21st Century Affiliate Marketing

If you’ve been reading this blog for any time, you know that my attitude changed last year when everything seemed to turn against me.

I bitched and moaned about it for several months and I’m not going to do any of that now.

Last month, I turned the corner and feel like I’ve finished a dark chapter in my life’s story and now I’ve opened a new, brighter chapter filled with hope, opportunity, and challenges I’m looking forward to meeting.

You know the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog and found a very short post that linked to the movie Lemonade.

I took a half-hour and watched that movie and it was inspirational. I want to share it with you, if you haven’t seen it.

Here are several people who were fired or laid off and took the opportunity to do something they really loved, instead of just working to earn a paycheck.

The last year or so has been rough for a lot of people. Maybe you.

Have you considered that maybe this is your opportunity to do something you love?

Act on your dream!

JD

I’ve been a fan of Apple and the Macintosh for a long, long time.

But, I’m not much of a fan of mobile computers, devices, or phones.

I don’t have a cell phone and don’t want one.

I like listening to music on my Mac using iTunes, but I’ve never wanted an iPod. In fact, when I won an iPod years ago, I gave it to my grandkids.

So, with that in mind, I haven’t been paying much attention to all the hype about the new Apple tablet computer that was going to be introduced.

I didn’t even pay much attention yesterday when it was announced.

Today, however, I had some free time and decided to learn something about the new Apple iPad.

I watched the Keynote Speech where Steve Jobs introduced the iPad and I was hooked.

This is the first time I’ve been excited about a new product in a long, long time.

The last time I felt this way was when I was given a sneak peek at the original Macintosh. This was back when all computers were basically text oriented and I saw how easy it was to create and include graphics in documents.

My first thought was, “I gotta get me one of these!”

So, I ordered my first Macintosh about two weeks before they were introduced and got one of the first ones that was shipped to Arizona, where I was living at the time.

Over the years, I have bought several Macs and I’ve enjoyed every one of them. I know, without a doubt, that I made the right choice when I took the Macintosh route.

I haven’t felt that feeling of excitement and admiration again until a few minutes ago.

After watching the keynote speech and the iPad video, I have that same feeling, “I gotta get me one of these!”

Most of my daily work involves browsing the web and dealing with email. The iPad looks like it will handle both of those tasks with ease and panache.

However, even though the touch-screen keyboard (in horizontal mode) looks like it would be usable, I’m so used to touch typing on a keyboard that I just don’t think I would be interested in doing much typing that way.

When I saw the keyboard dock for the iPad, that made a huge difference.

I’ll still do most of my typing on my desktop Mac, but I think that keyboard dock will make the iPad much more usable for a variety of people.

What clinched the deal was the price.

The base model iPad will be introduced in a couple of months for only $499 and it comes with 16 GB of flash memory. Two other models are available for $599 (32 GB) and $699 (64 GB).

There will be three models that have 3G included, but I’m not interested in those. The base models with WiFi will do all I would be interested in doing.

The iPad will run most of the 140,000 applications that have been developed for the iPhone and IPod Touch, but there are advantages for users that will entice developers to modify their apps or build new ones using the iPad SDK.

Personally, I’m not interested in most of those applications and never will be. I do the majority of my work using a web browser and email client, and the rest is graphics, working with photos, accounting, spreadsheets, and word processing. The new iWork versions of Numbers and Pages look great (especially since they only cost $9.99), so I’m sure I’ll buy and use them.

Many years ago, I decided to quit living on the bleeding edge of technology where you take risks with hardware and software with undiscovered bugs, high introductory prices, and other disadvantages. Since then, I’ve never bought a 1.0 version of any product and my life has been easier.

This time, however, I really want to get my hands on a brand new iPad as soon as I can.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about a new product, and it has taken me completely by surprise. I did not expect to be interested, at all, in the iPad.

What about you?

Have you watched the video and/or keynote speech? What do you think about the iPad. Is this something you would be interested in owning and using?

Act on your dream!

JD

Selling my own designs on CafePress

I have been selling products in my CafePress shop for several years and there are many things I like about it.

I enjoy selling my designs and earning commissions on a regular basis, but I’m not much of a graphic designer and there are many things I like that I don’t have either the time or the talent to create and sell.

Promoting designs created by others on CafePress

At one point, I was doing well with earning commissions through the CafePress affiliate program, but that dropped to almost nothing when they went from a private affiliate program to using Commission Junction.

CafePress changed the pricing model for products sold through their marketplace

Last year, CafePress made some changes and when one of my designs sells in their marketplace, I earn a smaller commission than when the same product with the same design sells in my shop.

Most of my sales in November and December were through the CafePress marketplace, so my earnings were smaller than they would have been if they were made through my shop.

On top of that, I didn’t earn any affiliate commissions.

Getting started with Zazzle

So, I decided today to look into Zazzle and see if it was something I wanted to try.

I have a lot of friends who have either moved from CafePress to Zazzle, or they have shops at both of them.

Getting started with Zazzle is very easy

I set up my account and opened my brand new Zazzle shop today.

There’s not much in it, yet.

Basically, I’ve chosen a theme, entered a bit about me on my profile page, uploaded my standard profile photo, and set up some of the optional stuff for promotions.

Adding designs and products to Zazzle

Now, it’s time to modify some of my best-selling designs and add them to products at Zazzle. That’s going to take some time and will be an ongoing process. My goal is to have most of my best selling designs on both CafePress and Zazzle before October, so they’ll be ready to promote in time for the massive November-December buying season.

I’ll start later this week with one of my best selling designs on CafePress and see what it takes to add it to multiple products on Zazzle. I’m sure there will be differences and I may run into obstacles as a result of my experience with CafePress and being so new to Zazzle. We’ll see if these are serious obstacles or just speed bumps.

Zazzle has their own private affiliate program

in addition to selling my own designs, I’m looking forward to trying their affiliate program and selling designs created by other people that I find and like.

For instance, when browsing through their marketplace, this afternoon, I found a design that cleverly combines two things that speak to me, and possibly to you, with a bit of humor.

I’m a huge Star Trek and Star Wars fan and I was really angry last year with the bailout of banks and financial institutions that were considered too big to fail.

That’s why I laughed when I saw this design:

A lot of people use the abbreviation, “lol,” to say that they laughed out loud when seeing something. I don’t make a habit of that, but I really did laugh out loud when I saw that design.

I like it better than my own Too Big To Fail design.

The nice thing is, if someone sees this and buys either a product with my design or the more clever death star product then I’ll earn a commission.

I enjoy earning a commission.

Really.

The more, the better!

Even though I don’t have a single product in my Zazzle shop, yet, I can still earn by promoting other people’s designs, and I like that.

When I have products in my shop, then I can benefit from any other Zazzle shop owners who choose to promote my products.

