Can you succeed online?

I think that is a question that lots of people ask themselves, every day.

Can I succeed online?

I’m not going to lie to you. I truly do not believe everyone can succeed with an online business.

That’s probably not what you were expecting to hear.

You probably expected me to tell you breathlessly that you can succeed beyond your wildest imagination and that money will gush into your bank account if you only buy the world changing secret that only I know.

Right.

Well, I’ll tell you right now. That’s a bunch of crap.

The real world does not work like that.

Only hucksters, shysters, scammers, and crooks pretend to know the one thing you must know to build a successful online business (or make a few extra bucks every month), and insist that you have to buy it RIGHT NOW or it’s going to disappear.

Nonsense.

Code Red! General Quarters!

When you go to a long form sales page with a gazillion bonuses and all the rest you’ll see, you should declare “Code Red” and turn your BS deflector shields to maximum. Divert energy from the warp engines, if you need to, but raise those shields.

I won’t say that all those pages are scams, but I will say that a large percentage of them just are not worth the time it takes to read it.

At least, for most people.

Deadlines? We don’t need no stinkin’ deadlines!

Also, look at how much they’re stressing a deadline. That is used to intentionally build a feeling of scarcity to get you to buy now. It may be true, or it may not be true.

Lots of times that deadline is programmed in PHP or javascript to have today’s date or just a few days from today. It’s not real, and it should send a signal about how real the rest of their offer may be. (You can prove this to yourself by noting the deadline on the offer you’re considering. Bookmark the page. Go back a few days later and see if the deadline has changed.)

Good business deals don’t need fake deadlines

While there are some real deadlines in business, most of the time a good deal today is just as much of a good deal later. Sometimes the deal gets better over time.

Will it work for real people, or just for technogeeks?

Some of those offers do have good information that can help you sell something online, but most of the average people won’t be able to make it work the way the technical geeks and marketing nerds portray it. (I’m a geek and a nerd, so I can say that. I’m talking about my herd.)

Let’s face it. Most people don’t even know what a browser is and can’t name more than two of them.

Most people don’t know what a CMS or plug-in is.

Technogeeks live and breathe that stuff. Real people don’t.

If you do, then you’re ahead of the curve and you should feel good about learning what you know.

The problem arises that you probably have learned some things that aren’t effective and don’t produce as well as they are claimed. Some are just busy-work. Some try to trick the search engines. Some are unethical. Some are illegal.

Some actually do work.

How can you tell the difference?

Don’t look at the number of hits, or visitors, or page views. Look at your profit and loss statement. Real businesses produce a profit.

What do you know about the company and the people behind the offer?

If I am going to buy anything that costs more than about $20 or so, I think about it and consider my options. I’m not saying I’m cheap. I spend several hundred dollars every month on website hosting, domain names, mailing list services, card mailing services, and other things I need, but I don’t spend the money unless it helps me generate a profit.

(The last two years are a notable exception. I operated at a loss while I was too sick to work, but now I’m focused on profit, again.)

If I’m going to invest any real money in buying something, I want to know who produced it, where they are located, and at least a couple of ways to contact them, before I pull out my card.

Try learning who the owner of the business is. What’s the address of their home office? Do they have a phone number and physical address? Can you contact them? Do they reply with any answers that actually address your questions? How long have they been in business? What do people say about them? Can you talk to their customers? Will they answer questions in public?

Are they real, reliable, ethical, knowledgeable, and honest?

If you can’t verify that for the people who own what you want to buy, how can you verify — in advance — that you’re making a good choice in investing your time and money in it.

I’m going to address some of those questions and I’m going to give you my best recommendation for how you can learn how to build a real, ongoing business online.

Can you succeed online?

No, it’s not easy. No, you won’t get rich in a few weeks. No, you won’t earn more money than your wildest dreams of avarice.

Yes, it is possible to succeed with a work at home, online business.

Are you willing to really read, study, practice, and implement what you learn?

Are you a good writer? Do you spell well and have a good grasp of grammar, sentence structure, and the norms of communications?

Do you have a topic in which you are passionately interested?

If so, then you have a better than average chance to be successful with your online business.

Are you willing to invest a few hundred dollars, a few hundred hours over a couple of years, and a lot of head-scratching, and serious thinking?

Then, you may be one of the few people I’m trying to reach.

I’m going to let you in on my secret, although it’s no secret at all.

First, who the heck am I?

I’m John Dilbeck. That’s my photo up there at the top of the page. It was taken last summer when I spent a day on Lake Hiwassee with my family. The lake is located just to the north of Murphy, NC. I live a few miles from there. If you search for my name, you’ll find me on my own sites and blogs, on social media, and in forums.

I’ve been a full-time affiliate marketer and webmaster for about 15 years and I earned the great majority of my income for most of that time from my online business.

I’ve been around and I’ve paid my dues.

I have been building blogs with WordPress since the early days, before there were plug-ins and widgets and the code had to be modified by changing the PHP scripts. Automatic updating didn’t exist back then.

I’ve been blogging since before that was what it was called.

I’ve been building websites for almost 20 years.

I’ve built forums, communities, an article directory, and other similar online presences. I’ve tested a number of content management systems. I program fluently in PHP and PERL. I’ve been a systems administrator for an ISP. I’ve been a computer consultant since the late 1970s. I taught computer programming and using computer applications at two colleges.

I have owned several of my own companies over the last 30+ years. I was not a raging financial success, but I paid my way and haven’t gone hungry. Learning and achieving have always been more important to me than getting wealthy. I’m not one to dream about getting rich or winning the lottery, and I don’t mind months of work to achieve something.

The journey is the reward. That’s how I see it.

I am not some Johnny-come-lately who is going to try to baffle you with BS about something I know nothing about.

Those are my bona fides.

Why do you promote SBI instead of WordPress? This blog is powered by WordPress!

I maintain this blog mainly to prove that I have a good working knowledge of blogging and WordPress. Plus, I enjoy blogging and discussions with people who leave good comments.

So, let’s get back to the subject…

Can you succeed online?

