Disability Grants and Benefits at Accessible.org

Over the last decade, or so, I have had the pleasure of meeting many helpful, friendly, successful people on Sitesell’s members-only forum.

One of those people is Don Coggan. He’s the guy behind Accessible.org, and he donates his time and effort to help people with disabilities.

Why does he do this? Because he’d rather donate his time and effort directly, rather than just donating money. You can learn more about Don and why he is helping people with disabilities on his site’s About Us page.

Here’s a short video where Tony, from Sitesell, interviews Don Coggan…

In this case, Don is not building a business with Sitesell’s SBI service. He’s working to help people who need help. He chose SBI, because he wants as many people as possible to find and benefit from his charitable work.

Good work, Don!

I can speak with some experience and insight about this subject.

I nearly died a couple of years ago when I was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. If I had not been approved for disability and Medicaid coverage of my surgeries and chemotherapy, I’m almost positive I would have died.

However, I was caught by the safety net and I’m getting a little stronger every day. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same strong, tall, giant of a man I used to be, but I’m better than I was a year ago and I intend to be better a year from now.

Sometimes, all we need is some help at just the right time in our lives. Many of us recover and again become productive members of society. Some don’t fare as well and they need continuing help and support.

I’m happy to know I live in a world where people like Don Coggan (and many others) are there to help when they’re needed.

You can learn more about Sitesell and SBI on Facebook, YouTube, and Sitesell’s website. (Yes, these are affiliate links in this paragraph.)

Act on your dream!

JD

Sitesell announces new BB2 contest on Twitter

More than two years in the making, at the cost of several million dollars, SiteSell has been completely rebuilding the SBI system. It is transitioning from individual servers to a sophisticated clustered environment that will make it possible to add new features, and to improve existing features, in the coming years.

These changes will bring the underlying technology of SBI into the 21st Century and will pave the way for the next ten years of growth for Sitesell.

It’s being called “The End of Clunky.”

Now, I don’t really agree with this description of being “clunky.” I don’t think SBI has ever been clunky, but some people feel that way.

Basically, I think, the argument is that the Block Builder is clunky.

While I agree that building a new page using BB is not as easy as writing a blog post or sending an email, I believe that the original Block Builder has been a wonderful success and has helped thousands of people with no knowledge of HTML to build successful, profitable websites using SBI.

Others disagree and just don’t like it.

So, the propellerheads at Sitesell have been working very long hours for a long time to make all these changes and improvements.

I think the underlying architecture is the most important part of the story, but I think the new Block Builder 2 will be the most visible change.

Coming in January 2012: Block Builder 2

Some of the new things that will be introduced are:

• Block Builder 2
• Site Designer
• Image Library

and many more features that will be added over the next few months

So, to celebrate all of this, Sitesell will be having a contest on Twitter, next week, from Monday, January 16, 2012 to Friday, January 20, 2012.

If you don’t follow their Twitter account, here it is: @SiteSell

(Following their Twitter account is one of the requirements of the contest.)

Now for the contest

The details and rules are on the Sitesell BB2 Twitter Contest page.

There will be five prizes awarded.

1st prize is one year of SBI! plus $500 cash.
2nd through 5th prizes are one year of SBI!.

(One year of SBI! is worth $299 USD.)

If you are not an SBI subscriber, and you are one of the five winners, you can get a free year to build your online business.

If you are already an SBI subscriber, and you win, you can extend one of your subscriptions for a full year at no cost.

It will be a fun, easy contest and it lasts only five days.

Good luck!

JD

WordPress or SBI revisited

First, let’s get this point out of the way: Yes, this blog is powered by WordPress.

I enjoy blogging, even though I make little money from it. As I’ve said many times before, I make more money from a couple of websites than I do from all my other sites and blogs. Since I do this to earn a living, it’s the profit that’s important to me.

Yes, it’s easier to write pages on WordPress than using SBI. I throw up ad hoc pages on my blogs all the time about topics in which I’m interested at the moment, with very little pre-planning. I come here to share what I’ve learned and to recommend dependable products and services that produce results month after month.

It’s a fact that I’ve closed most of my WordPress-powered blogs and I rarely post on any of my blogs, any more. I’ve left a wasteland of abandoned blogs in my past. Why were they abandoned? Because they were not profitable.

As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I am going back to focusing almost all of my attention on two things: local marketing for a select group of small business owners and a very limited amount of consulting. It is going to be very hard to become one of my clients. I’m getting pickier as I get older.

I’ll be using SBI for most of my marketing in 2012 and beyond.

If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool WordPress fan and have no intention of changing your mind, then, the show’s over. There’s nothing to see here. Move along. Don’t waste your time on this blog.

If you’re a marketing wannabee, but you’re not willing to invest money for the tools that do a reliable job of earning profit, I’m not for you, either. If you invest all your time and energy in using only the free tools you can find, I’m going to argue that you don’t have a business, you have a hobby.

That’s my position. Agree or disagree, it’s your choice.

On the other hand, if you are a business owner and you want to grow your business, serve more clients and customers, and earn more, then you may want to take a few minutes and read some of the things I have to say.

No, I’m no “Internet Guru.” In fact, I tend to avoid anyone who refers to himself as a guru.

I’m a guy who’s been in the marketing trenches, off and on, for over three decades and I’ve learned some things that work well and some that don’t.

Am I right all the time? I doubt it, but I’ve made my fair share of mistakes and have learned what to avoid and what to do. That’s part of the learning process. Maybe I can help you avoid some errors along the way.

Okay, now that the preamble to the post is out of the way, let’s turn our attention to the subject at hand: building a business by marketing online.

Whether you sell a product or service, online or offline, I think you’ll agree that marketing is a very important part of the process.

