« Site Build It! is changing its name to SBI

One more reason to use SBI to build my sites

September 6, 2010 by John Dilbeck
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It

A couple of days ago, I came across another reason to like SBI so much.

I received an email from the security department at HostGator that one of my oldest websites had been compromised and several phishing scripts had been installed. They found and deleted them and then I had to take several hours and look through the whole site, delete several sections, update scripts, remove some I was no longer using, change passwords, and generally wasted half a day because of someone messing with my site.

At one time, that site was my biggest money-maker, but life intervened, North Carolina passed their new tax nexus laws, I was dropped by several large affiliate programs, and now the site earns practically nothing.

Still, it’s one of my oldest and favorite sites, so I keep it around.

I used to be one of those people who didn’t really like it that SBI didn’t allow us to use PHP, PERL, and other scripts on our sites. Now, I’m one of those who is happy that they don’t. It makes it much harder for someone to compromise our sites.

Over the last 13 years, I’ve built dozens of websites, blogs, communities, and forums, most using publicly available scripts. I’m one of those people who has to test everything and come to my own conclusions based on my experience and not what someone tells me.

I’ve wasted several of those years, as a result.

In almost every case, when one of my sites became popular and started producing some real income, it was hacked and destroyed. I would fix the problem, rebuild the site, and go on. Eventually, each of them became more trouble than they were worth and I let them die.

Now, I’m down to a few sites and the only ones that have NEVER given me even a minute of trouble are my sites powered by SBI. Not once.

Because of the changes in my affiliate status with several companies, I’ve been earning only a fraction of what I used to earn, but most of my attention has been focused on surviving and conquering this cancer that tried to kill me earlier this year. I’m making progress and we’re kicking that cancer’s butt. I’m getting stronger every week.

In the future, I’ll be deleting most of my sites that no longer perform as they once did. My brother is also having health problems and I’ll be taking down a large site I built for him, too.

I’m no longer enamored with blogs, forums, and communities built with commonly available scripts.

So, now I’m rethinking everything I learned and I’m going to apply what does work to reorganizing and building my SBI sites and planning new niche sites for the future.

I’ve always been a huge fan of SBI and all my big sites worked well for about ten years because I applied what I learned from Make Your Site Sell! to them.

Times have changed, though, and I’m tired of experimenting with everything to see for myself what works and what doesn’t.

I’ll be redoubling my efforts to use SBI the way it is intended.

I’ve started going through the new video action guide and it’s helping me relearn how to use SBI effectively.

I’m tired of hackers, malicious scripts, rebuilding sites, upgrading scripts, and all the other tasks that I don’t have to deal with on SBI-powered sites.

Yes, I’m a propeller-headed geek and I love programming and learning new things. I’ve enjoyed all my experiments. I’ve learned lots of things that don’t work and some that do.

Now, it’s time to focus on doing more of what really works and leaving all the red shiny balls that keep bouncing across my path for someone else to play with.

Or you can just do what I’m doing now — switch to SBI and not have to deal with all the headaches.

Compare SBI with traditional hosting. Decide for yourself.

I know what works for me.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

Tags: experience, focus, hackers, phishing, scripts

Comments

8 Comments on One more reason to use SBI to build my sites

Mike Logan on Mon, 6th Sep 2010 1:00 pm

Hi John,
Your post just stopped me right in my tracks. I have had 3 SBI websites, two of which did not follow the action guide as closely as they should have, and the third is much better, but it is a big sprawling website that reflects my knowledge or grandiosity as the case may be, as much as it follows the action guide. I have been pouring energy into the third website for 2 years, and traffic has quadrupled, and along the way, I have learned a bit about WordPress, and I have two word press blogs now, one designed only to capture local traffic and the other to actually be a business and traffic is growing and I do not know anything about php or the other tools you mentioned. If they are hacked, I would have to hire someone to fix them. Maybe I should move them into my counseling website. Thanks for the wonderful info. Mike Logan

John Dilbeck on Tue, 7th Sep 2010 5:09 pm

Hi Mike,

I know what you mean. Thankfully, I know how to do all this stuff, but I’m tired of losing years of my life because someone with nothing better to do decides to destroy my hard work.

My Act On Your Dream! site has been sadly neglected the last couple of years, but I’ve been doing some work on it and a lot of background brainstorming, keyword research, site comparisons, and building a new site blueprint. It’s going to rise from the ashes like a phoenix later this year.

It used to be monetized mostly by Amazon.com, but that died last summer. Still, it earns more than enough to pay it’s way and make a modest profit.

The action guide has been completely rewritten since I started that site, so I can already see lots of ways to improve it as I feel like doing the work.

