worth the price. If you are a do-it-yourselfer, you can do this for free, but why not let us do it for you?

Fourth, we order your free credit reports on your behalf from the major credit bureaus and they are sent directly to you. We do this every year. You can also do this yourself for free (Pennzoil anyone?).

Fifth, hassling with lost or stolen wallets is no longer a problem with WalletLock™. If ever your wallet goes missing, just give us a call - anytime, anywhere - and a WalletLock specialist will help you contact each credit card, bank or document issuing company, cancel your affected accounts and complete the paperwork and steps necessary to replace your lost documents*, including your credit/debit cards, driver’s license, social security card, insurance cards, checkbook - even travelers checks - at no additional cost.

Last, but certainly not least: If your Identity is stolen while you are a member of LifeLock, we’re going to do whatever it takes to recover your good name. If you need lawyers, we’re going to hire the best we can find. If you need investigators, accountants, case managers, whatever, they’re yours. If you lose money as a result of the theft, we’re going to give it back to you.

We will do whatever it takes to help you recover your good name and we will spend up to $1,000,000 to do it.

We don’t think you will see a guarantee like this anywhere else from any other company. If you do, let us know because we’d like to do business with them. There isn’t much fine print in our Guarantee. To see the details, click here. (Click on the “$1 Million Service Guarantee” tab)

If you have a reason to think that you will become a victim of Identity Theft, we can help you stop looking over your shoulder, because we’ve got your back.

This could be a great service, especially if you order a lot of products on the internet. For a mere $10 per month, you can have peace of mind. Click on the ad above, and try it out. If it is not right for you, you can always cancel your account…there is no obligation!

In my quest for making a little extra money on the internet, I often come across different ideas. I am always interested in “Home Based Business” ads, because that is really what I am looking for. I don’t want any get rich quick schemes, and I don’t want to anything to do with companies that are just trying to cheat you. I still haven’t found that perfect niche for myself, but maybe you will be more successful at that than I have been. I know there are many home based businesses that can make you successful.

I came across this link today that promises to hook you up with various home based businesses. Typically, I shy away from these because there is often a fee associated with it. But this one caught my eye–it is completely free! You simply enter your email, and they will work to set you up with as many as 5 home based businesses. I figure, if it is free, you might as well give it a try. I don’t know what they will send me, but I will be on the look out for it.

Let me repeat one warning that I have given before. When signing up for anything on the internet, make sure and use a “disposable” email address. Set up an address with a free service, or if you have your own domain, create an email address just for that purpose. Then, if you end up getting too much spam, you can always delete the account and start over. That is what I do, and will continue to do so that I can preserve my legitimate, personal accounts.

So, if you are interested in making money from home, with legitimate home based businesses, click the graphic above, and see what they send you. I will try to keep up with the matches they send to me and report back to you! Good luck!

Since I have been on the theme of useful, and “must have” plugins of late, I thought I would pass one on that is extremely helpful. it is called the Instant Upgrade Plugin for WordPress. This plugin does exactly what its name implies–upgrades your WordPress installation instantly. It will download the new files to your server, overwriting the old ones (except for the wp-content files and the wp-config.php file). It then installs the new installation, and runs the database upgrade. I have used this plugin to upgrade my blogs to the new WordPress 2.5.1, which is supposed to provide a security upgrade over the previous version.

When using this plugin, make sure to first download and install the WP Backup plugin that I wrote about earlier. I have not had any problems thus far with my upgrades with this plugin, but you certainly want to have backups of your work available just in case anything bad should happen!

This plugin is very easy to install and use.  Simply download the zip file, unzip it and upload the contents of the file into your plugins directory on your server.  Then, when you log in to your account, you will find the plugin listed on your plugins tab (far right hand side of the page in WordPress 2.5 and up).  Activate the plugin by clicking on the “activate” button listed with the plugin.  Next, click on your “Manage” tab, and click the heading that says “InstantUpgrade”.  The first thing you will be asked to do is to configure the plugin.  There are two options, FTP or HTTP.  I used HTTP without any problems, and you should be able to as well, unless there is a need to change file permissions.  FTP can be used if you are uncomfortable making the changes necessary on some servers for use of HTTP.  The plugin author recommends HTTP installation.

After you configure the plugin, it will run a test to make sure that your settings are valid, and that it will be able to upgrade your WordPress.  This is done in a matter of seconds.  Finally, it will inform you that you can now begin upgrading.  This setup, and configuring process only has to be done once.  After this, you can use it to upgrade with every new release of the software.

Upgrading is a snap.  Simply click on the “upgrade WordPress” button, after selecting that you want to install the latest version of WordPress.  The plugin does all the work for you, and in about 20 seconds (or less) you will be running the latest version of WordPress!

Enjoy!

