Sitesell is about to have 20,000 fans on Facebook

June 29, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 23 Comments
Filed under: Business Networking, Facebook, Sitesell and Site Build It 

It was only three months ago that I wrote about Sitesell’s Facebook page being liked by 10,000 people. Now, they’re about to reach the 20,000 milestone. I think that’s remarkable.

Sitesell reaches 10,000 fans milestone on Facebook

Later, I wrote about how Facebook had closed their page with no warning, and then, just as mysteriously, had reinstated it just over a day later.

Your Facebook page – what would you do if it suddenly disappeared?

Last week, Sitesell hosted a live question and answer session with Michael Stelzner:

Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner – Live Q and A Session on Facebook

And, now, I’m writing about how they will pass the 20,000 fans milestone in the next day or two on their Facebook page.

How are they attracting so many people to their page? Why are so many people liking it?

I don’t know the answer for everyone, but I can tell you some of the reasons why I like their page and why I like the folks who make up the Sitesell business.

  • Sitesell UnderPromises and OverDelivers — this is the opposite of so many companies I run into every day
  • They offer so much, for so little — I won’t even try to list all they provide to help me run my business (here’s a partial list and explanation of the tools they offer), and I’m more than happy to pay them the $300 per year for each of my sites powered by SBI. In my book, that’s a bargain, because I earn back much more than I pay. (It’s like renting a building when opening a brick and mortar store, or buying a truck when you’re in the trucking business. You don’t expect to get that for free in the real world, so why would you expect to build an online business using free tools? I just don’t understand that thinking.)
  • Their staff constantly keeps up with emerging trends and evaluates them. When something has proven its worth, they help us make better use of it and do most of the tech work for us, in the background, so we can concentrate on our business.
  • They provide the best training and guidance to help us build our businesses and they have outstanding support and a great members-only forum.
  • They practice what they preach. Most of the 100+ employees of Sitesell work from their own homes around the world. Only a handful have to be on location at corporate headquarters and in their data center. And, we get to know some of their employees from their interactions on Sitesell’s Facebook page and Sitesell’s Twitter account.
  • For over 10 years, I’ve read everything I could find that Ken Evoy, the founder of Sitesell, wrote and he has always been open, honest, and on target. For over a decade, he has gotten much more right than wrong, and when he’s wrong, he admits it and learns from it. I’ve never worked with any other company where the founder of the business was so involved with his customers. I don’t know how he finds enough hours in the day to do all he does.

I could go on for several more pages.

And so could other SBI webmasters. See what some have said on SBI version 2 Site For You.

The fact that I get lots of people reading what I write on my SBI powered sites is almost a bonus. The fact that I earn income from them is the whole point. That’s the name of the game when you own an online marketing business.

It’s why I can sit here on the porch on a bright sunny day on top a mountain not too far from the Great Smokies and run my business on my own schedule. My morning commute was walking from my bedroom to my office (where I turned on my computer) to the kitchen to make coffee and then out to the front porch.

Do I miss the morning rush hour commutes I had to deal with when I lived in Atlanta, Georgia and Phoenix, Arizona? Not at all.

I learned how to build websites that sell over a decade ago when I read a book that Ken Evoy wrote. I followed his advice, and now I’m living my dream.

Can you tell that I like Sitesell and the people who work there? (grin)

Get to know them. Maybe you will, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner – Live Q and A Session on Facebook

June 18, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 8 Comments
Filed under: Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Social Media Marketing 

On Thursday, June 23, 2011, at 1:00 pm (ET), Sitesell, Inc. will host a one-hour live question and answer session with Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner.
 
If you have any interest in social media marketing, you probably already know that he is one of the rising stars in that category and really knows what he talks about. He doesn’t spout untested theory. He and his team have built Social Media Examiner into one of the most authoritative sites about social media marketing and currently their site has an Alexa ranking in the mid-2,600 range.

