EDIT: Feb 2010 – Due to the new pricing system of the eBay Partner Network I no longer recommend the use of this script to making money on the internet. You can still make money by using the script but it is no where as efficient as it used to be when it comes to making money on the internet.

If you are completely new to making money on the internet, and want to know How to Make Money Online then my recommendation would be to start off with Build a Niche Store, also known as BANS. This is not the best method of making money on the internet in my opinion, but it does make me about 1,000 bucks a month, and I have not done any site building with BANS in awhile. But for the beginner, this is what I would recommend, simply because it is easy to install, it is easy to set up, and it is easy to bring in traffic.

Before you start making money on the internet with BANS you will have to sign up to be an eBay affiliate through the eBay Partner Network.

Now to be on your way making money on the internet with BANS, you will need some initial start up cash. I believe that the price of the script is $97 dollars right now at the moment. Now that you have the software you will have to set up a hosting account, one that works well for me is hostprise, which is great for the beginner as they have the cheapest reseller accounts that are around. Once you set up a hosting account, you will next need to do some keyword research.

Find a buying keyword, what I mean by buying is say that you are trying to sell golf clubs. They you would want to use something like cheap golf clubs, golf clubs for sale, discount golf clubs etc. A buying keyword is essential if you are to be making money on the internet with BANS. When you are choosing a keyword, think about if that keyword has a buying need or not, if someone is just searching for “golf clubs”, then they may be looking for information about the types of golf clubs, or how to use a golf club, not necessarily wanting to buy a golf club. Pick something with low competition. If you have been reading my posts then you should have SEO quake installed, see what site sits at number one for keyword that you are trying to take over.

Choose a domain name and register it, I use go daddy for domain names, but I use either hostprise or hostgator for hosting. If you can find a pre-owned domain name, that has one or more of your keywords in it, then go for it. My personal preference is I only use .com’s and .net’s, I have done no tests with any other kinds of domains other than those, they have worked for me so I am sticking with that.

If you cant find a pre-owned domain name, then register a new one, there is almost always a way to get a .com and fit all of your keywords in the domain name (unless you are tackling a popular niche, which you shouldn’t be doing as a newb). I have found that having the exact keywords in the url is the best onsite seo that you can possibly do, although not necessary to rank number one, just helps a hell of a lot, and has helped me in making money on the internet with BANS.

If you need help installing the script then the BANS forums has plenty of useful tutorials on how to get your niche store running, I wouldn’t take their information on SEO to heart though. If you want to be making money on the internet with BANS, you will go broke following the SEO tactics there, they are helpful for the installation and technical issues though.

There is a problem with BANS though and if you just throw up a spammy store, then you will more than likely get de-indexed. You can either learn this the hard way or you can follow some of my tips that I have used, and more than 75% of my stores are still indexed and they are ranking strong.

Keep the store ten pages or less, this will help your site not look like a duplicate content spam site. Think about it, you put in a category id in the set up, the category is golfing, and boom, you have over a 1,000 pages all filled with eBay items. The problem is, many people do this, and in theory, triggers a major flag that your site is spam. What I do is I put about a paragraph above the product listings, and as much as possible beneath the listings, especially on the home page. I do the same for all of my store pages, which is always less than 10. You should only be targeting a couple of keywords anyway, so there are really no need for multiple pages. My best performing BANS store has 5 pages, it gets about 300 uniques a day, and makes me 40% of my entire income.

Change the name of the store pages, change the name of the sidebar tags, such as “Home” and “store pages” to something that is relevant to your keyword. Remove the sponsored links H2 tag, just another dumb foot print you do not need. Remove the powered by footer. This will remove some footprints, not so much from search engines, but by idiots that try and see who is competing with them, who is working the same BANS product they are.

Don’t worry about making the theme look pretty, in fact, for the newbie, just erase the header and do not worry about an image. Most of the sites that make me money have no header image, just an H1 tag with the keyword that I am targeting. You need to be spending time getting links instead of making your site look pretty. Once you are done with the site, build a bunch more. Do not put all of your eggs in this script BANS though, there are many ways that you can be making money on the internet, use as many as you can.