If you want to learn more, go to Sitesell’s page that introduces the C-T-P-M process. It will open in another window. I’ll wait right here.

Welcome back!

(if you left to look at the other site)

Now, do you remember those questions I asked at the top of this article? Here’s a reminder…

Try learning who the owner of the business is. What’s the address of their home office? Do they have a phone number and physical address? Can you contact them? Do they reply with any answers that actually address your questions? How long have they been in business? What do people say about them? Can you talk to their customers? Will they answer questions in public?

Let’s address these questions one at a time:

Try learning who the owner of the business is.

I know it’s not a question. It’s more of a challenge.

Sitesell is incorporated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was founded by Dr. Ken Evoy. You’ll learn more about the management of the company on that page, too.

Ken is the author of one of the first, best-selling ebooks about marketing on the Internet and he overdelivered and underpriced back then, the same way he continues to do.

The book sold for less than $20 when it was introduced.

It was revised in 2002 and the new edition was sold for $29.95.

Unlike many ebooks, this was 1,500 pages of outstanding information. Even though a lot of things have changed since 2002, I still keep a copy of that book on my desktop and refer to it at least once a week. The business information and advice is timeless, even though some of the recommended sites and technical advice is out-dated.

If you want, you can download the ebook for free and you don’t even have to give your email address. Just go get it, if you want it: Make Your Site Sell!

I knew how to build websites before I ever saw that book.

What I didn’t know how to do, was to make my sites sell. That’s what I learned from the book.

I used what I learned in that book to rebuild several websites and sold physical products and services online, as well as earning income through affiliate marketing commissions and Google Adsense commissions.

Make Your Site Sell! was what helped me change from a technogeek to a successful marketing nerd.

So, now, you know who founded and manages Sitesell, Inc.

What’s the address of their home office?

Here ya go. It’s on the bottom right of their LinkedIn Business Profile page.

Their LinkedIn profile also has information about some of their employees.

Do they have a phone number and physical address?

Their physical address is on their LinkedIn profile. Their phone number and email contact form is on the Questions page.

Can you contact them?

You can call or email them. The information is on the previously listed Questions page. The phone number is toll-free in North America, and they have an alternate number you can call if you are located outside of North America.

Do they reply with any answers that actually address your questions?

Test them and see. It’s free. If you have a legitimate question about building your own online business using SBI, they will do their best to answer it. SBI can help most people be successful online, but it won’t do everything and it isn’t for everyone. You can get a straight answer. No obligation.

How long have they been in business?

Sitesell, Inc. was founded in 1997. The company is still headquartered in Canada. Ken has moved to Anguilla to escape those Canadian winters.

What do people say about them?

Except for a well-known Google bomb that was concocted a few years ago around the fake “Is Sitesell a Scam” review, comments are overwhelmingly positive about Ken Evoy, Sitesell, and SBI.

You can also see for yourself on Sitesell’s Facebook page.

If you go there, you can see that over 35,000 people like the page and there are active discussions ongoing. Notice how friendly and helpful those discussions are.

Can you talk to their customers? Will they answer questions in public?

There are thousands of Sitesell customers participating on their Facebook page, and I think most of us are happy to answer questions in public. I’ll respond to your questions here in the comments or on the Sitesell Facebook page — if I see it.

There. I think that shows that Sitesell is an established, above-board company.

What does the media say about Sitesell, SBI, and some of their customers?

Sitesell, Inc. has a Media page that includes reports from newspapers, TV shows, and other websites.

SBI is taught in colleges around the world

I think it says a lot about the credibility of Sitesell and SBI when you learn that the SBI method and tools are taught in colleges and universities around the world.

I am a satisfied customer and affiliate

I am extremely happy that I became a Sitesell customer back in the 20th century and I continue to use their tools in the 21st century.

SBI grows and expands as needed to keep up with what is really important for helping customers generate more income. The SBI system I subscribed to after its original release was not nearly as powerful nor as well documented as what I subscribe to, today. Yet, the cost is the same: $300 per year per site.

Quality and power continues to grow and the price stays the same. I like that.

I have two SBI-powered websites, but they have been largely neglected for the last two years while I fought a battle with cancer that almost killed me last year. Now, I’m on the mend and recovering nicely.

I’ve been doing a lot of strategizing and planning for how I’m going to expand and improve my two SBI sites and you’ll see a lot going on there in just a few more weeks. These two sites will be my primary focus over the next two years and will provide much more income for me than all my other sites and blogs combined. That’s why I promote Sitesell.

And both of my sites are about subjects in which I’m really interested and which I knew, going in, would not be the best choices for earning a large income. I’m doing it for the passion and I’m in a stage of my life where money is not even close to being my main motivator. Still, I don’t mind earning more.

Can you be successful?

If you have basic word skills and can write clearly, and you’re willing to learn a proven process and use a set of tools that work, yes, you can.

And I truly believe that you will substantially increase your odds of success if you build a firm foundation of knowledge and couple it with great tools and support, all offered at one low annual cost. You will NOT be bombarded with a constant stream of upsells, cross sells, and what you may have grown accustomed to, elsewhere.

You will not be surrounded by sharks in the members-only forums. You’ll find people who are willing to share what they’ve learned with you. Affiliate links and promotions are prohibited in the forums.

How much will I earn?

I can’t tell you how much you’d earn, and it would be illegal if I did.

I know many people who use SBI to earn a few hundred dollars of additional income each month, and I know quite a few who earn substantial full-time incomes.

Success often depends upon your own definition of the word.

I am not saying that SBI is the only way to succeed online.

Let me reiterate. I am NOT saying that.

I believe that there are many ways to build a successful online business, but the great majority of them require sophisticated technical skills and knowledge.

I know about that first-hand. I’ve been programming computers for over 40 years and I’ve been building websites since shortly after the World Wide Web was invented. I’ve been selling products and services on the web since shortly after it became legal to conduct commercial operations on the Internet.

I know a lot of ways to build a website and I know how to do a lot of things that I can’t do in SBI. I also know that the great majority of people who want to build an online business don’t know all those things nor do they have that level of experience.