That means a lot of people read their advice on a regular basis.
 
I’m looking forward to the event and I’ll be there.
 
Here are the full details: Live Q and A with Michael Stelzner hosted by Sitesell
 
For the last several months, I’ve made it a point to read his blog posts on a regular basis.
 
Sitesell has hosted several very successful live question and answer sessions on their Facebook page over the last several months.

SiteSell Facebook

It works like this:
 
They are already collecting a number of questions for the session, some of which will be answered by Michael before the session begins and the answers will be posted during the session by Sitesell employees. Michael will also answer as many questions as possible during the one-hour session. All the questions and answers will be gathered and posted so we can refer back to them.
 
Time: June 23, 2011 at 1:00 pm (ET)

Place: On Sitesell’s Facebook Page

Cost: Free
 
If you attend the live session, don’t forget to refresh the page in your browser periodically to make sure you see all the latest updates as the session progresses.

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Unrealistic expectations about building an online business

June 13, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 57 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Musings, Sitesell and Site Build It, Success and Failure 

This morning, I was reading a forum message from a very unhappy new online marketer who was complaining of all the hard work he put into his business and the complete lack of results he had gotten out of it.

I think we can all relate to that, at some point and on some level.

So, out of curiosity, I went and looked at his website (a blog, in this case) and wasn’t surprised that he was getting no results.

The blog had only 19 posts over a bit less than two months and there was no theme or niche orientation that I could see.

I don’t see any point in mentioning this man’s name or the URL of his blog. I’m sure I could do a little research and come up with dozens of similar examples.

In his complaining forum post, he said that he had been working very hard on his online business and wanted to quit his job and do this full-time. He was behind his planned schedule.

What?

Does anyone really believe they can start a website or blog or anything else and make enough profit in two months to replace a full-time job? If so, they need to face some facts.

If you want immediate income, sell something you already own or get a job (if you can).

If you want to build a business and live off the profits, it’s going to take time, a plan, lots of energy and creativity, and the investment of money to succeed.

Yes, it costs less to start a website, but you’re completely invisible until the search engines start referring visitors and you won’t get a lot of that without writing pages with quality information and building links to your site so the search engines will find and index those pages. This takes time, and I don’t mean two months.

(I’m assuming that you are not buying ads on other sites, using Google Adwords or Facebook ads or anything similar. That can drive immediate traffic, but it adds to your expenses, too. If you can make a profit, it can be a good way to get visitors to your site.)

If you want to build an offline business, it takes tens of thousands of dollars and more time. Most new businesses should expect to have losses every month for at least the first couple of years and often for longer than that.

Business isn’t a game of days or weeks of work before earning a profit, it is often a game of years of work before you realize an income from all the work you’ve done during that time.

People with get rich schemes tell you that you can earn tens of thousands of dollars (or pounds or Euros or whatever) in a few days or weeks. They are lying to you to get you to buy their products.

If you’d like to prove me wrong on that point, I’m listening.

Just today, I did not approve comments from two people who were linking to the same get rich quick scheme from their comment. No thank you. Life is too short and there are too many other real opportunities to build a business for me to be a part of promoting such wastes of time and money, even from the link from a comment.

How long does it take to build a business?

That’s kind of like asking, “How long is a piece of string?”

The answer, of course, is, “It depends.”

It depends on a lot things. What are you selling? How big is the target market? How well can you reach them? Can you overcome their objections? What else can they buy with the same amount of money?

Those aren’t the best questions, but they are apropos to the point I’m trying to make.

It takes time and work to build a business.

Do you think large businesses like Sears, J. C. Penney’s, and Walmart were built overnight? No, they weren’t. Each of them started from humble beginnings and the owners invested years and most of their revenue into growing the businesses.

(I’m just using those three as examples, because they were the first that came to mind, since I already knew some of the history of their businesses and how they built them. There are thousands of other examples that could be chosen.)

Except for a few exceptions, most large businesses started very small and grew over time.

