It appears as though one of the original founders of Build A Niche Store (if you didn’t know, it’s a light CMS that allows you to create an eBay Partner Network website quickly and easily) has sent out a communication to the old BANS mailing list, which I’m still a part of. However, it has nothing to do about addressing how the founders have completely given up on the software, haven’t created an update in years, allowed their customers to potentially get banned from eBay Partner Network due to a simple software issue, given all of their customers a huge middle finger, and ax’ed the BANS referral program without sending any of their publishers a notice, but, just wanted to let the community know that their demonstration websites are now up for sale.

Looks like “GameImprovementIrons.com,” the original website that the founders of BANS had created to show off the software, is now being put up for sale. Things that make you go hmmmmm.

Perhaps they were actually banned by eBay Partner Network and have to peddle off the website as dead weight, or, the site itself has gotten chewed up thanks to the recent Google Panda update and its merciless butchery of affiliate storefront websites.

Either way, it’s both funny and sad to see the builder of an affiliate breakthrough sending an update to sell off the site that ‘started it all’ back in 2007 or so.

If you’re still using Build A Niche Store (I am), you’ll want to visit the forums, or what’s left of them. A few kind programmers out there continue to make improvements to the antiquated version v3.0, while the original creators of the software continue to ignore the community and collect payments from new copies sold.

A wave of recent email blasts from the original BANS founders started insinuating that the old world of ePN affiliate storefronts is now a thing of the past, and Clickbank stores are the new wave.

Clickbank?

I’ve been a long time hater of Clickbank. Not only because the world’s scummiest marketers on earth use it, or that 99% of the “not so secret” SEO secrets being sold there can easily be found for free on your favorite internet marketing forum, but Clickbank has screwed hundreds…thousands of affiliates.

I’ve tested almost every popular affiliate system out there – CJ, Plimus, e-Junkie, etc. The only one that I had never earned a CENT from was Clickbank, and that was after an entire year of promoting their stuff. Considering I make a rather healthy and steadily growing affiliate income every year, there’s something wrong with them – not me. A simple Google search for “Clickbank fraud” will paint the picture for you, since I’m not going to re-write history.

As for the topic at hand, what astounds me is how the beloved ePN/work-from-home/affiliate marketing giver of hope has given up on ePN themselves, and has resorted to the PDF pirate den known as Clickbank. All hope is lost …at least we still have PHPbay. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the new-found business advantage.

eBooks are so 2004! I think I’ll stick with my niche stores.

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.