I’m betting you aren’t a technical expert.

But, I’m also betting that you have specific knowledge about something and that you may be surprised that you can earn money while exploring what interests you, legally, ethically, and with class.

You don’t have to become a scuzzy old marketer who takes advantage of people.

Instead, you can learn how to present information to people when they’re looking to solve a problem or buy something they want. And, you can earn a commission from doing that.

Want to learn more? Give SBI a try. There’s a no-questions-asked, 90-day, unconditional, money-back guarantee. All you can lose is a little time and effort, if it isn’t for you. And, you’ll learn more than you know now about building an online business that generates a profit.

What can you gain?

You can gain a lot of valuable business and technical knowledge that has value in the 21st century. You can build a business that provides another source of income. You can find something interesting and useful to do if you’re a stay-at-home mom or dad, or if you’re retired and are looking for something to do with your time.

You can give a gift of real value to your child so that he or she will learn something that can be very useful in a career.

In a couple of years, or so, you can write me and tell me that you’re happy you subscribed to SBI and let me know how happy you are with your business. You won’t be the first who has thanked me for telling them about SBI and you won’t be the last.

It is interesting to me that I’ve referred a lot of people to a variety of business-related tools and information, yet I’ve never received a single thank-you from anyone other than people who subscribed to SBI. I haven’t received many, but there were a few and I should have kept them for reference, but I didn’t.

Most of the people I have introduced to SBI continue to renew their subscription, year after year. Why? Because it’s working for them.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll succeed, but I can guarantee that you won’t lose any money by trying SBI. Not a penny. Subscribe, follow the action guide, take it slow, do each action step methodically, and you’ll learn more about online business than you can imagine right now.

If you decide it isn’t for you, just contact support within the first 90 days and they’ll refund 100% of whatever you’ve paid. If you paid for an annual subscription, you will get 100% refunded within 90 days, and a prorated amount if you choose to ask for a refund after 90 days.

Downside risk? No money to lose, but you’ll have to invest some time and energy to test it.

Upside potential? More knowledge about online marketing and building a website. More technical skills — if you want them. A good opportunity to increase your income.

You may even change your life. Some have.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. My two SBI sites are Act On Your Dream! and Murphy Gold. Watch as they grow in the coming months.

Attitude is Everything

One of the things I always hear about inspirational movies, books, and quotes is they are fine for a little while, but the inspiration and motivation doesn’t last.

It’s true.

They don’t last for long.

As Zig Ziglar said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”

Zig Ziglar

(I love reading what Mr. Ziglar has to say. I’ve read his books many times over the years and I recommend See You At The Top. If you’d rather listen to him on CD or downloadable audio files, I recommend his See You at the Top 25th Anniversary Edition. He, too, believes that attitude is everything, and it was from reading one of his books that I adopted the attitude of gratitude, and practice it every day.)

I like to read inspirational stories and watch videos. When I’m really hard at work and time is short, that is often when I most need a motivation boost.

That’s why I like the books and movies available at Simple Truths.

Here’s a great three-minute reminder about the importance of attitude:

Since you’re reading this blog, you’re probably interested in affiliate marketing, too.

Simple Truths has an affiliate program that is managed by ShareASale.com, and it’s easy to join and promote.

Now, I’m going to make another cup of coffee, sit next to the air conditioner and watch the Attitude is Everything movie…

Act on your dream!

JD

Typestyler – how I start my designs for CafePress and Zazzle

Selling my designs on CafePress and Zazzle

In addition to affiliate marketing, I also enjoy creating designs and selling them in my Cafepress and Zazzle shops.

If you visit either of those shops, and I hope you will, you’ll notice that most of my designs are styled text. I’m not much of an artist, but I know how to use computer programs to help me express my visions for new products.

Windows

Please note: Windows users, I don’t have any advice for graphics processing software, because I’m strictly a Mac user and haven’t touched a PC in nearly 20 years. I’m sorry I can’t offer any advice or recommendations for you.

As you already know, most people use Windows computers and there is a wide variety of graphics editing programs that are used to create designs for selling on Cafepress and Zazzle. And, of course, you can open your own shop on either site and/or join their affiliate programs.

I just don’t have any experience I can share about the process using Windows.

Macintosh

Now, back to how I do this on a Mac…

Create the design

If you are an artist and/or photographer, you’d start by creating the artwork or photo, but I use styled text on almost all of my designs, so that’s where I start. Below this section on TypeStyler, I offer some advice about several graphics editing applications in which you may have some interest.

TypeStyler

Almost always, I start the process with TypeStyler, a program that is designed specifically to, well, style text on a Macintosh. (You can download a fully functional version that you can use for 60 days, for free. If it suits your needs, you can purchase it for $180.) (I wish they had an affiliate program!)

Edit the JPEG file

Once I get the design how I want it, I export it as a 300 dpi JPEG file for further editing in a graphics editing application.

One of the things I can quibble about is how TypeStyler doesn’t do an excellent job of exact sizes when exporting to JPEG files. It gets it close, but I still find it necessary to tweak the file in a dedicated photo-type bitmapped image editor.

I used to use Photoshop and GIMP for that, but both of those programs are too complicated and offer much more than I need. So, last year, I went searching and found three graphics programs that offer the tools I want, and the prices are good, too.

I should mention that a lot of people, who don’t need all the features of Photoshop, like to use Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Editor, by Adobe Systems Incorporated. I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard from people I trust that it is a good application, especially for home users who are not graphics pros. Since I’ve never used it, I can’t recommend it to you, but it should be mentioned, for completeness.

Instead of using Photoshop, I’ve switched mainly to Pixelmator, by Pixelmator Team and like it much better. It offers all of the tools I used in Photoshop and the interface is similar enough that I didn’t have a lot of relearning to do, yet it seems more responsive and the cost is much better.

(The Pixelmator team is working hard to finish and release version 2, which will have a lot of new features and will improve the existing tools. They’ve promised that anyone who buys version 1 through the Mac App Store will receive a free upgrade to version 2 when it is released. I think that’s a great deal, especially when you consider that the software sells for only $30.)

