Dilbeck Marketing – back to business in 2012

December 21, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 10 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Business, John Dilbeck, Marketing, Opinions

Lots of fun things to do, today.

I’m finally free to update some of the websites related to my marketing business.

For the last several months, I’ve been pulling out my hair and chewing my fingernails trying to decide exactly what kinds of consulting services I’ll be offering. I settled that issue pretty quickly.

The hard part was deciding how I wanted to proceed and what I was going to charge for my time and effort.

Deciding what I WILL DO was much easier than deciding what I WILL NOT DO.

As I get older, I’m getting pickier about the people, products, and services I promote.

In the affiliate marketing side of my business, I’m dropping several companies this week, because I only promote the very best I can find in a particular category.

When it comes to business services, quality and dependability trumps price — every time. Some of the services I’ll be promoting cost more than their competitors, but they are worth it. Some, surprisingly, actually cost less.

In each case, I made my decisions based on quality and dependability, rather than price.

And, I did NOT make my decisions based on how much they are willing to pay me to promote them. I’m dropping several businesses that pay rather high commissions, but I don’t want to earn those commissions by recommending something that isn’t the best in its category.

Yes, it’s possible that I may make a bad decision now and then, but I’ve spent years and thousands of dollars using and testing these products and services. I know — first hand — if they deliver what they promise.

In a couple of cases, there really are two or three businesses that all deliver outstanding quality and return on investment. In one case, it has been very difficult to decide between them. I’m confident, however, that I made good choices for myself, my clients, and people like my clients.

If I won’t recommend something to my brother, daughter, best friend, or most-valued client, I won’t recommend it to you. If I won’t use it myself, I won’t recommend it, either.

That decision may cost me thousands of dollars, but if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

I only promote businesses, and their owners, whose products and services I use and with which I am very satisfied — and that applies equally to affiliate marketing and also to promoting local brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC.

I’ll be stepping up my efforts to a higher notch in just a couple of weeks and I’ve been wrestling with several decisions for a long time.

When I started MurphyGold.com a couple of years ago, I planned to offer my marketing services to only one business in each category. Then, I’ve had inquiries from competitors of the folks I’m already promoting, and it’s been hard to turn them down.

And, in several cases, there are multiple business owners in a particular category who all qualify as top-notch and deserve to be promoted, so it’s been hard to make a decision about how I’ll handle this. In one category, off the top of my head, there are at least four business owners who I’d be proud to recommend to my readers. That is what has made it such a difficult decision.

If I were selling advertising, it would be simple. I’d let all of them buy ads, but that’s not what I’m building with Murphy Gold.

After wrestling with myself about this for months, I’ve come full circle back to my original thoughts. I’ll promote only one business in each category. That way, I can offer ideas for marketing and advertising without having to deal with helping people directly compete against each other.

I feel better about that. It was an ethical, as well as a business, dilemma. I do my best to be open, honest, and ethical and I felt it was wrong to promote two businesses offering the same kinds of services, because I would have inside knowledge of their goals and plans. My gut has known all along that it would open a can of worms, but my head has been arguing that I could deal with it and not do anything unethical or unfair.

I’ve learned — over many years — to pay attention to my gut feelings and finally my big ol’ brain came to the same conclusion.

Looking back on it, I knew all along that it would not be the right thing to do, and, as a result, I haven’t proceeded with inviting new businesses.

Now, that I have locked this “one business per category” policy in place (and have thrown away the key), it frees up a lot of energy to get to work.

Then, this week, I resolved my conflicts about pricing. That’s always a hard thing to set. There are many models and ways of calculating prices, but I tossed them all aside and went with my gut. It has been a good counselor over the years.

Now, I know what I’ll be doing, what I’ll be charging, and a few of the people I’ll accept as new clients. What a relief. Now, I can jump into doing the work — and that’s the part I love.