If you don’t have a steady stream of interested prospects, it’s going to be hard to have a steady stream of happy customers who buy from you over and over, and that’s a business. Not one time, here and there, sales. Multiple sales to the same person, over and over, year in and year out.

That’s my goal for 2012. To build a marketing system that does just that: attracts thousands of prospects, tells them how to scratch an itch or avoid a pain, and then recommend products and services and processes that work.

Most of this system, I’ll be building for my clients and myself and I’ll never talk about it here, but I’ll be using the tools that I write about in this blog. If you look in the right column of almost any page on this site, you’ll see the tools I recommend and use all the time to attract prospects and turn them into customers.

(Note: I’m basically starting over after a long illness, so most of the systems I’ll be building are not yet in place, but I’m working on them every day. They will be.)

So, I’ve said all of that to say this:

Do not confuse busy-ness with business. They are not the same.

A business is based on results and that usually means profit. The goal of a business is to increase wealth. I would add this, “while providing the best services and products that are available to your customers.”

I know from experience that I’ve been busy with blogging and it has been a distraction. It has taken my attention away from building a real business and has cost a lot in terms of missed income, because I didn’t keep my eye on my goals.

I was enjoying the process of playing with the technology, rather than focusing on achieving specific business goals.

Blogging — for me, at least — has been a huge shiny object that diverted me from my business for several years. Yes, it was a valuable lesson, but I’m happy that I learned the lesson and have time to rectify the problem.

Harsh words? Maybe.

But, they’re true.

I can look at my own stats and accounting reports and I know that I earn far more money from several websites than I do from all the blogs I’ve built.

I’m thinking, and have no proof, that the main reason is that people come to blogs with a different mindset and different intentions than they do when going to an information rich, niche-focused, hierarchically organized, traditional website.

People bounce into a blog, scan the latest article, and bounce right back out — mostly. That’s why bounce rates tend to be higher on blogs than websites.

At least, that’s what my stats tell me.

I’m not saying that blogs are bad. For some specific niches, they are great. If you serve a niche where the latest news and developments is important and you focus on covering those topics day in and day out, then a blog may be the best approach for you.

If you want to write about a wide range of topics and don’t want to try to organize those topics as you would have to do with a website, then a blog may work, but I’m betting you won’t get very good results from it.

What are you selling?

You have to sell something to have a business. Your income has to exceed your expenses if you’re going to have a real business.

Over a decade ago, I quit computer consulting. I became an artist blacksmith and specialized in making roses that never wilt. I was enjoying that business until Mom became ill. Following her battle with cancer, she could not care for herself, so I brought her home and cared for her for the next several years. Since I could leave her alone for no more than an hour or two at a time, I took up affiliate marketing as a way to earn a living while staying home to care for her.

It worked.

But, the main problem was this: I had no customers nor clients. I had no products to sell. None.

I earned a pretty good living by writing about things that people were interested in and then recommending products via affiliate links. I’m still doing that. I love that business.

The problem, however, is that the people who purchase (or click on the Google Adsense ads) are not my customers — they’re someone else’s customers.

So, my job has been to attract hundreds of thousands of readers and hope that enough of them would purchase so that I’d earn enough to live well.

I did all the work up front and hoped for an income. It’s been great for me, but I know a lot of people who have tried it and have not done nearly as well as they want.

Part of the problem is that it’s a flawed business plan.

We do all the work of promotion and building interest and then pass the customers off to the merchants.

We’re helping the merchants increase their herds, but we’re not building and nurturing a herd of our own.

(If you’re wondering, that’s the term Dan Kennedy uses to help remind us that a good business has a group of satisfied customers and it’s our job to provide what those customers want so that they’ll buy from us over and over. He calls it building a fence around our herd. Then, he advises that we market to our herd over and over, every month, in a way that helps them get what they want.)

That whole process has been perverted, to a degree, in the “internet marketing” business, where people who don’t have a herd of their own, are always selling, selling, selling to anyone who wanders by, and that just does not work.

Someone visits your website or blog, clicks a link, and then they’re gone, possibly never to return. Next!

You may be able to earn a few hundred dollars per month with this approach, but you can’t live on a few hundred dollars per month. At least, I can’t, and I enjoy living a relatively simple life.

So, not only do you not have a herd of your own, you don’t have anything to sell to them. All most bloggers do is try to get visitors to click on affiliate links or click the ads.

Some bloggers offer a lot of quality content; some don’t. Most don’t earn much. Most don’t attract many readers and even fewer buyers.

So, they become enamored with the process and the technology and don’t invest the time, energy, and money to build systems to corral and nurture a herd of their own.

In fact, I know a few bloggers (myself included for a few years) who actively avoid building a herd and nurturing them, even if we know better. It’s a trap that is easy to fall into.

What do you sell? To whom do you sell it?

If you have a traditional business, you have regular customers and clients.

If you own a restaurant, you have regular customers who enjoy your food and they tell their friends. They eat there off and on. If you do a good job of marketing, you can get them to eat more often and to bring their friends along, too. This increases the number of purchases and also increases the amount of the transactions, and that means more income. If your marketing costs less than the increase in revenue, it means that you have higher profits — and that’s the goal. (At least, it’s one of the goals.)

When I was a computer consultant, it was easy to focus on my business. I wanted people to find me, hire me, pay me, and call me back the next time they needed my services. This was before the Internet, so most of my marketing consisted of giving free presentations to groups of potential clients and publishing a newsletter every month.

(I wish I had one of those old newsletters to look at. They were produced with a typewriter and were cut and pasted with real scissors and glue, before cutting and pasting meant clicking a button.)