Richard Sears got into the retail business when he purchased a shipment of watches that a local jeweler didn’t want. He was a train station agent and he sold these watches to other station agents for a tidy profit.

The first Sears catalog was published in 1888. They didn’t open their first retail store until 1925, nearly 40 years after he started selling those watches.

James Cash Penney opened a small dry goods store in 1902. Over the years, the company grew and opened more retail stores. They published their first catalog in 1963 and what was the forerunner of their current website started selling on the online in 1994. It took them over 60 years to start their catalog and over 90 years to enter online commerce.

In the 1940s, Sam Walton began his retail career when he worked for J. C. Penney. In 1950, he opened Walton’s 5 & 10 store. In 1962, they invested most of the company capital to open the first Walmart store. In 1968, after opening several stores in Arkansas, they opened their first store in a different state. They opened their first Wal-Mart Supercenter in 1988.

The point I’m trying to make is that these retail pioneers started small and invested a lot of time, energy, and money into building their business. They reinvested their profits and grew. (Of course, unlike most small businesses and almost all micro businesses, they also received capital from investors who bought their stock and that gave them more resources to continue growing.)

None of them had a successful business with less than twenty pages of questionable content on the Internet. None of them had a profitable business in less than two months. All of them invested lots of money (for their time) in opening their stores and purchasing inventory.

Now, the pace of change has quickened. It’s not unusual to hear that someone started an online company and became millionaires or billionaires after a decade or less. Those are the exceptions. They are not the norm.

People, maybe you, have acquired unrealistic expectations on how long it takes to succeed with an online business. They have unrealistic expectations about how much money they’ll make.

Unless you are very lucky, or very talented, or both, you will not become the next uberbillionaire. If you were working on that project you would not have time to read my quaint little blog.

Even a company that I respect and admire — Sitesell — makes the mistake of using terms that lead to an unrealistic expectation for how long it will take to build an online business.

They use a 10-Day process for analyzing and building a new niche-oriented business.

While they make it very clear in their documentation, Action Guide, and most of their online marketing, that a “Day” in this process does not equal a 24-hour day in the real world, I think it is misleading to folks who try to rush through the process without slowing down, reading the documentation, watching the videos, and proceeding at a more reasonable pace.

It’s true that some of those “Days” tasks can be completed in two or three days in real time, but some of them will take months to complete, or represent ongoing activities that may be performed for years as part of building and promoting an online business.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Sitesell used to have the entire Action Guide online, but it has been privatized for the benefit of their customers, only. However, they do have a series of videos about the process they teach for building an online business and those videos are available free on YouTube. They are an abridged version of the videos that are part of the Video Action Guide that comes with a subscription to SBI.

Nowhere, though, do they say that it will be easy and free and your inbox will overflow with people rushing to send you money with no work on your part.

Others, however, say exactly that. They try to sell you software and systems that they claim will make you rich in a few weeks.

Who are you going to believe?

Think it through for yourself. If someone has an automatic system for making huge amounts of money online with no effort nor experience, why would they sell it? Wouldn’t they use it themselves and reap the benefits?

If you had one, would you sell a goose that laid golden eggs?

Of course not.

It is possible to build a business that makes a good profit. It can be done offline in a brick and mortar business or it can be done online with a website that does the selling.

In neither case is it easy nor guaranteed. Some of us succeed. Some of us don’t. Then, we try again.

I love working on my sites from the comfort of my home in the mountains. I don’t just like it, I love it.

I’m not rich and I’m not even doing as well as I was a few years ago before I got so sick. Now that I’m much better, it’s time to get back to work and equal or exceed the success I enjoyed few years ago.

I’m using a combination of affiliate marketing on some sites and promoting locally owned brick and mortar businesses on other sites. There are countless niches in which a profitable online business can be built.

It can be done.

Can you do it?