Normally, in the last two weeks of December, I fire the bottom 10% of my clients. I don’t work with people who are hard to deal with, who don’t do what they say they’ll do, who don’t pay on time, or who are just difficult to deal with.

If I don’t enjoy working with someone, there isn’t enough money on this quaint little planet to convince me to work with them. Life’s too short to deal with difficult people.

The only people I’ll work with are honest, reliable, helpful, friendly, cooperative, happy to see their customers, and very good at what they do.

I’m kind of a strange bird. In a world where most people will work with anyone who has some money and a pulse, I turn away more prospects than I accept.

I’ve been told I don’t have a firm grasp on reality and that I don’t understand business. That may be true.

However, I’d rather work with a few outstanding clients I truly love working with than have hundreds or thousands of clients I don’t like.

Some things transcend money.

This year, I’m happy to say that I don’t have any clients who need firing. I think that’s a first. I love working with great people.

I’ll be sending out invoices for next year, and we’ll see if any of my clients decide to fire me. It’s possible.

It’s gonna be an outstanding 2012! I’m going to have a lot of fun with my business.

Act on your dream!

Tags: 2012, Dilbeck Marketing

Kashoo online accounting

December 13, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 3 Comments
Filed under: Business

Accounting. I know how to do it and I’ve done it for years, but I still don’t enjoy it.

Over the last two years, I got behind in my accounting and forgot to file my taxes in 2009. So, for a variety of reasons, I had to find a new accounting system that would run on my Mac. I had been using Quickbooks Pro for a long time, but decided not to update to the latest version when I bought my new computers last year. The version I’d been using for so long would not run on Macs with Intel processors.

I bought three different accounting programs and didn’t like any of them. They just didn’t offer what I needed.

So, I searched for a system that would do all I needed without being more complicated than necessary.

I found what I was looking for with Kashoo accounting:

Here’s their Facebook page: Kashoo online accounting

It’s a cloud-based system and costs only about $11.00 per month. They handle all the updates to their system and I don’t have to deal with it.

One reason I wanted an online cloud-based accounting system is because I have multiple computers and want to be able to do a quick update to my accounting using whichever computer I’m on at the moment.

All I have to do is keep up to date with my business transactions. They handle installing upgrades and other similar technical tasks.

Catching up with two years of accounting was a major task, earlier in the year. When you get behind with the paperwork and you’re too sick to think clearly, it’s very difficult to keep up with what needs to be done.

Thanks to the help of a friend who came over and helped me organize everything, I was able to catch up, file two years of taxes, and get it back under control.

(I can do just about anything with a computer, but I am completely inept when it comes to dealing with paper, filing, and receipts. My friend helped me find and organize all the paper and, after that, getting it into the computer was relatively painless.)

Now, it’s easy, even though I don’t particularly like it.

(Plus, it helps that I’m feeling much better and I’m thinking much more clearly.)

If you’re looking for an accounting system, I recommend Kashoo. They’re a small Canadian firm and the system works on any computer with a modern web browser. I use my Mac and Safari with no problems. I’ve also tested it with Firefox, with no problems.

They’re not paying me to recommend them and I earn nothing if you subscribe to their service. I’m a satisfied customer and I know that it’s hard to find a good, easy-to-use accounting system for micro businesses, especially if you use Macs.

Kashoo does not offer all the features that Quickbooks Pro or Quickbooks Online offers, but I didn’t need those extra features.

If you need more than what Kashoo provides, here’s a comparison chart for different versions of QuickBooks Online.

You know what they say, “The job’s not over until the paperwork is completed.”

Kashoo makes it easy. Well, easier.

Act on your dream!

Tags: accounting, Kashoo, online services

Rebuilding my business with SBI in 2012!

December 10, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 2 Comments
Filed under: Business, Marketing, Opinions, Sitesell and Site Build It

Several important currents are coming together to make 2012 a much more productive year for me. Sitesell is going to play a very big part.