I’ve been working on very slow dial-up for all of my online career, until this January. Now that I have fast broadband, I’m making use of audio and video. The new video Action Guide helps fill in the blanks and complements the written guide very well.

Act On Your Dream has lots of ways to go, but the main problem has been people wanting me to interpret their sleeping dreams, and that just ain’t agonna happen.

I got an idea from the Sitesell forums and I’m going to be doing a lot of interviewing people about their dream (i.e., main goal in life), what they’re doing to achieve it, and the obstacles they’re overcoming in the process.

I’m also going to be doing the majority of my “blogging” there, using C2.

One of the drawbacks that I haven’t liked about SBI is the lack of a way to have conversations with visitors. With C2, I can set up an invitation that only I will use. (I’ll delete anything submitted to that one by anyone other than myself.) Then, anyone who wants can comment on the topic, just as you did here.

That’s the main reason I’ve been using blogs — for the interactivity.

I’m also working on other ways to use C2 to build out the site. I have not had good luck, yet, but I’ve been so sick that I barely scratched the surface of what it will do.

My newest SBI-powered site, MurphyGold.com, is going to be my main site. I want it to be the best site on the Internet for information about Murphy, NC. I have a long way to go, but traffic is already building, even though I’ve barely worked on it for months.

I’m going to charter an airplane later this week and get a lot of aerial photos and videos for the site.

It is monetized by site sponsors, and I’m very picky about who I’ll accept as a site sponsor. I may be adding Adsense to some of the pages, but I’m not sure.

One thing I like about site sponsorship is that I get a check in advance for a full year of promotion. Some people gripe about spending $300 a year for SBI, but two of those checks pays a full year and puts a nice chunk of profit in my pocket. The others are almost entirely profit, because the overhead is so low.

I’m going to have to see how to make this blogging-via-c2 work, and I will not be calling it a blog. Each entry will be an article, but there will be the availability to comment on it and carry on a discussion.

The beauty of C2 is that all the security, support, updating, etc., is handled by the Sitesell support staff, and the cost is included in the annual subscription.

If you had to hire someone to repair a hacked WordPress-powered blog, two or three hours of their time (if they really know what they’re doing and charge accordingly) would cost you more than an annual subscription to SBi. Easily.

(It would, if you hired me at my professional rates. But, I’m not taking any of those jobs these days.)

I’ve had three WordPress powered blogs hacked multiple times, and that’s why I’m down to only three active ones, and one will probably be retired as I switch it over to “blogging-via-c2″ on Murphy Gold.

(For more on blogging versus building a properly structured site, see Blog or Build?)

Most people undervalue SBI support and all the work that goes on in the background. They are constantly improving the 70+ modules built into the system, adding new ones, and helping us focus on our businesses, instead of just building a website.

When I’m capable of working full steam ahead, I can do a lot more in a week than I’m doing in two or three months now. When I’m recovered, I’d happily pay $1,000 per year for all I get from SBI, per site, because I’ll make multiples of that in profit. Fortunately, Ken Evoy believes in underpromising and overdelivering at a very low price. (Less than $1 a day!)

I’ll let you know when I get my “blogging via C2″ going on Murphy Gold. I’d welcome your input on how you think it works.

I’m also going to be modifying the site a bit when the new sitebuilder is released in a few months. I’m going to test Nori’s method of promoting her site sponsors. I think it will work well on my site.

Thanks for joining the conversation, Mike. It’s always a pleasure “talking” to you.

Act on your dream!

Dennis Mellersh on Thu, 9th Sep 2010 4:23 pm

Hi John

I am very sorry to read of your bout with cancer, but glad to see that you appear to be beating it.

I have been away from the Internet marketing scene for over a year and have lost touch with a lot that is going on.

So your site, with its usual excellent information was a good place for me to get started again.

Would like to keep in touch, so it would be nice if you could send me your e-mail address. I lost it in a computer crash.

Keep up the excellent work.

PS: The Muskoka Cottage Rental Blog is one of a number that I built with WordPress and have just started to work on again after leaving some of them for two years.

Best wishes,

Denn

Dennis Mellersh

John Dilbeck on Sun, 12th Sep 2010 11:13 am

Hi Dennis,

It’s great hearing from you again. I hope things are going well for you up there in Toronto.

Yes, this cancer knocked me down, but I’m back up on my feet and working around the clock to kick its butt.

You probably haven’t missed a lot. There’s still the same old misinformation, hype-filled “buy this right now!” sales pages, and new schemes for someone to get rich every day.

And, there are some outstanding, honest, informative people, too. Sometimes they’re hard to find because of all the hucksters and hawkers who outnumber them.

I sent you an email last night. I look forward to resuming our correspondence.