They weren’t nearly as pretty as the newsletters I’ll create this year, but they were effective.

When I was a blacksmith, the Internet was just starting to flourish, and I used one tiny section of one website and was able to sell all the steel roses I was able to forge.

But, when I closed my blacksmithing business and started caring for Mom, I lost my direction. My main interest was caring for her and my secondary interest was earning enough money to continue caring for her at home. Affiliate marketing served that purpose, well.

So, during the time I cared for her and then fought my own battle with cancer, it means that I’ve spent almost exactly a decade of selling to random people who were attracted to my various websites.

Since I had no clear target markets and no clear business goals, I drifted and experimented with the technology. I was fascinated and I enjoyed it and I learned a lot.

But, now, for the first time in a decade, I’m able to work full-time at what I enjoy doing and I have a couple of products of my own that I can sell.

That makes it much easier to define the target market and to create ways to communicate with those people. As time goes by, I’ll attract them into my pasture, feed and nourish them, and tell them, over and over, how I can help them get what they want.

Since I have some highly-developed skills in this area and enough experience to know what to do and what not to do, I can sell my services in several ways. Each of those will have its own herd and I will nurture and care for them month after month after month, until I can do it no longer.

That makes it much, much easier to focus.

It’s also why it has become so obvious to me that I need to decrease my blogging activities and focus on other means of marketing and attracting clients and customers.

Yes, I still enjoy blogging, or I would not take the time to write this post.

I don’t know if you enjoy reading it. That’s for you to decide.

Affiliate marketing will always be a part of my business, but it has moved into second place this year. It will move into third place in 2013.

Even so, I intend to earn more from affiliate marketing in the coming years than I ever did in the past, because I’ve stopped promoting anything that doesn’t work very well. I’ve narrowed my focus on tools I use and I’m promoting only the best of breed in each category.

I’ve taken that philosophy and adapted it to one of my service businesses, and I’ll only work with one person in each category — and that person will be the best I can find. Life is too short to waste it on working with people who aren’t focused on doing the best they can.

Why build a website instead of a blog?

This brings us back to the original topic: WordPress and SBI, revisited.

Here’s an interesting page you may want to read:

I think the conclusions that are drawn are valid — but it is a limited data set.

I suspect, but have no proof, that the majority of self-hosted WordPress blogs attract many more readers than the average number reported by WordPress blogs that are hosted by WordPress.com.

I have a blog there that I rarely write to, and I doubt it gets any visitors.

I post a lot more frequently to this blog and put a lot more work into each post.

So, I believe that the actual average number of viewers for WordPress-powered blogs is higher than shown, but there’s no way to know for sure.

The numbers for SBI sites, however, are valid and true. SBI keeps these stats for all sites hosted on their system, so we can be sure that they are accurate.

And, as with any “average” number of anything, there will be sites with far fewer visitors and a few sites with many, many more.

I believe one of the key differences is that SBI has a process that includes an education and set of steps that we follow to make our sites as good as they can be — if we take the time to follow those steps properly.

I admit that I have not done a good job of that, so I’m basically starting over with both my sites and will systematically rebuild them using the plan I created over the last few months.

Even though I’ve mostly ignored my two SBI sites for the last couple of years, they still outperform my blogs — including this one.

Now, will that be true for you? Honestly, I don’t know, but I think the odds are in your favor.

I also want to quibble with one point on that page. It says, “The more traffic you receive, the more income you earn, whether you’re selling ads or aardvarks.”

All things being equal, that may be true. It probably is.

However, I don’t think things are equal between blogs and websites. I think people have a different mindset when they visit a blog and bounce back out than when they visit a website and read several pages before leaving.

I think that gives a well-organized website that is full of high-quality information a real edge over most blogs.

I’m not positive about it, but I think it’s true

Building an online business is not for everyone. It requires a number of skills, and two that are very important are being able to research a topic and then write what you know about it. I don’t mean paraphrasing someone else’s work, I mean truly original writing. That takes work and talent.

Not everyone can or will do that.

It’s a little easier if you have your own business with your own products and services and you want to promote them online. A well-planned and organized website will outperform a blog.

While I can’t conclusively prove that statement, I think it is accurate.

Do you have to use SBI to build such a website?

Of course not.

There are many ways to build a website and there is a lot of information scattered all over the Web on how to do it. Without any doubt, that is true.

But, none of those includes all you need to know to build your online business in the way that SBI does, all in one place.

Will SBI work well for every site? No. SBI does not offer things like PHP scripting and database access. If you need those features, or even if you just want them, SBI is not for you.

However, for the majority of people who don’t want or need such things, SBI puts the technology in the background and lets you focus more of your attention on attracting and nurturing your herd.

No matter what system you use, however, if you’re new to building websites, there is a LOT to learn. But, with SBI, you don’t have to figure it all out, all you have to do is follow the time-proven method to identify, research, and build your site. That makes it a lot easier.

Especially if you’re a busy business owner who isn’t interested in learning a lot of technobabble.

You want to tend your herd and have them buy from you again and again. That’s the goal. SBI makes it easier. Not easy, but definitely easier.

What kinds of businesses are people building with SBI? Find your business.

If you’re not sure if SBI is right for you, you can ask your questions for free. No obligation.

When you’re ready to start, SBI offers a 90-day full-money-back guarantee, if you decide it isn’t what you need.

Why am I so insistent?

Is it because I earn a commission if you subscribe to SBI through one of my links?

Yes, that’s partly true.

However, I’m also an affiliate for HostGator, 1&1, and others, and you don’t see me promoting them. I’m also an affiliate for several domain registrars and I’ve stopped promoting them.