Sometimes, I’ll edit graphics using Acorn – The Image Editor for Humans, by Flying Meat and I almost always create new coupons using Sketch, by Bohemian Coding.

Vector graphics

I do very little work with vector drawing, other than coupons. Sketch works perfectly well for that. It does take a little getting used to. It works similarly to Illustrator, but certain tasks are very different.

If you want something that will do what Illustrator does, this is not the application for you. A step up from Sketch would be Artboard, by Mapdiva, LLC, but it is still not a complete substitute for Adobe’s Illustrator. I have not used Artboard, yet, but it’s on my wish list and I expect to buy it this year and put it to the test, so I’m not qualified to recommend it to you.

Just as Pixelmator does most of what I used Photoshop for, Sketch does what I used to use Illustrator for, and it costs much, much less.

Years ago, I spent a lot of money buying PageMaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, and the full version of Acrobat. I spent hundreds of dollars for each of those programs. Now, for around $100 total, I can replace them with Pages, by Apple®, Pixelmator, and Sketch. I don’t have a need for Acrobat, since any application on a Mac can produce a PDF file.

Pixelmator and Acorn are very similar. I just happen to like the feel of Pixelmator better. Both are good apps.

For the most part, however, Typestyler and Pixelmator are the graphics programs I use over 90% of the time.

I’m not going to get into a review of these products, except to say that I really love using them. Each of them offers some things not available in the others, so they make a good toolset for modifying graphics and photos.

And, this is very important to me, they are specifically designed for a Mac and make very good use of the underlying graphics tools that are built into Mac OS X.

Want to put a frame on your image?

I recently found another application that will be part of my photo editing toolset, but it won’t be used for designs I sell on CafePress or Zazzle — I don’t think. It’s called ImageFramer3, by Apparent Software and it does just what its name suggests. It adds frames to photos, and I’ll be using this a lot on my websites where I show photos. I think they look better when they’re framed.

I recently learned that you can add relatively simple frames to images on Picnik, for free.

But, let’s get back to preparing a design for CafePress and Zazzle.

As I already said, I start with TypeStyler and use it to create the text. It is a very versatile application and it lets me create all kinds of text using all the fonts on my system and then I can stretch and shape the text in a variety of ways. I can add texture, bumps, highlights, gloss, and much more so that the text on each design can have an unique appearance, or I can save a particular type style and use it on similar designs without having to design everything from scratch each time.

The text is created in a raster format that allows for easy manipulation and it can be exported in a variety of formats, both raster and bitmapped. It takes a little time to really master all that TypeStyler can do.

As I said, I usually export it as a JPEG file for further customization.

When I’ve completed the design and exported it as a JPEG file, I open it in Pixelmator, and that’s where I do the precise sizing of the image so that it fits within an 10″ by 8″ rectangle at 300 dpi.

(Yes, I can make larger designs for Zazzle and I might do that in the future, but, generally, I like to use the same design for both sites. Pixelmator does an excellent job of tweaking the image and/or canvas sizes and creates very clean graphics when it resamples and resizes.

If I’m going to add a bitmapped image, this is when I’d do it. Usually, I skip this step.

I have a custom brush in Pixelmator that I use to put a watermark copyright notice on each design, before uploading it. I try to make it small and use a color similar to the design to make it less noticeable.

Upload the design and add it to products for sale

Then, it’s a simple matter to upload the design to either sales site (Cafepress and/or Zazzle) and add it to the products I choose.

I have to admit that I’ve been rather lazy the last few years, and put the designs on the products that take the least work. That was acceptable while I was so sick, but now that I’m feeling better, I’ll be adding the designs to more products in an effort to increase the sales.

The better you promote your designs, the more you sell

I’m talking about this now, because it won’t be long before people all over the world will be looking for gifts for their friends, family, neighbors, associates, and themselves. I want to have as many products available as I can.

Fortunately, each year I can add to the number of designs, so I’m still selling items I created years ago. Now, I need to step up my marketing of those designs so people learn about them and can find them easily. That’s something I seriously neglected over the last three years, or so.

Still, I make regular sales without much promotion, so I expect a lot more sales with more widespread promotions.

Open your store on Zazzle

Later this week, I’m going to write a post about selling products on Zazzle, and even if you don’t want to sell in your own shop, I’m going to suggest that you sign up for one, anyway. They’re free.

Why?

Zazzle Affiliate Program

Because, as soon as you have a shop, you also become an affiliate, and you can promote any of the millions of products you want to on your own sites and blogs and earn an affiliate commission for each sale you generate, even if you never sell any designs in your own store.

In fact, you can sign up as an affiliate for Zazzle — if you’re not already one — and promote my designs. Any that sell based on your referral will earn both of us a commission.

So, the more the merrier!

Of course, you’re also free to promote the items in any Zazzle store, so you can find products that fit with the theme of your blog or website. It’s a pretty easy way to earn some extra cash.

Get started on Zazzle, today

Additionally, if you’d like to create and sell your own designs on Zazzle, go here and get started by creating your first product. It’s free.

Later in the week, I’ll talk more about selling the products in your Zazzle shop, and I’ll write another post about promoting products, designs, and stores in the Zazzle affiliate program.

Extra money is nice

I’m nowhere near to getting rich with my Cafepress and Zazzle shops, but I enjoy spending the few hundred dollars I earn each year.

In this case, I’m creating and selling these products mostly for the fun of it and to earn a little extra spending money. I’m not doing it as a major part of my business. It’s just a little side-line that I do when I feel like it.

What about you?

Do you have any experiences or opinions you’d like to share on the topic of creating and selling your designs on Cafepress and Zazzle?

Act on your dream!

JD

What is SBI? A one minute introduction

I’m going to try something different today.

Instead of a long post telling you lots of reasons why I like, use, and recommend SBI, I’m going to present this video introduction.

It’s about a minute long and goes pretty quickly, so pay attention…

Whew!

I bet you didn’t have time to read all that, did you?

One of the great things about watching video on the Internet is that we can stop it at any time and select parts of the video to re-watch.

