I have started to set up a page as a beta test to see how this widget works. The page is called Friends Of Niche Store Marketer. I would love it if you would join so I can see just what I can accomplish with the tool.

Twitter Tools is like a auto alert for your followers to get a update when you post on your blog. I use to make a post and then run over to tinyurl and post the link in my twits. Done with that. Saves lots of time and is still personable. The plug in allows your blog readers to post a twit from your site as well.

Download Twitter Tools Here. Simply download the plugin, activate it and configure it. On some blogs I don’t configure it to show in the sidebar, I only send out twits when I post. Seems to help gather followers. I like followers! NicheMarketer has 99 as of today. Not bad

When I first heard of Squidoo the rumor was it wasn’t being crawled by Google and then it was. Some Marketers swear by the site and promote everything from pimple medication to cars.

The best thing in my mind about Squidoo is that everything on the site is unique content. Each lens needs to be built with authority and have valuable content for the users of the site looking for information. Information is what Internet Users want. If a conversion of a sale happens then you’ve done your job of writing Unique, Relevant Useful Content For Users. The very same criteria Google uses to rank your sites. So having links to your site from Squidoo will help your sites rank better in the index.

It’s about time ePN caught up with the rest of us! ePN doesn’t seem to understand what we go through to rank our sites and drive traffic to eBay. At least in there responses on there forum. Its almost like they want instant result from it’s affiliates. It shows when the start with quality scores and tell affiliate to archive non performing sites. How can you build a site naturally and have instant results. You can’t. Sites may have a honeymoon period, but after 30 days most site drop in the search engines and slowly climb back up. Those of us who use ePN should be happy that the ePN Blog has began to get on the same track as us. Hopefully they will learn more about how the cycle of site building works and loosen up on the quality issue and the user engagement they mentioned during the recent expiration’s of users.

Sept 11 2008 eBay block servers that 1000’s of ebay Partner sites where hosted on. At first eBay said nothing was wrong, but quickly learned of the major outage. The ePN community came together to fix this problem. EBay even asked a fellow BANS member for help. If it wasn’t for the affiliate marketers that ePN has been alienating for months the problem might have never been fixed. I sure hope Sept 11, 08 show eBay that where not all bad people like they have been treating some and come to realize if people work together much more good can be done. eBay needs to learn you get more with sugar than vinegar. IMO

Twitter should be part of Niche Marketing. If you can get lots of users to follow you over time the value of what you post should become authoritative. User will grow to trust you, but getting those users to follow you is another story.

Since I’m in this marketing thing for the long haul the Twitter Experiment will continue. Please sign up and follow Niche Store Marketer. I promise over time we will see how relevant twitter realy is to our marketing goals.

But over the last several month’s with the growth the forum has lost authority. Why do I say this ? because the forum has gone from 99% usful information to advertisements cloaked as discussions and some really rude responses like RTFM directed at newer novice users. What some users don’t seem to understand is thats what the forum is for. Novice Web Masters.

The BANS developers are implementing some rules, They are basically No Advertising/ SPAM and a Zero Tolerance Policy for users who flame, disrespect anyone. As far as the SPAM go’s all they had to do is turn off the option in the forum.

As for being respectful here what is a paragraph that was in today’s portion of the email. This is the Hammer!

Well after seeing a story about a new company called Gazelle I think I finally found something that can be put on just about any web site. Almost everyone has a Cell Phone these days. And anyone who has had a Cell Phone has a box of old Cell Phones sitting around. Why do keep our old Cell Phones, well the reasons vary, but most people don’t want to pollute the environment. Global Warming has become a big concern over the last decade and people stop and think about it when they see offers to help recycle Old Cell Phones

I believe Gazelle can be promoted on just about any web site due to the facts that almost all Cell Phone Users have old phones and people need Cash now. Even if your site sell donuts and a users needs money to buy donuts may go to Gazelle to Sell Old Cell Phones. Everyone I know has at least 2 or 3 old phones. If a user is going to click away from your site anyway you need to provide something to catch there attention that my convert for you.

Gazelle is part of LinkConnector.com Network It’s worth a try they have some excellent payouts.

eBay / ePN is trying to bring high quality traffic to eBay. If you read the ePN message board you will find many threads from users who have been banned for low quality traffic. Most of these affiliates even broke terms of service contract or had links coming from low quality sites such as porn sites. Since nor the banned users or eBay tell us exactly what the issue’s where with the site some ePN message board users claimed to have found the sites and researched them. There findings according to them is the sites had inbound links coming from porn sites or very low quality web sites.

Here’s the highlights of the ePN Email.