1. I am recovering from a very serious illness and I finally feel like working on my sites again. It has been a difficult period (almost three years), but I’m ready to go. (I’m getting tired of talking about being sick. I’m looking forward to it becoming a distant memory.)

(If you’re interested, I wrote about my battle with cancer on my other blog. It’s a good thing I wrote it down, because I have no memory of writing those posts. Fortunately, my memory is improving, this year.)

2. I have closed over 50 websites that I built over the last decade (non-SBI). I started about half of them before SBI was introduced and the other half to test ideas and to see if I could put together a system that was better than SBI (for my own use, only, not to sell to others). I tested many different ways of building websites and blogs, and some of them were successful, but all of them had problems. Problems that I’ve never experienced on either of my SBI sites.

As an example, I spent a whole day last week fighting a security issue on one of my non-SBI sites. It took several hours with that company’s support staff, a supervisor, an administrator, and their security team to find one PHP malware file hiding on the site. I have no idea how it got there. Additionally, I spent several hours reprogramming the webserver on that site, so that it would block a group of people from around the world who were using my server for their purposes (to the tune of over 20 GB of bandwidth per month, and nearly 200,000 page views). I devised an elegant solution to block them, and still let everyone else see the site.

At one time in my life, I would have enjoyed that. I used to enjoy devising fast, elegant solutions to tech problems. Now, it’s just a hassle. A major hassle. This is one of the reasons that I fully support Sitesell for not allowing scripts (other than javascript) on our sites. Every non-SBI site I’ve ever built has been hacked more than once. Neither of my SBI sites have been.

Why did I build so many websites? I am a firm believer in testing to see how well something works. I don’t believe what people say, until I test it for myself. That’s probably a character defect and it has caused me a lot of unnecessary work, but I’ve reached my conclusions based on my own experience, not from someone’s claims.

3. The release of BB2 is coming at just the right time. I’ve spent the last three or four months brainstorming, planning, and thinking. I’m going to rebuild both of my sites and I’m going to take the time to do it the right way.

When I built my first SBI-powered site in April 2004, it was basically to learn how SBI worked so I would be better as a 5P affiliate. At the time, I was building a couple of large (1,500+ page) sites using a database created by Dave Winer (one of the inventors of RSS and an early blogger, as well as a very talented programmer and application developer). His product was called Frontier and later became Radio Userland and Manila, before he moved on to other things a few years ago. Over a period of several years, I modified that system heavily by tweaking the programming and adding my own modules. (Even with all my work and thousands of hours invested, it did not do all that I can do with SBI.)

It did, however, offer an easy way to build templated sites from a database. I could modify the template and rebuild the entire site, any time I wanted to, with ease. It made it easy to manage large sites. It made it easy to manage sub-sections of a site.

I’m looking forward to seeing how well I can do similar things using BB2. Reusable blocks open up a new way of approaching a block-built SBI site.

At their peak, each of my largest sites was getting about a million page views per year and earning enough income for me to be able to stay at home and be my mother’s sole caretaker for the last years of her life.

4. My income from affiliate marketing took a nose-dive in 2009. It has not recovered, yet.

The sites I built were very successful until the North Carolina legislature passed the nexus tax law in 2009 and Amazon.com cancelled my affiliation, and all the other affiliates in the state. Several other large merchants also dropped me at the same time. I had been an Amazon.com affiliate for 13 years and all of my sites were heavily monetized through their affiliate program. *poof* *gone*

For the last 2 years, my income has been decimated, so I’m basically starting over. I’ve managed to hang on and not close my business, but it was touch and go last year. Last spring, I showed my daughter how to close the business, if necessary, and gave her my power of attorney to do so.

This happened just as I was getting so sick that I had a very difficult time thinking straight and trying to make the necessary changes. I was able to update one large site by deleting several hundred pages and removing most of the Amazon affiliate links, and I removed most of the Amazon links on my smaller sites. I never got around to updating the other large site, so it’s been sending thousands of people to Amazon.com to purchase products we recommended, for more than two years — and we’re earning nothing from it. (Even after two years of total neglect, that site still gets more than 50,000 visitors and about 300,000 page views per year.)

