Welcome and thank you for purchasing Build A Niche Store...

What you’re about to read is the blueprint to using BANS...By the end of this short journey you’ll have your first niche store setup on a new website or fully integrated into your existing site.

If you want to gain and share ideas with other BANS users then please join the members only forum first. I’ve tried to cover everything in this manual but you’ll also be able to use the forum to receive any additional help you need.

Before we get started please take a moment to sign up to the BANS user list. As new features and country specific versions of BANS become available I will need a way to send you these up-dates and unless you’re on my user list I won’t be able to do this.

With that said...here’s a quick overview of what we’ll be walking through in this manual:

1.Pre-Building (the things you need to do before you get going with BANS)2.Installing (getting your first store setup)3.Customizing (modifying the standard templates & using your own template)4.Integrating (integrating your niche store into your existing website)5.Developing (creating custom navigations, landing pages and developing content)

If you follow me step by step along the way, by the time we’ve finished you’ll be a BANS devel-oper limited by nothing but your own creativity. I hope that BANS far exceeds you expectations and you have great fun using it...

So let’s not wait any longer...let’s get straight into business and start using Build A Niche Store.

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1. Pre-Building

To use BANS there are a few things you’re going to need before we can get going (If you have an existing website then the first two won’t be of importance to you)...

The first thing you need for any website is a domain name...you will also need a hosting account and of course you’ll need to be registered as an eBay.com affiliate...If you’re starting out from scratch then you might also want to become a Google AdSense publisher (We’ll come to this later as you’ll need your website built before you can apply for an account).

Choosing a domain name

A while back I wanted to create a new website based around eBay’s 7,000 used motorcycles. After doing a little research I found the domain name UsedMotorcycle.org. Now in my opinion this is a great domain name for a niche site. It tells the visitor what the site is focused on before they even visit the site...it’s easy to remember, reasonably short and uses the main keywords that my niche site is targeting ‘Used Motorcycle’.

Although this name isn’t a .com domain, when finding the right name for your site please don’t get caught up thinking you need a .com or nothing. (the value is marginally less and I would always choose a domain name in this order of availability: .com .net .org .info) Try and find a do-main name which encapsulates the purpose behind your site (That’s not to say you should buy:

used-motorcycles-and-bikes-for-sale-on-ebay.com). You want to keep it processible!

When I go looking for a domain name I always use GoDaddy. They have a great search feature which spins out different names based on what you want.

I’ve just been to GoDaddy to try and find a new name for a fictitious site which will sell Gibson Guitars. I then make a search for ‘Gibson Guitars’ (my main keywords). Out of the domains they recommend I found a few .com’s which really caught my eye.

GibsonGuitarsStore.comGibsonElectricGuitar.comGibsonClassicGuitar.com CheapGibsonGuitar.comFindGibsonGuitar.comOnlineGibsonGuitars.comMyGibsonGuitar.com YourGibsonGuitar.com

I thought any of these first four would really encapsulate the purpose behind my site (an online store where you can find cheap Gibson Guitars)

GibsonGuitarsStore.comCheapGibsonGuitar.comFindGibsonGuitar.comOnlineGibsonGuitars.com

I thought these two would work really well if I wanted to create a specific type of Gibson Guitar store.

GibsonElectricGuitar.comGibsonClassicGuitar.com

I thought these two would work really well if I was going to develop beyond my store with con-tent about Gibson Guitars.

MyGibsonGuitar.com YourGibsonGuitar.com

There’s really one thing to remember when choosing a good domain name...know what site you are building and encapsulate that idea as much as you can into a short memorable domain.

Setting up a hosting account

With a domain name in mind the next step to getting your website live is setting up a hosting ac-count. This will allow you to upload BANS and turn your domain name into a website.