A sale of one of my designs through someone else’s affiliate link slightly reduces my earnings, but that’s more than made up for by their promotional efforts, so I’m happy to share part of the profits with them.

There are significant differences between CafePress and Zazzle

So, I still have a lot to learn about Zazzle, but I’m liking what I’ve seen and learned up to this point.

Another difference between CafePress and Zazzle is that you have to pay for a premium shop on CafePress in order to have multiple designs in your store, but on Zazzle, it’s totally free.

Even though it only costs about $7 per month for a premium shop on CafePress, this ought to appeal to you if you don’t want to pay anything and still have a way to earn money through online marketing.

Discussing Zazzle on Squidoo Marketing

I’ve started a discussion in the Zazzle Group on my Squidoo Marketing community for discussing opening a Zazzle shop, creating designs, adding them to products, and promoting them.

Since I’m a complete newbie on Zazzle, I’ll use myself as a guinea pig and talk about some of the things I do to create the products and market them.

I’m sure I’ll make some mistakes and I may have some ideas you never thought of, so I’m hoping it will be a useful discussion. You can see it here:

I am a newbie to Zazzle - do you have any advice?

That discussion is primarily for people who enjoy using Squidoo to market their products, but we’ll also be discussing other avenues of promotion and sales. You’re welcome to come and join us there, if you want.

In conclusion…

I like what I see so far at Zazzle and I’m looking forward to exercising what they offer and promoting designs I find that were created by other people, too.

I’m looking forward to seeing if I can develop a new, reliable, and growing income stream with Zazzle.

What about you?

Do you have any thoughts about CafePress, Zazzle, or either of their affiliate programs?

Act on your dream!

JD

I want to preface this post by saying that I learn much better when I teach myself or learn from an individual than I do when I’m in a classroom. I don’t know if I’m in the minority or the majority in that respect, but I know that all of us learn differently.

I prefer to read and learn. Perhaps you enjoy interacting and learning.

Do you learn better in a classroom setting?

One of the things that Sitesell offers that I haven’t talked about very much is their eLearning course. This is an online version of the course that is taught at a number of universities and colleges around the world.

Since the eLearning course was first introduced, you could enroll in the course at a discounted introductory price. That price expires on January 31, 2010 and the normal price takes effect on February 1, 2010.

If you are one of the people who learns better in a classroom setting - in the comfort of your own home, no less - then you may want to look into what the SBI eLearning course offers.

Here’s a brief video that explains it in just under ten minutes:

Perhaps you’re a self-learner

On the other hand, if you’re a self-learner, like me, then you may be more interested in the standard SBI Version 2.0 subscription. It offers much of the same training and support without having to attend a class.

Would you rather hire someone to help you build your online business?

Maybe you’re one of those people who has more time than money and you’d rather hire someone to build your online business for you, or at least to help you get it started.

Sitesell Services will work with anyone who wants them to “do it for me.” That doesn’t mean you won’t be involved, however. The webmaster who builds your initial site will consult closely with you to make sure it meets your needs.

Three great ways to get started with building a real online business

Now, Sitesell offers a great way to get started with building your online business regardless of your learning style or business preferences. You can do it yourself, learn in an online class, or hire someone to do it for you.

If you’re seriously interested in building a profitable online business, you owe it to yourself to quit flitting around from this to that and focus on building a business that you can enjoy working and promoting.

This is not get rich quick! It will take an investment of time, effort, creativity, and money to build a real business.

Don’t forget.

The introductory pricing for the eLearning course goes up in just two weeks.

If you want to take the class and save money, don’t delay.

Act on your dream!

JD

If you’ve been reading my blogs or sites for any length of time, you know I live in an area where only dial-up Internet access is currently available, and it’s also an area with old, copper phone lines so that means I’ve been connecting at much slower speeds than my equipment is capable of.

This wasn’t much of a problem a few years ago.

Now, however, it has become a much bigger problem, especially for someone who earns his living from online marketing.

For the last week or so, I’ve had access to high-speed broadband and it has made all the difference in how I perceive what I and some of my friends are doing online.

For example, I’m a huge fan of Mitch Mitchell’s I’m Just Sharing blog and Aussie Sire’s Wassup blog.

As much as I enjoy both of their blogs, sometimes it has been frustrating trying to get them to load. Many times, I would have to load a blog post two or three times before the entire page would load.

This week, however, they load the first time, every time and do it quickly. That has made it much easier and more enjoyable to read what they have to say. The same holds true for quite a few other blogs I read on a regular basis.

The benefit to me is that I’m less frustrated and can read more in much less time. That increases my motivation to participate and also decreases the amount of time I spend waiting — and playing solitaire while the pages load. (In fact, I’ve only played two games of solitaire in the last week, and there were many times in the past few years when I would play several games while waiting on one page to load, so that’s a huge difference.)

Broadband makes it much easier to edit my sites

Truthfully, it hasn’t made much of a difference in editing my own blogs and sites, because I tend to do a lot of low-bandwidth things on them and intend to continue with that approach. Still, high-speed broadband opens the door to working with video in the future, especially when promoting local small businesses on Murphy Gold. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time and I’m looking forward to it.

I can view and edit my Squidoo lenses, now

Where it has made a huge difference is being able to once-again edit my Squidoo lenses reliably and easily.

I was having a problem even seeing my own Squidoo lenses the last year or two. Editing them was even more problematic, especially some of the larger lenses such as my Site Build It lens.

The result of my problem with loading the lenses with slow dial-up was that I became more frustrated and less prone to update the lenses when people added sites to the voting Plexo modules.

The benefit of high-speed broadband is that I find it easy to view the lenses and edit them. Now, instead of being frustrated when I receive an email telling me that someone has added something to a Plexo module, I look forward to seeing what it is.

Usually, unfortunately, it’s some lame-brained spammer trying to spam their totally off-topic link on my site, but there are some nuggets in all the mud where people are suggesting excellent sites and lenses that I’m happy to add.

Publishing the lenses is much faster and much more reliable with a fast Internet connection, too.

The result is, over the last week, I’ve updated more lenses than I did in the last several months combined.

I can see my CafePress store much better now

Over the last couple of years, it seems that it has become harder and harder (and much slower) to edit my CafePress store and do all the things that are necessary to keep it up-to-date and to add new designs. As a result, I just stopped updating it.

We all know that makes a great recipe for stagnation, fewer sales, and loss of income. It’s exactly what happened.

Now, however, I can load the store in seconds, as opposed to sometimes taking ten minutes or more for pages with lots of products.

I’ve only tested editing a couple of pages, but I was able to make changes in five minutes or less that would have taken over an hour with my dial-up connection — if it were possible to successfully complete them at all.

A lot of people don’t care for my designs, and that’s okay. The good news is that I’ve sold a lot of products through my CafePress store and look forward to selling lots more. I have over 100 designs that I’ve never added to my store because it just wasn’t worth the time and effort.