Do I feel bitter about this and resent Amazon.com? I did, at first. Now, I recognize that our state legislature made a decision, Amazon.com responded to that decision, and I (and many others) took the hit. That’s business. There are always ups and downs and obstacles in our path to success.

For most of 2009 and 2010, I was so sick that I could not work, at all. I wrote a few blog posts and played on Facebook, but most of the time I slept. Fortunately, the surgeries were successful and chemotherapy did its job. I’m getting stronger every month and I’m back up to about half-speed.

5. After nearly 15 years of building websites and earning a living with my marketing business, I’m turning my attention from all the other ways I know of building websites and blogs and focusing on SBI.

My first SBI site was something I built because it was a subject that is important to me, not because I thought it was something that would make a lot of money. I liked how SBI made it easy to build and manage the site and how it did so much for me behind the scenes. I made some mistakes with that site, and some of those mistakes are evident in my choice of keywords. I did not choose very well. I’ll be testing the bottom-up approach to building that site over the next couple of years.

I was heavily focused on other ways of building money-making sites, at the time. I’ve built social communities, forums, websites, blogs, and even an article directory. I wanted to know, from the inside, how these various sites worked and performed — and I wanted to discover their benefits and problems. I think I spent more time modifying and writing PHP code over the last few years than doing any other activity.

I was a Sitesell 5P affiliate before there was an SBI. So, I had the chance to watch as SBI grew and expanded. It continued to improve and offer more features, year after year. And, the price has not increased, even though the product is many times better than it was all those years ago.

Despite inflation and all the new and improved modules, the price for SBI remains at $299 per year.

I spend more than that for coffee. (…and Reece’s Pieces…)

I’ve also observed, for about 13 or 14 years, the high levels of intelligence, honesty, ethics, integrity, innovation, and good-judgement that are possessed by the people who make up the Sitesell team. I’ve observed how the company has adapted to a changing world, not by following every fad, but by evaluating each new innovation from a business standpoint and then deciding whether or not it would have a long-term beneficial or detrimental effect on all of Sitesell’s subscribers.

I have observed how deeply focused the Sitesell team is on helping us succeed. They don’t just say it. They do it. Much of it for free.

The private, members-only Sitesell Forums are dedicated to helping and being helped, and I have observed more times than I can count or remember how SBIers help each other. Individuals on the Sitesell team offer their help, too, above and beyond their official duties.

This has been true, day in and day out, for years.

When I built my first SBI-powered site, in early 2004, things were very different from what they are, now. (I also have to admit that I thought I was something of an expert in building websites and I didn’t pay as close attention to the advice I got as I should have.)

The brainstormer was impressive and was a FileMaker runtime database that actually ran on our own computers, before being rebuilt to run entirely on Sitesell’s servers. That was a big change. It’s even better now, and the improvements that are planned for next year will be important improvements, also.

I don’t remember there being an Action Guide, although there probably was. I know, if it existed, it was nothing like what’s available now.

Until last year, I lived where there was no high speed Internet and I had a very, very slow dial-up connection. Last year, while I was too sick to work, I moved about four miles away to live with my daughter and her family, and jumped into the 21st century, complete with high-speed broadband. For the first time, I was introduced to video on the Internet and it changed my whole approach to using the ‘net. I discovered the video Action Guide and watched all of them, but remember almost none of it. My illness left me with some real memory problems, but that’s getting better, too.

I’ll be re-reading the Action Guide and re-watching the videos as I work though my site redesigns and expansion, next year. I’ll also use the action steps gleaned from a (recent members-only research) report to help guide me to making my sites as good as I can. It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of time. It feels almost overwhelming when I look at the big picture, but I’ll take the tortoise path. One keyword, one page, one topic at a time — over a period of months and years. Each individual task is relatively simple.