There are lots of companies you can use to set up a hosting account...some charge $25+ a month to host a single website, some a little less and some a little more...but there’s one hosting company who really stand out from the rest and I recommend them to you: BlueHost

BlueHost charge $6.95 a month, you get a free domain name when you setup your account and you can host 6 websites with your account. If you ever wanted to build more websites then for

an extra $5 a month you can host an additional 5 websites. You could end up hosting 16 web-sites for just $16.95 a month (remember some hosts charge more than this for a single site).

When you setup an account with BlueHost you will be able to get the domain name you found earlier on GoDaddy free of charge. You’ll also be able to buy your other domain names through your BlueHost account and have them automatically setup ready for you to upload your site.

If you choose to buy a domain name through GoDaddy then to setup your domain name on your hosting account you will need to do a few things. The first thing you will need to do is create a new add on domain inside your hosting account (this will give you the nameserver details). Once you have done this you will need to log into your GoDaddy account and click on the do-main name you want to setup on your hosting account. From that section you will then be able to click on nameserver settings and enter the details you got above. Your site will become ready to use within 48 hours. GoDaddy do charge $1.05 less than BlueHost for domain names but for ease of use on setting up your domain names I would cut your work and pay the extra dollar to BlueHost. Once you’ve finished setting up your domain on your hosting account you’ll be ready to start installing BANS...before we move onto installing there is one last thing you need to do in pre-building:

Signing up as an eBay.com affiliate

eBay run their affiliate program through their affiliate tracker Commission Junction. Commis-sion Junction (CJ) handle all of the tracking and payments you generate from your eBay stores. Inside your CJ account you will be able to track exactly how many people you have sent though to eBay, how many people have bought a product, signed up as an eBay member, your conver-sion rate of clicks to buyers and how much you have earned on each sale...(you can even find out what products have been bought from your stores)

To sign up to CJ you will need to fill out their application form.

Once inside your CJ account you will want to sign up to eBay.com’s affiliate program by clicking on ‘Get Links’ and then making a search for eBay.com. This will bring up a list of all the eBay affiliate programs you can join. Looking at my screen, the eBay.com affiliate program is the 3rd one down...it is named just ‘eBay’. If you click on the eBay link a new page will open holding their affiliate program details...if you scroll down to the bottom of that page and click on the link ‘Apply To Program’ you should receive an automatic approval.

What you need to do if you don’t get an automatic approvalIf you are based outside of the US then you might find you receive an automatic decline. If this happens then please contact eBay on this email address - ebayaffiliates@cj.com - provide them with your CJ account number (this can be found at the top right of your CJ account) and an email like this:

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Hi,

I have just signed up to the eBay.com affiliate program but I have been automatically declined? I understand you have an automatic decline feature in place for people who reside outside of the US. I am currently developing some sites which target the US market and would really like to

integrate your affiliate program into them. (I’m going to be using your RSS feed to do this)

Please can you accept my application asap so I can start integrating your products into my sites.

I’ll await your response,

Thank you,

Your Name

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If you get declined then please don’t put yourself on hold until you get approved...you can still carry on setting up and playing around with BANS. Once they approve your account, your com-missions will automatically start to be tracked.

Getting your CJ affiliate PIDTo track your eBay activity CJ use an affiliate PID (this is a unique tracking number for your website). To get your PID you will need to log into your CJ account and click on the button ‘Ac-count’. From there click on ‘Web Site Settings’ and you should have a screen appear like below.

Your PID number is next to the text ‘PID’ and in the case above Build A Niche Store would use

the PID ‘2160870’. Keep a note of this as you will need it shortly...

If you click on ‘Add A New Web Site’ you can create a unique PID number for each store you build on a different site. This will let you track exactly how many clicks and sales you’re receiv-ing from each of your stores so you will know what is working and what needs to be changed.

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2. Installing

Now you have gone through Pre-Building we can move onto getting your first store setup.

