Many Internet marketers have been debating whether or not BANS (Build A Niche Store) is dead or not. For quite a long time, many savvy Internet marketers were using Wordpress and BANS to build a lot of niche Ebay stores and were making a lot of money off of it. However, now word is getting around that a lot of BANS sites are getting deindexed by Google.

So what are we to think about all of this?

Well, there are generally two opposing points of view.

The first point of view is that BANS is dead and should not be used anymore, and one of the best articles from this perspective was written by Melissa Eaton: I Can No Longer Recommend Build A Niche Store aka BANS.

Melissa's argument is that it is tough to risk putting together and promoting a site using BANS knowing that it could be deindexed by Google at any time. The following is an excerpt from her article.....

You cannot imagine how sad it makes me to say that. Until two days ago, all but one of my BANS sites were still listed in the Google index. All were nearly 3 years old, had good traffic and made excellent money. This is no longer the case as they have now all been de-indexed. They are still getting traffic from Yahoo and MSN as well as earning money, but nothing like they were before.

The second perspective on this floating around the blogosphere is that BANS is still a good tool if you produce a content-rich site. Soggy of the Build A Niche Store Blog recently wrote an article from this perspective entitled: No, BANS Is Not Dead.

He believes that BANS is still as good a tool as ever if you follow some common sense guidelines. The following is an excerpt from his article.....

I have received a few emails over the last week from readers who are saying that they heard that BANS is dead and that they should not use it anymore. This is the furthest thing from the truth. I will say though that if you just put up an out of the box BANS site with little to no content, default category settings and default meta tags, be prepared to fail and get deindexed etc. etc.

So what is the truth?

Is BANS still a good option for Internet marketers?

I do know that BANS has helped a lot of people make a LOT of money over the years, and they are to be commended for that.

But is the gravy train over?

Or do people just need to adapt?

What do you think?

Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.....