I’ll be adding quite a few of them in the coming days and I’ll be promoting my CafePress store much more actively in the future.

In fact, I’ll probably be opening more stores that are focused entirely on a single niche and I’ll be promoting them heavily on several sites.

Will that increase sales? I’m sure it will. I’ll know for sure a year from now.

One of the things I’m sure will increase sales is lowering the prices.

In the past, I’ve used a premium pricing strategy for my CafePress shop. I expected few sales, so I raised the markup I’d receive on each sale.

Now that I have reliable, fast access to editing my shop, again, I’m changing the strategy.

I just lowered the prices on all the products in my store to reflect a moderate pricing strategy. I’ll earn quite a bit less per sale, but I expect that to increase the number of sales.

So, just a few minutes ago, while writing this post, I lowered the prices of every product in my shop, some of them substantially.

A fast broadband connection even makes Site Build It better

I intentionally design both of my sites that are powered by Site Build It to be low-bandwidth friendly.

I want people with slow connections to be able to read what I write and I want those pages to snap on the screen for people with faster connections.

I’m not going to make many changes in that regard, with the exception of adding a few videos.

I’ve known for some time that the popularity of video on the web has been exploding, but it was a waste of time and effort to even try to view them with my slow connection. This week, however, I’ve found how easy it is to watch video in real time with a fast connection and I know that video is more interesting to lots of people than pure text.

I still remain a text-oriented person, but I recognize an opportunity when I see it.

Another very interesting thing occurred to me this week. For all the years that I’ve been a Site Build It subscriber, I’ve always read the Action Guide and never even tried to view the video version of it.

That changed this week. For the first time ever, I watched the entire video version of the Action Guide and I have to admit that hearing someone speak while watching animation that was used to illustrate some of the processes really did make some of it more understandable. In fact, I’m going to watch the Days 2 and 3 videos again this evening.

Even though I have a good understanding of the three-tier structure of a successful website, the new tier-structure video made it much more understandable and I’ll be implementing some changes to both of my SBI sites over the coming days, as a result.

A fast connection doesn’t lessen the work, but it does make my efforts more efficient

I don’t know of anything that is reliable and honest that reduces the amount of work that it takes to be a successful online marketer, but I do know that a fast broadband connection makes a world of difference in improving efficiency.

Of course, that makes sense, but it has been a real eye-opener for me.

Back when I was a Systems Administrator for a local ISP I had direct access to a fast broadband pipe and it was nice, but that was before so many sites relied upon javascript, java, audio, video, and other things that benefit from high-speed pipes.

So, I was able to do just about anything I needed to do from home on dial-up almost as efficiently as I could do from the office using broadband.

But, that was a decade ago and things have changed drastically.

Now, there is a world of difference between slow dial-up access and high-speed broadband. That difference is much bigger and more important than I realized, and it is a very important difference for anyone aspiring to make money online from affiliate marketing or just about any other form of marketing.

Now, I’m wondering what other things I’m going to discover that will make my online marketing more effective.

What about you?

Do you have any thoughts or opinions about the differences between slow and fast Internet connections and the effectiveness of your online affiliate marketing efforts?

I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts.

Act on your dream!

JD

I’ve done my share of whining about how hard 2009 has been, and frankly I’m done with that and I’m looking for this year to come to a close in a few days.

I wrote about it on my Act On Your Dream! site:

I survived 2009 and I think that was a success!

(If you have any interest in doing so, you’re welcome to comment on that page. Although you can’t use HTML in your comments, if I recognize you as a regular commenter here on this blog, I’ll be happy to make an active link back to you in your comment. Just post the full URL you want me to link to and I’ll take care of it. Of course, it has to be a link to one of your sites, not an affiliate link or anything inappropriate.)

So, as I said, I’m done with whining and I’m done with 2009. I still have a few more days to generate a little more income before the year is over and then I’m turning all my attention towards the future.

I expect 2010 to be a much better year.

I’m doing things differently next year.

For the last few years, I’ve tested a lot of things and most of them didn’t work at all, or had limited success. I don’t know if all of that was wasted time and effort, or if it was just a necessary part of testing the options and learning what works best for me.

Since I depend upon the revenue I earn from my online marketing, that’s what I use to evaluate if something has been valuable and successful for me. However, even the things that did not produce any appreciable income had other aspects that were very successful.

For instance, I’ve met lots of great people that I may never have met otherwise and I value that.

But that doesn’t pay the bills!

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time blogging and I’ve learned a lot. Even though it has not been successful as a way of generating income, I believe it has been a valuable learning experience and it has helped me spread my brand to a much wider audience.

I’ll be doing much less blogging in 2010, but I’m not going to abandon it entirely.

I built a number of portals over the last few years using Mamba and PHP-Nuke. Every single one of them was hacked and I finally got tired of rebuilding them. All of them are closed.

The only thing I learned from that experience is that it was wasted effort and there are serious security holes in open source scripts. I won’t be going that route again.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with forums (fora?) over the years.

I’ve met lots of great people and I would be worse off if I had not participated in them.

I have had better results from participating in forums than I have in building my own. That’s a lesson I’ll remember.

I have two forums that are still open at AYearFromNowForum.com and WesternNorthCarolinaForum.com, but I’ll be shutting them down in January, after I’ve had the time to find any content that can be repurposed on my static sites. Then, they’ll be gone forever.

Social networking has been a lot of work, but it has been satisfying in several respects. Although I can’t attribute any specific revenue to social networking, I do believe it has contributed by widening my readership to people who may not have found me otherwise.

It’s also been a great way to interact with lots of different people. That’s very important to me, because I live alone and work at home. There are times when I go several days without seeing another person in real life, and the interaction on the social networks has been very important to me.

I’ll be narrowing my social networking to just a few sites and don’t feel the need to be on nearly as many as I’ve tried over the last few years.

Things have changed and my focus in social networking has changed, too.

For example, I used to be very active on Ryze.com, but I hardly ever go there anymore. They fell behind the times when they didn’t implement RSS and they missed the boat when they required their community leaders to be upgraded members.

I was enjoying MySpace.com for awhile, but they jumped the shark when they started redirecting external links from our profiles to their own home page. As soon as they did that, I jumped ship.

I’m still enjoying Facebook.com, but I don’t spend a lot of time there. One of the most annoying things about Facebook, for me, is the plethora of applications and the ease with which my “friends” can spam me with them. I don’t know how many of those applications I’ve blocked, but I still block several more every time I go there.

My two favorite social networking sites are communities I’ve built on the Ning.com platform. I created and manage Squidoo Marketing and Murphy Connections, and I intend to do much more with each of them in the coming year.