I like, use, and recommend Weebly to some people for building some kinds of websites, but not if your primary method of attracting prospects is via your website. For that purpose, I recommend SBI.

Weebly does make it easy, however, if you want to build a website and blog that provides some information about your existing business and you promote it mainly by links from other places, rather than relying on attracting lots of visitors through the search engines. You can do it and it works well for some people, but it is not my top recommendation.

By the same token, I could join the affiliate programs to recommend premium WordPress blog themes and even promote WordPress consultants and specialists.

You don’t see me doing that, either. (Although I’m sure I could earn a lot of money, if I did.)

Why?

Because, for most business owners, and people who want to own their own business, SBI is the right choice.

Act on your dream!

JD

Rebuilding my business with SBI in 2012!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Success is a process.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are a couple of reasons for this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. SBI is a bargain.

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

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

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

That’s a bargain.

I know.

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

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

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

Only for beginners? Not true.

Too expensive. Not true.

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

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

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

Act on your dream!

JD

What is happening with Sitesell and SBI in December?

December has turned into a very busy month for Sitesell.

Sitesell reached 50,000 fans on their Facebook page

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

“Best of Breed” photo competition

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second Prize: 1 Year SBI! + US$250

Third Prize: 6 months SBI! + US$150

Fourth to Tenth Prize: 3 months SBI!

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

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

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

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

Live demonstration of the new Block Builder 2

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

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

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

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

I’ll definitely be there.

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

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

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

Christmas Two-For-One SBI! sale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t miss the SBI! 2 for 1 sale!

Act on your dream!

JD

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

Sitesell has almost reached 50,000 fans on Facebook

We are less than 100 people away from 50,000. It’s been moving quickly this evening. Won’t be long, now.

Here we go!

JD

Sitesell and SBI are going to play a big part in my 2012 marketing

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

1. I am recovering from a very serious illness and I finally feel like working on my sites again. It has been a difficult period (almost three years), but I’m ready to go. During this time, my income was decimated, so I’m basically starting over.

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

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

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

When I built my first SBI site in April 2004, it was basically to learn how SBI worked so I would be better as a 5P affiliate. At the time, I was building a couple of large (1,500+ page) sites using a database created by Dave Winer (one of the inventors of RSS and an early blogger, as well as a very talented programmer and application developer) and which I had modified heavily by tweaking the programming and adding my own modules.

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

This happened just as I was getting so sick that I had a very difficult time thinking straight and trying to make the necessary changes. A few months later, I was so sick that I could not work, at all.

So, my first SBI site was something I built because it was a subject that is important to me, not because I thought it was something that would make a lot of money. I liked how SBI made it easy to build and manage the site and how it did so much for me behind the scenes.

I was heavily focused on other ways of building money-making sites, at the time. I’ve built social communities, forums, websites, blogs, and even an article directory (for awhile). I wanted to know, from the inside, how these various sites worked and performed — and what were their benefits and problems.

I was a 5P affiliate before there was an SBI. Before even Page Build It! So, I had the chance to watch as SBI grew and expanded and expanded and continued to get better and better, year after year. And, I noticed that the price has not increased, even though the product is many times better than it was all those years ago.

(Actually, I think the price did increase for awhile, but I don’t remember the details. I also know that the C2 module used to cost about $100 per year in addition to the SBI subscription. C2 is now included free. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that SBI cost about $500 per year at one time. Can anyone else verify this, or is it just another hole in my memory?)

Despite inflation and all the new and improved modules, the price for SBI remains at $299 per year. (Or, you can get it for $29.95 per month. You save almost $60 per year if you pay for it annually. Plus, there’s no risk. SBI comes with a 90-day no-risk money-back guarantee. Sign up today and try it for yourself!)

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

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

I have observed how deeply focused all of the people on the Sitesell team are on helping all of us to succeed. They don’t just say it. They do it. Much of it for free. The members-only Sitesell Forums are dedicated to helping and being helped, and I have observed more times than I can count or remember how SBIers help each other. Individuals on the Sitesell team offer their help, too, above and beyond their official duties.

Day in and day out, for years.

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

The brainstormer was impressive and was a FileMaker runtime database that actually ran on our own computers, before being rebuilt to run entirely on Sitesell’s servers. That was a big change. It’s even better now, and the improvements that are planned for next year will be important improvements, also. SBI comes with an impressive list of tools and many of them are scheduled for improvements in 2012.

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

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

I’ll be re-reading the Action Guide and re-watching the videos as I work though my site redesigns and expansion, next year.)

As I said, I closed most of my websites and I’m changing my focus. For a decade or so, I was wide and shallow — lots of websites with not too much depth to any of them. I spent a lot of time on various forums and commenting on other people’s blogs.

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

Of course, there’s more to choosing and building an income-producing niche-focused original content website, but some of it can only be learned by doing what you think is best and then adapting and improving the things that don’t work.

And, I want to emphasize this — it takes work! To be successful, you have to plan, organize, and then implement. SBI makes it easier, but it DOES NOT DO THE WORK FOR YOU! If you don’t want to invest your work, time, and creativity into building your online business, stay away from SBI! Go waste your time blogging. Did you know that you can do that for free — sort of?

To be fair, there are some good reasons for having a blog. If there weren’t, this site would not be powered by WordPress. However, I have proven to myself that blogging has been mostly a waste of time — for me. When I get my other two SBI sites situated, I am seriously considering rebuilding this site as an SBI site, instead of a blog. Those plans are on the drawing board, but I have a lot of other things that must be done first.

I did not focus on my own business as much as I should have, but there were other, more important, things I was doing, at the time. Caring for Mom, primarily.

Now, I’m moving to narrow and deep — a few websites that will go as deeply as I can on their topics.