I don’t know.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Comments Policy – a reminder

June 6, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 18 Comments
Filed under: Policies 

This is just a quick reminder that I have adopted a Comments Policy for this blog.

I continue to delete good comments because the writer does not follow the policy, and I’ll continue doing so.

You must use your name. No keywords, no name@keywords, no websites, no company names. Your Name.

If you choose to ignore the policy, I will delete your comment.

Now and then, if I’m in a good mood and have the time, I may edit your name and accept the comment, but don’t count on it.

I love comments from real people who want to add to the discussion. You are always welcome here and I look forward to talking with you.

Act on your dream!

JD

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SBI Success Story – Elad buys a home

June 6, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 6 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It 

This is going to be one of the shortest blog posts I’ve ever written. There’s no need for me to say very much.

Elad Shippony and his sister started a coolest kids birthday party website using the tools included with an SBI subscription.

Over the years, he shared his story in the case studies section of Sitesell’s website. About a month ago, exactly eight years since he resigned from his full-time job, he, his wife, and their children moved into a new home: Elad buys a home

You can read the other updates to his story by clicking the links you’ll find on the bottom of that page.

Real people, building real businesses by marketing on the Internet. That’s my dream and my goal.

Want to read more? There are several case studies telling the stories of real people succeeding with their online business.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Your Facebook page – what would you do if it suddenly disappeared?

June 5, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 17 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Facebook, Sitesell and Site Build It, Social Media Marketing, Webhosting, Websites 

On Wednesday, I wrote about Sitesell’s Facebook page disappearing. *poof*

You might want to read that before reading the rest of this article.

If you don’t want to go read it, here’s a brief synopsis. Sitesell’s Facebook page was doing very well. They had invested months of time, lots of money, and the energy of several employees to build it to where it was. There were over 16,000 people who Liked the page. There was hundreds of pages of content and thousands of interactions. Interest was growing. Activity was increasing. More people were liking it every day.

Then, Facebook shut it down.

*poof*

No warning. No explanation.

*poof*

Gone.

What would you do if your Facebook page was your primary marketing site for your business? (It wasn’t for Sitesell, but it was becoming a very valuable resource.)

What if all your marketing was to send people to your Facebook page? What if all your marketing suddenly sent people to Facebook’s home page, instead. No warning. No explanation.

I bet you’d be reaching for the antacid to put out the fire in your belly. I know I would.

Ken Evoy, the founder of the company, blogged about it. He linked to other businesses that had similarly had their Facebook page shut down. I urge you to read that blog post: Urgent! We Need Your Help!

Now it’s back again and you can see it here: SiteSell.

Still, there’s been no explanation or apology forthcoming from Facebook.

Think about this.

Don’t put all your promotion eggs in Facebook’s basket. Have at least one website you own and control.

Even if you have your own website and/or blog on a domain you own, you’re still at least a little bit at the mercy of the company that hosts your site for you. But, I think, there isn’t nearly as much of a risk as there is at Facebook.

One of my Facebook pages was shut down

I have a website at Murphy Gold that I use for promoting select locally-owned businesses in Murphy, NC.

As part of my marketing, I set up a Facebook page for Murphy Gold.

I let it languish for a few months, while I was undergoing chemotherapy and just didn’t feel like working on it. One day, when I was feeling relatively well, I noticed that I had over 25 likes on the page. That meant that I could apply to Facebook to get a shorter page URL than the one that is automatically assigned when you create a page.

I wrote a note about that on my Dilbeck Marketing page: How to get a better URL for your Facebook pages.

Of course, I wanted Murphy Gold to be in the URL. So, I applied for the URL I wanted and it was denied, because it was already in use. Of course, I went to the URL to see it. In this case, it wasn’t a page, it was a personal profile, and it was inactive, having only a couple of status updates from a year earlier. There was no tie between the person using the URL and themselves, and I’ve claimed common law trademark on the phrase “Murphy Gold” as you’ll see on the bottom of just about every page of my site.