I had another one of those “learn from experience” moments yesterday. If you tried to visit this blog any time over the last 3 days, you may have found my site down. It seems that my web host has been having some problems, particularly with their databases. When I finally called them last night to complain about my sites being down for the 3rd time in the day, they told me that they discovered that some of the databases had become corrupted, and they had to be deleted. When I asked if they had backups, they told me that the backups were corrupted as well (that is, they backed up the corrupted files, over the good files).

This made me realize just how important it is to provide myself a local backup of my data bases, just in case they happen to lose my data. I would hate to lose all of my blogs due to such a “bad luck” experience. I feel bad for the people who actually did lose their databases, because it means that they lost all the information from their blogs, and will have to start over!

So, I found a great plugin that will allow you to backup your WordPress blogs. You can find it by clicking here. Not only can you download the plugin, but you can find all the instructions for installing and using the plugin. But, don’t worry, it isn’t difficult. I am setting all of my blogs up to send me a back up by email every day. That way, I will never lose more than one day of data, which means only one or two posts on any given day.

If you don’t have a way to secure a local backup of your blog databases, make sure and get it set up. You cannot really rely on any web host to protect your data, as they can have the same problems as you and I can have. If they crash their servers, and their backups get corrupted, then you lose everything! So, just in case, backup your data locally, and then make sure to back up your backup! Call it overcautious, but it is better to be safe than sorry!

Here is one plugin that you should install if you are blogging on the WordPress platform. The Nofollow-free plugin turns off the default settings in WordPress that makes all links in the comments section of the blog “No Follow”. Most blog writers who are networking are trying to accomplish three things:

1. They want to check out other blogs, and learn as much as possible about their topics, niche or design.
2. They want to draw attention to their own blogs by leaving comments, with links, on other blogs that others can follow to their blogs.
3. They want to build their page rank by developing more links to their sites.

Unfortunately, on most blogs, this last objective is not met because all links are “No Follow” by default. If you install this plugin, you can allow those who comment on your blog to get those valuable back links. Of course, you will still want to keep an eye on all the comments, and not allow useless comments just for the links. Most bloggers will only comment when they think they have something valuable to say, so this is not usually a problem. However, it does become a problem, you can always delete inappropriate, or gratuitous comments through your control panel.

This plugin also has a lot of user control built in. You can define how many comments a user has to leave before the “no follow” tags are removed. The default is 5, but you can change that to anything you want. You can also control whether links put into the comment itself are “no follow” or not. Personally, I have this blog set so that all links attached to the name of the commenter is “no follow free”, but links placed in the comment itself will remain “no follow”. My thinking is that I want to encourage comments, but I don’t want people trying to put in a whole list of websites just to get links back to their sites.

You can download the Nofollow-free plugin by clicking here. If you need help getting the plugin installed or configured, visit the Nofollow-free plugin page.

Ok, I know what you are thinking…everyone and their brother is using AdSense now. And that is probably true. But for the very few out there that aren’t using it: Why not? This is an amazingly easy way to start earning a little money off of your blogs, even if you are not blogging to make money. Think about it, all you have to do is put a little snippet of code in your blog template, and you have advertising that can bring in some extra money. There are some things you need to consider when using AdSense, or really any advertising medium on your site. Here are just a few:

1. Integrate the advertising. Make sure that you insert the advertising into your template where it will look good. You do not want your AdSense block to look gaudy or out of place. There are some natural places that you can insert the code and make it look good. That leads us to the next suggestion:
2. Don’t over do it! Too much AdSense can make your blog look cheap. I know there are some blogs that I stumble on, and then leave quickly because I can hardly find the content around all the ads. You can insert 2 or 3 AdSense blocks on your site and it will look good, and flow with the rest of your design. Personally, I like to put one block in the header, and one block in the sidebar. In this particular theme, there is a block following the first post on the page.
3. Don’t fill your posts with AdSense Code. I have seen some blogs that put as many as 3 snippets of code in every single post. Again, that makes it hard to distinguish the content from the post. Some writers intentionally set AdSense code into the post in such a way as to try and deceive readers into clicking on their ads. I’m sure they make some money from this tactic, but it just makes me mad! If this happens to me, I generally will not return to the blog.
4. Make the code match your theme. Google has made it very easy to configure your code to fit seamlessly with your theme. Make the colors match, and tinker with the code until you get something that looks good on the page. Make sure your block fits into the spot you have ready for the code. Making it too large can throw off your whole template, or it can cut off the ad itself.
5. Place your code where it is noticeable, but not intrusive. This idea goes along with some of what I have already written, but it can certainly be repeated! Put your AdSense blocks in aesthetically pleasing places on your site. Don’t put it where it will interfere with the reading of your content. Face it, most people will read your blog because you have good content. If they find your ads intrusive to that goal, they will simply skip out, and go read someone else’s blog.

Some of these may simply reflect my own personal pet peeves, but that is ok too. You see, if they are my pet peeves, then they are probably someone else’s as well. If these tips will help to keep more readers on your site, and maybe even make a little money too, then they are well worth the effort!