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

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

So, 2012 is going to be a big year for me.

BB2 and the new site design features and templates are going to make it much easier to build the sites I’ve envisioned, but was unable to build (due to overextension on other sites and a debilitating illness).

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

(It turns out that blogging is fun for me, but doesn’t produce any real income, so the lack of an integrated blog or forum module in SBI no longer bothers me. In another year or two, John Dilbeck And Friends may be my last blog. I’m considering turning it into an SBI site, too, but don’t have any firm plans, at this time.)

I’ve learned, after a decade of blogging, that I don’t make my money on my blogs. I enjoy writing them, but the money is made on my websites, and that’s what I am going to focus upon next year.

So, in summation (finally!!), this old dog is going to try to learn some new tricks. I’m going to forget about using PHP and PERL and Frontier and Radio Userland to accomplish things and I’ll adapt to the tools that SBI offers. The new reusable blocks that make server side includes available to people who use the block builder editor will make it possible for me to do some things I’ve long wanted to do.

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

If you hear that SBI is only for beginners who don’t know how to do the technical stuff, part of that is true. It is perfect for beginners, but it is also perfect for us old propellerheads who have been slinging computer code for decades and building websites for almost as long as the World Wide Web has existed. Some of us have proven to ourselves that SBI offers a better way of building the kinds of sites we want to develop.)

(If you need SQL databases, scripting, and other similar features, SBI is not for you. If you are unsure if you can do what you want to do with SBI, you can always ask your questions. Answers are free and there is no obligation.)

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

That’s a bargain.

I know.

You have to look at the big picture. SBI is much more than just a webhost.

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

Only for beginners? Not true.

Too expensive. Not true.

I spend several hundred dollars every month for webhosting, email mailing services, domain names, and other expenses related to my online marketing business. Only $60 of that is for my two SBI sites. By comparison, they are a bargain.

The best way I know to build a successful online business, no matter how much experience and technical skill you have, or don’t have? Absolutely true.

But, I’m just one of nearly 50,000 fans of Sitesell. If you want other opinions, just ask.

I intend to be here when there are 100,000 Sitesell fans on Facebook.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering if you can be successful at building a business with SBI. What do you know that other people want to know?

That’s part of the beauty of SBI. The Action Guide includes 10 steps (metaphorically known as days, although some may take much longer to complete), and it teaches you all about building a website, identifying your strengths and interests, and helps you choose a niche, before you decide upon a topic and domain name.

Most people put the cart before the horse when building a website, but SBI’s Action Guide teaches you a much better way of approaching building an online business.

If you’ve been on the fence about trying SBI, or if you’re skeptical because you have been burned by online scams and get-rich-quick schemes, I understand your reticence. I’ve been burned by a few of them, too.

I have never had a bad experience with Sitesell. Never. Not once. In over a decade.

I can’t say that for any other company. I won’t say that for any other company, even if they offer to pay me.

You never know what you can accomplish until you get off the fence and start working to build a better future for yourself and your family.

Will you get rich? I am almost positive that YOU WILL NOT GET RICH. Possbily, but the odds are stacked against you, by far.

Can you earn a few hundred dollars to supplement your income while you learn new skills, probably, if you follow the Action Guide and do the work. Don’t expect it immediately, it may take a year or two to start earning real money.

Can you quit your job? A few have been able to do that, but I’m sure the majority have not.

Maybe you don’t want to quit your job. Maybe you’re retired and want something interesting to do, and maybe earn a bit in the process.

(I’ll be 60 in 2012 and I’m thinking about my retirement. But, I don’t think there will be much difference. I already work at home, at my own pace, on my own schedule. I enjoy researching and writing, and continuing to build websites really appeals to me — and so does making extra money.)

Maybe you’re a work at home mom or dad and you’d like to supplement your income.

Maybe you’re a student or recently-graduated young person and you’re having trouble finding a job that will help you grow and learn more. Why flip burgers or do something similar when you can learn valuable skills that will help you earn more in the 21st century. Learn how to build effective websites that earn real money. Do it for yourself. Perhaps you can leverage your new skills into a better job. I know several people who have done that after they spent a year or so learning what SBI teaches.

Students, and their parents, invest thousands of dollars in formal schooling, some of which actually helps them in life.

Why not invest another $300 in something that will help you (or your children) learn real-world skills related to business and 21st century communications and marketing.

Did you know that one of the more famous SBI-powered websites, Anguilla Beaches, was built by Nori Evoy (Ken Evoy’s daughter)? Would you believe she was only 14 years old when she started the site? It’s true. Now, she’s a college student who already has a profit-making online business.

Maybe you’d just like to earn enough to make payments on a new (or newer) car or save money for a vacation.

All of these are possible. I personally know people who have done all of these, and some of them didn’t know any more about building websites than you do, when they started.

Get off the fence.

Do something.

Thousands of people took the chance and ordered SBI. The great majority of the ones I know are happy that they did. That’s why they continue to renew their subscription year after year and even purchase several subscriptions so they can build multiple sites.

But, slow down. Start with one. Give it a try.

Take it one step at a time, and learn from the people who have helped thousands of people like you.

What will it cost? $300.

What about all the options, upsells, continuity programs, bundles, and all the back-end products they’re going to try to sell you?

There are none. They provide optional coaching services (by the hour), if you need them to get past something you don’t understand, but they are optional.

There is no hard sell.

$300 per year. That’s it.

Order SBI today.

Do it now. Six months from now, you can comment and tell your story. Is it working for you, or not?

Try it for up to 90 days risk free.

You can’t find a better deal than that. At least, I can’t find a better deal than that, and I’m always looking.