I’m not earning any money (well, not much money) from either of them, but now that I have sponsors for each community at least they’re not expenses out of my own pocket. I’ll be working hard to make sure the sponsors get their money’s worth, too.

I have mixed feelings about Squidoo.com and HubPages.com. I’ve earned some money from Squidoo every month for the last several years, but that income continues to decrease. If the lenses I have there weren’t already built and attracting some readership, I probably would not make the effort to build them, now.

On the other hand, sometimes building a lens at Squidoo.com about one of my other sites is a good way to get the free traffic started both through referrals from the lens as well as free traffic from the search engines.

When I started Murphy Gold this year, I built several lenses for the site and for my first several clients. By syndicating the RSS feed from Murphy Gold through the Squidoo lenses, it attracted more visitors initially and continues to bring new people to the site.

However, now I’m getting many more visitors from Google, Yahoo, and Bing than from Squidoo, so it isn’t as important to me now as it was initially.

I have never really understood article marketing and I don’t think I have given it a fair trial, yet. To learn more about it, I opened and managed 21st Century Articles for over a year. I put a lot of work into that site and met a few good authors, but most of what was contributed was drivel and I deleted at least 95% of all the contributions.

It was built using a popular article directory script and was hacked several times. Eventually, it was no longer worth recovering the site and continuing.

I learned that there are some good authors writing quality content, but they are in the minority. I also learned that it takes a lot of time to manage an article directory, if you’re interested in quality. Since I moderated every submission, I believe I had a high-quality directory, but it would never have been a top-tier article directory, so closing it down was not a hard decision, in the end. Also, even with thousands of pages of content — all with Adsense ads on them — it generated only a few dollars a month and that certainly was not enough to pay me for my time and effort.

So, what have I learned about online marketing over these last few years?

I’ve learned that you can invest a lot of time and effort into something that never produces the results you want. It is very easy to do.

I’ve learned that every time you try something new, it takes you away from other things that are working for you, so you need to be careful and keep your focus. I believe that it’s always good to learn something new, but not to the point where it impacts your business negatively.

So, I’m happy that I learned how to use lots of different scripts for building portals, my article directory, and blogs, but I’m not happy that they did not produce any significant revenue.

What has worked for me?

Now, I know that what works for me, may not work for you, and vice versa. So, just as successful bloggers recommend blogging, I’m going to recommend building static niche-oriented websites.

I have a couple of large websites that I built over the last few years, and even though they are pretty much running on automatic now, with just the occasional addition or modification, they consistently produce revenue from several sources. Over time, their popularity rises and falls, but they are getting more readers and page views now than they were when I was actively building them.

The problem with them is that they don’t provide a way of getting easy feedback from their readers or to engage in any online conversations. I’ve tried using blogs and forums for each of these sites, but that really didn’t produce the results I wanted.

So, now, they just sit there and serve pages to people who are interested in the subjects, with very little input from me.

Most of my effort in 2010 will be building my two static sites that are powered by Site Build It!

Now, up until this year, it was appropriate to consider them static sites, but that has changed with the introduction of SBI version 2.

With the introduction of Content 2.0 as a standard part of SBI sites, now we can take advantage of some of the web 2.0 features that allow interaction with the readers without having to deal with all the insecurities of open source software.

So, I’ve been working hard over the last couple of weeks to update and revise my Act On Your Dream! site and to get it ready for lots more work in 2010.

I’ve added several pages that invite readers to submit their stories or articles and once they are accepted and published on the site, we can comment and/or rank them.

In some ways, this is similar to blogging, because we can carry on conversations in the comments. It is different from blogging, because it doesn’t just make it easy for the webmaster to add content, it also invites the readers to add content.

Yes, it’s similar to blogging, but different. Only time and experience will tell if it is better or worse, for me, than blogging has been.

Many people consider all the plug-ins that are available for WordPress to be one of its primary benefits. I’ve come to consider them to be drawbacks that waste my time at least as much as they help me.

With SBI version 2, there are no plug-ins. I don’t have to do anything to deal with security updates, plug-in updates, or anything else. I just use it and let the propeller-heads at Sitesell manage all the technical stuff for me. I like that. It allows me to concentrate on producing more content and not on just keeping the sites running.

From a blogger’s point of view, especially those who believe that commenters and do-follow links are important, there may be some drawbacks.

For example, this blog, and many others, use the CommentLuv plug-in which makes it easy to link back to a commenter’s blog via their RSS feed. That’s a nice feature, but I’m not personally convinced that it is valuable economically.

Contrary to what some bloggers believe, I have not seen any correlation between the number of comments on a blog and the income it generates, but I’m not even nearly an A-list blogger, so what do I know?

Yes, leaving comments on others’ blogs brings more readers to my own blog, but I believe that most of those readers, especially the ones who leave comments, are primarily motivated to bring other readers to their sites. This isn’t a particularly bad thing to do, but I do believe that it is unproductive in terms of generating revenue, if that is your primary motivation.

Having said that, I value a number of people who read this blog and some of my others and regularly comment on what I have to say, no matter how bone-headed I might be now and then.

I enjoy the conversations and I’m happy to link back to their blog posts. I don’t see anything wrong with it.

But, it doesn’t help me pay the bills, and until I get that firmly under control, that’s going to be my primary motivation.

It is my belief, in most instances, that bloggers are sellers, not buyers. We’re interested in promoting products and making sales through affiliate links. Or, we’re interested in selling advertising to generate revenue. Perhaps we have sponsors who cover the costs. For most of us, we want to either supplement our income or generate all of it from our online marketing.

So, increased readership from other bloggers may be satisfying on several levels, but I have no statistics that show that it adds to my bottom line. Some bloggers are generating six and seven figures a year in income, but they are rare, and they don’t include me.

So, as I’ve said previously, I’m going back to what has worked for me for about a decade.

In 2009, my income, such as it was, was generated primarily from three sites. Two of them produced affiliate income and Adsense ads revenue, primarily. One of them generated direct advertising revenue from paid clients. The latter one produced several times the revenue the two others did.

But, all three of them consistently bring in money and are easy to maintain and expand, so I’m going to focus on them primarily in the first six months of 2010.

To put other things in perspective, any one of those three sites brought in more revenue than all my other websites, blogs, forums, and social networks — combined!

But, I don’t think they would do as well in total isolation. So, I believe that blogging and social networking has brought more readers to those sites and helped them. The syndication of their RSS feeds on a variety of sites brings in readers, because I can see the referral numbers in my statistics.

So, I’ll continue to maintain quite a few sites that will not be my primary focus, but which add to the funnel that brings readers to the sites that I will be focusing on. Fortunately, most of the work in building that infrastructure is completed and just needs a little maintenance work now and then.

