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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
26

How to Add External Links Alphabetically to Your Site’s Sidebar

RochelleHow To..., Strategies

I recently wrote about how to add external links to your sidebar menus. Those instructions tell you how to add external links that are either above or below your Site Navigation menu. Since that post I have learned how to add external links to your sidebar menus so that they show up alphabetically along with any other pages you have created. This is one of my favorite mods.

Build A Niche Store member Pip gets credit for this mod. Thank you for sharing, Pip.

 

My instructions to add external links alphabetically to your site’s sidebar:

This set of instructions will take visitors from your site, NOT open in a new window or tab.
Step One
  Open Notepad (not a word processing program such as Word). Copy and paste the contents of external-link.txt to Notepad.
  Note: Change http://externalURL.com to the URL you want to send people to.
   
  Save the file as externalURL.php or whatever you want to name this link, but it must have the .php extension.
Step Two
  Upload the file you created in step one to your site’s root folder (where you site’s index.php is located).
Step Three
  Log in to your site’s Admin and click on the ‘Content Pages ‘ tab and ‘Create Content Page ‘ link for the template you are using. If you prefer, you can create a new store page instead of a content page.
   
  Enter the following information:
 
  • Link Name = Name of link (this is the anchor text visible in the sidebar menu) - I.E. Google
  • Page URL = Exact name of file you created in step one - I.E. google.php
  Note: You MUST include the extension in the ‘Page URL’ name. If your file is google.php then the link must be google.php - INCLUDE the .php or the link won’t work.
   
  Save page and view site for errors.
.

You now have a link that takes visitors away from your site that is alphabetically listed in your site’s sidebar menu.

The instructions above will not open a new window or tab. If you prefer to have a new window or tab open then follow these instructions. Be aware, though, if users block popups then the new window or tab may be blank. I know of no way to prevent this.

 

My instructions to add external links alphabetically to your site’s sidebar:

This set of instructions will NOT take visitors from your site, as it WILL open in a new window or tab, but it may be blank.
Step One
  Open Notepad (not a word processing program such as Word). Copy and paste the following code to Notepad:
  <html>
<body>
<script>
window.open(”http://www.externalURL.com”, “_blank”, “”);
</script>
</body>
</html>
  Note: Change http://externalURL.com to the URL you want to send people to.
   
  Save the file as externalURL.html
  Note: You can use the actual URL you are sending people to. For example, if you want to add an external link to Google you can save the file as google.html
Step Two
  Upload the file you created in step one to your site’s root folder (where you site’s index.php is located).
Step Three
  Log in to your site’s Admin and click on the ‘Content Pages ‘ tab and ‘Create Content Page ‘ link for the template you are using. If you prefer, you can create a new store page instead of a content page.
   
  Enter the following information:
 
  • Link Name = Name of link (this is the anchor text visible in the sidebar menu) - I.E. Google
  • Page URL = Exact name of file you created in step one - I.E. google.html
  Note: You MUST include the extension in the ‘Page URL’ name. If your file is google.html then the link must be google.html - INCLUDE the .html or the link won’t work.
   
  Save page and view site for errors.
.

Rochelle

Apr
25

I Added Two More Free Templates

RochelleMisc.

Today I created two simple, clean templates.  They are primarily white with a subtle splash of colors to give them character.  I’ll add more in this style soon.

 Rochelle

Apr
25

How to See What Items Earned You Affiliate Commissions

RochelleTools

Are you struggling to figure out what eBay sales generated commissions for you? I am. As much as I like the new eBay EPN program I think seeing what sold is not great. Fortunately for Build A Niche Store (BANS) user there is a super easy way to find out, thanks to BANS forum member sonjay.

Sonjay created a script that you install on one of your sites. Then, each time you want to know what items got you commissions, you download the transactions from eBay and enter this information into the script on your own site. Why should you want to do this? Because no prying eyes will be able to see what items are making you money and no harvesters will collect this because everything is done on your site.

Don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense. Check out sonjay’s script on her website and try the demo to get a better feel for what I’m talking about.

Rochelle

Apr
22

Three Days After Starting Test of 30 Minute Backlinks

RochelleTools

 

My test of 30 Minute Backlinks started on April 19, 2008 so it is now three days into my test. 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 04/22/2008): 9 (increase of 0)
Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/22/2008): 4 (increase of 1)
Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/22/2008):
Robots/Spiders visitors
6 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Googlebot 111+9 3.24 MB 21 Apr 2008 - 19:11
Yahoo Slurp 9+6 1.24 MB 21 Apr 2008 - 19:52
Ask 5+1 114.69 KB 14 Apr 2008 - 12:57
Unknown robot (identified by ‘bot/’ or ‘bot-’) 3+3 72.71 KB 21 Apr 2008 - 23:47
Google Sitemaps 2 48.84 KB 16 Apr 2008 - 08:45
MSNBot 1+1 21.89 KB 07 Apr 2008 - 23:49

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 04/22/2008): 7 (decrease of 6)
Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/22/2008): 5 (increase of 3)
Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/22/2008):
Robots/Spiders visitors
7 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Googlebot 173+10 7.10 MB 21 Apr 2008 - 20:56
Yahoo Slurp 6+6 1.00 MB 21 Apr 2008 - 18:03
Alexa (IA Archiver) 4+1 52.42 KB 21 Apr 2008 - 20:44
Unknown robot (identified by ‘robot’) 4 38.02 KB 21 Apr 2008 - 23:37
Unknown robot (identified by ‘bot/’ or ‘bot-’) 2+2 47.16 KB 21 Apr 2008 - 23:54
Google Sitemaps 2 46.04 KB 16 Apr 2008 - 08:43
Unknown robot (identified by ’spider’) 1+1 24.25 KB 19 Apr 2008 - 09:44

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 04/22/2008): 50 (decrease of 46)
Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/22/2008): 0 (decrease of 1)
Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/22/2008):
Robots/Spiders visitors (Top 25) - Full list - Last visit
10 different robots* Hits Bandwidth Last visit
Yahoo Slurp 56+24 7.24 MB 21 Apr 2008 - 21:26
Googlebot 45+3 5.91 MB 21 Apr 2008 - 22:20
Unknown robot (identified by ‘crawl’) 30+1 1.92 MB 21 Apr 2008 - 20:37
MSNBot-media 8+3 608.09 KB 21 Apr 2008 - 23:42
Unknown robot (identified by ‘robot’) 4 37.82 KB 21 Apr 2008 - 23:37
Ask 3+1 16.40 KB 17 Apr 2008 - 19:29
Unknown robot (identified by ‘bot/’ or ‘bot-’) 3+1 70.88 KB 21 Apr 2008 - 05:00
Google Sitemaps 2 18.65 KB 19 Apr 2008 - 08:23
Unknown robot (identified by ’spider’) 1+1 24.65 KB 19 Apr 2008 - 11:03
Unknown robot (identified by hit on ‘robots.txt’) 0+1 514 Bytes 19 Apr 2008 - 14:51
.v

Well, it looks like Google is balancing things out, but it’s still too early for me to draw any conclusions. I think I’ll wait about a week for the next update.

Rochelle