Are you satisfied with what you’ve accomplished in 2011? If you said yes, say it again, proudly. Congratulations!

If you said no, then think seriously about how 2012 is going to be the same, or different.

I can’t speak for you, but for me, 2012 is going to be different.

Sitesell and SBI are going to help me.

I choose to invest time, energy, and money in myself and my future.

Act on your dream!

JD

Sitesell is about to reach 50,000 fans on Facebook

You won’t believe it, but this is going to be a very short post.

I was planning to talk about this later in the week, because I thought that it would take until December before 50,000 people liked Sitesell’s Facebook page, but now it looks like it will happen today or tomorrow.

I know how much I like Sitesell and I’m obviously not alone.

Looks like it will be party time soon. There will be lots of surprises and prizes when it happens.

A few thoughts about webhosting and building websites

This morning, I received an email notice that someone had submitted a new site for the Sites Built With SBI list on my Site Build It, a revolution in website design, hosting, and promotion lens on Squidoo.

I usually wait until I’ve received several such notices before I go to either approve or delete the entries. Usually, 80% of the entries are spam for sites that are not built using SBI. I’m not sure why anyone would think I’d approve those sites for the list, but I get regular submissions for sites built using other methods and most of them are built with WordPress.

So, I go look at each site and, if it’s built with SBI, I accept it. Otherwise, I delete it.

Designing and building websites

I’ve been thinking a lot about SBI sites lately, because Sitesell has been building a new site editor called Block Builder 2 (or BB2) and it is set for release in December. They have spent a couple of years and several million dollars developing it and it recently completed alpha testing.

(Unlike other sitebuilders, SBI offers 70 or 80 integrated tools that are part of the process and features of building sites the SBI way. This new BB2 has to integrate with almost all of them, and the central database had to be modified and expanded to work with BB2. So, this was probably a larger, more difficult project than the original creation of SBI about a decade ago. Updating and expanding a system that powers thousands of websites is not the same as building an HTML editor that just builds pages or adds blog posts. It’s a very big job.)

Beta testing starts this week with a couple of hundred volunteers, who will be added in groups over the next couple of weeks.

If you’re interested, here’s a pre-release sneak preview of using the new block builder 2:

Sneak peak of Sitesell’s new block builder 2 for SBI!

I’m one of those volunteers, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it, soon. I have plans for a complete make-over and extensive additions to both of my SBI-powered sites, and you can bet that I’ll be talking about it over the next few weeks.

This new editor is going to make building sites and pages much easier than before and I’ll finally get to do some of the things I’ve done on other sites, but much more easily. This includes using Server Side Includes for things like links to particular pages, affiliate programs, Google Adsense ads, and more, using their new Reusable Blocks tool.

Even for an old-timer like me, who can dream in HTML, this is going to be a nice, easy way to build a site. For someone who is not technically-inclined and doesn’t like coding HTML, it’ll be wonderful. Once again, SBI helps people focus on the business of building their business, not endlessly tinkering with all the tech stuff.

Of course, there are lots of site builders out there, so this isn’t what makes SBI special. Sitesell continues to be focused on helping their subscribers create successful, profitable businesses, and not just websites.

So, with the imminent release of BB2, look and feel, and site design has been on my mind a lot over the last couple of months.

I think it is better to make sites simpler and faster, rather than confusing with lots of distractions. (You can’t tell that by looking at my blogs, because I add a lot of things to a blog that I would not put on a website.)

Meanwhile, back at the Squidoo ranch…

I noticed that one of the sites on my Squidoo lens (out of over 100) was now powered by WordPress, rather than SBI. It has been over a year since I’ve gone through the whole list to check, so I spent some time this morning going through each of them.

Out of over 100, six were now powered by WordPress, two were standard Linux-hosted websites, and three domains had been allowed to expire or put up for sale. So, a little less than 8% had left SBI over the last year.

I got to thinking that there seems to be a lot less churn with SBI sites over the years, even though a lot of people just can’t seem to wrap their minds around why I consider each SBI-powered site to be a bargain at $300 each per year.

For the last couple of decades, I’ve seen webhosting services come and go and I’ve used a number of them. I’ve watched as websites move from one service to another, and often I can see the change only because their name servers change.

Hosting sites and blogs at HostGator

For professional technogeeks and web designers, I recommend HostGator.

For the last ten years, or so, all of my traditionally-hosted sites and WordPress-powered blogs have been hosted by HostGator, and I’m very happy with the service and features I get there. I have a reseller account, so I can host more sites than I care to, all for about $25 per month. That includes several sites and three blogs. At one point, a couple of years ago, I was hosting many more sites with them, but I’ve closed those sites as I focus more on my main target market.

As I said, I’m very happy with HostGator, but I don’t go out of my way to recommend them, even though I’m an affiliate.

Why?

Over the years, it has been my experience that building websites and managing blogs is a pain in the rear. This is definitely NOT for everyone. If you are not technically inclined and if you don’t like tinkering “under the hood” all the time, then I urge you to avoid traditional webhosting services.

If you don’t love writing, day in and day out, all the time, don’t even think of building websites or blogging. If you don’t love the subject for your site enough to write a book, or even a magazine article about it, you WILL NOT enjoy an online business.

I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know how much work it can be. Especially, when some jerk decides to hack a site and either destroy it or break in and install malware. All of my traditionally-hosted sites have been hacked at least once, and most of them several times, over the years.

(Note: Neither of my SBI sites has ever been hacked, and I’ve never spent even a minute thinking about site security for either of them.)

HostGator is very good about watching for this and notifying me if someone has hacked a site and installed malware. They shut down the domain and then I have to go find and delete the cause of it.

