Having said that, and since it´s a web 2.0 oriented site, that tries to put the “social” back into shopping, I do believe Wigix will be successful, enough so that anyone that joins the party now can make some money with them. I won´t even try to guess how much money you can possibly make, but as you read on you will see that there is lots of potential here.

Taking a few steps back, let me explain what exactly is Wigix. The name Wigix comes from “WantItGotIt Exchage”, and the site is an online platform that allows you to buy and sell merchandise, and works in a very similar fashion to the NASDAQ stock exchange. Wigix takes this online exchange type of environment and adds a little from eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia, web 2.0, and the profit sharing model of today´s social sites.

Like I said, Wigix tries to bring sellers and buyers of a particular product together, and a sale is made when the two agree on a price. Having said that, you can conclude that Wigix will not be the ideal place to sell one of a kind, unique item, but instead to sell items that are mass produced, and preferably with a SKU to easily identify them. For now, and since the site is only about a month old, there isn´t really much buying and selling going on.

Now that I have explained how the Wigix works, lets look at how you can eventually profit from it.

Homestead - Add products to the catalog

Much like most web 2.0 sites, Wigix invites us to add products to the Wigix catalog. This will be the first way for you to profit from Wigix, and it´s called “homestead”, which comes from colonial times, when the first American settlers were rewarded for settling on land outside the 13 original colonies.

To add a product to the Wigix catalog, and create a homestead, you don´t need to sell, own, or have that product. You don´t even need to know anything about the product. All you need to do is insert the product description and specs into the Wigix catalog. Than, once you have added the product to the catalog, you will be entitle to 5% of all future revenue Wigix generates from the sale of this item, as well as from any advertising generated by that page. Can you imagine what kind of revenue this would mean if Wigix ever grews to a fraction of eBay?

Along with the revenue generated from the homesteads, you also have the option of selling your homestead, or buying existing homesteads from other users.

Adding products to the Wigix catalog is pretty straight forward, and all you do is fill in certain information, that varies by product type. I personally already own of a few homesteads, and have several more waiting on approval.

To do this all did was search the Amazon top sellers list by category, and added some products that were not on the Wigix catalog. All of the required information was already on Amazon.

Become a category expert

Another way to make money off of Wigix is by becoming a category expert (CE). After you sign-up, you will be able to see which categories don´t have experts and apply for the position. As a category expert you will be asked to approve homesteads, and organize and maintain the category spam free. Category experts make 1% of the revenue generated by the category from transaction fees and advertising revenue.

Applying for a category expert position is also straight forward, and you are asked to give a few reasons why you should be chosen as a category expert. The CE position is valid for one year, after which time there is an election, with the winner getting a term valid for two years.

I have also applied for the category expert position at two categories but have not been approved yet.

Spread the word about Wigix

The final way to make money from Wigix is by letting others know about the site. Wigix has an affiliate program that pays you 4% of the revenue generated by the homesteads created by your referrals. It also pays out 2% of the revenue generated by homesteads of second tier referrals, and another 1% of third tier referrals. With this kind of an affiliate program Wigix wants encourage users to contribute to the Wigix catalog.

Summing it all up

With almost two months under its belt, and still in beta stage, with an official launch expected for late summer, it´s still too early to come to a definite conclusion about Wigix. They are expect to court eBay powersellers, and are a breath of fresh air in the too stale e-commerce arena. The money making potential is there, especially for those that can claim “homesteads”.

I have also noticed that Wigix already has some decent Google rankings, with searches for several keywords showing up in the first and second page. Attaining good search engine ranking can be a deciding factor in determining the ultimate success of Wigix.  Since we all know Google likes web 2.0, and social sites, and likes to offer searchers different alternatives o its front page, I expect to see Wigix showing up there also.

Build unlimited sites

One of my favorite reason to buy BANS is that with a rather small investment of only $97 you can build an unlimited number of Build a Nich Stores. You can even add BANS stores to existing sites like on did on this domain. This dilutes the cost of the software by large number of sites and reduced the cost per site. Say for example that you build 5 stores, then “cost per store” is $19.40, but if you build 100 BANS stores the cost per store is only .97 cents! And its a one time cost!

Unlimited Niches

With over 90000 categories on eBay and its international sites, the number of possible niches is almost endless. You can build BANS stores to sell almost anything on eBay.

Easy to setup

Even without any programing knowledge you can have a build a basic BANS site in about 15 minutes. You will of course have to come back to it later in order to optimize it and add niche categories.

Multiple revenue sources

Although BANS stores are built to take advantage of the eBay affiliate program, you are by no means limited to that monetization option. You can explore other revenue streams such as TTZ, Adsense, and WidgetBucks, just to give a few examples.

Multiple languages and countries

You can build niche stores from over 12 different countries and 8 different languages where eBay is present with a country site (Spain and Australia are just two examples). This allows you to explore less competitive niches with greater earnings potential. You could probably setup a basic store even if you don´t know the local language.

SEO optimized for free traffic

The BANS software builds SEO websites that receive free search engine traffic with minimal work. I spend about an hour a month on each of my BANS sites and I get a decent amount of free search engine traffic.

Minimal initial investment

After the initial cost of the software, you won´t need to spend much more. You can add BANS stores to already existing sites, and register a few domains to get started. After you optimized your BANS stores and they start earning revenue, you can use the cash-flow they generate to build more stores.

