I was thinking about aMember in the beginning when I wanted to start a small membership site. But I heard there were issues with getting use to it and having things work properly with it. But again it is also one of the most recommended membership scripts out there.

It was not till some of my marketing friends started making membership sites and they were using aMember. I ask them what they thought and they gave me their inputs.

After a good week of asking around I decided to purchase a license and install it and test it. At first it was time consuming trying to get use to the interface and its settings but after that it was fairly easy. Then came the plugins and versatility that I needed for my site…

The installation of aMember was very simple and very straight forward. I didnt have any issues installing it at all. Once in then you get to play around with the interface and settings. I have messed up a couple things in the beginning but I finally got use to the interface and use to what it can do.

At first it was working great and I enjoyed it, but then when certain things came up like how would I integrate it with my affiliate program, how does it handle with aweber, how does it remove canceled users etc. So these things I spent several good days researching Google and the aMember forum.

Good thing about their community and their staff is they are all helpful and I get a response usually within a couple of hours. It did take some several customization with my programmer to get some things working the way I wanted.

One good thing it gives me is the access logs and who have logged in and what pages they went to etc. Which I think is really good to help troubleshoot if any issues arise. The main dashboard is very informative and gives you a lot of information right away.

Another good thing about amember is the fact they have a ton of plugins free and paid. I have bought several plugins to seamlessly integrate a forum, some reporting, and soon I will be purchasing some other plugins to help with the selling of my membership site.

One thing I did not like was the fact that if you add someone for free it calculates it as an income, which I think it shouldn’t. The only way to avoid this I think is to personally create the same product BUT without a price. This way it does not get calculated with the income reports.

…speaking of reports. Amember has a very basic reporting system and I think can be improved. They have very basic reports but one report stick outs, demographics. This can easily show you who your demographics are overall. Helping you who to target online.

I know some users have requested a more versatile reporting and more options than protection. But there are a lot of plugins for amember but sometimes you may have to create your own to get what you want.

.. Check out aMember and let me know what you think. In a couple days a total wrap up will be discussed. Maybe a video?

In the beginning I wanted to use strictly Wordpress as my membership script since there is already a login area for it. I figured it was the best bet for my membership site. Then another idea came and wishlist could not do what I need it to do, so I bought another script. Well I think I got a good comparison with both scripts – because I think both scripts accomplish what I needed it to do!

So here is a nice write up of the comparisons of both script, Wishlist Member vs aMember!

I have a good couple videos too that I want to put up as well. But in any case I have been multi tasking, working with networks and advertisers can be a pain. The reason is they want your traffic. I finally got the chance to work with a new advertiser to test out an offer and to see if it will work. I also started doing more Facebook advertising. The reason is because I want to test a traffic demographic both search and social traffic.

But also I had to deal and work with my programmers on the new Twit Sniper platform!

Now I talked a lot about other keyword tools and I have my thoughts on others while I support a lot of really good ones. Today, I have this other crazy tool that does almost all the tools out there. It expands off the Google Keyword tool and does even more.

Jon Shugart has created this crazy keyword tool that does what most of the keyword tools does. The problem is with these multiple keyword tools, they either focus on one thing or several other smaller features. But Keyword Rockstar has multiple functions and does a hell of a lot of work.

BUT Brad got a really good system on keyword research which is rarely seen in others. It digs! Which is a very powerful feature and I think it finds more keywords for you which will be the determination of your success. Since keywords are important factor in online marketing, you want to dig deeper in each keyword and see what is being produced. Each keyword is unique and pulls in different types of information.

Sometimes it take time to find the perfect keyword, but Brad solved this issue and made t automatic. He has and is doing the digging for you on each keyword Google is providing to find more and more relevant keywords for your niche.

If you think I am just hyping it up because me and Brad are friends, well I actually bought it and I got the video to give you a quick preview of it on just what I mean when it starts to dig deeper into each keyword it finds.

Watch the video:

But, I do not just accept all products or write testimonials for every product out there. Some of them are trusted names that I trust and speak on a regular basis. The best part I get is I get the exposure and brand from these testimonials I put out for these products. I get to create an instant relationship with the creator and even other users who see my name, users who Google me, email me, etc.

So lets see how to leverage some f this traffic and use it to your benefit.

Well I call this the YES Funnel, just because you want users to say yes all the time. From the beginning you catch your traffic you want them to say yes in some sort of way, entering their email address in an optin, giving them a discount price, asking for a retweet, or something easy like letting them watch a video without anything in return.

Boiled down, RevResponse is simply a CPL network. But, after closer inspection you will see it is much more valuable than many other CPL programs. RevResponse provides our partners with hundreds of free niche-industry magazines, whitepapers, software trials, etc. Affiliates can then give these free offers to their audience and get paid when users request them. Some of the payouts are as high as $20 per qualified lead.

The problem that I was having is some links were dead and some reader question the multiple links within the context. I look again at my website and literally just stared at a random post, trying to find an annoyance and errors. I did not find anything annoying with the exception of the amount of links that are distributed among the post. One reader stated the link properties were not showing on the bottom bar of their browser, I purposely hid it – cloaking. I left the cloaking a lone and I then decided to filter out specific keywords and remove dead links.