If you’re looking for a good place to host a WordPress blog or you need scripting and databases for your business, I highly recommend HostGator. They are the only traditional hosting service that I’ve used for years with no complaints.

If you want an account with them, I’d be happy if you click my link and purchase your subscription to HostGator.

If you are unhappy about the amount of work it takes to build a site or blog and if it doesn’t open the automatic magical Internet dollar machine to make you rich overnight, don’t complain to me. That is a fantasy.

The reality is this: building websites and blogs and earning a profit takes lots of hard work and time. It’s not as hard as digging ditches, but it’s not nearly as easy as some people want you to believe.

Trust me. I know.

Weebly – Webhosting for real people

These days, I urge people who want a basic website — and who don’t want to have to roll up their sleeves and get under the hood — to use a service like Weebly. I’ve been using them for a little over a year with excellent results. I particularly like their sitebuilder and think most people can use it to build a reasonably good site. If you have the skills and the knowledge, you can build an excellent site using their service.

If you want to put up a brochure-like website for your brick and mortar business and you prefer to do it yourself rather than hire someone to do it for you, Weebly is a good choice. If you want to purchase a domain for your website, it makes sense to purchase through Weebly, because they’ll do the set-up for you. If you prefer to purchase a domain elsewhere, they have instructions on how to set up the DNS, but, unless that’s something you like doing, you’re better off buying the domain through them and letting their propeller-heads do the work.

—–Sidebar—-
Just in case you’re not familiar with the lingo, here’s the deal…

What is a domain?

This blog is on the 21stCenturyAffiliateMarketing.com domain. I have another one at JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com and another one (rarely used) at MurphyNC28906.com.

Those names that end in .com, .org, .info, .biz, .mil, and others are domain names.

So, if you’re a plumber and own We Fix Leaks, you could register WeFixLeaks.com — if someone else hasn’t already done it. [Someone already owns that domain.]

You could also host it on Weebly at wefixleaks.weebly.com, and that’s called a subdomain. The word to the left of Weebly.com — separated by a period — is the name of the subdomain.

In general, that’s not a good idea if the top level domain is already taken. It could lead to things like trademark infringement, legal actions, bad feelings, and other things most of us would prefer to avoid. It’s not exactly illegal to do it, but you’ll sleep better at night if you avoid those kinds of tactics. It’s better to find a top-level domain that nobody has claimed, and that can take some time and creativity.

Weebly hosts thousands of subdomains, and thousands of full domains, for their clients.

I hope that explains it. I’ve been doing this so long that I forget that this is brand-new to some people.
———-

If you want to build a site for something like a family reunion, big picnic, community event, or something similar, and you want a good place to do it for free, Weebly is a good choice.

If you want to combine a website with a simple blog (and don’t want to hassle with WordPress upgrades and plug-ins), Weebly is a good choice.

You can host a couple of sites for free at Weebly, or you can upgrade to their professional level (at about $50 per year) and host up to 10 sites. I’ve had a professional account with them for a little over a year and it has worked very well. No hassles, good price, easy to build and maintain.

You can start for free and test it, and then if you want the features that are available only for the paid professional level account, it’s easy to upgrade.

That’s the route I took. I have a couple of fully functional sites hosted by Weebly and five others in various stages of completion. All for the low annual price. I spend a lot more money on coffee every year than I do on hosting professional sites at Weebly. (grin)

I sometimes use their service to test an idea by building a site on one of Weebly’s subdomains, so I don’t even have to register a new domain to see if I like it, or not.

(I don’t know about you, but I have a lot more ideas for things to do than I have time and energy to get them all done. In the past, I’d rush to register a domain, build a site, and see how it worked. I’ve done way too much of that, and now I stay much more focused on my core mission. Still, now and then, mostly for fun, I like to try out an idea and see what I think about it. Some people watch TV, movies, or sports. I build websites.)

I have a couple of old sites that are currently hosted by HostGator that I’m slowly adapting and moving to Weebly, and I’ll be changing the DNS to point their domains to the new sites sometime this winter.

SBI – The place to go if you’re interested in long-term online business success

If you want to build an income-producing online business, my top recommendation is still Sitesell’s SBI, and that’s where I’ll be putting at least 80% of my efforts next year.

My two SBI sites have been sadly neglected over the last couple of years (along with all my other sites), but now that I’m recovering from the cancer that tried to kill me last year, I’ll be getting back up to full speed, soon.

So, that’s my round-about way of saying this…

As I looked at all of the sites on my lens that were built with SBI, I realized that there is a remarkably low rate of churn with SBI sites. Most sites that are built using SBI stay there, year after year.

I know from talking to friends and colleagues that people have real businesses based around their SBI sites. They earn good money every year, and there is very little temptation to leave. Some have added WordPress blogs to their sites, but this is an additional part of the site, not a replacement.

It’s kind of tricky to add a WordPress blog to an SBI site, because SBI doesn’t allow the use of databases and scripts. So, SBI added a feature called Infin It! a few years ago. This makes it easier to add an e-commerce store, blog, forum, or other feature that won’t run on SBI, and combine it with your main site using subdomains.

You need both MySQL and PHP in order to host a WordPress blog, so the way it is added to an SBI-powered site is this: You have to host the blog on another service, such as BlueHost or HostGator and then attach it to the main domain by adjusting the DNS entries so that the blog is a subdomain of the main site.

It’s a little complicated, but the directions on how to do it are well-written and quite a few people have done it. When it’s set up (a one-time thing), the store, forum, or blog is treated as a part of your domain, rather than as a stand-alone site on a different domain.

Personally, I prefer to keep my blogs separate from my sites, but that’s just my own take on how to do it. People who prefer to do it the other way can make that choice for themselves. I know several webmasters who have chosen to go the Infin It! approach.