Even though I totally lost focus on my Act On Your Dream! site over the last three years, now that I’ve almost completed rebuilding the site, updating all the pages, and adding some pages that hopefully will lead to more interaction with the readers, I’m once-again looking forward to helping others identify their dream(s), setting goals, and working to achieve them. I enjoy helping others get what they want. I may not be able to do a lot to help, but I’m happy to do what I can.

Perhaps you would like to be a part of that process.

To get started, I have a couple of pages that I’d like to invite you to visit. Each of them has a form where you can contribute a story or article, and all submissions are moderated. Even though the form says otherwise (which is something I can’t change, yet), you must use your name and location when submitting something, or I won’t accept it.

To put it bluntly, submissions from anonymous people or from anyone who uses keywords as their name will be summarily rejected and trashed.

On the other hand, quality submissions from real people are welcome and I look forward to publishing them on the site and maybe in my ezine.

You are invited to visit and submit your entries to the following list of pages. They are new and may not have any, or many, submissions yet, so you can be a trend-setter!

Reader submitted entries are listed below the forms, so even if you don’t want to submit anything, you can scroll down below the form and see what has been published already.

Your comments and ratings on the items are welcome, but please use your real name. As with the submissions themselves, I don’t accept anonymous comments.

Do you have a dream? (I’m talking about something you aspire to achieve or acquire, not a sleeping dream.) You’re invited to share it with us at Your Dream.

Do you have a success story you’d like to share? Successes come in all sizes, so it doesn’t have to be a blockbuster, runaway success to be valuable to our readers. Share Your Success Story.

How do you Define Success?

Do you have an original article that you’ve written about success, failure, time management, goal setting, making your dream come true, the law of attraction, or similar topics? If you do, you’re invited to Submit Your Article.

(I turned off article submissions in early November, because I was being bombarded by off-topic, spammy submissions every day. Now, I’m trying a different approach and look forward to publishing your quality original articles on topics related to the Act On Your Dream! site.)

I’ll be adding more pages to the site and asking for your participation. In the next couple of days, I’ll add a new page that lists all these pages where you are invited to submit your thoughts, opinions, stories, and articles. I’m not sure what I’ll call it, however. I’m leaning towards “Your Thoughts,” but I’d welcome any suggestions for a better title.

So, those are my plans for the first half of 2010 and I’m looking forward to working on them.

What about you?

What are you going to be focusing on in 2010?

Act on your dream!

JD

BTW, while I’m thinking about it, the SBI version 2 two-for-one holiday special has been extended until Monday, January 4, 2010. This will be your last chance until next Christmas to get two SBI subscriptions for the price of one.

Of course, you don’t have to buy two, even if the second one is free, if you don’t want to. The choice is yours.

As long as we’re thinking about our futures, I think SBI, and all it includes, is an excellent investment, and, yes, I get a commission if you buy from my link. More importantly, however, I know from experience that my investments in SBI have produced very good returns. It’s not magic, but it is a time-tested process and set of tools that has produced great results for a lot of others, too.

As with all things of any value, it takes work, effort, time, and money to succeed. If you want overnight success without working for it, don’t bother trying anything. It won’t work for you. Go play another video game or watch some more TV.

On the other hand, if you’re willing to devote some time to building your online business, and you’re willing to follow a guide that has helped thousands succeed, then maybe SBI is right for you. If you try it and don’t like it, you can get a full refund in the first 30 days and a prorated refund after that, so there’s very little risk in trying SBI to see for yourself what you think of it.

Have you been interested in trying to build your online business with Site Build It?

If you have, and you haven’t taken the plunge and tried it, yet, now is the best time to get started.

Throughout the year, at major holidays, Sitesell offers a buy one get one for only $100 more special offer. Since SBI costs $299 per year, that means that you can get two sites for only $399.

You can get the two sites for one year at the discount price, but remember that each of them will cost $299 to renew each year — a bargain when you consider all you get with SBI.

But right now, until Christmas 2009, you can buy one and get one free. That’s right, get one SBI subscription for $299, or get two of them for the same $299.

Why would you want to buy two subscriptions?

Buy both of them for yourself. You can start one site now and have up to 9 months before you have to activate the second site. That gives you time to start earning some money and staggers the renewal cycles so you don’t have to pay both of them the same month.

Or, buy one and give one as a gift. Helping someone learn how to build an online business is a much more valuable gift than something they’ll play with for awhile and then lose interest in.

Or, buy them and give both of them as gifts.

The choice is yours.

I have a couple of sites powered by SBI and I intend to build more in the future. I’ve been a satisfied customer for years.

So, I recommend Site Build It version 2.0 to you without any reservations, and, yes, if you buy from this link I’ll earn a commission. I recommend SBI, however, because it works. I can earn commissions from lots of other things, but you don’t see me promoting them, do you?

Site Build It is not magic

Don’t misunderstand me.

This is not some pie-in-the-sky, get-rich-quick deal.

Building a successful website takes time, energy, money, creativity, dedication, and work. There’s no way around it.

I can’t tell you how much time and money I’ve wasted over the years trying lots of different ways to build an online business. I hope you don’t have to waste all the time and energy I have.

While SBI is not magic, it does offer a proven, time-tested, set of tools, support, training, and step-by-step guide to help you find a niche for which you have a passion. Then, you’re taught how to structure that site, publish the content, and start building an audience who is interested in the same subject.

You will not be an overnight success!

If you want to do something free and get rich, stop reading right now. This is not for you.

But, if you are willing to spend the same amount of time and energy that you would expect to learn anything else of value, then you owe it to yourself to try the best.

You get a full 30 day money back guarantee. If you don’t like what you see, ask for a full refund. If you refund after 30 days, I think the refund will be prorated, and I think that’s fair.

Even though there is a special going on right now, you don’t have to buy two of them if you don’t want. The choice is yours, but as long as you can get two for one, maybe you can find a friend or relative who would like to try it. You can split the money and each of you can get a full year of using SBI for only $150 each. Now, that’s a real deal!

You can learn together, motivate each other, help each other get over any rough spots, and each of you can learn valuable new skills.

Or, just buy one site and get started building it.

Or, if you can’t afford the $299 right now, and in this year of unemployment and lowered incomes, many can’t, you can now subscribe to SBI for only $29.95 per month, right from the start. However, if you choose this monthly payment approach, you can’t take advantage of the two for one offer.

As soon as I publish this post, I’m going to log in at Sitesell and spend the rest of the day working on my two SBI sites.

As I’ve said in a previous post, I’m leaving blogging and going back to what I know works for me - and earns money - and that’s building more websites focused on particular topics and powered by SBI.

While SBI isn’t for everyone, I know many more people who have been successful in building their online business using what it offers than from any other approach.

Your mileage may vary, close cover before striking, etc.

It works for me and for dozens of people I know who purchased from my recommendations — most of whom are renewing their subscriptions every year.

Sure, some people don’t like it and they get a refund. That’s fair enough.

