As promised, I wanted to give you an update on my Guitarstruck.com website. 
I just made my first sale …Whaahoo! 
First thing this morning after getting my first cup of coffee, I took a look at my Commission Junction status and low and behold I made my first BANS site sale!
OK, you might say, big deal, one sale, not too exciting …I agree, but this is a good indication that the site has potential. It's on the right track and as it matures, as I add content on a regular basis and promote it, it could do quite well. So what's so great about this product and how it works?
You can take a look at my BANS review, but basically after my site was built and I was happy with its look and feel, I added as much content as I could think of. I actually placed the content pages on my navigation bar before the list of site categories. This gives the search engines a look at my content first.
My content consists mostly of articles; I even went the lazy route and added articles from Chris Knight's, http://www.zinearticles.com/ site.
I did however, write one article myself and submitted it to a several article directories, but so far, most of my content consists of other people's articles. I'm adding more articles as time permits but I'm doing it gradually since the search engines are suspicious of a lot of content added all at once.
Then I submitted my site to as many popular free directories as I could. There aren't many FREE ones left, but these are a good start.
http://www.dmoz.com/
http://www.jayde.com/
http://www.dmegs.com/
www.onemission.com/d.pl
I do recommend adding to these directories as well. They are paid directories but as you make money from your site, put some money back into your business by submitting to these directories as well. It's a very worthwhile investment.
www.uncoverthenet.com/directory
http://www.goguides.org/
botw.org
dir.yahoo.com
http://www.gimpsy.com/
http://www.site-sift.com/
http://www.wowdirectory.com/
http://www.joeant.com/
Again, as time permits I add my site to more and more directories
Also let me add that last Saturday morning, I spent about 2 hours exchanging links with prominent sites. Saturday mornings are often a time for me to work on linking strategies …just one of my routine habits 
I noticed that on Jan 25 my site was indexed by Google and today I'm getting about 10-20 visitors a day to my site. No, it's not very much but the day I made my sale I had 19 visitors, that's a 5.3% conversion …not too shabby since my site has been up less than 3 weeks.
So there you have it. I spent about 6 hours installing and customizing my store. Over the course of the next week I spend about another 8 hours writing an article, adding article content to my site, submitting to directories and exchanging links.
I agree, this is a very small start, but definitely a good one and I'm psyched to start building my next BANS site, but I'm also thrilled to let you in on my success because this means that it's doable for YOU as well.
So if you're at all on the fence about what product to use for building a profitable webiste, I highly recommend BANS, it's definitely a well thought out piece of software, designed for ease of use and capitalizes on a very lucrative business - EBAY!
For my next store I think I may narrow down my niche a bit more. Not sure what I'll be doing but it's fun to think about.
Got any good ideas?
Click here to find out more about BANS Build A Niche Store
