Is it possible to create a stable passive income stream with affiliate marketing?
Yes, absolutely.
Is it true that we can create an affiliate site within minutes and become a millionaire overnight, just like it says in $99.00 “Get Rich Overnight” eBooks?
Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Every penny, a real online marketer makes online, is the result of very hard work and many sleepless hours spent on the computer.
I have found a way to create a stable passive income stream with much less work than any online or affiliate marketing techniques.
I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I will share my biggest secret today which I have never shared before, not even with my close friends. I am a guy who believes in KARMA, so here it goes.
Table of Contents
My true story of making over $5000/month passive income within 3 months as an eBay affiliate:
It was around August of 2007 when I have read a few forum posts about a software/script called BANS (Build a Niche Store). A few people were talking about how much they make with this script as an eBay affiliate.
The stories sounded to good to be true, and I didn’t even check the script’s website.
I was already making good amount of money with my ecommerce business, affiliate sites, blogs, and consultancy business. But I was always searching for that secret recipe; Passive Income, like many other online marketers.
Every penny I made online was the result of hard work and many sleepless nights spent on the computer. I was amazed with the stories of online marketers making unbelievable numbers as passive income. I always thought it was too good to be true. It was a prejudgment on my side, I admit it now.
It was around November of 2007, three months after I’ve heard about this script BANS, now more and more people started talking about it online. I have decided to give it a shot and purchased the script.
I have paid $97.00 for BANS which comes with unlimited website license, and totally forgot about it due to my busy schedule.
About 6 months later, during May 2008, I have decided to spend a few hours and setup a site. I have setup my first BANS eBay affiliate site that weekend, and within exactly 3 months (June, July, August 2008), I have 10 BANS sites with over $5000/month income. (August sales numbers are not finalized yet, but we are at $5,125.24 exactly as of august 29th).
Here’s the interesting part. The first site I’ve built with BANS, after doing the initial promotion, is making around $1000/month as of august, and had a steady income increase of 100% every single month. I have setup the site, promoted it, and left it there untouched. This is pure increasing passive income.
I have seen one thing, if built right, an eBay affiliate store can make more money than you can ever imagine. Many affiliate marketers will tell you, eBay affiliate sites are too SATURATED, stay away from them. Of course, they will tell you that. Because they don’t want you to be competition. Ok, too much talk doesn’t take us anywhere. I have told you the story of my journey as an eBay affiliate, now it is time to show you how I have succeeded within 3 months, step by step:
Creating My eBay Affiliate Site Network with BANS Script for Stable Passive Income
Niche Market Research:
After doing some preliminary research, and reading forums, I have seen that some BANS site owners are getting great results, while others are not making any money at all.
I have figured out that choosing the right niche for your BANS store is the half of the equation, but the important half.
Here are the steps I have taken for my niche market research:
I have used eBay Pulse (eBay’s FREE Research Website). It shows you the most popular keywords, and top eBay stores under any chosen category. This is like gold mine, crazy valuable information.
I have spent like 4-5 hours digging deep into sub sub categories and trying to find the right niche market for my BANS Store.
After a well done keyword research and niche market research I have decided on a few niche markets I would profit as an eBay affiliate and picked one of them right away.
I have purchased Keyword Elite which was highly recommended by my super affiliate friends on many occasions. It wasn’t cheap, it was $176.00, but I can’t seriously believe how many hours I have saved by using a top notch software like Keyword Elite. It’s on my top recommendations lists.
When I was setting up my BANS sites, I have heard of a tool called Micro Niche Finder, but didn’t purchase it. After reading so many positive reviews by reputable online marketers, I have decided to purchase it recently. It seems like a great tool, I haven’t played with it much yet, but it might help with your niche market research a lot, and save you some time and money.
Planning and Setting Up the BANS Sites:
After researching many web hosting companies, I have decided to go with HostGator. I have signed up with their Baby Plan. It offers 600gb diskspace, and 6000gb bandwidth for $9.95/month. I host 38 sites on it right now, and everything is working great.
I have purchased 10 domains from GoDaddy, for $9.99/year each. I have done some in depth research to find the best keyword rich domains. This is still very important for search engines.
If your niche is Blue Widgets, your goal should be getting a domain www.bluewidgets.com , if it’s taken, be creative and try to find something like: www.buybluewidgets.com, www.bluewidgetsuniverse.com, etc. You get the idea.
