Progress in My Build a Niche Store

9/27/08
In these three weeks I've done the following things to optimize my BANS' site - Travel Deals on EBay:

1. Everyday I read as much information as I can in BANS' private forum; it includes tips and strategies that some BANS' members have contributed.

2. Find some one-way links to promote Travel Deals on EBay.

3. Submit it to the major directories such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

4. Submit it to other directories other than Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

5. Submit it to Google Webmaster Tool account and observe its stats.

6. Submit it to Yahoo Site Explorer and its feed too.

7. Promote each page by providing some unique contents to it.

Actually Travel Deals on EBay was indexed by Google the next day after it went live. Now a couple of pages have shown zero out of ten for Google's PageRank. There are 13 out of 22 links being indexed by Google. Yahoo has indexed only one. I am still waiting for MSN to index Travel Deals on EBay. Still no sale yet; but I have good feeling that it will be soon.

10/4/08
Here are the things that I observed with my BANS so far.
- Google put my BANS site in sandbox - Now only 6 out of 23 links in airlineticketswithus.com were being indexed.
- Yahoo indexed 6 out of 23 links so far. One person searched "airline ticket agent" in Yahoo search engine and found Travel Deals on EBay today.
- MSN still did not index any links for Travel Deals on EBay yet.

10/11/08
I changed a new theme and customized it a little bit. I added more content to my BANS site and created a Links page which is used to exchange links with any relevant sites.
- Google still put my BANS site in sandbox - I checked my server site's Latest Visitors Logs, I found out that Googlebot did visiting 6 links of my BANS site but no indexing was listed.
- Yahoo indexed 5 links instead 6 this week.
- I submitted my BANS site to MSN's Webmaster Center. According to the Latest Visitors Logs in my sever, MSNbot did visiting one or two links of my BANS site since then; but it did not index any links of that site.

10/18/08
This week I added more content to my BANS site. I still did not get any replies from the reciprocal websites I've listed in my Links page yet.
- Google still has not listed any links of my BANS site yet. However, Googlebot has actively crawled the site.
- Yahoo indexed 3 links. It decreased from 6 to 3 links this week. According to Latest Visitors Logs in my server, 'cheap airline tickets eBay' and 'travel' are two key words/phrases people typed in search engines for my BANS site to show up. However it only showed up for two days. Now they are disappeared without a trace.
- The good news is MSN has finally indexed my BANS home page in its search result. Try it you'll see it when you typed 'site:airlineticketswithus.com' in its search engine.

10/25/08
- This week I did not do much for my BANS site. I think I'll leave it alone for a while.
- Still no replies from any sites that I had included in Links of my BANS site.
- Google's sandbox was still in effect.
- Yahoo really picked up my BANS site. It indexed 25 pages as this moment. I am really happy about that.
- MSN still showed 1 page which is the main page of my BANS site. Someone typed "bids for bargains branson missouri" in Live Search and found my BANS site.
- Besides these three major search engines, I saw other search robots visiting my BANS site as well.

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What is The Difference Between Subdomains, Parked Domains, and Addon Domains?

Last week I talked about Transfer My Joomla! Website to a New Host. My new host, hostmonster.com, allows its customers to set up unlimited subdomains, unlimited parked domains, and unlimited addon domains. So I tried to find out what they are, here are the results I've found.

What is a subdomain?
A subdomain is an url for a different section of your website. It uses your domain name and a prefix or a postfix. For example, my domain name is airlineticketswithus.com, a subdomain of my domain might be store.airlineticketswithus.com or airlineticketswithus.com/store/. Setting up a subdomain is Free.

What is a parked domain?
A parked domain (a pointed domain) is a domain name that points to the same directory as your primary domain. For example, if my primary domain is mysite.com, then my parked domain might be myothersite.com. Both primary domain and parked domain will point to the same website. In other words, both domains will lead to one website.

You'll need to purchase a parked domain from a registry like GoDaddy. It provides the best deals for domain registry so far. Your parked domain should point to the same name servers as your primary domain name. You can find your name servers from your web server's cPanel under Domain Manager. In my case, they are ns1.hostmonster.com and ns2.hostmonster.com.