So, I filed a trademark infringement claim and requested the URL be applied to my page, since it rightfully belonged to me.

What happened?

The next day my page was shut down for trademark infringement.

So, I know about the fire in the belly when that happens.

Fortunately, it was not a major problem, but it was still wrong.

So, I appealed with an explanation that I was the one who had filed the claim against the personal profile that was infringing on my intellectual property.

I went on to other things, including my next chemotherapy treatment. A few days later, when checking my email, I received a message that my page was restored with the URL I requested.

No apology.

It was just another case of Facebook being the sole judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to their site and all the work we put into building it for them so they can make hugemongous profits.

Fortunately, it worked out for me. It doesn’t for some.

I know that Facebook is a free site and they can (and will) do what suits them. I knew that going in. But, still, I expect them to follow their own terms and conditions as well as the policies they adopt. What we don’t get is clear lines of good communications.

I could have demanded a full refund for what I paid them, but that wouldn’t have helped. (grin)

I urge caution, if you’re using a Facebook page as a primary source of contact with your customers and prospects. Make sure that you have another site where you can be reached and where you can explain what’s happening, if you encounter a situation like this.

In fact, I urge you to use a website or blog that you own and control as your primary marketing venue. Other sites, like Facebook, Squidoo, Hubpages, and so forth, can be good adjuncts to your site, but should not be your only, or even primary, representation of your business.

Likewise, be careful of building your website on a free service using one of their subdomains.

I’ve cautioned about building a site on a free service and promoting it using their url.

For example, I’ve been testing a new site here: johndilbeck.weebly.com

Soon, I’ll be working on that site on a regular basis, but I won’t be promoting it until I set it up as DilbeckMarketing.com. It’s not a lot of work to do. I already own the domain and I want to replace my old site with this new one. It’s just a matter of setting aside a few hours one day when my head is clear and I’m thinking straight and then doing the work.

You can learn more about Weebly here: learn more about Weebly

(Yes, that’s an affiliate link. It’s what I do. It’s how I’ve earned my living for over ten years. Many of the links in this article are affiliate links. When you buy through one of them, I earn a small commission. It’s what pays the bills. Thank you! If you buy direct by going to their site instead of through my link, you won’t save any money. You’ll just let the company keep the commission I might have earned by telling you about these resources that can be very useful for you.)

(By the way, I don’t promote just anything — even if they would pay me a commission. For instance, I don’t promote credit cards, insurance companies, multi-level marketing companies, and many, many others that I could. Yes, they pay very good commissions. However, I decided that I will only promote products and services that I would use myself. Or, which I would recommend to my family and best friends, even if I earned nothing from it. I use all of the services I suggest in this article and I’m happy with them. Now, back to the subject at hand…)

Weebly

Weebly provides both free and pro hosting services. I paid for the pro service and it’s only about $50 per year and offers more features than the free version. I’m not positive, but I think you can host up to five websites on a pro account, for the same price.

I recommend Weebly to my friends, family, clients, and you.

If you want a good looking website with lots of features for a low price (or free), and you don’t want to learn all the technogeek stuff you need to know to code a site from scratch (the way I do some of my sites), then you ought to look into Weebly. After all, it won’t cost anything to sign up for a free account and spend some time learning how it works.

That’s the reason I first signed up for Weebly. Sitesell’s next version of SBI is going to have a greatly-enhanced version of their sitebuilder and they’ve said it will be similar to Weebly’s. So, I initially signed up for a free account at Weebly so I’d be prepared when Sitesell rolls out their new version later this year.

In the process of using it, I really liked it, and that’s when I decided to upgrade to the pro version of Weebly. Now, I just need to knuckle down and build my new Dilbeck Marketing site, there.

Here’s another professional website hosted on Weebly: Images By Courtnie Photography

Weebly offers lots of great features and what I think is the best site builder software on the Internet. By that, I mean the best interface for easily creating HTML pages with all the bells and whistles, without having to learn all the code.