I am more of a technogeek propellerhead than I am a businessman. I’ve been self-employed as a computer consultant, analyst, programmer, and SysAdmin since the late 1970s. I also taught people how to use and program computers at a couple of colleges along the way.

Over the last ten years, I mostly built websites for the fun of it. I did it for the achievement of overcoming the technical hurdles and creating sites that worked as I wanted. In most cases, the goal was not to earn more money, it was to revel in the joy of learning and doing.

As I said, I closed most of my websites and blogs and I’m changing my focus. Now, I’m more focused on business. I’ve gotten the joy of testing and tweaking out of my system and now I intend to earn a good living from the income produced by my sites.

6. I am moving from being wide and shallow to being narrow and deep.

For a decade or so, I was wide and shallow — lots of websites with not too much depth to any of them, except for a couple. I spent a lot of time on various forums and commenting on other people’s blogs. Although I enjoyed those activities, and they gave me something to do when I wasn’t able to focus on work, I was not building a business in the process. That was not an investment in my business.

It is important not to confuse busy-ness with business.

I actually believed the nonsense about having 100 sites producing $1 a day being a good way to earn $100 per day. Now, I know that this is ridiculous. That’s a whole lot of work to earn very little money. Now, I know that it’s much, much better to focus on a few sites and build them so that they attract thousands of readers and earn much more money.

7. Success is a process.

Of course, as all SBIers know, it takes a lot of thought and work to build an income-producing, niche-focused, original-content website. The Action Guide is a tremendous help, but important parts of building a successful online business can only be learned by doing what you think is best, and then adapting and improving the things that don’t work as well as expected.

I did not focus on my own business as much as I should have, but I will in 2012.

The planning is mostly done. The mind maps are created, the site blueprints are completed, copious notes have been written, and now I’m waiting on BB2 before I completely revamp my two SBI sites.

Even though I made some mistakes when I chose the niche for the first site, I’m going to work through the Action Guide and do my best to correct some of those mistakes and then proceed forward with a patched foundation.

My second SBI-powered site will be much easier to build and monetize.

8. I’m going to quit focusing on what SBI doesn’t do, and focus more on all that it offers.

This time, I’m going to stop fighting the things I didn’t like about SBI (the main one being no integrated blog module with commenting) and start fully using all the tools that ARE available.

It turns out that blogging is fun for me (busyness), but doesn’t produce any real income (business), so the lack of an integrated blog or forum module in SBI no longer bothers me. I’ve learned, after a decade of blogging, that I don’t make my money on my blogs or forums. I enjoy writing them, and sometimes enjoy the conversations in the comments, but the money is made on my websites, and that’s what I am going to focus upon next year.

I should also mention that it has seemed to me that it was easier to write a blog post using WordPress, Radio Userland, or Blogger than it was to write a comparable page using SBI.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

A. WordPress comes with an almost-WYSIWYG editor for writing the posts. It’s easier to write an ad hoc blog post. That’s more of a perception than a reality, however.

B. I put a lot more thought, research, and planning into writing a page on one of my SBI sites, because I knew more people would see it. That may be partly self-fulfilling prophesy, and it may be partly due to all the things that SBI does behind the scenes to make it easier for people to find a page.

When I first started using WordPress, it pretty much required knowledge of PHP in order to get anything done. Now, it’s much easier, but still takes more technical knowledge.

SBI templates offered fewer options with the basic block builder, but, a few years ago, they introduced the ability to upload pages built using any site design software. However, those of us who preferred using the block builder tool had fewer options. The introduction of block builder 2 (BB2) this month will make a huge difference in how we design and build our sites. It’ll still be easy for beginners, but will offer more options as SBIers learn more.

In reality, however, I believe this is mostly perception. What we gain in ease of use in modifying a blog, we lose in spending additional time researching plug-ins and dealing with other technical details.

