Pixelrage.net

If you’re an affiliate marketer and have never heard of Build A Niche Store (widely known simply as “BANS” by the affiliate community), then I’m going to seriously doubt your validity. This game-changing program seemed to start it all when it first came out in ’06: a simple CMS built strictly for the ePN (eBay Partner Network) affiliate program, allowing you to create an insta-store populated with eBay products. In late 2009, the BANS enterprise took a complete 180°  turn as its original founders sold the company. What I witnessed afterward was a virtual train wreck of a transition.

BANS has quickly become a household name to affiliate marketers: if you wanted to get into or understand ePN, then you probably began with Build A Niche Store.

The $65 software has sold hundreds of thousands of licenses, has a massive community, and has been both hated and loved (depending on the white or black-hattedness of its users). In the 3+ years of its existence, it has fostered a number of at-home entrepreneurs enjoying four-figure per month incomes through eBay’s affiliate program, and has also been the starting point in affiliate marketing for yours truly.

Its only notable competitor, PHPbay, is a premium WordPress plugin that lets you “drop in” a custom tailored eBay affiliate feed into any page with a simple line of code. Between BANS and PHPbay, your options were unlimited: either use BANS to power a site on its own, or if you’re a bit more savvy, harness the incredible power of WordPress and PHPbay to make an authority storefront.

The Build A Niche Store Hand-off

Getting back to October 5, 2009: Kelvin and Adam, the co-owners of BANS, announced their business decision of selling the massively popular, game-changing software company. Undoubtedly, many pants have been crapped since that initial email. It reminds me of one of my previous jobs, where the owner, in his early 40s, wanted to retire early; so, he simply sold the company and bid us all a farewell while we flopped around like a fish out of water.

That’s basically what I saw with this situation.

Shortly after that initial email, a second communication was sent out on October 13, 2009 stating that a small development firm in the UK has expressed interest in buying the BANS name. A horribly long 1,700 word “dear diary” of an email (yes, I checked the word count in Microsoft Word) introduced the firm, the history of BANS and its potential future.

What Was Once Great…

On October 26, 2009, an email announced the birth of “The Niche Site Building Network,” located at none other than “thenichesitebuildingnetwork.com,” which would also go down in history as one of the worst domain names ever registered. The site itself is none other than a doorway page pointing to three separate websites (nichesitebuilding.com, thenichesiteblueprint and buildanichestore.com), which is none other than a dissection of the original “BuildANicheStore.com,” making everything more tedious and difficult to find. The website itself went from a clean and clear web 2.0 interface to a way-out-of-the-fold scrolling monster of a web page, filled with unnecessary information, huge text and terrible navigation.

Immediately, my aspirations of the BANS legacy was strangled, shot and drowned.

If the transition from good to (really) bad web design, coupled with the myriad of additional domain names wasn’t enough, the company has now renamed itself as “In Colour,” which has nothing to do with In Living Color. This has also spawned off yet another domain name, “MyDigitalProjectManager.com,” which is a guide for existing Build A Niche Store users. Confusing.

The BANS Community Gets Banned

Here’s the moral: transitions and acquisitions are never easy, and it’s up to the new ownership to make things move as smoothly as possible. Knowing, understanding and talking to the existing community that you’re “buying” is paramount. Understanding that you can’t screw around with the existing look and feel is equally as important, as is making things easy and as stress-free on the user base as possible. I haven’t seen any of these elements with the Build A Niche Store transition.

During the sale of a business, the sellers bid farewell to their baby. They say goodbye to the community/employees/whoever was involved, yet at the same time, don’t give much of a crap about the transition process. Why should they? I wouldn’t either, if I sold my company, collected my pot of gold and moved onward and upward. However, it really sucks to be a part of the existing community when these things happen.

I’m sorry to say that I no longer have any faith in Build A Niche Store, unless this new team really gets moving and proves themselves in doing the amazing job that its founding fathers Kelvin and Adam have done. So far, I haven’t seen any inclination of this.