There are four parts to installing BANS and if you follow me step by step you should have your first store setup in about 15 minutes (I can setup a store in about 5 minutes and by the time you’ve followed this process once or twice you should be able to do the same)

1.Uploading the files2.Creating a new database3.Importing the database4.Setting up your store

Uploading the files

The first part of installing BANS is uploading the files into your hosting account. You can do this through FTP software like Cute FTP or alternatively through File Manager which is inside your hosting control panel.

When uploading BANS please keep the file structure the same as you received it (place images into an images folder etc...). Please don’t upload the folder ‘Build-A-Niche-Store’, this is just a holding folder for the files and only the files inside of it need to be uploaded.

Whe you upload BANS you can place the files inside any part of your website that you choose...if you are adding a store into an existing site then you might want to create a new folder named ‘store’ and upload into that... If you are building a new site with BANS then you will want to up-load everything into your top level directory so your store will appear when you visit your main URL.

Once you have uploaded BANS there is one change you need to make to the file named set-tings.php. You will need to CHMOD (change the file permissions) to 777...If you don’t know what this means or how you can do this then let me show you.

How to CHMOD settings.php using Cute FTPOnce you have logged into your hosting account through Cute FTP you will need to go to the area of your site where you have uploaded BANS (you will see the file named settings.php), once you see this file right click on it and choose the option CHMOD from the menu which ap-pears as shown in the screen shot show below.

Once you have clicked CHMOD a new screen will appear which has 9 tick boxes. To CHMOD the file to 777 please tick all of the boxes or type 777 into the Manual input box as shown below.

How to CHMOD settings.php using File ManagerInside your hosting control panel will be a section named File Manager. If you enter this sec-tion and navigate to the area of your site where you have uploaded BANS (you will see the file named settings.php), once you see this file click on it and a right hand navigation will appear like the screen shot below. If you click on the link ‘Change Permissions’ this navigation will change and a box with 9 tick boxes will appear. To CHMOD the file to 777 please tick all of the boxes and click on ‘Change’ as shown below.

Creating a new database

With your files uploaded you can now create a new database. Before you panic about the word database...if you follow this through you will see that creating a new database is just as easy as uploading files. It should take you no more than a few minutes to finish off this last part of the install and move onto setting up your store.

How to create your new databaseInside your hosting control panel is a section named ‘MySQL Databases’. (Inside BlueHost this is normally on the right hand side of the screen in a box named ‘Databases’) If you enter your ‘MySQL Databases’ section you will see some input boxes.

To create a new database you will need to find the input box which has a button named ‘Add Db’ (or something similar) and enter a new name for your database (this can be anything).

In the screen shot below I have entered ‘ebay’ as the database name (it’s easy to remember). By clicking on the button ‘Add Db’ you will be taken to a confirmation page which will say that you have successfully created a new database. Please click on ‘Go Back’

Create a new username and passwordNow you will need to create a new username and password. If you find the input box which has a button named ‘Add User’ (or somthing similar) and enter a new username and password into the boxes then all you need to do is click on the button to create a new user. Once again you will be taken to a confirmation page which says that you have successfully added a new user and once again click on ‘Go Back’ to return to the previous page.

Join your database and username togetherNow that you have your new database and user created the last thing you need to do is join the two together (This will grant access for BANS to work with your database).

If you go to the part of the page which has 2 drop down menus like the screen shot below. You will need to select your username and database name from the drop down menus and press the button ‘Add User to Db’ (please don’t touch the tick boxes). You will again be taken to a confir-mation page and once again click on ‘Go Back’...

Your database is now setup and you can move onto the final import.

Importing the database

At the bottom of your ‘MySQL Databases’ page will be an image/link named ‘phpMyAdmin’. If you click on this link a new browser window will open and you will see or be able to select from the left hand drop down menu your new database name. Once you have clicked on or selected your database...a screen like the one below should appear.