Since I have so many sites, and affiliate projects running at the same time, I tend to be more organized nowadays. So, I went to Flowchart.com and created a flow chart for BANS sites network. This is like a roadmap for me, and it helps to be organized. This flow chart shows me which site will link to which site, basic SEO plan, etc. I’d highly recommend signing up at Flowchart.com for an absolutely FREE account. Creating flow charts for your business will help you to survive and be more productive at the era of information overload.
Setting Up BANS Store Categories (MY SECRET RECIPE):
Your hosting is setup, your domain is registered, and you have installed the BANS Script. Installing BANS is very easy even for a non-tech savvy person. BANS comes with a step by step installation guide with screenshots.
The tricky part is setting up the categories. That’s where my secret recipe for a stable passive income method by BANS comes in.
You have two options to setup categories within BANS. You can either pull a specific category from eBay with all the auctions, and BANS creates the category and sub-categories automatically. Most of BANS store owners choose this option. If you pull a specific category from eBay, let’s say you’ve chosen Baby Gear category, there will be many other BANS stores which have chosen the exact same category, and your store will be another DUPLICATE BANS store for Google. You will never get great search engine traffic.
But instead, if you enter “2″ as your main store category number, this means multiple category store, you have the chance of entering search queries for each category, and create 100% customized categories.
For instance, you can have a 100% unique category called “Handmade Baby Gear”, even though eBay doesn’t have a category like this, and create a custom search query and pull all auctions live. This way you can focus on more long tail keywords.
eBay has a great GUIDE called USING SEARCH COMMANDS. Please read this guide very carefully, and do tons of test searches on eBay according to this guide.
When you fully understand how the search queries work at eBay, it will be a piece of cake to setup 100% custom, long tail categories with eBay search queries. This will be your competitive advantage.
Feel free to ask me any questions regarding to eBay search queries, and setting up BANS categories at the comments section under this post. I will be happy to help as much as I can.
After you’ve setup your BANS site with custom categories, play with the template, and create a unique look if you like. BANS template system is very easy to customize. This is what I love about BANS, you can have a 100% unique looking affiliate site.
Promoting BANS Sites & SEO:
BANS admin panel has Store Pages and Content Pages options. Store pages are the category pages, and content pages are a built in CMS system to add content to your BANS store. As we all know, the power of unique content is priceless for SEO.
So, I’d highly recommend adding around 5 unique articles to each of your BANS sites. Be creative, add a video page (embed YouTube videos), also add a pictures page (embed Flickr images), etc. These will bring the quality links, so spend some time and create unique content.
Basic SEO: Every BANS site I have built had a few unique content pages, and some basic SEO.
What do I mean by basic seo? Doing some article marketing, directory submissions, blog commenting, video marketing, social bookmarking etc. For each BANS site I have created, I have done some preliminary SEO, not much.
That’s ALL. After these 4 steps, sit down, relax and enjoy your income increasing every single day.
The more you work on creating unique content, and doing SEO, the more traffic and income you will get. No secret recipe here. You will enjoy the free organic search engine traffic to your custom categories and you will realize the power of long tail keywords.
Very important note I must add. I haven’t brought any PAID traffic to my BANS sites. So, over $5000/month passive income within 3 months is pure profit minus the domain and hosting cost (which is close to nothing).
I have seen many BANS sites making good amount of money with paid traffic (Google Adwords, etc.), but I haven’t had the time to setup PPC campaigns for my BANS Sites.
All the traffic I get is PURE organic search engine traffic due to long tail keywords. 92% of the traffic comes from Google organic search as of today.
Tools Used & Money Spent to Setup my BANS Network and Passive Income Sites:
- BANS Script : $97.00 (Must have. One time fee, unlimited sites license)
- Keyword Elite: $176.00 (Optional. One time fee, unlimited usage)
- Micro Niche Finder: $97.00 (Optional. One time fee, unlimited usage)
- HostGator: $9.95/month (Must have if you don’t have a hosting account. Unlimited site hosting, great for a network of BANS sites.)
- GoDaddy: $9.99/year per domain registration (Must have, one of the most reputable domain registration companies in the market)
- eBay Pulse: FREE (Optional. Free website)
- Flowchart.com: FREE (Optional. Free website)
- eBay Search Commands Guide: FREE (Optional. Free website)
If you think this is too GOOD to be true, think again. Do some research online about BANS success stories and don’t take my word if you like. But I’m in a KARMA mood today, and I just shared all of my secrets to create a stable, passive income as an eBay affiliate marketer.
Remember to share your success stories and ask your questions at the comments section below.
It’s time to get back to work and create more BANS Sites.