Ease or difficulty aside, however, I have proof that my blogs did not earn as much and took much more time than my SBI sites — even though I largely neglected my SBI sites for over two years.

I’ve also quit focusing on wanting comments and conversations on my website pages. That’s been a sticking point for me for a long time. When I started focusing on the lack of this feature, I really believed that all the commenting and discussions I was having on multiple blogs (my own and others) was helping my business. Earlier this year, I stopped most of that, and neither my income nor the number of visitors to my sites dropped.

It turns out that commenting is not that important, after all. It is a fun social activity that I enjoy, but it does not produce more income. Maybe I should qualify that by saying that it didn’t produce more income for me. Your mileage may vary.

Now that I have Facebook commenting on my SBI sites, it has become a non-issue.

Once again, I was confusing busyness with business. They are not the same.

Also, by focusing on the lack of a feature I wanted, it dimished the usefulness of all the features that SBI provides. I learned that lesson a long time ago. I’m surprised that I had to re-learn it.

So, this old dog is going to learn some new tricks.

I’m going to forget about using PHP and PERL to accomplish things and I’ll adapt to the tools that SBI offers. The new reusable blocks feature of BB2, that makes server side includes available to people who use the block builder editor, will make it possible for me to do some things I’ve long wanted to do.

My first SBI site may never be a real moneymaker. It’s always paid its way and made a profit, however. My second SBI site is the one around which I’m rebuilding my marketing business.

9. It has taken me a long time, but I have finally proven to myself that SBI is the right choice for me. Not just another choice in my bag of tricks and tools — the best choice.

I feel comfortable in stating that I’ve tried most of the alternatives and they are all lacking — especially in performance.

If you hear that SBI is only for beginners who don’t know how to do the technical stuff, part of that is true. It is perfect for beginners, but it is also perfect for us old propellerheads who have been slinging computer code for decades and building websites for almost as long as there have been websites.

(I was building websites before the introduction of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Before javascript. Before Google. Before websites could show graphics. When I still had to compile source code to build tools. When websites were listed in printed books. When I had to write CGI code in Perl or C to do any kind of animation or process forms. When I had to write my own program for building autoresponders. Before most people had even heard of the World Wide Web. I may not be great at it, but I’ve been doing it for quite some time.)

I admit that I am not a great business-person. I don’t have the knack for making big profits. I’m trying to learn how to do it. I think it’s probably a skill like any other, and even those of us who don’t have a natural talent can learn how to do better.

Ken Evoy has been a great mentor and I have learned a great deal from him. I haven’t implemented all that I learned as well as I could have and I’m going to remedy at least some of that.

He has also been a great inspiration. I admire his dedication, work ethic, intelligence, and ability to cut through the fog and keep things real. I look forward to learning more from him and putting that knowledge to work.

Unfortunately, it seems that I have learned how to write incredibly long posts from him, too. (grin)

10. SBI is a bargain.

Some of us have proven to ourselves that SBI offers a better way of building the kinds of sites we want to develop. Many of you have done much better with this than I have, but I intend to do better next year.

I won’t waste thousands of (more) hours on trying to prove to myself that SBI is the real deal. I’ve already done that. Yes, I learned a lot. Yes, I tested and proved to myself what works and what doesn’t. Yes, I learned all about the high cost of “free” websites.

And the price? $300 per year, per site?

That’s a bargain.

I know.

You have to look at the big picture. Sitesell is much more than a webhosting company.

SBI is not magic. It is not a magical Internet money machine on steroids.

SBI is an online business success toolkit, complete with detailed instructions that you can adapt to the niche of your choice. It comes complete with a set of tools that are unmatched in one service — anywhere. (Remember that there were no challengers in the recent $50,000 Sitesell challenge!) SBI offers a forum with a friendly, helpful atmosphere where fellow subscribers enjoy helping each other succeed.

Only for beginners? Not true.