Now on this page is a row of buttons and one of these is named ‘Import’ (if you don’t see an ‘Import’ button then you will need to click on the ‘SQL’ button). If you click on the ‘Import/SQL’ button then you will see an input box with a button named ‘Browse’. You will need to click on this ‘Browse’ button to locate the file named ‘database.sql’ on your computer (this will be inside the Build A Niche Store folder). If you select the file you will come back to the import page and by clicking on the button named ‘Go’...the import process will start. It will take a few moments to fully import but once finished you should see a screen like below.

You have now successfully installed BANS and can move onto setting up your store...

To setup your store you will need the database details you have just created which should be:

Database name:Database username:Database password:

Please note: BlueHost and many other hosting accounts will place your hosting account user-name infront of both your database name and database username. If I accessed my BlueHost account through the username ‘niche’ and I created a database named ‘ebay’...then my data-base name would now be niche_ebay, the same applies with the username, if I created a data-base user named ‘kelvin’ then my database username would now be niche_kelvin (your pass-word always stays exactly the same as the password you entered).

A few hosting companies will require another setting (GoDaddy is one of them). This setting is your database hostname. You should be able to find this inside the area of your hosting account where you have just created your database...It will look something like this - mysql123.secure-server.net - or a number like this - 222.2222.222 - If this setting isn’t entered when you setup your store you will receive an error which is detailed below. If you receive this error then please double check the database section of your hosting account for a database hostname or contact your hosting provider and ask them what your database hostname is.

Setting up your store

So here we are...reaching the end of the install...It’s now time to setup your niche store and this should be plug and play from here on in...

Depending on where you have uploaded BANS (top level or inside a folder) you will need to visit your store setup area using a URL like below:

http://yourdomanname/setup.php - top level installhttp://yourdomanname/folder/setup.php - folder install

Inside your store setup area are 13 entries which determine the niche store you want to build. I’ll go through each one with you so you know what’s what:

Site Name: This is used inside the title tags for each of your stores pages and also on the logo if you’re us-ing one of the standard templates. (You can leave this blank)

Store Category:This is used to determine what niche store you want to build. If you wanted to build a Golf Store then you would enter the category number 1513, your store would then be targeted to Golf with all the subcategories which fall inside of golf as your stores navigation. If you follow the link ‘View Category Numbers’ you will be taken to eBay.com where you can navigate through and choose the category number which matches the niche store you want to build. Please remem-ber to enter the number without the #.

Template Design: If you’re going to use one of our standard templates then this is where you can choose from the 30 pre-made designs. They are themed around eBay’s top level categories so that you can

automatically choose the one which relates to your website. (If you’re going to use your own template then i’ll walk you through using your own template in the next chapter)

Template Layout: If you are using one of the standard templates then this is where you can choose from a 3 col-umn layout (eBay products in the middle) or 2 column layout (eBay products on the right). If you are going to use your own template (which we’ll come to in a minute) then please make sure you select ‘3 columns’ for your template to work.

Database Hostname: This is set to localhost which should work for most hosting companies...as mentioned above, if you see a Database Hostname inside the MySQL area of your hosting account then place your hostname into this area.

Database Name: This is the database name you created earlier...If you are using BlueHost then please remember to place your hosting account username infront of your database name

Username: This is the database username your created earlier...again if you are using BlueHost then follow the previous explanation

Password: This is the database password you created earlier...please enter your password exactly as you chose it.

CJ Affiliate PID: This is what turns all of the products within your eBay store into your affiliate products. Please enter the CJ PID you got earlier.

Google ID: If you are using the standard template then you can automatically embed Google AdSense into your store. If you log into your AdSense account and click on ‘AdSense Setup’, then go into ‘Ad-Sense for content’, quickly click through to the end where you receive your code and the part of the code which looks like this:

google_ad_client = “pub-9340326990722121”;

In the case above - pub-9340326990722121 - would be your Google ID

Please make sure you enter the whole code ‘pub-xxxx’ like above and not just the number. If you need an AdSense account then once you have built your store click here to signup for an account with your new website.

