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This website is all about strategies to help you grow your niche store empire. I have many Build A Niche Store sites and use the strategies that I share here.
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Archive for April, 2008

Apr
30

I will be offline for a few days

RochelleMisc.

There are gremlins running amuck in my computer.  I’ve put off dealing with them but the weird and funky things my computer is doing is finely getting to me.  So, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and reformat my computer. This is something I do about every six months or so.  I hate it, but my system runs so much better when I do.  (My husband is rolling his eyes and groaning right about now…)

For some people it may take a few hours to get their computers back up to speed.  For me it takes two to three days (I think this means I have far too many programs but I do use them). 

Please forgive me if I don’t respond to your comments and questions right away.  I will, but it may be a few days.

Rochelle

Apr
29

10 Days After Starting 30 Minute Backlinks Test

RochelleTools

 

As you know, on April 19, 2008 I started my test of 30 Minute Backlinks. It has now been 10 days since this test began.

The stats now include a section for how much each site has earned. Yesterday one of these sites got its first commissions. This is the fastest I’ve made commissions for any Build A Niche Store I have. Woo hoo!

Here are the most recent stats:

.

Site #1 - Minimal Promotion

Date URL purchased: 04/07/2008
Date toolbar submitted to shareware repository: 04/19/2008
Date of first backlink: 04/19/2008
Number of backlinks (as of 04/29/2008): 11 (increase of 2)
Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/29/2008): 9 (increase of 5)
Commissions earned (as of 04/29/2008): $2.23 (increase of $2.23)
Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/29/2008):
Robots/Spiders visitors
8 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Googlebot 164+15 4.38 MB 28 Apr 2008 - 17:01
Yahoo Slurp 38+29 4.86 MB 29 Apr 2008 - 00:21
Alexa (IA Archiver) 11+3 216.33 KB 25 Apr 2008 - 19:34
Unknown robot (identified by ‘bot/’ or ‘bot-’) 4+4 97.68 KB 28 Apr 2008 - 21:41
Ask 5+1 114.69 KB 14 Apr 2008 - 12:57
Google Sitemaps 3 73.36 KB 24 Apr 2008 - 09:40
MSNBot 1+1 21.89 KB 07 Apr 2008 - 23:49
MSNBot-media 1+1 24.79 KB 22 Apr 2008 - 06:02

Site #2 - Moderate Promotion

Date URL purchased: 04/07/2008
Date toolbar submitted to shareware repository: 04/19/2008
Date toolbar submitted to 30 software directories: 04/19/2008
Date of first backlink: 04/19/2008
Number of backlinks (as of 04/29/2008): 16 (increase of 9)
Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/29/2008): 21 (increase of 16)
Commissions earned (as of 04/29/2008): $0.00
Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/29/2008):
Robots/Spiders visitors
7 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Googlebot 286+18 9.10 MB 28 Apr 2008 - 16:08
Yahoo Slurp 27+22 1.83 MB 29 Apr 2008 - 00:10
Unknown robot (identified by ‘bot/’ or ‘bot-’) 41+4 902.09 KB 28 Apr 2008 - 22:05
Alexa (IA Archiver) 20+2 414.54 KB 22 Apr 2008 - 20:02
Unknown robot (identified by ‘robot’) 10 95.05 KB 28 Apr 2008 - 04:13
Unknown robot (identified by ’spider’) 5+3 119.21 KB 26 Apr 2008 - 18:28
Google Sitemaps 4 93.38 KB 24 Apr 2008 - 09:40

Site #3 - Maximum Promotion

Date URL purchased: 04/13/2008
Date toolbar submitted to shareware repository: 04/19/2008
Date toolbar submitted to 800+ software directories: 04/19/2008
Date of first backlink: 04/19/2008
Number of backlinks (as of 04/29/2008): 201 (increase of 151)
Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/29/2008): 15 (increase of 15)
Commissions earned (as of 04/29/2008): $0.00
Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/29/2008):
Robots/Spiders visitors
12 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Yahoo Slurp 111+61 9.40 MB 28 Apr 2008 - 18:03
Googlebot 127+11 8.22 MB 28 Apr 2008 - 18:00
Unknown robot (identified by ‘crawl’) 31+2 1.94 MB 22 Apr 2008 - 19:19
MSNBot-media 9+5 633.54 KB 23 Apr 2008 - 21:12
Unknown robot (identified by ’spider’) 8+5 161.99 KB 26 Apr 2008 - 18:07
Unknown robot (identified by ‘robot’) 10 94.55 KB 28 Apr 2008 - 04:13
Unknown robot (identified by ‘bot/’ or ‘bot-’) 4+2 96.84 KB 28 Apr 2008 - 03:16
MSNBot 2+2 464.08 KB 27 Apr 2008 - 23:22
Ask 3+1 16.40 KB 17 Apr 2008 - 19:29
Google Sitemaps 3 44.16 KB 26 Apr 2008 - 20:28
Alexa (IA Archiver) 1+1 463.57 KB 24 Apr 2008 - 10:58
Unknown robot (identified by hit on ‘robots.txt’) 0+1 514 Bytes 19 Apr 2008 - 14:51
.