Too expensive. Not true.

I still spend several hundred dollars every month for webhosting, email mailing services, domain names, and other expenses related to my online marketing business. Only $60 of that is for my two SBI sites. By comparison, they are a bargain. (In fact, I’m saving enough every year (by not renewing a lot of non-producing domain names) to pay the inexpensive cost of both SBI sites.

Later in 2012, I am seriously considering building two more websites powered by SBI. Both are profitable sites, currently, but I know I can create more revenue by taking the content off of those sites and building new sites using the tools that SBI provides. All I need is more time and energy.

I have a dream and I’ll act on achieving it in 2012 and beyond.

Act on your dream!

Tags: Blogging, Ken Evoy, online business, SBI, Sitesell, success, Websites

Strider Software introduces TypeStyler version 11

December 10, 2011 by John Dilbeck · 1 Comment
Filed under: CafePress, Macintosh, Zazzle

Yesterday, Strider Software introduced version 11 of their outstanding text editing software.

I’ve been using TypeStyler for years and love it. Mostly, I use it to create new designs for products I sell in my Cafepress shop and my Zazzle shop.

I start by creating the design in TypeStyler and export it to a jpg file. Then, I open that jpg with Pixelmator for fine-tuning, sizing, and adding the copyright notice.

(Here’s more information about Pixelmator: Pixelmator – Pixelmator Team)

I’m using TypeStyler version 10 and I’m very happy with it. I wasn’t aware that version 11 was about to be introduced, but it’s available now in the Mac App Store, with a holiday introductory price of only $59.99, which is about $40 less than the normal, full price.

You can read more about Typestyler, and can purchase at the holiday price by going to the Mac App Store, here: TypeStyler – Strider Software, Inc.

TypeStyler is a Mac-only product and is useful for developing lots of different designs for various uses, including labels, posters, boxes, cans, and so forth. It can do much more than what I use it for. If you are a graphic designer and don’t know about TypeStyler, I urge you to look at it.

Here’s a quick video introduction to using the app…

There are other introductory videos on YouTube on the TypeStyler channel.

I’ve been in contact with Karen Stillman at Strider Software, and she said she’d send me an update about how long the holiday pricing will be in effect. I’ll comment on this post as soon as I know more.

There are other tools that can do some of what TypeStyler does, but I don’t know of anything that is as easy to use — even for a non-artist, like me — than TypeStyler. I’ve tried doing similar things with Photoshop, Pixelmator, Adobe Illustrator, and others and all of them are harder than TypeStyler for creating the designs I enjoy. In fact, I wasn’t able to create the designs I wanted, when using the other apps.

You can export designs to several vector and bitmapped graphics formats from TypeStyler, for further enhancements, if you want. Version 11 offers new grunge effects, social sharing of designs, and more.

Here’s another quick video showing how easy it is to drop graphics into text and shaped blocks with TypeStyler…

Learn more about TypeStyler, here: TypeStyler – Strider Software, Inc.

Act on your dream!

Tags: graphics design, Mac App Store, Mac applications, Pixelmator, Strider Software, Typestyler

What is happening with Sitesell and SBI in December?

December 10, 2011 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, Sitesell and Site Build It

December has turned into a very busy month for Sitesell.

Sitesell reached 50,000 fans on their Facebook page

Their Facebook page now has over 50,000 fans and they are celebrating with a Best of Breed photo competition.

“Best of Breed” photo competition

Go to their Facebook page and click the Contests tab in the left column.

As soon as I saw what the contest was about, I immediately entered Apple’s iPad as the best of breed product for tablet computers. I knew what I wanted to say and where I could find a good photo (on Apple’s site), so my entry was completed in just two minutes following the announcement of the contest.

I was surprised, later that day, to learn that I had won a free three-month extension to one of my SBI subscriptions for being the first entrant in the contest. Several more three-month extensions have been given to other entrants.

