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I shelved my case study for a few weeks and I am ready to get back to work on it. For a refresh I am creating a website from scratch using BANS.

This easy website building tool pulls auction listings from eBay
for your chosen niche. I have decided to focus on Gifts on the website Your Gift Elf. A few weeks ago I installed the software. It was so easy and the manual walked me right through it. Great if you are technically challenged!

You do have to modify the template though, but they have set up an easy to follow tutorial on how to do that as well. Today I worked on changing colors to make the site less grey. I have to create a header graphic (or have one made for me). That is on my to do list.

It is also necessary to create fresh content for each page of your site in order to have a website filled with unique content. I need to work on that next week. So far though I am really liking this program.

Today I printed our the 70 page user manual for BANS and got to work. I prefer to print manuals out so that I don’t have to change between windows and so that I can read them off the computer. I set it to print 4 pages per page in order to conserve paper. Anyway, the manual is a real light read and basically is a how-to for installation and setting up your site. I already had a domain and hosting so I got to skip that part. I’m using an existing domain that I’ve had parked for quite some time. It is www.yourgiftelf.com. For hosting I prefer Hostgator
and www.GoDaddy.com
for registering domains.

I had to unzip the software and then use an ftp client to upload to my webhost. If you don’t know how to do this, the instructions very clearly lay it out and recommend a ftp program to use. It took a few minutes to upload and I had to change permissions on one file. Again the instructions walk you through it. Then you install the software online, very simple. I did a basic setup and put some categories in from eBay
that I want to feature. It all took me about the hour that my daughter napped today. And this is what it looks like so far.

Not too bad, but definitely needs some work!

I thought that I would do a case study here on my latest project. I just purchased a license to use BANS. BANS stands for Build a Niche Store. It is an automated system for building a complete website around Ebay. Ebay as everyone knows is the powerhouse auction website where you can find everything. I’m going to use it to build a completely new website and track my progress here. The package contains an ebook, the software, and membership to a very active forum. It would also be a great system to add to an existing website and I will probably be doing some of that too.

I’m going to install the software tomorrow and I will let you know how it goes.