If you missed anything or if you want to read all that it says, watch it again and stop it at any point.

Just wait. When you use SBI and start to understand all it does to help you build a real online business, you’ll find that describing and explaining it is difficult, too.

SBI remains my most important recommendation. Don’t build a website, build an e-business.

Act on your dream!

JD

P.S. I’m both a very happy customer and an affiliate, too.

Mind mapping is an incredible way to brainstorm and organize

Did you ever wake up one day and go to work, school, the club, church, or somewhere else and everyone was talking about that great party last night? You know, the one that everyone else went to and had an outrageously good time, but you never heard about it until it was over?

I feel a bit like that today.

Except for the fact that the party is still going strong. I just missed the first few years of it.

What the heck are you talking about, JD?

Have you ever heard of something called mind maps? The process of creating a mind map is called mind mapping.

I just heard of it about three days ago, and I’ve been studying everything I can find about it for the last two.

Where have you been all my life, mind maps?

I am far from being an expert on this, but it has already changed my life when it comes to brainstorming, planning, and organizing my life and my business.

Hard to believe, isn’t it?

For decades, I’ve tried all kinds of systems to help me keep track of everything and to help me plan my life and achieve the goals I set for myself. I’ve tried big whiteboards, notebooks, databases, spreadsheets, project management software, and others, and each of them has been valuable to some degree, but they’ve all had shortcomings, too.

That will probably be true of mind mapping, as well, but — so far — it’s the best way I’ve ever found for organizing my life and work.

I’m not going to tell you the history of mind maps (you’re welcome), but I will point you to some interesting resources.

Tony Buzan invented mind mapping, I think

Apparently, Tony Buzan created this process and wrote several books about it. One of those books, The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential, may be helpful if you want to learn more about mind maps and how to use them.

There are a lot of websites and many videos on YouTube that are devoted to mind maps and how to use them for various purposes. I visited several dozen sites and spent most of an afternoon watching the videos, before I decided that this was something I wanted to learn.

iMindMap Software

ThinkBuzan.com is the official site for Tony Buzan’s mind mapping software, called iMindMap. I have not tried that software. I found this site rather late in my searching on the subject and I’d already found a couple of applications that I liked and had already started using. They have an affiliate program. I am not an affiliate, although as I learn more about this subject, I may apply. It looks attractive.

The main reason I am not an affiliate is because my policy is to recommend only products I use and which help me run my business more effectively. If I had found this site earlier in my searching, I might very well have decided to use it. I don’t know.

MindMeister

One of my friends, Pat, was the first to recommend MindMeister, which is a tool she uses. They offer several versions, including a free version. Here is their versions and pricing information.

I can’t comment on the software, since I have not used it.

MindNode

As you may know, I am a Macintosh person and I prefer to buy programs that I can use when I am not connected to the Internet — especially when I’m brainstorming and organizing. I find it much less distracting when I’m not being tempted to check on Facebook and see what’s going on, for instance.

I found several applications that run on Mac and on iOS mobile devices. I have an iPod Touch and carry it everywhere with me. It is my portable memory.

I compared a couple and downloaded the free version of MindNode.

I put it right to work and really like it. It’s easy to learn and fun to use. You can get it free from the Mac App Store: MindNode (free) – Markus Müller

Of the tools I tested, it remains my favorite for easy brainstorming and organizing of my thoughts. It’s like drawing on paper or a whiteboard, but I can save it on my computer and come back to it later.

Here’s the start of one of the mind maps I created with it, within just a few minutes of installing MindNode from the Mac store:

As I said, earlier, I really like MindNode and I’ll be using it for relatively simple mind maps.

I like to support software developers, so I’ll be purchasing the Pro version of MindNode, which adds a few extra features. You can learn more about it on the Mac App Store: MindNode Pro – Markus Müller

As I said earlier, I carry my iPod Touch with me every where I go and I’ll be buying an iPad for demonstrating my services to my clients and for brainstorming with them and discussing projects.

There is a version of MindNode available for iOS and it works on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. I bought it and I like it. Here it is in the iOS App Store: MindNode – Markus Müller

The description of the product says the iOS version can interchange mind maps with the Pro version of the Mac app. I have not tested this, so I can’t verify it. It will read several import formats and export to others. I have not tested these features, either, other than one simple test that worked with no problem.

NovaMind for Macintosh and Windows

As much as I like MindNode, I could already tell that it was not going to work for all I wanted to do with mind mapping. It remains my first choice for relatively simple mind maps with a few dozen nodes, but when I continued to add to the map I showed above, it got harder to use. I knew that it would not support the really complicated mind maps I could already see in my mind.

For example, here’s part of a complicated mind map I’m creating in NovaMind:

This mind map has grown rather more complicated since I exported that image of it.

Over the decades, I’ve managed a number of projects and some of them were rather complex. I learned early on that I needed to use project management software to help me plan and organize a project, to present the project overview to clients, and to use PERT and Gantt charts for managing tasks, timelines, and resources.

I tried various methods of doing this, and eventually started using professional project management software.

I have been looking at buying Merlin 2 for Macintosh from Novamind and that is what I will probably do in a few months, when I need it. I had been entirely focused on Merlin and never even noticed their mind mapping software, called NovaMind 5 Mind Mapping.

I think that is interesting, because their company and mind mapping software are both named NovaMind. I guess it’s true that things are invisible before you start looking for them.

The more I looked at professional-level mind mapping software, the more I was drawn to NovaMind. They offer three versions of the software: Express, Pro, and Platinum.

The two versions I find most interesting are Express and Platinum. For me, the differences in features between Express and Pro are not compelling, but the Platinum level offers lots of project management tools and can help generate a project in Merlin. That pretty much seals the deal for me. Here is a comparison of the features of all three levels: NovaMind Feature Comparison.

Please note that NovaMind Mind Mapping software is available for both Mac and Windows, but Merlin is available only for the Mac. Microsoft Project is pretty much the standard in the Windows world.