The contest is open for entering until tomorrow, and voting starts on Monday. Before entering, be sure to read the Official Rules for the contest.

Ten prizes will be awarded in this contest (in addition to the fun surPRIZES that are being awarded):

First Prize: 2 Years SBI! + US$500 + 1 hour of exclusive coaching with Ken Evoy, SiteSell’s Founder and Chairman of the Board

Second Prize: 1 Year SBI! + US$250

Third Prize: 6 months SBI! + US$150

Fourth to Tenth Prize: 3 months SBI!

I would love to win that First Prize. The two free years of SBI! is a great prize and the $500 cash would be nice, too, but — for me — a full hour of one-on-one coaching with Ken Evoy would be the grand prize.

I would be honored if you would visit the contest on Monday, 12/12/2011, and vote for my entry, the Apple iPad, as best of breed in its category.

In just two days, you can vote for me and my entry! (two days) (2) (grin)

Or, if you are so inclined, you can enter the competition and compete with me for the prizes.

Live demonstration of the new Block Builder 2

For over two years, the designers, programmers, and database experts at Sitesell have been working to transition SBI! to a new platform that will help us be even more competitive for the next ten years. All of the modules (about 70 or 80) are being upgraded to work with the new architecture. It’s a massive project and already over $3 million has been invested in getting it completed.

On Monday, December 12, 2011, there will be a live video sneak preview of the new BB2. This will replace the original (sometimes called clunky) block builder that is used to build pages on sites powered by SBI! and will introduce a new state-of-the-art page builder. It also has a number of new site design features and probably a few surprises I don’t yet know about.

The presentation starts at 6:00 pm (Eastern Time) and there will be a link to it on Sitesell’s Facebook page.

You can learn more about this event here: BlockBuilder 2 Live Video Broadcast

I’ll definitely be there.

The public Beta test of BB2 is imminent and Sitesell is hoping that BB2 will be introduced for all SBIers to use on their sites before Christmas.

This has been a massive project and I can’t wait to get my hands on this new tool.

I have big plans for my marketing business and SBI! in 2012.

Christmas Two-For-One SBI! sale

Ken Evoy announced yesterday that the holiday special Buy-One-Get-One-Free! offer is now live and will go until midnight on December 25th.

During this sale period, you can buy two SBI! subscriptions for the price of one.

Keep both for yourself, if you want. (You can start the second site up to 9 months after purchase and it’s renewal date starts from when you start working with it.)

That means you can start one now, and wait until next summer or fall to start the second one.

When the annual renewal date arrives, each site will renew at the $299 price, so the second site is completely free for a full year.

Or, if you prefer, you and a friend can go together and start two sites (and split the cost, so that each of you can get started at half-price). If the two of you work well, you can help each other as you both learn the SBI! proven method of building an online business.

Or, buy one for yourself and give the other as a gift.

There are a number of ways you can choose to proceed.

If I didn’t already have so many tasks on my to-do list for the first few months next year, I’d take advantage of this sale, because I have two more SBI! sites on my drawing board and I hope to start both of them next year.

That’s a lot of things happening at Sitesell this month!

Over 50,000 fans; Best of Breed photo contest; live video preview of BB2; introduction of BB2 (hopefully — fingers crossed!); special holiday sale!

I won’t give you a lot of breathless hype. SBI! is the real deal. They won’t stop selling subscriptions to SBI! if you miss a fake deadline (although you won’t be able to take advantage of the 2-for-1 sale if you miss its deadline).

SBI! was a great deal a few years ago. It’s a great deal now. It’ll be a great deal a few years in the future.

Don’t miss the SBI! 2 for 1 sale!

Act on your dream!

P.S. Of course, you don’t have to take advantage of the special offer. If you want only one SBI! site, you can still buy one. Choose either the monthly or annual payment plan and get started!

Tags: contests, Facebook, holidays, Ken Evoy, sales, SBI, Sitesell, Special Offers, upgrades