ClickBank ID: This is used to change the bottom of your store into another way for you to make money. Where it says Powered by ‘Build A Niche Store’, you can turn this link into your affiliate link and earn 50% on each sale of BANS you make. You can take part in the BANS affiliate program here

Show eBay Logo: By selecting ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, this will place a small eBay logo above your main store navigation.

Number Of Products: Here you can choose the number of products you want to display on you stores pages. If you choose 50 then 50 products will be displayed, 200 and 200 will be displayed...

And Finally...Build A Niche StoreOnce you have entered all of your details click on the ‘Build A Niche Store’ button to finish...

Important Note!

Once you have setup your new store, have tested it to make sure everything is working and are happy with your above choices then please make sure you delete the file setup.php from your server. If you leave this file in place...anyone who knows how BANS works will be able to go to your store setup file and change things around without you knowing!

Setup Troubleshooting

If you run into any errors after you press ‘Build A Niche Store’ then there’s only so many things it can be,

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Access denied for user ‘your_database_username’@’your_database_hostname’ to database ‘your_database_name’

This error means that you have entered the wrong database name but your username & pass-word should be correct.

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Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user ‘your_database_username’@’your_database_hostname’ (using password: YES) in /your Build A Niche Store upload directory/db.php on line 2Access denied for user ‘your_database_username’@’your_database_hostname’ (using pass-word: YES)

This error means you have entered the wrong database name, username or password. Please double ckeck you have the correct details by logging into the ‘MySQL Databases’ section of your hosting control panel.

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Warning: mysql_connect(): Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ (2) in /your Build A Niche Store upload directory/db.php on line 2

This error means that the MySQL server doesn’t run through ‘localhost’, as mentioned as a possibility above and you haven’t changed the Input field ‘Database Hostname’ to that provided by your hosting company. If you can’t find your ‘Database Hostname’ inside your ‘MySQL Data-bases’ section then please contact your hosting provider about this for a solution.

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3. Customizing

With your store set up you might want to start customizing it. In this section we’ll go through modifying the standard templates and using your existing template to integrate your store into your site design.

Modifying the standard templates

The standard templates have been designed to allow you to modify them as easily as possible. For each template there is a stylesheet (named nichestore.php) which controls all of the fonts and colors throughout your store and a logo which you can modify or overwrite with your own.

To make changes to a template you will need to open up the BANS folder which you unzipped to get access to this manual...inside this folder you will see another folder named ‘templates’ and inside this folder you will see a list of all the standard templates in folders.

If you chose the Art template for your store then you can modify this template by opeing up the folder named ‘art’. You will see the file nichestore.php and if you open this up in a html editor you will be able to modify and then re-upload this file to the same folder inside your hosting ac-count to make the changes. You will also see a folder named ‘images’, inside this folder you will find the ‘logo.jpg’ file and 3 other images which handle the border of your store. If you open the ‘logo.jpg’ file in an image editor you will be able to modify and then re-upload to your server. You can create your own logo but please make sure you save it as a .jpg in order for it to work on your website.

Using your existing site template

If you want to integrate your new store into your existing site design then there are a few steps you will need to take to get your template setup for BANS. The first thing you will need to do is open up your template in a html editor. If you are integrating your store into a WordPress tem-plate then you will need to get your template by opening your website in an internet browser and then right clicking on your page. This will open up a menu and from it you will be able to select ‘View Source’. This will give you the source code of your template and you’ll need to copy this into your html editor.

With your template open and ready to customize you will need to place the 7 tags which run BANS into the relevant parts of your template. I have listed these tags below and provided in-structions on what each one does and where you should place it.

<?php include “title.php” ?>This tag controls the title for each of your stores pages and it needs to be placed near the top of your template code where you see:

<title>your title</title> - place the tag above in place of ‘your title’.

<?php include “keywords.php” ?>This tag controls the keywords for each of your stores pages and it needs to be placed just un-der your title tag where you see the code:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”your keywords”> - place the tag above in place of ‘your key-words’.

