I have about 10 BANS sites and have made almost $10k this year. As with anything, there is no easy road to success. you need to learn what search terms drive traffic, how to increase your Search engine rankings and how to convert visitors into buyers. BANS is just 1 step in the process to help you get over the technical goobledegook.

jayesjaye, I bought BANS and am currently setting up my first site (not finished, but its going to be incredibly detailed, that's why), but I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can. And if you have any others, you can ask me directly through my ebay account, rather than have to endure some of the vitriol here.

No, the website isn't included in the price. What you get is an unlimited license, which means you can put it on as many websites as you like, you just can't sell those sites without requiring the buyer to purchase their own license. You get the scripts and everything that you can upload to the website, a user manual that tells you how to to upload and change your site, and access to the member website. Oh, and you get free updates for life, so you also get whatever improvements they make in future.

I can't speak to the money making aspect since I haven't gotten far enough in the process to monetize it and try to make money, but I can speak to some of the issues that have been raised. For someone who doesn't have many web related skills, it was incredibly easy for me to set up a website that I could never have done myself in that little time. Yes, the default appearance is pretty cookie cutter, but its easy enough to change, there are custom templates, you can put in a custom logo, the page titles are set up to be SEO friendly, its easy to add new categories, your own pages of content, etc. so it doesn't look so cookie cutter. And it creates a sitemap, which is also very useful for search engine robots.

As for the BANS member board, yes there are people who post there with their affiliate links, some of which are junk, some of which have been very useful, and which I'm glad I had access to. You should always post and get to know the posters there, judge their credibility by the advice they give, before clicking on the links and deciding to sign up or buy something. But I've found some good advice there. There are folks there who claim to be making money, some by concentrating on a few quality sites, others by setting up a 100 quick and dirty sites, I have no idea which strategy is better (although I suspect the former), but if you discount all the claims, the fact that people are generally so tightlipped about their niches and their URLs suggests to me that they must be making some money, otherwise, why bother hiding it? And there's at least one fellow who is making money by setting up BANS sites, getting them going to the point where they're making about $50 a month, and then selling them. (Oh, and in order to prove the buyer has bought the license, they have to buy it through his affiliate link, which means he gets half of the commission.)

As in life, I suspect you will get out of it what you put in it. If you are looking for an easy get rich quick scheme with no research and no work, well, good luck. As with all things, making money is at least upfront labor intensive. While some people here can spot a BANS site a mile off, most people will not know or care the difference. And I'd certainly rather spend my time doing niche research and creating content to drive traffic than the basics of setting up the website or trying to figure out how to create and XML sitemap.

I never know whether it's best to go for numbers or not. How do you maintain so many sites? I have three BANS sites and one fairly large content based site. I'm finding that there's a lot of work and research to be done just to keep these sites going. I'm adding content more or less daily but two of the BANS sites cover fairly large niches so they are keeping me very busy. I couldn't contemplate starting any more just now.

I'm a BANs owner and I have to say I've found nothing but success with it. Also, the functionality and ability to customize is very simple, just as mentioned most people don't want to put the time into it. Don't purchase expecting a quick answer to your sagging profits, but it is a great tool.

Making Money Answers

Another option to BANS is JarXweb Software similar but a little more control over what you can find, I am running serveral of JarxWebSoftware Sites and we are starting to generate alot of clicks and translating the clicks into sales after waiting the 7 day grace period from EPN. EPN is not perfect but it is starting to get on track, if interested in JarxWebSoftware, the guys name is James or Jamie, he really knows his stuff.

Knowmatter what you choose. Trying to make a living with any Internet affiliate program is hard work. If you know nothing html or SEO its even harder. BANS is just another tool of a long list of ways to build sites. Try building a free blog with a custom design. Just like any site you need to find a niche. Wheather its BANS, Wordpress, Blogger or using the free site most hosts give w/ a account.
Learn what you need to do first in order to make $.
One thing I can say for BANS is it gives you a platform to learn.
The principles are the same how ever you decide to proceed.
Build
promote
design
promote again and again and again and again and again.
And yes I do have BANS and Wordpress and blogger and mini sites and what ever else you can think of.
Check out the thenichestorebuilder
Good luck see you in the IM world

Holy ****!

Seriously, can spammers get any more stupid?

Thing is, this is manual spam, whoever is doing it MUST have some idea about the topic/tone of this thread.

I love bans, It is steady money if you promote the site. you can get a lot of info of this blog which is totally free.
http://affiliate-niche-stores.com

I'm getting fed up with seeing BANS spam everywhere. Amen. BANS has it's place, I make some money with it, but I'm sick of seeing it too, there's quite enough useless crap here already. The eBars crap being posted non-stop by mishj is even worse. This woman even spammed me with her crap when she saw in her stats I loaded a stand alone page with an ad just to see how much she skims.

I was a little off by considering 'paying for links' ILLEGAL, but if Gooogle catches on, they are going to degrade your PR, or if severe, remove your PR.

I'm getting fed up with seeing BANS spam everywhere.

Yes, Bans is a tool. Why the hell would you pay $97 for that tool when there are so many free alternatives that are just as good. They are making some serious cash off people. First they sell their product for $97, then they refer you to hostgator and get $50-$120 commissions from you there. Then they refer you to keyword programs, more commission.

Then you look at their customers on the forums that bought all this software and paid for their backlinks and ended up with absolutely nothing...

BANS is not going to make you rich without HARD WORK.
So why pay $97 when you can monetize with the same HARD WORK, without BANS? (this was poorly worded, sorry)

I'm simply saying that Bans is an overpriced, SPAMMED tool that overpromises and underdelivers(. People are not going to succeed with cookie cutter templates. Content needs to be original and useful.

Cut the spam, the first poster was obviously trying to advertise the product, he posted the thread multiple times... And it's not the first time I've seen it happen.

Buying links is not illegal. That is the biggest baloney I have ever heard.

It just won't help you in the rankings if it's detected or some reports you for it through the Google webmaster console.

You need to stop stating stuff this is not true.

You are right about the links though. You need to spend countless hours getting those links or find other ways to generate them that won't get you tagged for spam or would stand up to a live review.

Guys do not be fooled. These people spend hours upon hours on "SEO" search engine optimization.

It is NOT worth it. You cannot just build a site and expect to make money from these cheap templates.

You are going to have to spend hours every day trying to build backlinks to get your site pushed up in Google.

You are never going to find help in getting started because nearly everybody in the business is just trying to sell you some crappy affiliate product of theres. This is a big ring of low life bottom feeders.

The first thing that will happen after you buy bans is you'll be told to search for keywords and niches. You are going to be offered some spam crap programs that are ineffective at measuring actual daily keyword searches. All the programs are going to give you different results, and you'll never know which program is correct.

If you manage to get lucky and hit a keyword, now you are going to be told to get backlinks. Here comes the second wave of spam from low life bottom feeders. They are going to try to get you to PAY for backlinks so your site can move up in google. This is ILLEGAL and will get you DEINDEXED from Google.

If you are looking to monetize from Ebay, come up with something original, like a mashup. Or, you can always just come up with quality content, and put up some related Ebay ads. Content is going to get you ranked in search engines, not some cheap template program.

I replaced my BANS site with a blog that has quality content, and now I'm actually monetizing.

A mod should remove these BANS spam postings. They are inspiring more people to drive low quality traffic(if they can get to the point where they get traffic) to Ebay.