Build a Niche Store Recap

These are a few of the reasons why I consider BANS a worthwhile investment. I do however want to point out that like any other investment you make, and you will need to put effort into your BANS stores to really make the most of the software. Remember, BANS is just a tool, like any other, and won´t do the actual work for you. I have seen BANS stores that make over $1000 to $2000 without much follow-up work, but you can also make money if you build a network of 100 BANS sites making $20 to $80 each.

You can buy your Build a Niche Store software here.

To be able to do this, you first need to setup different Adsense color palettes, or use some of Google´s default color schemes, not your best option,  since as Darren pointed out, there are AdSense ad design strategies you might want to test.  For example, if you want to alternate two different color schemes, one in which you blend the ads with your content, and another in which you give the ads a different background color (but matching your blog´s overall theme), you would start by creating these color palettes.

After this is done, and when you´re getting the Adsense code, in the part where you pick ad colors, on the palettes drop down menu choose the last option, the one that says “use multiple palettes”. From here you can pick multiple color palettes using the “Ctrl” key.

Now, and without the need for any additional ad code, or any kind of ad rotating plugin, Google will alternate ad colors among your chosen color palettes.

This seem like an interesting thing to try in order to reduce the so called “ad blindness” effect among your regular visitors.

As is usually the case with increasing your Adsense earnings, there aren´t any big secrets to be revealed, and the best advice I can give is test, test, and test again.

1. I start by visiting Keyword Discovery Tool, my favorite free keyword tool. I then put in my chosen keyword and conduct a search. Than, with a simple “cut and paste”, I copy the top 20 or 30 results (or any other number with decent search volume).
2. My next step is to open a spreadsheet and paste my results. Next I eliminate the column with the search volume. Still with the spreadsheet, I do a “find and replace”, where I will “search” for the “spaces” between the keywords, and replace those with “nothing”. Just in case you didn´t understand what I am trying to say, I want to eliminate the spaces between keywords. So if I had something like “this is a keyword”. I want it to look like this: “thisisakeyword”. My last step with the spreadsheet is to copy the new list.
3. Now I head over to Dynadot and find the “bulk search” option. Next I paste my list of keywords and do a “.com” extension search. I could also search for “.net” or anything else, but I prefer to stick to “.com“. A few seconds later I have a list of names that are available and choose which ones to register.
4. My last step is just to head over to NameDrive and park these domains to test for traffic.

At this time I won´t waste any time putting in keywords or setting up templates or anything. My only objective here is to find out if any of these domains have traffic. I don´t want to spend an hour trying to optimize 10 or 20 domains only to find out that only one or two of them are worth keeping.

This whole process takes about 5 minutes and lets me test about 10 or 15 domains. Now all I have to do is see if any of these domains have any traffic and cancel the ones that don´t within the 118 hours to receive a full credit for the amount spent. Later on I can go back and optimize the domains I kept.

As far as the whole process, its just wash and rinse

The reason behind the changes in the Alexa algorithm is to have the ranking more closely resemble of actual site traffic. Before this change, the Alexa rank only considered visitors to a site those people that had one of the Alexa toolbars installed on their computer. The new algorithm will take into account that certain groups of web surfers are more likely yo have one of the toolbars installed. This is usually the case with webmasters, and among those in the techie community.

The most noticeable changes thus far have been among sites with heavy SEO based readerships. You would also expect that blogs in general fall in the rankings, since many of them “promote” and encourage their readers to install the Alexa toolbars to bolster their own rankings. The biggest beneficiaries from these changes should be e-commerce type sites, as well as sites with a younger reader base.

Although it is used by some companies, like PayPerPost and others, your actual Alexa rank isn´t really that important. Most of the time it just used to compare traffic rankings of sites within the same niches. I am certain that most of us will not see any practical impact from these changes and the new rankings.

For now there doesn´t seem to have been much of a change in my ranking for this blog, but I have had other sites where I fell considerably. How many of you have noticed a significant change in your ranking?

As far as the people that subscribe via feed reader are concerned, they are counted as long as they actually open up your feed in the previous 24 hours. This means that a feed reader subscriber is only counted is they actually read your feed. What this means is that we all have a lot more subscribers than the ones that show on the FeedBurner number since most people don´t read their feeds daily.

Included in the daily FeedBurner tally are also the people that read via email. But contrary to what most people think, it´s not enough for you to subscribe via email to be counted as an email reader. FeedBurner has a way of telling if the email is actually being opened, and only in this case are you counted an email RSS reader. All this is very easy to confirm by checking your FeedBurner account. Lets see this example from my blog.

According to the following graph, available in my FeedBurner account under “Analyze” and then “Feed Stats - Subscribers”, you can see that I had 694 RSS readers the previous day.

If you look at these numbers in more detail, you can that of the 694 subscribers, 289 read the feed by email. Now, still in my FeedBurner account, under “Publicize” and “Email Subscriptions” I can see that my blog has 380 RSS email subscribers. The difference between the 380 and 289 represents the 91 readers that didn´t open their emails the previous day.

Having said this, I cann´t really tell you if this has always been this way, or if it´s a more recent move by FeedBurner to make the RSS number more credible. I am also not sure if the number of email readers is only for the previous day, or if it counts readers that open their emails every other day for example. Either way, it´s an important improvement since the number of RSS subscribers is becoming an important benchmark, and is even used to help value blogs.