Start with NovaMind Express and upgrade to Platinum

At the moment, I don’t need all the project management features, so I don’t have to buy what I don’t need. I can start out by buying NovaMind Express and, later, when I need the project management features, I can upgrade to NovaMind Platinum by paying the difference in the prices plus a small processing fee. So, that’s the route I’m taking.

If I needed the project management features right now, I’d go ahead and buy the Platinum version.

Without a doubt, for me, NovaMind 5 is the best mind mapping software.

It is more complex than MindNode and takes longer to learn. I spent several hours yesterday afternoon learning how to use it and watching videos that introduced the software and showed ways it can be used.

That time and effort was well invested, however, when I realized all the power that NovaMind brings to my brainstorming and organizing toolbox.

One of the things I like about MindNode is how easy it is to use and how I can drag different parts of the map around however I want.

I can do the same thing in NovaMind, but the real power starts to show when I don’t do that. When I follow the directions on how to enter nodes using the keyboard, that’s when NovaMind begins to shine! No matter how complicated the mind map (in my admittedly limited experience), it automatically adjusts the map to make room for the addition or deletion of nodes, and does a darn good job of keeping everything neat and presentable. It does a much better job than I did when my mind map started getting complicated in MindNode.

If you’re interested, you can learn more about the challenges the NovaMind team faced when designing the layout and display algorithms that set their software apart from all their competitors.

One of the things I really like about NovaMind is that I can show or hide nodes (and all their children and descendants) with the click of a button. As soon as I hide a node, the entire map redraws (in seconds) so I can see the relationships easily. When I show the node, it redraws in seconds and shows the more-complicated version.

So, for example, if I’m brainstorming, organizing, or documenting my Dilbeck Marketing business, I can hide all my personal nodes.

If I want to concentrate on income and expenses, I can hide all the nodes showing my websites, blogs, communities, lenses, social network profiles, and all the rest. I can even hide all the expenses while I’m thinking about generating income, and vice versa, when I’m concentrating on expenses.

Where it really shines, and what led me to consider mind maps in the first place is how it can help me create a page-by-page site plan for a website (large or small). Each page can be a node. Children of that node can be topics. I can document the page by adding keywords and other information in the notes field, and — although I haven’t tried it, yet — I think I can store all the source code of the page in the notes field. I’m going to try this, soon, to see how large the file grows and how much slower it runs.

Right now, I’m putting everything into a single big mind map. This includes linking to each page of my websites (as I document them), to my blogs (both the sites and the editing dashboard), to each of my lenses on Squidoo, and so forth. It’s going to be huge.

In addition to being able to hyperlink to URLs, it allows me to link to documents and files on my computer so that I can find them easily. Or, if I prefer, I can embed the documents into the mind map. I haven’t tried that, yet, and probably won’t.

Gideon King, founder of NovaMind is the father of this company and software and has written quite a bit about himself and the project. I find it interesting reading. I like to know the name of the person behind the software and their philosophy and some of the obstacles they had to overcome to succeed.

He has a number of videos on YouTube that show how to use NovaMind.

Of all the videos I watched when trying to grok mind mapping, this one on using mind maps to write books, articles, and technical documentation was the first to help me start to “get it.”

Before I forget the main subject of this blog, NovaMind does have an affiliate program.

Free versus Paid Mind Mapping Applications

In the past, I was a big proponent of free open source software, but not so much these days.

I have found many security vulnerabilities in open source software that is used for building websites and I’m rapidly moving away from using those scripts. This has, in turn, colored my perceptions of open source applications.

I have GIMP and NeoOffice on my computer and rarely use them.

GIMP is a photo and graphic editing application with much of the power of Photoshop. For some people, it has a great advantage and that’s because it is free, while Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars.

NeoOffice is a Mac-specific version of OpenOffice, which provides much of the power of MS Office and is free.

Likewise, there are free versions of mind mapping software and it looks to me (with my limited knowledge) that FreeMind may be the leading open source application for mind mapping. It was recommended by my friend, Deb, and she has a Squidoo lens on mind mapping that you may find informative: Mindmap – Tools to Organize Your Thoughts – Powerful How-To Tool. She links to FreeMind in that lens and also to books and other software that I haven’t mentioned in this article.

What prompted my interest in mind mapping?

A few days ago, on the Sitesell Facebook page, we were talking about how important it is to go through the SBI action guide, do the keyword research, determine a good niche, and then build a site map plan for the website, before starting to build the site.

If we already have a site, it is important to go back and build a plan for the site in order to add material we may have overlooked and to better organize the site.

I’ve tried using spreadsheets and databases in the past for this task, and I always hated it.

Yesterday, I started working on a site map plan for one of my existing sites using NovaMind, and it seemed like an easy and natural way to approach the task. That got me to thinking about documenting what I do at Dilbeck Marketing, and before you know it, I had a fairly complex mind map for my business — and I’m just getting started with it.

For me, and maybe for you, a mind map is a great way to conceptualize, organize, and document what I’ve already done and what I want to do.

Doing all that in spreadsheets, databases, hand-written notebooks, and word processors just didn’t work for me. It was like trying to pound a square peg into a small round hole.

On the other hand, to use another cliche, I took to mind mapping like a duck to water.

What do you think?

Do you use mind mapping to help you brainstorm, organize, and/or manage what you do?

What applications do you prefer? Why?

Act on your dream!

JD

Avoid the scam artists

This started as a reply to a comment on the SBI Urban Myths post I wrote a few days ago.

The part of the comment that started me thinking was this, “… most methods actually work, you just need to know how to make them work. So we often get in the situation when two people contradicting each other in regards to a method are both right. The method work [for] some people, and it fails for other.”

There is some truth to that, but it is not nearly the big picture.

There are a lot of scam artists who are happy to rip off people who want to learn online marketing. There are overpriced schemes that don’t work. There are people who release “the next big thing that you have to buy NOW” over and over and over. They are the ones telling you that you can get rich in a few weeks with no effort.

They sound just like the pitchmen in a carnival or sideshow, because that’s essentially what they are. And they are surrounded by shills who make the marks believe the scam is real.