Check it out, if you want to build a website. It’s a great place for personal sites in addition to business sites. Want to build a website for your club, family reunion, church group, or something similar? Try Weebly.

HostGator

I’ve tested dozens of ways to build websites, forums, online communities, blogs, and even obscure things such as an article directory of my own.

After building dozens of test sites, I’ve narrowed my choices, considerably.

I still have some blogs at Blogger.com and WordPress.com and a few other free sites, but they are more or less inactive at this point. Now and then I post something. I mainly keep them around to retain control over the URLs that I have heavily promoted in the past.

These days, I host my traditional sites, including websites and self-hosted WordPress powered blogs (including this one) at HostGator. I’ve been doing this for years and it has been very cost effective and reliable.

It takes a lot more technical knowledge to build a site at HostGator than at Weebly, but HostGator offers features that are great for programmers and developers to add additional functionality to a website. I use PHP and PERL programming on some of my sites to do things I can’t on other webhosting services.

On the downside, we open ourselves up to more security risks when we use scripts — both custom and open source — on our websites. Scripts are the main way in which criminals gain control of our sites and use them for their nefarious purposes, such as hosting phishing pages and/or using them to send spam emails without our knowledge. Or, sometimes, they just like to take control and either deface or destroy the site. I’ve had all of those things happen to my traditionally-hosted sites, multiple times, on HostGator and other similar hosting services.

I can’t think of a single open source script I’ve used, including WordPress, that hasn’t been hacked at least once, over the years that I’ve been doing this. And, to be totally honest, it might be going on right now on one of more of my sites without my knowledge.

The last phishing scam that was installed on one of my sites was caught by HostGator security. They disabled and removed the offending scripts and pages and notified me. Then, I spent the next day or so going over the site looking for other problems. That was a totally non-productive, but necessary, use of my time and energy.

I’ll continue using HostGator for most of my current sites (except for a few, like DilbeckMarketing.com, that I’ll be moving to Weebly.

I have a couple of large websites hosted there…

JohnDilbeck.com (which has lots of custom programming I added over the years)

It used to be a much larger site (nearly 2,000 pages) before the NC General Assembly passed the nexus tax law in 2009 and Amazon.com dropped all affiliates in North Carolina. I lost several hundred dollars per month in income as a result of that decision and removed hundreds of pages on the site that were designed for and had links to products that could be purchased on Amazon.com.

GeorgiaDragRacing.com (which will be taken down one of these days due to my brother’s bad health)

I seem to recall something about drag racing in my senior yearbook entry when I went to Campbell High School in Fairburn, GA. (Howdy, class of ’70!) This website proves how much David and I loved drag racing. There are some great photos of the Houston Brothers and their ‘vettes. They owned and operated Houston Brothers Dragstrip in Fairburn for a number of years.

(If we were going to keep that site up, I’d add lots of videos of drag racing from YouTube. I think that would make an even more interesting site.)

My three active blogs will continue to be hosted on Hostgator:

John Dilbeck And Friends

21st Century Affiliate Marketing (you’re here right now. Thanks for reading!)

and the smaller, and less active

Murphy, NC 28906 (It’s being replaced by my MurphyConnections.com social networking site.)

All three of those sites are powered by WordPress and some custom programming I’ve added here and there.

I like HostGator and all they provide at a very reasonable cost, but their hosting service takes more technical skill and savvy to use than Weebly.

Sitesell and SBI

Now, if you’re very serious about building an online business and you want the best combination of tools, training, support, and an outstanding members-only forum for helping and being helped, then the only company I suggest is Sitesell.

(By online business, I don’t just mean making money online. See: Make money online vs. Build a business online for more of my thoughts on this subject.)

Yes, Sitesell is the company that had their Facebook page taken down for almost two days and that’s what prompted this long post.