First, the reason why I have context links for affiliate programs is because content is good/excellent information. Readers take links within post more serious than those that are exposed to the sidebars labeled “Featured” or “Sponsors.” Links within content is very powerful simply targeting specific keywords to targeted niche products can result to sales. I have used aLinks ever since this blog has started and I found it to be very powerful.

There are other companies such as Kontera that does similar things to content. Kontera turns specific targeted keywords and turns them in to contextual ads. It provides images, information, and even streams depending on the keyword it targets. In turn if someone clicks on such an ad I get paid, it is on a per click basis.

There is also an Amazon Product Preview and Context Links. This is a CPA version of Kontera. This displays a description and image of the product. This is really good for the user because it gives them a virtual window of what is to be seen on the next page if clicked on. With Amazon.com you are not paid on a per click basis but on the action the end user takes, for example purchasing the item.

Another one is by Chitika, called Linx. It is a mix of Kontera and Amazon Product Preview. With Chitika you are paid on a per click basis. These are physical products being shown, just like Amazon, you are just paid per click, like Kontera.

Chitika does work well with physical type of websites or blogs. For example: tech blogs, tech forums, review websites, etc. Any site that deals with physical item, Chitika is right for you!

Now, why not get paid in bigger amounts by accomplishing some keywords into affiliated links? CPA are far more likely to product more income for a user. CPA stands for Cost Per Action, meaning you get paid for the actions the end user does. This can mean they purchase something and you get a percentage of that sale or you provided someone an email address and you get paid per email address.

Back to Cleaning my DB:

I went through the database, export all the information in excel and filtered the ones I wanted to remove. I even went through all 200 links and checked to see if they were dead or not. It is amazing how some domains are parked because the owner doe snot want to promote or sell his item no more. Another good reason why domains were park is the product didn’t sell to good to keep the domain? But there were dead affiliate links within my post and I apologize for having them in my post.

I was using a lot of ClickBank products and 7$ products within my post. I have had great success with 7$ items and reports, I wish I can say this about Clickbank – only few sales.

Now that I found the dead links I went ahead and republished my DB with the information that I want and active links, refresh the DB and bam all the links are active. Looking at some posts I find there were fewer links, depending on the keywords ofcourse. The post now looks neater and more comfortable. I again stared at my monitor until I found any other issues with the context links.

I would like to thank my readers for providing feedback on my blog and making it a better experience for you and the future readers.

I think users get the Build a Niche Store and just let it be, hoping to get a sale or commission. But there are other ways to earn from your BANS website. I notice a lot have been adding Adsense and I know there are specific issues with Adsense lately, a lot of updates on their end – which I will not discuss in this post. But Adsense is just one way of monetizing a BANS store.

Build a Niche Store is just an eBay feed slapped on to a webpage. It redirects the user to ebay – so can we say your build a niche store is a landing page? I think we can. At the same time why just leave it to just ebay? or leave it just to eBay and Adsense? We can add so many other monetizing widgets to help increase your profits.

With BadCircuit.com I have 6 other ways I am earning money. I use Pay Per Click other than Adsense such as TTZ Media, Chitika, and WidgetBucks. I also use Amazon Widgets, CJ.com Banners, and NeverBlueAds Campaigns. So you can really say my Build a Niche Store is a landing page for affilaites!

As you can see to the left I am monetizing my BANS to its fullest. I think of my Build a Niche Store as a landing page because I am redirecting users to another site where they do their final purchase. So why not create the ‘landing page’ into a page with all affiliates BUT blend in all the other forms of advertising on the website?

My BANS layout is very unique because it resembles a scroll like blog, where the users have to scroll down to view more items. So looking at this web layout there are several factors what the users see first. Upon entering the website they are greeted by my logo in the upper left hand corner then by the 728 banner provided by NeverBlueAds. From there it page seemed like it splits and the user is shown ‘Today’s Top Electronics Deals’ then the eBay feed.

A lot of users read from left to right so the most important factors should be on the left (my own case study). At the very bottom after they scroll they are then exposed to an amazon widget text cloud, which shows popular electronic items from Amazon.

Already, I am giving 4 opportunities to my readers to purchase something or direct them elsewhere. If they do not find anything they like they can search, pick a category or there are other options in the forms of banners and TTZ Media links. There are multiple ways a user can find the item they are looking for and if they do, I am getting paid either by PPC or an affiliate commission.

There are so many other ways to utilize your web layout and monetizing your store. If you are getting good traffic to your BANS, try to increase revenue by adding a couple lines of code to help increase commissions. What you do not want is to just clutter your layout. Strategically place banners and widgets in proper areas of your layout. Your layout is crucial to all your readers, so split test and split test again! Once you know where certain areas are more targeted, use it to your advantage.

For BadCircuit, I just hired a web designer to re-design my layout, creating my Build a Niche Store even more unique and a better user experience. I already know what I want and where I will be placing specific ads and widgets. Take the layout to the left as a good example of strategic placement <- my opinion.

There is a Chitika widget prior to the eBay feeds and there is an Amazon text cloud after – create interaction with your users. There are multiple ways to monetize such a site instead of just using the eBay feed as a source of earnings, expand your horizon and earnings! Think about if you were a user and you arrived at someone’s store; what would you look for, how are you looking at the webpage, where are you looking at, etc.

Just think what you can add to your Build a Niche Store to help it grow. How can you blend other forms of advertising within your store? Soon BadCircuit.com will have a new layout and new design, giving my buyers a better experience – first impressions are important!