There are people who use something that works for awhile (like mini sites) and then, when they quit working, they are happy to sell you ebooks and systems telling you how great they are.

Ken Evoy wrote a great blog post about that awhile back. Let me see if I can find it…

I found it. I’m surprised that it has been over four years since he wrote it.

Mooch Marketing

He followed up with Success Stories and Mooch Marketing.

He said it better and in more detail than I can. It will take only a few minutes to read those two article, and it may save you thousands of dollars and months of wasted time and effort.

So, while there are times when something works for one person and not for the other, there are also a lot of people out there who will deliberately cheat you and take your money. A lot of them.

It’s no different from the rigged games in a carnival or sideshow. When they find a mark or mooch, they’re going to do their best to take all his money and tell their friends so they can get what’s left.

The big difference is that they don’t mark you with colored chalk on your shoulder, they do it by trading and/or selling mailing lists to each other. A list of mooches is a very valuable list, in the hands of someone who is willing to exploit it.

Some people feel that it is morally wrong to leave a sucker with any money in his pocket, bank account, or credit card limit.

Believe this. It’s true.

The trick is to learn who is honest and helpful and to avoid the mooch marketers.

Caveat Emptor. Let the buyer beware.

Do your research carefully and think it through before you buy anything that promises you easy riches. It has been my experience that “easy” and “rich” are good warning signs when someone wants my money.

My policy is to tell you about the good guys. Ken Evoy is one of the good guys.

SBI urban myths

Sitesell has been around for over a decade and SBI is getting close to a decade old.

Along the way, a lot has been written about the company (Sitesell), the product (SBI), and the founder (Ken Evoy).

Some of it has been accurate and truthful.

Some of it has been inaccurate and misleading.

Some of it has been a scam to promote something else that doesn’t work.

So, if you’re like most of us, you’ve learned about affiliate marketing and how to approach it from different people here and there and, most likely, you have learned a lot of conflicting information and advice from a lot of different people.

I’ve been there.

Really.

I mean, I’ve really been there.

I’ve read thousands of websites and blogs, have joined and tested hundreds of marketing systems, have bought and read dozens of books and ebooks (really studied them), and have subscribed to hundreds of mailing lists and newsletters.

I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve read one person recommend something as the very best approach, only to have that contradicted by someone else who says it’s the absolute worst approach and doesn’t work.

The truth is, that there are many different approaches to building websites, blogs, and an online presence and what works well for one person may be entirely ineffective for another.

We all have our own personal approaches, preferences, filters, and blinders, and I guarantee that you and I can look at the exact same thing and have different opinions about it. That’s basic human nature.

But, through research and testing, we can try various approaches and find what works best for us. Right?

Or, we can just try the “flavor of the day” approach and never really know what works and what doesn’t. Right?

It’s okay to do something on a whim or as a hobby. We all do them.

It’s a different thing if you want to build a business that can provide for you and your family.

I have a couple of websites that I’ve built just for the fun of it. I like to write about different things and I’d rather do it on my own sites than on a bunch of free sites where my writing is lost in mix of stuff from thousands of others.

So, I really do know, and appreciate, the difference between doing something for the fun of it, versus building a business with the intent to earn a profit.

I’ve tried and tested hundreds of approaches and have settled on a very few that I know work for me. Whether they’ll work for you, I can’t guarantee.

What doesn’t work for me?

MLMs and Network Marketing. I’ve spent thousands of dollars and hours trying to build a team and offer support and training in order to leverage their efforts into a profitable business. Huge.waste.of.time — at least for me. Maybe I don’t have the right personality. Maybe I chose the wrong merchants. Maybe I attracted the wrong people. Maybe I just suck at multi-level marketing.

I’ve watched others and some of them seem to be successful. I know a few, personally, who are successful with MLM — very few — count em on my fingers and have fingers left over.

I think, for many people, it can be a way to earn some extra money. For a few, it can be a really good business. For most of us, nope.

I could go on and on with many other examples.

Build a hundred sites and earn a buck a day from each of them. Nope. Doesn’t work. Lot’s of effort for no return.

Downline builders and traffic exchanges. I had some good results with some of them. But, I got tired of the whole “work at home” and “make money online” niche. For me, semi-successful. Don’t like the feeling of running on a treadmill to nowhere.

Yes, SBI is a system that’s designed to help folks make money by building an online business, but the focus is definitely not on the get rich quick schemes that are so prevalent in the “work at home” niche.

Over the years, I’ve heard lots of things about SBI and Ken Evoy that just aren’t true. Some of them are even malicious.

Yes, we can all have different opinions, but I just don’t see a reason to lie about something.

When I want to know about something, I want to know as much as I can learn about it. I buy the product or service. I read all the instructions and participate in the forums. I write support to see how they solve problems. I follow the steps and do my best to make it work. I join the affiliate program (if it has one) and try it out. In short, I do all I can think of to see if this is something for me, or not.

Many things, even those that look attractive, just don’t work. Maybe they once did. Maybe they never did.

A few things that I’ve tested really do work. And they work for lots of different people in a lot of different industries and niches. Those are the gems that make it worth sifting through all the duds.

SBI is one of the gems.

Mailing list services like Aweber and MailChimp are gems. I’ve used Aweber successfully in the past and intend to use both services effectively in the future.

Last week, I identified a new gem that is going to help me with SMS text message marketing to opt-in lists. EzTexting looks like a very good system and has passed my initial tests with flying colors. So, now it’s time to invest some money in it and put it to work in a real-world environment.

(Update: March 1, 2012. I am no longer promoting EzTexting as an affiliate, but I’ll probably remain one of their customers.)

Other gems include WordPress and Hostgator for my traditional websites. I’ve used the combination of a WordPress blog on a domain hosted by HostGator for years. That’s how this blog works.

But, I’m moving away from that particular combination. I’m also moving away from Hostgator and that style of hosting using cPanel and all the other traditional Linux/Unix hosting. I want to concentrate less on tech stuff and more on business and marketing.