<?php include “description.php” ?>

This tag controls the description for each of your stores pages and it needs to be placed just under your keywords tag where you see the code:

<meta name=”description” content=”your description”> - place the tag above in place of ‘your description’.

<?php include “nichestore.php” ?>This tag controls the fonts and colors of your store and it needs to be placed just under the de-scription tag.<?php include “search.php” ?>This tag controls the search facility of your store and it needs to be placed within your template where you would like your search box to appear. I normally place this at the top of where my websites content would normally appear.

<?php include “sortby.php” ?>This tag controls the sort by drop down menu and title of the page you are on and it needs to be placed where you would like your sort by box to appear. I normally place this just under the search tag.

<?php include “nav.php” ?>This tag controls the category navigation of your store and needs to be placed within your template where you would like your navigation to appear. I normally place this in the left or right hand columns of my template.

With the 7 tags in place you have now set up your template to work for BANS. If you are cus-tomizing a WordPress template then you will also need to delete your WordPress navigation and place this tag in its place:

<?php require(‘../wp-blog-header.php’);get_sidebar(); ?>

Please make sure you have also deleted all of the content from your page template if you got your source code from ‘View Source’ (This is where your products will appear once you have split your template into a header and footer file)

Splitting your template into a header and footer file

If you don’t know what a header and footer file is then i’ll quickly explain...basically these files are created by splitting your template in two so it will wrap around your stores products when you upload your files.

The easiest way to understand how you can do this is to place the following text where you would like your stores products to appear (where your sites content would normally appear).

<---All of the code to the left of this arrow goes into a new file saved as header.php and all of the code to the right of this arrow goes into a new file saved as footer.php--->

If you view your source code and follow the above instructions then you will have created your header and footer file whch will now wrap your design around your stores products.

If you now upload these files your store will be fully integrated into your existing site design.

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4. Integrating

If you have used the contextual advertising program Google AdSense you will have no doubt found that by changing certain things like the color, size and placement of your ads you will increase your number of clicks and hence your earnings can dramatically change.

The same is true of Build A Niche Store...Having created an affiliate store for your website/blog it will generate more revenue for you if you take the time to properly integrate it into your site.

These are a few tried and tested methods of integration which have improved conversion.

Placing a link to your store throughout your website navigation

This is the first and simplest way of integrating your store into the rest of your site. By including a link to your store within your existing navigation you are now telling your visitors that you have a new section that will be of interest to them.

Example: Start Playing Golf - A link named ‘Golf Store’ has been placed on every page of this site and as the navigation is used alot by visitors to find their way around, by placing a link to your store in this way you will automatically be able to start directing your visitors through. When integrating your store like this you will want to place the link near the top of your navigation and for increased visibilty you could choose to highlight it like the golf site above.

Placing your top level store navigation throughout your website

The easiest way to integrate your entire top level store navigation into your site is to go to your main store page on the internet and right click on it to ‘View Source’ (as mentioned above inside Customizing)

If you copy your source code into a html editor you will then be able to see your stores naviga-tion wherever you have placed it inside your template. If you copy your navigation from this page you will then be able to drop it into your main website navigation where you want it to ap-pear (Please note if you have placed your store inside a folder then you will need to place the folder name infront of each link otherwise when clicked on it will try to search your store outside of the folder it’s in).

This is how you would change the links if your store is in folder: foldername/index.php?catid=xxx

The benefit of integrating your entire store navigation into your website like this is increased ex-posure of your store and the ability for your visitors to choose what part of your store they would like to visit.

Placing your store search box throughout your website

In the same way that you got your top level store navigation above by ‘View Source’, on that same page you will see your stores search box. If you copy your search box from this page you will then be able to drop it into your website where you want it to appear.

Again if you have placed your store inside a folder then you will need to change the following part of the code as shown below for your store search facility to work:

<form action=’foldername/index.php’ name=’search’ id=”search” style=”margin: 0px; padding: 0px;”>

The benefit of integrating your store search box into your site is your visitors will have the free-dom to search for something which they want rather than having to navigate through your stores navigation.