Here’s the link to their blog post about this episode: Urgent! We Need Your Help!

and here’s a link to Sitesell’s Facebook page.

A little history, if you’re new to reading my scribblings…

I would not have been able to build my online marketing empire (grin) had it not been for what I learned from Ken Evoy (founder of SiteSell and the visionary behind SBI).

I found him over ten years ago, when I had quit programming and consulting and returned to blacksmithing — an old family tradition.

I enjoy making things and I was planning to make custom-made arms and armour. I did some of that, but along the way, I took a path less traveled and made a steel rose for Dena, my beautiful daughter.

My friend George Kelischek, a master violin maker in Brasstown, NC once told me, “Anyone can learn to make something, but you can’t build a business until you learn how to sell what you make.”

Truer words were never spoken.

So, since the Internet was starting to get popular, I went searching for information on how to build a website that could help me sell my roses that never wilt.

I already knew how to build websites, and I was already an Amazon affiliate, earning a hundred or so dollars a month, so I already knew a little about the subject.

What made the difference was finding Ken Evoy and buying his book, Make Your Site Sell! That was by far the best $20 (or so) I ever spent. I’ve recouped that investment and much more, many times over, and I’m still earning from work I did years ago. (I love passive residual income. I wish I had a lot more of it!)

The book cost about $17, if I remember correctly, and with the second edition the price was increased, to around $30. That was for three volumes and about 1,500 pages of very good information.

Now, you can get it as a free PDF download of Make Your Site Sell!

That book changed my life. It took a lot of studying and a LOT of work, but before long, I was selling all the roses I could make to people all across the USA and Canada and made some lifelong friends in the process.

I was getting inquiries from Ireland, England, Australia, New Zealand, and other far-off lands.

I was even getting requests for custom-forged daggers, crowns, jewelry, and other items from people as far away as California. A good website that could be found in the search engines really extended my marketing reach.

Then, Mom got sick with cancer. I’ve written about that over the years, so I won’t repeat the story here. I cared for Mom for years following her cancer surgery and then spent a couple of years fighting my own battle. Thankfully, Dena and Stacey cared for me when I needed it.

Here’s something I wrote about Mom, following her death: In memory of Mattie Lee Dilbeck

Here’s something I wrote following Mom’s death (before my cancer fight started) that shows some of my thinking and the state I was in: Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

It’s safe to say that the last nine years were devoted to caring for Mom and fighting my battle with cancer. What little free time and energy I had, I continued to maintain my sites and company as well as I could. If it had been anything but an online business that mostly ran on automatic (except for the research and writing, of course), I would have had to shut it down. That came very close to happening last March. It looked like I wouldn’t live much longer and I didn’t have the strength to work on it. I came very close to pulling the plug on Dilbeck Marketing and shutting down all my sites.

Even without much input from me, there was enough income to cover the expenses, so I left it running. Good thing. I didn’t have the energy or enough of a clear head to shut it down gracefully. All I would have been able to do was cancel the hosting accounts and stop paying the expenses. That would have left remnants all around the Internet from all the work I’ve done over the last 10 years.

So, I left all the sites up. Now, we’re continuing to kick cancer’s butt and I’m getting stronger every day. There’s a lot already in place, but it feels a lot like I’m starting a new business. I have to clean things up and start running on the treadmill that powers everything. Fortunately for me, the treadmill is actually the keyboard I’m pounding on right now.

Make Your Site Sell! and all the work I put into building these sites and relationships kept me going financially, even when I could not leave home for more than an hour or two to run errands the last few years I was caring for Mom, and the last couple of years while Dena and Stacey were caring for me.

But, a lot of people who read MYSS! did not have the technical skills to follow the advice in that book, so Ken Evoy took it up a notch and created Site Build It, now referred to as SBI! ver 2.

Now, back to the present…

Henceforth, I’ll be putting about 80% of my efforts into building two sites I own that are powered by SBI: Act on your dream! and Murphy Gold.

