As a general rule, I have a feeling for what’s coming in, moneywise. I know what most of my sites tend to bring in monthly and plan around that.

But there’s an exception to that, and it delighted me today with a surprise $1000+ commission check. Obviously a very nice surprise.

You see, one program I belong to doesn’t have a way for me to track my sales. I get checks pretty regularly from the company with records of my sales, but I can’t follow it online. Only the fact that they do pay well on sales keeps me going with them. Normally I do $50-100 per month with them.

So over $1000 was quite a pleasant surprise in today’s mail.

Of course I’m hoping that trend continues. That’s not a bad income at all for a site that doesn’t require tremendous maintenance. A little, sure, but less than many of my sites that earn less.

No, no clues as to niche or affiliate program. I get to keep some secrets!

It’s fun to make jokes. Getting a laugh is something just about anyone can appreciate. This is probably why so many people love to write humorous articles for their websites. They get attention, sometimes lots of attention.

But is it the right kind of attention for your business? That all depends on what your goals are.

If all you want is traffic, then it might be. A really funny post on your site can bring tons of StumbleUpon, Digg or other social media and viral traffic. But what it probably won’t bring is sales or repeat visitors, at least not in great numbers for the amount of traffic.

Humor, used well, can generate sales, but it’s more challenging.

Think back to any television commercial that made you laugh. It could be the “Where’s the beef?” ads from Wendy’s. It could be something more current.

Do you remember what the ad was about? What company ran it? Whether or not it made you want the product?

Appropriately used humor can do all of that, but too often ads are made funny more to be funny. There’s too little emphasis on the actual product they’re trying to sell.

One of the most challenging steps can be keeping the joke appropriate to your business. You generally don’t want to anger a significant portion of your potential customer base.

If this is something you’re going to want to use regularly in marketing your home business, you need to develop something of a style in it. You may even be able to take advantage of a running gag and have people look forward to the next time you mention the purple eel or whatever the key part of the joke may be.

So how do you learn to use humor?

The first thing you need to do is look at what makes you laugh. If it amuses you, it might just be funny to others. Then again, you could just have a really odd sense of humor.

Now look at ads that have made you laugh. Especially pay attention to any that are in an industry related to your own.

Also pay attention to comedians and others who earn a living by being funny. Read the comics.

Start coming up with funny things about your home business. You can write a list down on paper, on your computer, or any of your kids who doesn’t move fast enough when you’re looking for something to write on. Just don’t use permanent marker on them. People ask so many questions….

Show your ideas to others. Get feedback.

Write the ad, blog post or whatever, including the joke you thought of. Remember to keep a call to action in there, somehow!

Write it up for your site or email campaign, and give it a try. Track your results. Hope for results beyond your wildest dreams.

Humor doesn’t work for everyone, but it has its place and can be highly effective. Give it a try if you dare.

Normally I give these things a few days before upgrading. I like to see the bugs get worked out before I suffer through seeing what happens to my sites in an upgrade.

But Wordpress 2.5 had some issues that were bugging me. So I went for it.

This is a generally important upgrade anyhow. There’s a security issue that isn’t public yet, and they’d rather see people fix it before it becomes an issue than after. Sounds like a good practice to me.

I’ve noticed with interest some discussion about whether or not blogging is the right business model to use. Much of this is started by SiteSell’s new page discussing when blogging is not the right option.

Then again, Problogger has released a book on blogging. It’s now available for preorder on Amazon.

I have to say, I’m biased in favor of blogging. I have regular websites, and they do quite well. But blogging gives me some flexibility that is more challenging for a website to offer.

Almost… almost everything I say on a blog of mine could be read at any time and still be relevant. I’m not much of a news blogger, and that’s one of the areas where Ken Evoy of SiteSell acknowledges that blogging does well.

But some of the problems he addresses aren’t an issue for every blogger.

Yes, blogging can be stressful, if you’re too focused on a high level of production. That’s an easy trap to fall into, especially in competitive areas such as tech or news. Everyone wants to get in on the story first or at least very early, to get all the links.

Then there are bloggers like me. I blog a fair bit, but not constantly. Sometimes not even regularly.

He also doesn’t quite have it entirely right about the hierarchy of blog posts. Yes, they’re reverse chronological, but they’re also organized into categories and sometimes even subcategories. There’s a lot of flexibility there. And even if you use category pages to show what’s in the subcategories on a regular website, you have to use some sort of order that is often chronological by when you wrote it… whether or not the piece is dated.