But the ones who really take the time to study and understand the action guide, learn how to use Brainstorm It!, and build a site around a profitable niche for which they have passion, are succeeding.

I can’t tell the future and I can’t guarantee your success, but I can tell you that Sitesell guarantees their offer. You can’t lose anything but a little time by trying SBI.

Learn how to build your own online business. Buy SBI version 2.0 today. (And, yes that’s an affiliate link.)

The choice is yours.

Act on your dream!

JD

I enjoy blogging and I’ve been doing this for a long time, back before the words weblog and blog were even coined.

This is the last year where blogging will be part of my marketing plan, however.

The plain truth is that blogging hasn’t been worth the time and effort in terms of receiving an income from all I’ve done. So, since I’m going to be concentrating on increasing my revenue next year, I’m going to focus almost entirely on what works for me and I’m dropping what hasn’t been fruitful.

There is a good chance that this blog won’t be here a year from now.

I’m turning my attention back to what does work for me - what pays the bills - and another thing I enjoy, which is building static, hierarchical websites focused on particular topics.

I’ve been building websites since shortly after the introduction of the world wide web and I have used lots of different tools to build sites that attract visitors and earn money from sponsorships, advertising, affiliate sales, and in other ways.

One site, that I’ve sadly neglected because of health issues that have interfered, still earns more in one month than all my blogs earn in an entire year — and I haven’t done much to that site at all in the last year.

That should be a lesson to me. Concentrate on what’s working and stop playing with all the shiny red balls that bounce by.

I enjoy blogging

I enjoy blogging and the social aspects of commenting on other blogs. These discussions have been fun and I’ve met some great people around the world as a result.

But, let’s face it. We talk to each other, but we don’t buy from each other. You don’t buy from me and I don’t buy from you. That’s the bottom line when it comes to a marketing business.

I’m still going to follow blogs and bloggers that I like and I’ll still have something to say now and then when Mitch or AussieSire, or several others I enjoy reading, writes something of interest, but I’m not going to spend nearly the time and effort that I have in the past on my own blogs.

I don’t like being poor

My goal in having an online marketing business is to earn a good living at it, not just barely get by.

This has been an unusually hard year for me, but that’s the way life happens. I’m hoping that it was just the bottom of a bad cycle and that things will start moving upwards, soon.

That’s another reason to concentrate on what’s working.

The majority of my income this year has been from a brand new site I started back in July when I had to replace the affiliate income I lost.

I’ve been playing around with promoting my adopted home town and the people and organizations here, but I turned that into a business this year when I launched Murphy Gold and its companion social networking site at Murphy Connections.

This is a more-traditional business structure.

Local business owners pay me to promote them and I write about the products and services they offer and other things they do throughout the year, such as special events.

Over time, even in a small town like Murphy, NC, this can be profitable.

Now that I have all the infrastructure in place, it’s time to hunker down and focus on that.

So, you’ll see less of me here. I’ll still drop in on your blogs now and then and I’m following some of them in email and RSS, but I won’t be saying much, unless you write something that really captures my interest and I think my comment may add value to what you’re saying.

This answers my question: WordPress or SBI?

I can clearly show on my profit and loss statement that SBI delivers much more income and more visitors who actually buy something than all of my blogs put together.

SBI takes less work, doesn’t have to be updated every time I turn around, and now with Content 2 being available to all of us who power our sites with Site Build It, it gives me an easy way to let others write pages for the site and comment on them.

That adds the social aspect to SBI sites that I’ve enjoyed on blogs.

So, there you have it.

I’ve been promoting SBI for years and telling you how much I love it, so I’m going to go back to using it and rebuilding my online marketing business.

Blogging has been a fun experiment.

Act on your dream!

JD

If you’ve been reading this blog this year, you know that I was caught by the new tax laws that were passed in North Carolina back in July. As a result, I was dropped by several large merchants as an affiliate, including Amazon.com where I had been an affiliate for over a decade.

That hurt, but it also meant that I had to rebuild several large sites and remove all the links. I still have not finished that process.

It also meant that I lost all the monetization for one of my sites and I’ve been looking for a way to replace the income I lost.

I got some good news this week and think I may see some light at the end of the tunnel.

ShopZilla approved me as an affiliate and I can use it similarly to what I used to do with Amazon.com.

The main difference is that ShopZilla is a shopping comparison site and links, especially search results links, offer a variety of choices where you can buy and at what price.

I won’t have time to work on this until January, but I’m looking forward to giving it a try.

What about you?

Do you have any experience with ShopZilla?

Act on your dream!

JD

How much do you know about Google’s personalized search feature?

For some time now, if you were signed in to Google (through any of the accounts you may have there), your search results were subject to being personalized.

I first realized how important this was when I was doing some search engine optimization and promotion for a client. I told my daughter that we were already getting page one placement for that client and she said she didn’t see it.

That’s when I remembered that I was logged in to Google. When I logged out, and did the search again, the results were different. My client was not on page one and these new results were consistent with what my daughter saw when she did the same search.

So, after that, when I was testing search results, I had to remember to log out of Google.

Last Friday, however, Google rolled out personalized search results for everyone and you’ve been opted-in by them automatically, whether you are aware of it or not.

Here’s their announcement…

Personalized Search for everyone

Now, personally, I think this has potential for real differences in how people see search results and I think it’s going to get more different over time.

How good or bad it is would depend upon how you’re using the search engines - Google, specifically.

As a marketer, I’m not much in favor of it and won’t be until I see how it affects traffic flow in the future. I’ve worked hard for many years to rank well for some search terms and this has the potential to destroy all that effort. I don’t know that it will, but it might, so I’m going to try to watch and see what happens.

As a user, it may have its benefits, but, again, only time will tell. I am not happy that Google opted me into this with no say on my part, however. I want a way to turn it on and off, and at this time, I don’t know if that’s possible. I’m still learning about it.

Danny Sullivan wrote an excellent post on the topic…

Google’s Personalized Results: The “New Normal” That Deserves Extraordinary Attention

Danny knows a lot more about all this than I do and I’ll be watching to see what else he has to say on this topic.

So, what do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

I’ve been seeing a trend of longer keyword searches in my sites’ statistics this year.

While most of the keyword searches that find something I write still are mostly 3 to 4 words long, I’m seeing lots more this year that are five or more words long.

I have been noticing this trend for a few months and wondered if it was due to the increasing sophistication of the people who normally read what I write or if it was a sign of average Internet users learning how to use the search engines more effectively.

Today, I found confirmation of this trend in an article on MarketingCharts.com:

Longer Searches Increase 3% in October 2009

At the end of the brief article, they bring up the possibility that longer search phrases may now be required to find what the searcher is looking for amid all the web clutter.

I hadn’t thought of that possibility.