“As part of our ongoing effort to reward our best marketing partners and promote trusted commerce on eBay, we are implementing a new pricing structure for Active Confirmed Registered User (ACRU) compensation. The new pricing scheme is based on quality, instead of just volume, and will reward top publishers with up to $50 per ACRU driven to eBay.
Starting today, August 1st, new publishers that join the eBay Partner Network will be placed in this new quality-based pricing structure for the US program.
All publishers that joined eBay Partner Network before August 1st will remain in the existing pricing tiers for a few more months so you can have time to look at the data and see how the change will affect you. As of November 1st, all publishers will be placed in the value based pricing structure for ACRUs.
Here’s how it will work. Each publisher will be placed in a quality tier at the end of each month based on that month’s and historical traffic. The tiers will range from $1 to $50, and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers a publisher sends, the higher the tier the publisher will receive. We expect that most affiliates with a history of driving good, consistent traffic won’t see a lot of variability from month to month.
Publishers that join after August 1st will be able to see what tier they fall in by going to the programs tab and selecting payments structure for the US program. This tier will be updated on the 9th of each month and will reflect the score for the previous month. The tier will be 0 for the first month while we calculate your first score. Note that your ACRU earnings in your reports will reflect this tier.
If you joined before August 1st, you will continue to only see the same volume-based tiers for now. In September we will release a new separate report that will allow all publishers to break down, by campaign, the quality of the ACRUs you are driving to eBay. We will send more details about this report in a few weeks.
Please note that this change only affects compensation for new user registrations (ACRUs). Payouts for revenue share will continue on the same volume-based tiers for both new and old users. While the current change only affects the US eBay program on eBay Partner Network, we are evaluating this system on a country by country basis and will provide additional updates as they become available”.

My question is how do we determine which tier our sites are ? For me it’s about quality site building mostly following Googled approach which hard to define in it’s self. The first thing all ePN users should start checking is inbound links. The inbound links from the banned users seam to be from porn sites, but we don’t know that for sure ! Is a thin affiliate site the same for Google as it is for ePN ? Also for me I will use Pepper Jam for some sites. I’m having succes with the PJ sites I have put up, but the Jury is still out if one is better than the other. I like PJ though and fully endorse it.

For me this change is a bonus seeing I strive to build high quality sites with original and relevant content. The issue is what dose ePN consider quality sites and traffic ? We will find out in due time. For now all ePN users can do is watch and see what happens. I’m sure we will see many more threads on forums like Digital Point and ePN from banned users. Hopefully we hear responses from EBay to these threads so we can decipher the rule and avoid mistakes others have had. ePN is one of the biggest payouts in affiliate Marketing you do not want to lose your account with ePN if you are in this for the long haul as I am. You could survive, but it would be hard. If SEM and SEO are not hard enough as it is.

Carry on

Piece Out

Opened up Free Directory Submitter and there it was. The system has been purged of old out of date directories that where just taking up space. The new version is so much better. Ive been using the tool for almost a year now and was just about at the point of getting a pay service. No need now. Its all nice and clean almost new.

If you don’t know what Free Directory Submitter is here a what it dose. As the search engines are evolving each and every day, it’s getting harder
  and harder to get top search engine rankings.

The search engines now, highly favor, websites that have a large number of
  quality, one way links pointing to them. Because of this, it’s absolutely critical
  that we consistently try to get other websites to link to us, WITHOUT us linking
  back to them.

Yes, reciprocal linking is becoming less and less valuable. Submitting your
  website to website directories is an excellent way to get, quality, 1 way links
  pointing to your websites. You see, many of the website directories online have
  a high amount of page rank and have been online for several years.

These are 2 of the most important criteria for determining what a good link
  is, vs what a bad link is. These two criteria are:

1. The age of the website linking to you
2. The Page Rank of the website linking to you

With that said, many of these directories have both a high Page Rank AND are
  old websites, giving them more authority and power in the search engines.

Not only that, but there are literally thousands of website directories on
  the Internet that are absolutely free for you to submit your website to! While
  it does take time to find these directories and then manually fill out all of
  the required criteria to submit your website, it is an excellent way to help
  increase your search engine rankings.

There are some good website directory submission software products on the market.
  The best of which is a product called Directory Submitter created by Brad Callen.
  Essentially you simply enter your website details into the software program 1
  time, and then click on any of the 1600+ website directories in the software
  and it will automatically fill in all of the submission criteria for you. Click
  the submit button and then your site has been instantly added to the website
  directory.

So, not only does it save you time in finding all of these directories, BUT
  it saves you an incredible amount of time filling out each and every web site’s
  submission criteria. To learn more about Directory Submitter, visit the link
  below:

Link Free Directory Submitter

For a very long time Build A niche Store users have been looking for ways to integrate Word Press into BANS seamlessly. The owners of Bans have consistently said they will not spend the time to build a plug in. How can you blame them. Plug ins are lots of work and with all the changes in Internet Marketing they simply don’t have the time.

Well The Niche Store Builder has been helping the BANS Community with many issues, but now Mark has taken helping people one step further. Mark has done the work for BANS user who want to build sites that include Word Press. Simply amazing Mark will even install it for you. I went both ways. I had him install it on one site and I try the install myself. My install was a mess. I’m not very good at files and folders, so Mark made a video just for me that shows how to upload files in cpanel. I couldn’t believe it.

The site I built is LG Dare Phone. I put the site up on July 1 2008 and over the first week it has had over 1400 visitors. The site also made $79.00 in that first few days using Pepper Jam. I credit all the visitors and sales to the way these templates are laid out. Very SEO Friendly. The Search Engine Spiders come in and follow the pages just the way they want to. LG Dare Phone is a new domain name, never used before.

This way of building Monetized sites is the future IMO. Google is looking for relevant content and having them come to a site and see fresh, relevant content first makes them happy so sites shoot to page one.

Click here to view more details on BANS / Word Press Templates with installation.

 If you are looking for a very highly developed theme Mark has made one of those too. He has limited these themes to 30 so if you want a seriously well built web site I suggest checking them out quickly. Click here to view more details on limited edition designer templates from The Niche Store Builder.

Mark also has Free Build A niche Store Templates just like the one I’m useing on The Niche Store Marketer Store Pages