Not as easy to spot an SBI site as it used to be

I noticed, today, that it is getting harder to tell a site that was built with SBI from sites built using other services. One reason is that people are uploading their own HTML using a variety of templates. This Upload Your Own HTML (UYOH) feature was added a few years ago, for people who wanted designs that could not be built with the original (and now ten years old) block builder.

So, a few years ago, I could tell at a glance if a site was powered by SBI or something else. Now, it’s not so easy. A couple of times this morning I had to look at the source code to see if the site was built with WordPress or SBI, and twice I had to go to BetterWhoIs.com to see where the domain was registered and what the domain name servers pointed to.

(I also noticed that some people do not have a good eye for design — not that I can brag about my own good taste. I know I’m not a visually-oriented designer. While some people don’t like the original SBI templates, they had the advantage of being simple and did not distract from the main purpose of each page — also known as its Most Wanted Response. This morning, I noticed that several of the sites were full of junk that just made it more complicated and less clear about what the owner was trying to do with the site. There were way too many distractions. Sure, that’s their choice, if they want to go that way, but I think they’re making a mistake.)

With the introduction of BB2, next month, it’s going to be even harder to recognize that sites are built and powered by SBI. There will be a lot of new templates, and BB2 offers many new features that allow for massive customization of a site and of individual pages. The new templates are all CSS enabled, and that allows for further, easy customization.

I won’t talk much about BB2 until I get my hands on it and see for sure how it works. Then, I’ll be talking about it. When it is fully-released next month, I’ll probably talk about it a lot, as I test what it can do.

I still believe in simple websites, but I think my sites will be a bit less simple than they currently are, although I hope I never make them as crowded as I do my blogs. And I know I won’t be junking them up with a lot of unnecessary doodads and thingamajigs.

If I go that route, please feel free to smack my little hand and get me back on track. (grin)

Now, back to working with Aweber the rest of the day

So, with that said, it’s time to turn my attention to building a new template for sending newsletters using Aweber. I have to complete that template within the next day or two, because the first issue will be published the second week of January, and that’s fast approaching.

The new editor of the newsletter is patient with me right now, but if I don’t get this done this week, I don’t think she’ll be as patient. I can hear her foot tapping as her impatience grows — and she lives several miles from me. (grin)

Happy Thanksgiving!

If I don’t write anything else here before Thursday, I want to wish all my friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m looking forward to setting my work aside for a day and spending time with my family. There is a poor unfortunate turkey who is going to be a big part of the day, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

Sitesell $50,000 challenge ends tonight at midnight

As I’ve said previously, I’ve spent years looking for a system that would help me build an online business.

I’ve tried lots of different things.

Now, I’ve proven to myself that Sitesell’s SBI offers the best mix of tools, support, proven success, and best price.

I’ve stopped looking at other solutions and my future work will be done on the SBI foundation.

The Sitesell $50,000 challenge ends tonight at midnight and there have been no entries from any other system that could challenge SBI. There is still almost five hours before the deadline, but I don’t expect a challenger to come forth.

SBI continues to make improvements in all the tools they offer and another big improvement should be released before the year is over. Their new blockbuilder sitebuilding tool is ten years old and some describe it as clunky. Compared to Weebly and WordPress, and others, that’s true. But, it has helped thousands of non-technical people build successful online businesses for about a decade.

Sitesell just finished the alpha testing of the new Block Builder 2 (BB2) module, which will introduce a giant leap forward in designing sites and building pages in SBI. Beta testing should start within the week and the release roll-out should happen in December.

It has taken a long time to get to this point and Sitesell has invested millions of dollars in the development of this new version of the blockbuilder module. One reason for the cost and time is that it has to be fully integrated with the other 70 or 80 tools modules that make up the SBI system. (I don’t know how many there are, currently, because Sitesell keeps adding new modules and updating existing ones — all without raising the price!)

I’ve applied as a beta tester and hope I’ll be approved, so I can start testing it. I’m really looking forward to this.

When BB2 is released, it should remove the “clunky” label from anyone’s perception of using the block builder to build effective pages. I’ve seen a video of it and I’ve talked to some alpha testers and I think this will be a game changer. One of the urban myths about SBI that has some truth, about building pages with SBI, will no longer be valid — and it really hasn’t been true for the last several years, since SBI introduced the Upload Your Own HTML (UYOH) module that let people design sites with the design software of their choosing and upload pages using those designs. BB2 will work similarly to Weebly and WordPress for designing the sites and building the pages.

I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

In the meantime, if you know of a better system that can prove success better than SBI and costs the same or less, you still have over four hours to submit it and try to win the challenge. Be sure to read the official rules in the first comment of the challenge thread on Facebook.

By the way, a few weeks ago, we celebrated 40,000 fans for Sitesell’s Facebook Page, and now there are over 46,000. We’ll be reaching and celebrating the 50,000 fans milestone before much longer.

Will there be a challenger?

I don’t think so. As far as I have been able to determine, there is no other system that offers what SBI does for the same or less price and also offers proof of the success that people have achieved with it.

Act on your dream!

JD

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  • Murphy Gold

• Zazzle Stores

  • John Dilbeck Designs on Zazzle

• John Dilbeck and Friends

  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-29 January 29, 2012
  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-22 January 22, 2012
  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-15 January 15, 2012
  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-08 January 8, 2012
  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-01 January 1, 2012
  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-18 December 18, 2011
  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-04 December 4, 2011
  • I am starting a new tradition for the day after Thanksgiving November 25, 2011
  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-11-13 November 13, 2011
  • Books – the best investment I ever made in myself and my future November 11, 2011