But he has a lot of really good points too.

Many people dive into blogging because they hear about the big successes, such as Darren Rowse. They don’t take the time to build their blogs properly. They may have no idea what they’re doing overall, but darn it! They’re going to make a ton of money off this thing.

And that is where SiteBuildIt excels. It gives you the tools you need to build your site correctly. If you follow their course step by step, your site will be quite carefully developed, with both users and search engines in mind. The blindfold you didn’t even know you were wearing is gone.

Since Darren Rowse’s book is only on preorder right now, obviously I can’t review and compare it right now. But I can note that his blog generally has excellent articles and I’ve gotten some great ideas there. I’d be willing to trust that his book is of good quality.

So What Has Worked Best for Me? Sites or Blogs?

Honestly, I’m having some pretty decent success with each. I’m often prone to use my blog to provide new information for my sites, linking to posts from the blog on regular website pages as appropriate. In many ways it’s an easier way to manage the content.

If you know what you’re doing, you can work your advertising and so forth pretty well with a blog.

In terms of searches and traffic, my oldest website does best by far. The website itself is static, but it does have a website attached to it, which does bring in some of the traffic. That should scarcely be a surprise. But my next best site is a blog that’s about a year old.

The thing I like about my blogs is the RSS feeds so that people can subscribe to them. I use Feedburner so that I know about how well each blog is doing in that area. I’m not a big name blogger by any means so far, but I’m working on what I have.

SiteBuildIt does offer that feature too, however, so it’s certainly not a reason to choose blogging over SBI. Any kind of a site feed is nice because it allows people who like your work to subscribe through a reader or even email if you set that up, and know when you’ve updated. It’s a great tool.

Sure, subscribers may read your latest post and then bounce away, but you’re bringing them back. Hopefully over and over again.

It really boils down to how much help you want. If you want a lot of help figuring out the best ways to build your website, SiteBuildIt may well be for you. If you just want to get going, you may want to blog since it’s cheaper and relatively easy to get started. But success may take longer.

And then there’s how much you really know about the internet and marketing already. If you’re new to the whole idea, SBI is very likely the right choice. It will save you hours upon hours of research and quite possibly keep you from making one or more false starts.

On the other hand if you’ve been looking over this whole online marketing thing for a while, you may be comfortable with going it on your own, or you may have found a resource you would prefer to use. There’s a lot out there.

I just got back home from my son’s speech therapy. It’s a half hour of nothing to do for me, as parents have to wait outside.

Nothing, that is, but think.

While some days I talk with the other parents waiting for their kids, other times I pull out my notepad and start brainstorming. It’s a great way to come up with ideas.

Today, for example, my focus was on coming up with new blog article ideas. That’s when I decided to write this article. I also came up with 25 other ideas.

None of them are fully developed. Some will take research, while others will require mere minutes to write. Some will generate multiple articles.

All in all, that’s not a bad return for a half hour of time.

I promised the other day I would post about finding great niches on eBay for people using Build a Niche Store. It’s time to start that process!

Check Hot Sellers on eBay

eBay makes this relatively easy in some ways. Go to the Sell page, and scroll down to the “Cash In!” section. You’ll see a link called Find out What’s Hot! There’s a ton of information there to help you figure out what you want to focus on.

Now there are a few big clues I can give you to help you pick. First of all, don’t go too general. Sure, lots of people buy iPods on eBay, but lots of people are trying to earn money through the affiliate program on them too. Go more specific. Tighten up that niche.

You can, of course, go for the big niches. You just have to be prepared to deal with more competition. If you’re just starting out, it’s generally a shorter learning curve and less frustrating if you start out with a smaller niche.

Another important thing is to pick something you will enjoy creating content around. While BANS creates a great site for you, you will still want some unique content that you’ve created on the site as well. You can buy and rewrite private label content, you can review individual products that tend to sell well, just create something more to draw the search engines and (more importantly) buyers to your site.

Now whether you create that content on or off your BANS website is up to you. I’ve done it both ways.

Also consider is whether the product is seasonal or sells well year-round. There’s nothing wrong with promoting seasonal products, but you should be ready for the impact that will have on your site.

You can see a lot of hot products by checking out the Hot Items by Category. It’s only updated every few months or so, so it’s not terribly accurate.