I don’t have any facts to back it up, but I think that more people are learning that they can find what they want by using longer search phrases and that’s something we should think about when we’re doing our keyword research and writing our blogs, websites, articles, and anything else.

What do you think?

Have you noticed this trend in your site’s statistics?

Act on your dream!

JD

I originally wrote this in July, 2007 on another of my blogs. That was back when my affiliate marketing business was growing and I was happy with the direction I was going.

Some of these points are just as valid today as they were then.

I have learned several lessons that I think may be valuable to anyone who reads this. You may agree or disagree, but at least give it some thought.

1. Anything that is a good value today will be a good value a year from now.

2. The more the hype, the less the value or longevity.

3. If it has a deadline, run away, don’t walk, run - in a zig-zag pattern.

4. Don’t send your valuable prospect away on first contact. Try to get their contact information so you can follow-up - yes, build your list. (I wish I’d done more of this.)

5. If you can’t understand the compensation plan after reading it twice, you may never understand it, so maybe it is best to avoid it.

6. Always try to get residual income rather than one-off commissions.

7. Try to get life-time customers.

8. If more than five people email you about something the same day, avoid it.

9. Spillover is a myth. It may happen now and then, but don’t depend upon it.

10. Earning money - no matter how you do it - is work. It takes longer than you think and it takes more creativity and effort. Nobody will do your work for you.

11. Don’t spend more than you can afford. Define your budget and stick with it. If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.

12. Don’t go into debt to try to make more money. Pour a percentage of your revenue back into tools and marketing. As a result of this, I’m spending more on marketing every month than I made the first two years of online marketing. But, it’s all a percentage of income. I have no debt and I intend to keep it that way.

13. It takes a long time to start earning money with online marketing (unless you are very lucky or very good at what you do). It took months for me to earn my first commission check, and several more months before I got my second one. Now, I get checks from several companies every month. It did not happen overnight, but it can be done with perseverance, even if you make a lot of mistakes along the way.

14. Don’t pay attention to how much money someone is claiming to earn. There is a huge difference between gross and net.

15. Help others grow and advance, don’t take advantage of them just to get their money.

When I originally wrote this, I was doing a lot of testing with traffic exchanges and downline builders. I was actively promoting two MLM companies. Today, I’m doing none of those things.

So, the comments about spillover really have nothing to do with affiliate marketing, because they’re more appropriate to anyone involved in network marketing. I got so tired of getting emails telling me that some “big-hitter” was going to start promoting to his “massive” list and there was only so much time to get involved in his program if we wanted any spillover. To the best of my recollection, from testing several different programs, I think I received half a dozen people in my downline from spillover and never made a penny from it.

In every case, I lost money in the process. That’s why I no longer do any of that.

In regards to #14, it’s not just a difference between gross and net. Some people will actually lie to you! (Surprise!) Anyone with a graphics program can dummy an income statement.

I’m not saying that all of them are dummies or lies, but I know that some of them are. Don’t believe everything you read or see. Caveat emptor.

What do you think?

Agree? Disagree? Let’s talk.

Act on your dream!

JD

A few months ago, I removed all the Google Adsense ads from this blog and some of my other sites.

Today, I decided to take a new look at how Adsense might perform on this blog.

There were a couple of reasons I removed them.

1. I could earn more from affiliate sales.

2. I didn’t like all the Get Rich Quick junk being shown in the Adsense ads on my sites.

When I put the Adsense Ads back on my blogs, today, I took a couple of steps to overcome the two items listed above.

1. I logged into Google Adsense and clicked the Adsense Setup tab. Then, I clicked on Competitive Ad Filter and entered the domains of the sites that I saw advertising my best-earning affiliate programs.

I’m sure this will be an ongoing process, but it’s not hard to do and takes little time.

2. Then, also in the Adsense Setup tab, I clicked on the Ad Review Center.

This was a new feature to me. I don’t know how long it has been available, but it was just what I was looking for.

They list a number of category filters and I selected seven of them (out of the maximum 8 that we can choose). One of the categories I filtered out of my ads was “Get Rich Quick.”

Since one of the things I keep writing about is to watch out for all these GRQ things that are all over the Internet, I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and have bunches of their ads on my pages.

So far, so good. I’ll keep watch over the types of ads that show and see what other tweaks will be necessary to show only, or at least mostly, the ads I want on my sites.

I got to thinking about this a few days ago, because - even though my affiliate marketing earnings have gone down this year - Adsense has continued to produce income on a daily basis. Not as much as I would like, granted, but I can’t earn if I don’t show the ads, can I?

I used to get a nice check from Google every month. This year, I’ve been averaging a check once every other month. I’d like to get it back to where I receive a nice check from Google every month, again.

I’ll be monitoring the performance of Adsense over the coming month or two and I’ll be tweaking ad types and placements to see if I can earn more on a regular basis.

It will be interesting to see how this works.

What about you?

How are you doing with your Adsense ads?

What have you been doing to improve the performance and therefore your income from them?

Act on your dream!

JD

Breaking news!

For years, SBI has been available only as an annual subscription.

For awhile, it has been possible to switch to monthly payments when it was time to renew after your initial first-year subscription of $299.

Now, you can subscribe to SBI starting with monthly payments of $29.99 instead of a lump-sum annual starting cost of $299.

Here’s what Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell, had to say about this…

Times are tough. Money is tight. So demand for a monthly subscription format for SBI! has been high, according to the good folks who handle questions from the Web site.

I’ve always believed in an annual model, using the $299 as a reasonable way to make sure folks are COMMITTED. The Guarantee protects new SBIers…

… But the psychological impact of “$299″ and “1 year” sets the correct mindset. Now, though, I believe that we’re in a period where, with unemployment rates so high and cash so tight, more people are simply MOTIVATED. Period.

And more than ever, they want something real. So…

Starting now, your visitors have the option of paying $29.99 per MONTH for their SBI! 2.0 subscription instead of the usual $299 yearly price. Check it out at the Order Page.

This is a limited time “soft” launch, without the usual shout-it-from-the-rafters pomp.

Why?

We’re not sure about the level of commitment. So we’ll observe how they’re doing. Frankly (very frankly), we don’t market SBI! to collect cash like a cable company if people are not serious about really using it to build the kind of business that will change their lives.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be watching the commitment level of these new SBIers with great interest. If the monthly option results in less serious SBIers, the time limitation will expire.

Have you wanted to try SBI but couldn’t afford the initial annual fee?

If that’s true for you, now is the time to take advantage of this offer and start your SBI version 2.0 site with an initial investment of only $29.99.

Folks, that’s only a dollar a day starting from day one!

Now, I don’t know how this impacts the Thanksgiving holiday special offer, but I do know a good deal when I see one.

Let me caution you

However, before you jump on this, let me caution you that building a site with SBI version 2.0 is not like what you may have done in the past or what you may have observed others doing.