What is an addon domain?
An addon domain is a domain name that points to a different sub-directory on your account. It gives you the ability to set up an entirely different website. For example, my primary site is airlineticketswithus.com, but my addon domain is mycoolonlinestores.com. They are totally independent websites.

You'll need to purchase an addon domain from a registry. GoDaddy offers the best deals for domain registry so far. Your addon domain name should also point to the same name servers as your primary domain name as well.

Suppose your addon domain name is yoursite.com, then in your web server your addon domain name might be accessed as follows:
yoursite.com
primarydomain.com/yoursite
yoursite.primarydomain.com

If you have questions, feel free to ask in the comment section.

How to Transfer My Joomla! Website to a New Host?

I've just transferred my Joomla! website (Joomla! 1.0.15) to a new host - hostmonster.com. It provides not only reasonable price but also unlimited hosting space, unlimited site bandwidth, and hosting unlimited domains. That is the main reason I chose hostmonster.com over the other hosts.

Switching between hosts can be easy or difficult depending on how much knowledge you've known about it. I've learned a lot during this hosting-switch processing. If one day for any reason that you decide to switch your current host to a new host, here are the things I want you to pay close attention to:

• Find a new host that meets your needs.
  


• Use FTP to backup your website to you PC (Personal Computer).
  


• Backup (export) your database to your PC using phpMyAdmin from your current host's cPanel. For more details, please find out here: MySQL Tutorial.
  


• Upload your website that you've backed up earlier to your new host's root directory using FTP.
  


• Create a new database using MySQL ® Database Wizard from your new host's cPanel. Video tutorial for creating MySQL database and user in cPanel will show you step-by-step of how to create one.
  


• Upload (import) your database that you've exported earlier to your new host using phpMyAdmin. In my case, I have to change the information about my database or the absolute path before I imported it. For example I have to change my old database mycowut7_joom1 to be new database airlinet_joom1. I also have to change my old database's absolute path home/mycowut7/public_html to be my new database's absolute path home1/airlinet/public_html.
  
  Where mycowut7 and airlinet are my old and new host user names respectively.
  


• Download configuration.php (it should be in your root directory) to your PC, edit the following lines, and then upload it back to your root directory:
  
  $mosConfig_absolute_path = '/home/hostlogin/public_html/';
  $mosConfig_cachepath = '/home/hostlogin/public_html/cache';
  $mosConfig_db = 'hostlogin_joom1';
  $mosConfig_password = 'passwordfordb';
  $mosConfig_smtphost = 'localhost';
  $mosConfig_user = 'hostlogin_joom1';
  
  where you have to change hostlogin to be your new host's user name, joom1 to be your database name, passwordfordb to be your database password. In my case I even have to change home to be home1. You can also find out your absolute path in your new host's cPanel.
  


• Point your domain to your new host's name servers from you current host. If you can't do it yourself, you may ask your current host to have that done for you. Remember that DNS (Domain Name System) changes will take 24 to 48 hours to be updated due to DNS' propagation. You also need to know EPP Code (Extensible Provisioning Protocol Code) to transfer your domain to your new host. You can obtain it from your current host's cPanel. If not ask your current host to send you one via email.
  
  where name servers should look like these: ns1.hostname.com and ns2.hostname.com or dns1.hostname.com and dns2.hostname.com depends on which host you are using. You can find out these name servers from your new host's cPanel.
  

If you have any questions, feel free to leave your comments here.

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Create a Store Using BANS' Software

Actually I learned Build a Niche Store (BANS) back in 2007 but I did not buy it till now. I've just created a new store using BANS' software. Take a look here: Travel Deals On eBay. What do you think? Actually building a store like that is really easy with BANS' software. However optimizing a site like that needs a little bit effort.

Once you bought the software, it would allow you to download it right away. It is a zipped file so you need to unzip it first. It includes four files and eleven folders. Each folders contains files related to a country name that you can promote from eBay Partner Network. For example, if you want to promote US products, then you will have to choose a folder named US Store. BANS' Install Manual will walk you through of how to install BANS in your server. Its User Manual will show you how to build and develop your new store from inside your BANS admin cpanel.

Travel Deals On eBay is the first store I've set up. I will let you know how things go.

Update: If you want to follow up how I've been doing with my Build a Niche Store (BANS). Read this post to find out more: Progress in My Build a Niche Store.

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