I'm actually interested in starting up some Ebay Stores in order to make a bit of a passive income since my aggressive attempts at PPC have left my pockets almost hollow
The way I see it is there are two approaches that people take with these Ebay Stores (BANS/PHPBay):
1. Set it and forget it: seems like an approach similar to what bb_wolfe was describing above. Basically you create a site where the key focus is the store, with some articles and posts on the side, and cover all the correct SEO factors (Permalinks, xml sitemap, meta tages, keyword dense articles, link building, etc.). Then you leave it (or perhaps work systematically on a proper link-building campaign) and wait for traffic to slowely come in.
Pros: these are relatively quick to make, and therefore easy to scale by creating more stores (ie. an empire)
Cons: Doesn't provide the customer with too much niche specific value asides from a few articles which may or may not be of high quality. This results in a Clicks:Conversion ratio that is not very high and therefore Ebay may penalize you by kicking you off their network (which has been common as of late).
2. high quality content rich site + Store: Putting more focus into creating a high quality content rich site, provding the customer with much more than just a store. Some have added forums, videos, polls, regularily updated blog/articles, and a very systematic link-building/social networking campaign.
Pros: Become more of an authority on your niche and have more return customers as well as the possibility of much more traffic and conversions. Also the ability to monetize the site in other ways that just Ebay.
Cons: Takes much more time to launch and maintain, which means that it's harder to create many of these.
Conclusion/Question: I have very limited experience using BANS/PHPBay (I created a few stores in the past with a few articles each and more or less forgot about them = they lost all their traffic eventually) and want to know which one of these methods is most recommended? I'm thinking it would be a medium between the two options, but my problem is trying to find a happy medium (ie. how much work i should do before moving on, or not moving on)
*To the original poster: buying chunks of "guaranteed" traffic is not a long-term or sustainable method, listen to what the successful guys here tell you... it's a joke, and you'll only fail yourself by following this kind of rich-quick mentality. Create a solid, long-term business plan and follow it.