If you want immediate gratification, don’t subscribe to SBI. Go with a traditional webhosting package somewhere and throw up a blog. You can be publishing to your new blog in a few hours.

When you don’t get the success you expected, however, you may find that the initial instant gratification you felt is nullified by losing the one thing you can never replace - time.

Building an online business with SBI is different

You will not get instant gratification with SBI. This frustrates a lot of people.

Instead, if you take the time to read and follow the action guide, you’ll learn to use the tools that help you identify a niche with profit potential, plan the site, research keywords to help you get free traffic from the search engines, and then build an evergreen multi-tiered website according to the plan you developed while working within the SBI C-T-P-M system.

So, you’re going to have to invest some time up-front, reading the action guide and/or watching the action guide videos. Some people don’t like to do this, and they’re the ones who typically fail with an SBI site.

Sitesell contrasts the hare approach to the tortoise approach. Blogging and free websites, including sites like Squidoo and HubPages, are more for the hares among us.

SBI is for the tortoises. We like to research and plan something before we do it. We like the slow and steady approach. We like to learn from others how to build an online business using time-tested methods.

We don’t like to run hither and yon looking at every shiny red ball that happens to bounce by.

That’s why the tortoise is the mascot for SBI.

If you’re not going to follow the guidelines, don’t bother subscribing to SBI.

But, if you truly want to learn how to build an online business, I personally recommend SBI version 2.0 as the way to go about it - especially if you’re a beginner.

There are many advantages to SBI if you’re a grizzled old-timer like me who has built many websites using lots of different tools and platforms.

I have to admit that I have both tortoise and hare qualities and that I’ve done a lot of research using lots of toys. I think that I’ve been building expertise in learning all the different approaches, but, in truth, part of it may have been enjoying playing with the shiny red balls that bounced along the path in front of me.

Either way, I’ve learned my lessons and now I know effective ways to build websites that attract lots of visitors. While I admit that there are several ways to do this, I’m positive that the SBI method and the tools they provide are the best combination for the majority of people who want to build an online business.

All of my new sites will be built using SBI version 2.0. I’ve tried lots of others, but I recognize the best when I see and use it.

With the addition of Content 2.0 as a standard feature of SBI version 2.0, I don’t see any more advantages to blogging, unless you’re building a site based on news or other time-sensitive information.

Content 2.0 adds the interaction that we look for with blogs, such as comments, and also makes it easy for your readers to submit new pages to your site.

(I’ll be adding these features to both of my SBI-powered sites over the coming weeks.)

This interactivity ratchets up the effectiveness of SBI sites to a new level.

And, now, at least for a limited time, you don’t have to swallow hard and spend $299 up-front.

You can get started for only $29.99, payable as a monthly subscription.

If you can’t afford that, I really don’t see how you can afford to build an online business at all. Just give up one cup of coffee or a sandwich every day and that will cover the cost.

Of all the products and services I recommend, SBI version 2.0 stands at the top of the list. I’ve been a happy Sitesell customer for several years and don’t see any reason not to continue for a long time to come.

Try SBI version 2.0 for yourself. Get started today.

Act on your dream!

JD

Thanksgiving Day is coming up quickly and Sitesell wants to help you this year by offering their $100 Thanksgiving holiday special offer.

That’s right. From now until November 30, 2009, you can get a one year subscription to SBI version 2.0 for $299, or you can take advantage of the special and get two subscriptions for only $399.

Keep both for yourself if you want. (You have up to nine months from the purchase date to activate your second site - and renewals for that site start on that date.)

If you don’t want to develop two sites, you can go in with a friend and each of you save money by splitting the cost and effectively saving $100 for each of you for the first year.

Or, give one - or both - subscriptions to someone you care for. An SBI version 2.0 subscription will help them develop the skills necessary in the 21st century.

There are many reasons that you might want to take advantage of this special offer.

If you haven’t already done so, take some time and look into SBI version 2.0 today.

I have two SBI sites and I’m happy I do.

With all the new features that were added to SBI in the last year, you’re already getting a discount on what you would have paid this time last year.

For example, just from the value of Content 2.0, you’re already saving $100. Just a few months ago, there was an additional charge of $99 per year for adding the features of Content 2.0 to an SBI annual subscription.

In October, however, Sitesell announced that Content 2.0 is now available for all SBI subscribers, and the price is now included in the $299 annual subscription. That’s more features for your site and a DECREASE in price!

One of the beauties of SBI is that their technical staff of programmers, developers, analysts, and other propeller-heads are always finding ways to make the product better, and they implement these improvements behind the scenes. You wake up one morning and learn that you can now do more with your site, usually with very little effort on your part.

Another great feature is the members-only Sitesell Forum where SBI webmasters help each other succeed with their online businesses.

Did you know that some SBI webmasters get over a million unique visitors per month? It’s true. See for yourself. Go to the Sitesell case studies page and scroll down to read Elad Shippony’s case study.

Pay particular attention to his November 2009 update where he talks about getting 1.5 million unique visitors per month over his three main SBI sites.

Now, we all know that everyone won’t achieve these levels of success, and it certainly won’t come overnight. Elad has been building his sites for several years, but now it’s his full-time business.

Can you do this well, or better? I don’t know.

I do know that SBI offers the tools, training, support, and help from other subscribers so that you can succeed if you follow the time-tested action guide and build a site that sells.

Until you try it, I don’t think you’ll ever understand what makes SBI version 2.0 different from traditional webhosting.

If you already have experience building websites that have not succeeded for you, take a little time and compare SBI version 2.0 with traditional Windows or Linux hosting.

If you have no experience building websites, but you do have a strong desire to learn how to effectively earn money with an online business, then you owe it to yourself to start with SBI and not waste a year or more of your time learning all the things that you’ll need to learn when building a site using other techniques.

Still, as much as I love building sites with SBI, it is true that SBI version 2.0 is not suitable for everyone or every project.

The good news is that your investment in SBI is guaranteed. If you find it isn’t for you, you can get a refund.

Not sure if SBI will work for what you want? If you have a question about SBI you can call toll-free during normal business hours or fill out a form to ask your question. An experienced SBI webmaster will answer your question, at no cost to you.

Thousands of people, many with very little - or no - previous experienced have succeeded in building an online business with SBI. Now, version 2.0 offers even more tools to help you succeed.

Not everyone who tries will find the success they want, not even with SBI helping them, but I believe you have a much better chance of success by following the time-proven methods that you’ll learn when you subscribe to SBI version 2.0 and follow the action guide in building your business.

Even with SBI, there’s a lot to learn, or possibly un-learn, but I’ve been looking for years to find something better and I haven’t found anything yet.

See for yourself.

Give SBI version 2.0 a try. It is helping thousands of people around the world change their lives for the better.

Act on your dream!

JD