Since we last “talked,” I’ve narrowed my focus a great deal. Part of it was because I was too sick to do much. The main reason, however, is that I’ve decided I’m not all that interested in promoting everything that crosses my path, no matter how much it may pay.

These days, I use Google Ads to show advertising on my sites and affiliate marketing only for the very best products I can find. If I’m not a satisfied customer, or if I don’t have at least two close friends who are satisfied customers, I won’t promote it.

I now consider promotions on my sites (other than ads from Google) to be personal endorsements. If I’m not willing to personally stand behind what I recommend, then I should not be promoting it.

Others don’t feel the same way, and that’s okay, but it’s the way I feel and is what I’m doing.

It limits the things I promote, but it makes me feel good that I’m promoting the very best I can find.

Most of my efforts will go into building MurphyGold.com and I’m looking forward to being able to resume building it soon.

The same philosophy applies there, as well. I only promote locally-owned small businesses in Murphy, NC. I don’t promote chains like WalMart, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, etc.

And, I don’t promote just any locally-owned business. Again, either I have to be a satisfied customer or client, or two of my very good friends must be. The owners of the business have to earn my trust before I’ll endorse them on my site.

I’ll leave it to others in the area to advertise any business owner with money to spend.

Always good to hear from you Dennis.

Luis on Wed, 22nd Sep 2010 2:51 am

I’m sorry to hear about health issues and I hope you are doing well. I have experimenting with wordpress adding plugins and thousand of things like that and I think I have waste a lot of time doing this. Right now I’m looking for a solution like SBI to take care of issues like that.

John Dilbeck on Thu, 23rd Sep 2010 6:13 pm

Good afternoon, Luis.

Thank you for the kind words about my health. I’m making steady progress.

It really depends upon what you want to do and what kind of site you want to build.

SBI is the best solution I know of for brainstorming, identifying a niche, creating a properly structured site, and making money from it. It’s not magic. It won’t do the work for you, but it offers the best set of tools (all integrated to work together and managed by a professional team in the background), a proven step-by-step method that has been shown to work in thousands of niches for different kinds of websites, outstanding support, and the best forum on the Internet.

So, if you want to build a niche site around a topic and are willing to do the hard work of planning it, writing the content, building the site, getting the visitors, and then start monetizing it, then it is the best solution I know of.

You can learn more about what I’m talking about by going through the Video Action Guide and see if you and your ideas for new sites are compatible with what SBI offers. This is the same Action Guide that helps SBI clients build successful sites more often than not.

On the other hand, if you want a website that heavily uses databases, PHP, PERL, Ruby on Rails, and other scripting languages then SBI is not for you. Not at all.

It is designed to work well for an individual or small group writing about a specific topic and using plain old HTML and javascript (the javascript is not required, but is supported).

It is not designed to build a corporate or even a small business (usually defined as less than 50 employees) site.

So, even someone who likes SBI as much as I do would never tell you that it is the perfect solution for all problems. It is not.

They extended SBI with a module called Infin It which can be used to work with blogs, forums, and other things hosted on a traditional host like BlueHost or HostGator, and then they do some DNS (domain name system) manipulations to make all the units be on the same domain using different subdomains, but that invites all the problems I’ve described in my post. Non-technical people should not be delving into those waters unless they’re prepared to fend off some sharks when they smell money in the water.

So, I am not a fan of Infin It!, but lots of people are. How many of them rushed out to use it when it was first released in order to ride the band wagon is unknown to me. How many of them are still building blogs, forums, Ning communities, etc, is also unknown to me.

So, you’d have to do a bit of research to see if you’re wanting to build a site that capitalizes on SBI’s strengths, or if you’ll be fighting it every step of the way trying to do something it is not designed to do.

If you have any specific questions, I’ll try to answer them. Or you can go to the official Sitesell Question page and contact them directly — at no cost and with no obligation.

Hope that helped.

Luis on Fri, 24th Sep 2010 5:53 pm

Hi John,

I appreciate sharing the Video Action Guide link I haven’t finish watching the videos. Right now I’m working on Niche-Choosing. I want to do it the right way also can you tell us what is the Nori’s method?

John Dilbeck on Sun, 26th Sep 2010 6:00 pm

It takes awhile to go through all the videos and do the work, before you even pick a niche or domain name. So, you’re approaching it from the right perspective.

I’m not sure what you mean when you ask what is Nori’s method?

Nori was Ken Evoy’s 14-year-old daughter when she started her website at http://www.anguilla-beaches.com and now she’s in college and earning thousands of dollars per month from the work she invested over the years.

Here’s how she describes herself and her site:

http://www.anguilla-beaches.com/about-me.html

As to her “method,” I don’t understand. Can you clarify what you’re asking?

All the best,

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