Placing links throughout your website content

The best way to make sales through any affiliate program is to be targeted. You want to be transferring relevant people through to relevant products and if you’ve got a content rich website then this content offers you a massive opportunity to connect your visitors through to products that will interest them inside your store.

Example: Using Start Playing Golf as an example again you can see how on their Golf Drivers page they have created three links to product search pages within their store. Website visitors who read this page are interested in knowing about the best driver for them to use as a begin-ner and as this article talks about the three most popular drivers and then enables the visitor to compare the prices of these drivers within the affiliate store this method can significantly im-prove the sales you generate.

You can create links through to specific products like this: index.php?q=Product+Name

You will need to place a + in between words in your search phrase

I’ll be going through creating custom search queries shortly in the final Developing section.

Another benefit of linking through to products like this is every search query link you create au-tomatically creates another content rich page for your website which targets that particular key-word. If we take a look at one of the search pages from the exmaple above: Nike Ignite Driver you will see that Start Playing Golf now has a content rich page targeted to the keywords ‘Nike Ignite Driver’. Pages like this will get indexed by the search engines and will mean that you can get direct search queries coming straight into your specific product store pages.

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5. Developing

We’re now at the final stages of the journey and in this section we’ll walk through creating more content rich pages in the search engines by developing custom navigations and landing pages, we’ll cover the benefits of developing another store for your site and also look into how you can go beyond a stand-alone store by developing and integrating relevant content.

By the end of this section you should have tons of ideas running through your head on what you can do next and should be in a position where you can see how you can develop your store beyond what you have.

Creating custom navigations

As mentioned in the last section ‘Placing links throughout your website content’, creating custom navigations is a great way of developing more pages for the search engines to index and ad-diotnally a better experience for your users to navigate through your store. This strategy can be used effectively to promote products that are currently popular inside your niche market and to extend your store navigation to provide links to brand name products which otherwise wouldn’t appear within your standard store navigation.

The easiest way to create a custom navigation is to understand how BANS works.Let’s say you have a website based on cats and you wanted to create a custom navigation which would link through to different cat collars within your store. I’ll pick one type of cat collar for this example, you would then replicate the process for the different cat collars you wanted to link to with your navigation.

Example: Breakaway Cat Collar

You would create a link to this product by using a link like below:

index.php?q=Breakaway+Cat+Collar

As you have a cat store this link would then search throughout the whole of your cat store to dis-play the products which contained the phrase ‘Breakaway Cat Collar’, If you wanted to search inside a specific category within your store for this product then you would change the link to:

index.php?q=Breakaway+Cat+Collar&catid=xxx - (xxx = category number)

If you wanted to make a search for this product displaying just Buy It Now Items only then you would change the link to this:

index.php?q=Breakaway+Cat+Collar&bin=y

You can use this method to create custom navigations which cross cut different categories as-well. You can see this method being used on this site - Snoop Dogg

This site has created a custom navigation to display all of the categories on eBay which contain products related to Snoop Dogg. (there is no Snoop Dogg category on eBay so this had to be done)

To create this navigation a search was made on eBay for ‘Snoop Dogg’, this provided a list of categories on the left hand navigation which contained Snoop Dogg products, the category number was written down for each of these relevant categories and was then used with the search query ‘Snoop Dogg’ to create the custom navigation you see on the site: The link used for this navigation is:

index.php?q=Snoop+Dogg&catid=xxx - (xxx = category number)

You can use your custom navigation throughout your main website to direct your visitors through to products which you know will be of interest to them.

If you’re using a standard template then you would place your custom navigation inside the header.php file just underneath the code: <?php include “nav.php” ?>

Creating landing pages

A landing page acts as a portal for a particular collection of products...eBay uses them a lot. This is eBay’s landing page for golf.