For my small websites and simple blogs, I’ve started using Weebly. I have several sites that I’m transitioning to their service and my Dilbeck Marketing site/blog will be hosted there.

I’ve been testing Weebly for the better part of a year (mostly with one of my client’s sites) and I am very happy with their service. I like how they combine a tier-structured website with blogging and e-commerce features. I also like that they automatically serve a site using mobile formatting when it is appropriate. I’ve tested it with feature cell phones, smartphones, iPods, and other similar mobile devices and it works very well — and I didn’t have to do anything extra.

So, I test a number of different approaches, including many I haven’t mentioned. I’ve been doing this for a long time.

I won’t say bad things about the ones that don’t work for me. I generally don’t mention those companies, systems, or individuals. I believe this, “if you can’t say something good about someone, keep your big trap shut.”

My approach is to identify the gems and then discuss why they are gems.

Others, however, take a different approach, and that brings me back to my original topic: SBI urban myths.

(About time, JD!)

Yes, I tend to write long posts and go in multiple directions. If you can hang on, it can be a fun ride. (grin)

Some people write about Sitesell, SBI, and Ken Evoy and give a totally different view from what I’ve observed over the last decade+.

If I had to name one person that had the most to do with my online marketing success, it would be Ken Evoy. He has never lied nor mislead me in over 10 years. He has never tried to sell me something I don’t need just so he can make a profit. He has never given me bad advice. I like and trust him.

Ken Evoy was already successful before he founded Sitesell and wrote his first ebook, Make Your Site Sell!

He was an emergency physician. Later he became a very successful developer of toys. He developed a product for a very narrow niche that was successful. From that experience, he wrote MYSS to help others learn how to build websites and make profits.

That’s how I got my start in online marketing. I am forever grateful that I bought that book and met Ken (online). One of these days, I hope to meet him in person and shake his hand.

He learned from the experience of writing that book and helping the people who bought it, that there is a minority of people who really want to succeed in an online business, but most of us don’t have all the skills to make it work. So, he started developing Site Build It! which is now generally known as SBI.

I don’t remember exactly when I first subscribed to SBI to start building my Act On Your Dream! site. I started that site because it involves something that is important to me. I truly believe that anyone who is willing to set a goal and work to achieve it can become a very different person in as little as a year from now. It may happen sooner, or it may take longer, depending upon the goal, but I have seen many people do just that.

Act On Your Dream! is more of a philosophy and hobby than a part of my business. I’ve worked on it here and there and it’s been earning a profit for years, month in and month out, with very little attention from me.

Now that I’m no longer caring for Mom and I’ve kicked cancer’s butt, I’ll be putting more attention and effort into that site. I have a lot I want to add to it.

People ask me why I spend $300 per year on that site when I can host it free on my HostGator account (I have a reseller account). That’s simple. It earns a profit every year and I have never had one single technical issue with it. Not once. I can’t say that for any of the sites I have hosted by HostGator, and I know they are a quality service.

Act On Your Dream! just works. Now and then I add to it, but mostly I just ignore it for weeks or months at a time.

It used to be even more successful when I advertised products sold through the Amazon.com affiliate program. But (you’ve probably heard this already) all the Amazon affiliates in North Carolina (including me) were dropped when our politicians passed the ill-advised nexus tax law in 2009.

The important point is that I earn a profit from that site. It’s not an expense, it’s a reliable, sustainable profit center even though there is much I can do to expand and increase that profit.

I earn more from that site in a year than I have from all my blogs (except this one) and all my forums ever did. And I’m not even really trying.

My other SBI-powered site, Murphy Gold, will be my primary revenue producer and focus for the coming years. Even in it’s present form (just a tiny part of what it will be), it has been profitable from the very first month I started it and that was back when I was so sick I could barely do anything. Now that I’m feeling better, it’s going to start shining!

This month, I’ll send out invoices to my clients on Murphy Gold and will earn more than I will from all my other sites combined for an entire year. I don’t give out my income figures to anyone but the IRS, but I’m talking a few thousand dollars — and that’s just the start.

In the process, I’m helping real people in the real world. It’s going to be even more exciting as it picks up speed.

That is the central hub of the biggest project I’m working on in my marketing business. I’ll be earning a full-time income from that site within another year.

Am I unhappy that I have to pay $300 per year for a site that earns many multiples of that investment? Not a bit.

The best part is that Sitesell continues to add new and better features to SBI that I can use in my sites and they haven’t raised the price in years. SBI is a much better deal now than it was when I first subscribed.

I can’t say that about any other business that I’ve worked with in my online marketing career. None of them.

Am I a raving fan of SBI? You bet I am.

Am I tired of all the misinformation about Sitesell and SBI. You bet I am.

That’s why I write about them now and then on this blog.

I know it looks like that’s all I write about, and that’s true for the last year or so while I was so sick, but it won’t be true over the coming months. I’ve joined and am in the process of learning and testing a variety of other affiliate programs that I’ll tell you more about as soon as I know more facts.

Hey, JD!

What?

You said you were going to talk about SBI urban myths.

Yes I did. And I’ve been addressing several of them already. Here’s the link to more information about some of the SBI! Urban Myths as presented by Sitesell.

I’m going to stop here. I have a lot more I could say, but I’ll leave it for another day and maybe another site.

So, what do you think? Questions? Comments?

I always enjoy hearing from you.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. You do realize that this is about affiliate marketing, too, don’t you? I am an affiliate for Sitesell and I believe they have the best affiliate program on the planet. I haven’t tested all of them, of course, but of the several hundred I have tested, Sitesell’s 5 Pillar Affiliate Program is the best. I’m not surprised. They are very good at what they do.

Unrealistic expectations about building an online business

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

SBI Success Story – Elad buys a home

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

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

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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  • Apr 2, Tyler Shields sets new NC state record by catching 66 pound striped bass
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  • Mar 9, Today is Lobster Bisque Day at Shoebooties Cafe
  • Mar 9, Images By Courtnie Photography introduces their new Simplicity Collection
  • Mar 6, Curfews in Cherokee County and Town of Murphy have been lifted
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  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-05-13 May 13, 2012
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