10 days may still be too early to come to any conclusions. It seems about right that the site with the most toolbar promotion has be most backlinks. It is interesting to me, though, that number of pages from each site indexed in Google is about the same.

Did you notice which site got the first affiliate earnings? It was the site with the least toolbar promotion. I’m started to suspect that you don’t need to blast the directories with the toolbar. It seems that simply submitting it to the one directory repository is sufficient to get the indexing ball rolling.

I’ll post another update sometime next week.

Rochelle

Apr
28

When to Send Visitors Away from Your Site

RochelleStrategies

In a recent post, How to Add External Links Alphabetically to Your Site’s Sidebar, I give instructions for adding links to a site’s sidebar. This particular set of instructions will send visitors away from your site when one of these links is clicked, instead of having a new window or tab open up.

In the comments for this post someone asked why we would ever want to send visitors away from our sites. This is a good question. Most of the time you don’t want to do this, but there are times when you do want to do this.

As you know, the point of having niche stores is to send them away from your stores to eBay (or Amazon, or whatever affiliate place you want them to shop at), have your affiliate cookie set to visitors computers, and hope they purchase one or more items. This remains true for the external links you add via the post listed above.

Have I confused you yet? I hope not. Consider this: eBay is a rich resource for articles as well as stuff to buy. They have articles to help people buy, to help people sell, marketing tips, and more. Even better, eBay encourages members (buyers and sellers like you and me, not eBay employees) to write articles. You can add links to your sites that take visitors to the articles of your choice.

Here are some of the many places on eBay where you can find information to link to:

  eBay University Learning Center
  eBay Security and Resolution Center
  eBay Buying and Selling Guides (TONS of resources here for niche stores to link to)
  eBay Reviews of Items (again, TONS of places here to link to)

You can use eBay’s own resources (most of which contain excellent information) to drop your affiliate cookie onto visitors computers. Don’t link directly to an article. Instead generate an affiliate link and use THAT link to add to your site. Clever, isn’t it?

You can create affiliate links to eBay by following my instructions for ‘How to Create eBay Affiliate Links.’

Rochelle

Apr
28

How to Create eBay Affiliate Links

RochelleHow To..., Strategies

You can easily create eBay affiliate links for use in your niche stores or elsewhere. When eBay’s affiliate accounts were still with Commissions Junction (CJ) you could create affiliate links using eBay’s Flexible Destination Tool. Now that eBay has moved their affiliate program from CJ to their own EPN you can still use the Flexible Destination Tool but it is now located in your EPN account and it is now called Link Generator.

 

My instructions to create eBay affiliate links

Step One
  Log in to your eBay EPN account.
   
  Click the ‘Tools‘ tab and ‘Link Generator‘ link.
   
  Enter or choose the following:
    Advertiser = eBay (or Half if you are promoting Half.com items)
    Link Type = Custom URL
    Custom URL = URL to the page you are creating an affiliate link for
    Geo-Target = Yes, if you can (I’ve not been able to get this option to work)
    Select program to apply = country you are targeting (i.e. eBay US)
    Campaign Name or ID = Name or ID for store you are creating link for
    Custom ID = Something descriptive so you can see if link is working (i.e. shop-safely-on-ebay)
    Link Action = Only check this if you are going to use eBay’s javascript since this won’t affect those using the ‘URL Only’ link
    Link Text = Add anchor text only if you are going to use eBay’s javascript since this won’t affect those using the ‘URL Only’ link
     
  Click the ‘Generate Link‘ button.
Step Two
  Copy the link from any of the three link options at the bottom and paste it to your desired location. I only use the ‘URL Only’ link because I add the links created here to my sites and don’t need the other two options.
.

Some of the instructions I’ve written instructions for that use eBay affiliate links you create include:

  How to Add a ‘Safety on eBay’ Page to Your Site
  How to Add External Links Alphabetically to Your Site’s Sidebar
  How to Add External Links to Your Site’s Sidebar
  How to Send Ad Viewers to the Actual Items you Advertise on USFreeads

Rochelle