These are most relevant to large niche markets where the products that are contained inside them can be broken down into several key sections and for cross cutting categories like the Snoop Dogg site above.

To show you how landing pages can be used you can take a look around two sites below.

Site 1: Custom Bike has a motorcycle parts store containing over 100,000 motorcycle parts...as products are mainly broken down by motorcycle manufacturer in this market custom landing pages were created to do just that - Honda Motorcycle Parts Landing Page

Because more than one landing page was needed for all the different manufacturers, all of the landing pages have been linked throughout the sites left hand navigation so they are accessible to visitors.

Site 2: The BIG Golf Store contains 11 custom landing pages to extend on eBay’s golf catego-ries. Here is their Golf Ball Landing Page - This page, along with the other 10 can be reached through a top navigation which again makes them accessible to visitors.

The effect of creating custom landing pages is threefold:

1. You have a keyword rich page which targets the main keyword of the landing page. The golf ball landing page above targets the popular search term ‘golf balls’.

2. You have created hundreds of new targeted keyword rich content pages on your website. On CustomBike.org, the 19 landing pages collectively contain links to several thousand new pages all of which didn’t exist in the basic motorcycle parts store and all of which can be indexed by the search engines meaning the site targets thousands of new keywords though the creation of just 19 landing pages.

3. You have provided another source of navigation for your website visitors enabling them to easily find what they are looking for in your store which should result in higher conversions.

Adding another store to your site

If your site is large and covers several different niche markets which aren’t covered by just one store then you may want to build several targeted stores and connect them throughout your site. This allows you to bring thousands more products to your site visitors and additional pages to the search engines.

Example: Trading Card Central cover the trading card market but as this niche is split into two seperate niches: Sports Cards and Non-Sports Cards, if TradingCardCentral.com was to only build one store for one of these niche markets they would be losing out on up to 300,000 tar-geted products which their visitors would still want. By building and integrating two stores they target both markets and can offer their visitors a wider choice of products which will ultimately lead to more sales: Sports Card Store and Non-Sports Card Store.

If you are thinking about creating another store or wondering whether there’s another store you

could add into your site then I recommend you visit eBay. If you make a search for products that are relevant to your users then any categories that appear on the left hand navigation which aren’t already covered by your store might be of value to your site. If there are more categories which contain many products then it might be worth thinking about what store you could build and how you could bring these additional products to your users.

Developing and integrating relevant content

Following on from ‘Creating landing pages’, the creation of new targeted content offers the same benefis. Your aim with developing and integrating content should be to ‘pre-sell’ the prod-ucts that are of interest to your visitors. Product reviews, buyer’s guides and related articles will get your website more search engine placements which will result in more traffic and more eBay commissions.

If you take a look around the products you have in your store and use Overture’s keyword re-search tool to see how many people are searching for particular products each month then you can draw up a list of products that you can create more information about.

This is the single most effective way of making more money from your stores as your store will target more keywords in the search engines bringing you more targeted traffic which will convert better into eBay buyers because you have pre-sold them the products.

If you’re using one of the standard templates you might want to create a master template to use the same design for all the content and landing pages you want to develop. You can do this by visiting your stores home page, right clicking the mouse button and then clicking on ‘View Source’. If you copy the code into a html editor then you will have created a master template with all your navigation, search box and AdSense in place ready for you to drop your content into the page and saving it for upload. To integrate your new content pages into your main store pages you will need to open up the file named header.php and create a custom navigation with links to your new pages as mentioned in the previous section. With very little work you can quite easily turn a standalone store into a comprehensive niche resource...

And so the journey ends...

Well that really covers everything for now...we’ve reached the end of our journey and you should now be at the start of yours...If this manual has done what it was intended to do then you should now have your new site setup or store fully integrated into your existing site and will have loads of development ideas going on for the future...

I will leave you to start playing with your new store(s) for now but I hope we’ll meet in the mem-bers forum soon.

My best regards,

Kelvin