And here’s a biggie: eBay has a new Marketplace Research tool. It offers up to 90 days of completed sales data, average sold prices, top searches by category and trend graphs. It’s not free, but you can pick your subscription level depending on if you’re just doing some quick research or if it’s going to be ongoing.

For free tools, there’s also Terapeak. It will give you similar data, as well as the percentage of auctions that actually sell, which can help in deciding if sales are good enough in your niche.

The higher the percentage of successful sales, the better, but don’t be at all surprised to see many in the 30-50% range. Just wander through eBay and you can quickly realize that most products do not sell more than half the time. Many sell far less often.

The other metric you’ll be interested in, of course, is the average sale price. Since your commission is based off what eBay earns, which is based on the final sale price, you want good numbers here. However, a niche that is easier to dominate that produces a lot of little sales can be better than a more challenging one with larger sales. It’s all a matter of balance and personal preference.

Personal Interests

What do you like? Is there something you’ve bought on eBay? What do you see around your house?

It doesn’t take a lot of detailed research to find things that you know people tend to buy. Pretty much anything you own has the potential to be sold online.

Once you’ve found your potential niche, you can use Terapeak to see how well it does on eBay. Maybe it works, maybe you need to think some more.

What About Pay Per Click Costs?

Even if you aren’t doing pay per click, it can be interesting to see what others are paying for traffic on Google and other search engines. A niche with a large number of PPC ads on it is often profitable for those running the ads.

But sometimes a profitable niche has been missed in the pay per click market. This is more common on the tighter niches, another good reason to really work on choosing your niche.

There’s a free tool offered by Google that lets you check out your keywords. You can add in the average CPC in the filter section so that you can see what others are paying. Type in $50 for your estimated Max CPC to see what it thinks you would be paying for that keyword.

You don’t have to use pay per click to promote your sites if that’s not your style. Many do just fine with other kinds of marketing. But the data’s still interesting, and you might come up with a niche you hadn’t yet considered.

There are lots of other ways you can research a niche, but I find these ones work pretty well. The key is to get creative and find a topic you want to work on.

I finally gave in and signed up for Twitter. People are making such a fuss about it, so I thought I would see what the big deal is.

It’s kind of interesting. I picked a variety of people to follow right at the start, although I have no doubt I’ll be following others soon enough. Just have to wait and see how it goes.

I can see where it could be a big time waster, but I also can see the advantage in the short messages. It just takes a moment to say something… because that’s all the room you’ve got.

That said, keeping this post short and sweet. Off to get some more work done around and about the web.

With eBay’s changes to their affiliate program, I’ve had to take some time with my BANS sites, getting them updated. But I also wanted to start some new ones.

The particular site I’m working on today is one I’d never switched to Build a Niche Store in the first place. I’d used eBay’s affiliate tools back before I’d ever heard of BANS. It’s brought in some sales depite being in Javascript, so it’s definitely a category I want to update to something the search engines will actually care about.

The installation of BANS is very simple. Create your database on your hosting, then upload Build a Niche Store. They’ll tell you to CHMOD the cont/cont.php file to 777, and the instructions tell you how to do that with your FTP program. It’s pretty simple - right click on the filename, select properties and change the 644 to 777. At least that’s how it works for me.

Then you go to your site and follow the instructions to install it. You’ll need your mySQL host and login information for this. A few seconds later, it’s all installed. Delete the install.php file and CHMOD the cont.php file back to 644.

Login, and you have one more very, very important step: Change your password. You can change the login name too, if you like, but since all BANS installations come with the same default admin name and password, changing the password is a vital bare minimum.

Next you’ll want to set up your store. I’ve circled the areas you need to fill out to get started.

There are other areas you can fill out, such as if you want to customize your site wide meta tags, but you don’t absolutely have to do that. You can also decide if you want open or closed navigation - that is, do you want links to all the categories showing or not?
The campaign ID you get from the eBay Partner Network, and you can follow the link to get your eBay category. Make sure you create a new campaign ID for every site so you can track which sites are profitable for you.

Hit Save once you’ve added all your information. Your basic store is now active… maybe. Some hosts need you to switch from normal mode to curl. That’s at the bottom of the Setup page:

Just make sure you customize it. The basic templates are very plain. I always change up the colors and give it a header graphic. In this particular case I’ll be coordinating it with the main site. There are several to choose from, so it’s pretty easy to find something that matches the basic layout of most sites, and you can customize from there.

Now I know I’ve skipped over one very important step - researching the niche. There are many ways to do that, and I’ll discuss it when I start my next BANS site.