I believe that almost anyone can make their life better by choosing their most important dream (not sleeping dream, but something you want to achieve), and then making it real. I think you can be well along the way to realizing your dream, once you’ve made that decision, in as little as a year from now.

For the last year, my dream has been to kick cancer’s butt and get back to work. (check)

Now, my dream is to do what I can to inspire others to live their dreams (using the first site) and to promote some of the very best business owners in Murphy, NC (the second site).

I’ll be spending about 15% of my work time on Act On Your Dream!, 65% on MurphyGold.com and MurphyConnections.com, and the remaining 20% of my time on running the business, accounting, maintaining all my other sites and blogs, occasionally updating my profiles and interactions on sites such as LinkedIn, MerchantCircle, and Squidoo, posting updates and teasers on Twitter, and playing — with a little work — on Facebook.

The plan is in place and the goals are set. Now, it’s time to start working on each of them and drawing a big heavy black line through each item when it is completed.

Ken Evoy and SBi have given me the knowledge, tools, and guidance I need to live my dream, just as they have done for thousands of others around the world, including a few who are reading this right now. They continue to evolve their product, let us know about new techniques that have been proven to help us build our business, and provide ongoing support and encouragement through their newsletters and forum.

Right now, I’m sitting on the front porch in the mountains while I’m working on my blog. That’s the life I love.

If I had to focus on just one thing, and that may very well happen one day in the future, I’d focus on promoting the people of Murphy, NC on MurphyGold.com and MurphyConnections.com.

And what’s going to make that possible? Yeppers! That’s right, Sitesell and SBI. (And Ning, for hosting Murphy Connections.)

Oh, yeah, LinkToDetails.com is a domain powered by SBI that makes it possible to have my own link shortening service like tinyurl.com, or bit.ly, or the others — but it is one I own and control, so I’m not subject to any whims or changes of direction on their part. Don’t bother going to look at it, I use it only for redirecting links, mostly affiliate links, to the businesses I promote.

The primary work I do is done on my own domains. The ones I own and control and over which I set my own policies. (I may be vulnerable to my own capricious or birdbrained decisions — like almost shutting all of them down last year — but not to anyone else’s.)

Facebook can be like that. They can be capricious and they can make mistakes. Sometimes, but not always, those mistakes are resolved properly. Unfortunately, they can be very difficult to communicate with and many of their communications are less than forthcoming and can be difficult to decipher.

In the case of Sitesell’s page and all the great community interaction there, it was a good outcome — but terrible communications.

Today, I took most of the thoughts I wrote on a thread on my Facebook profile and reworked them into this blog post on 21st Century Affiliate Marketing. I want them on a site I control. I want them where I can find them in the future. I want them on a site where YOU can find them.

Do you own a business?

Where and how are you promoting it? If Facebook or another free site is your primary marketing venue for your business, I think you’re making a big mistake.

It works great as an adjunct to your main site(s), but not as a primary contact point.

Facebook is great when used as another entry point to your marketing funnel, as long as you’re bringing more people to your main site(s).

If you want to learn more, but not spend any money on it, download and read Make Your Site Sell!

That book is excellent, even though a lot of things have changed over the few years since it was last updated. Still, there is some outstanding advice about researching, understanding your clients/customers, talking to them, and promoting the services and products you offer. That information and those techniques will never go out of date.

If you want to learn more about how to build a real online business and get all the tools, support, training, and a great community forum all for the ridiculously low price of only $300 per year (or $30 per month), the primary business I will recommend is the one I use myself, Sitesell.

They offer the best tools, best service, and best communications (even from the founder and department heads) of any company on this quaint little planet that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

As with anything else, it takes a combination of work, time, money, tools, strategies, and help to build a successful business. Don’t you owe it to yourself to use the best tools to help you do the work?

Please, don’t put all your eggs in the Facebook basket.

That’s a huge risk to take if you are serious about building a real business.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

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