Some of these people have taken the time to record and/or write their stories, experiences, and advice so we can learn from them.

Learning from Jim Rohn is worth your time, effort, and money. It has been for me.

Here’s a free sample of his advice.

You can learn a lot more from him on his website…

Visit JimRohn.com Today!

If you want to take charge of your life, learn from people who have already done it.

People like Jim Rohn.

It has worked very well for me.

Act on your dream!

JD

Ken Evoy is doing just that. He has issued a challenge. He posted the challenge on Sitesell’s Facebook page (click the $50,000 challenge in the menu on the left of that page to go right to the challenge). Briefly, here it is…

If you can find documented proof that another product, or collection of information and tools (see tools.sitesell.com), delivers everything that SBI! does (or more), at the price of SBI! (or less) AND that product documents success to the depth that SBI! does (see proof.sitesell.com), we will pay you $50,000.

Here’s a direct link to the Sitesell $50,000 Challenge. Be sure to read the entire status post and the first comment, which contains the official rules of this contest.

I’ve been hearing people say for years that SBI is overpriced and that there are better and cheaper ways to do just as well. Well, here’s your opportunity to show Ken your better solution. If you win this challenge, you can not only earn bragging rights, but you can get cold hard cash (well, probably a company check) for your effort.

I would try it myself, but I just spent the last five years searching diligently for a system or group of tools and information that was better than Sitesell’s SBI. I failed in that quest, and now I am 100% comfortable in saying that SBI is the best system out there for an individual or small team — especially if they have limited technical skills — to build an online business. I have no doubt at all.

Won’t I feel foolish if someone wins this challenge?

Yes, I will, for a few minutes, and then I’ll go test it for myself. I honestly don’t think there will be a winner in this challenge — except for Sitesell and all of us who enjoy using SBI.

After my five year search, and testing other products that looked like they might be good enough, I’ve closed almost all of my test sites and I’m going back to working on my SBI sites.

I would love to win that $50,000, but I have nothing to submit to the challenge.

So, I’ll just get back to work and EARN it.

Do not post your entries and contenders here. Go to the Sitesell $50,000 Challenge and post your entry as a comment in that thread. Read the rules.

Don’t dawdle. This challenge is for one month. It expires at midnight on November 8, 2011 (Eastern Time).

Who will win? Sitesell’s SBI — or a challenger?

(Oh, I forgot to mention that their Facebook page now has over 40,000 people who like it, and more are joining every day.)

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. Knowing the folks at Sitesell as well as I do (I’ve been a happy customer and affiliate for over ten years), I’m willing to bet — if there is a winner to this challenge — that we’ll see SBI extended to be even better than the winner, and that they won’t raise the price on SBI. I already know of some big improvements that will be introduced to SBI over the next few months and I can’t wait to start using them.

There is a simple reason. I know Dan’s reputation for quality and his ability to teach effective marketing techniques that have worked for thousands of people. So, although I have not seen this particular product of his, I have studied other books he has written over the years, and GameChanger DNA is a collection of what he has learned about marketing over the last nearly four decades — all presented in one place. It’s not everything he knows, but it should be enough to change your marketing game, if you study it and implement what you learn.

If you know in your heart that you won’t spend the time to learn and use the valuable knowledge in this product — Do Not Buy It!

To be perfectly frank, it’s not worth an affiliate commission if I have to listen to you bellyache and whine about it being a waste of money.

First, it can’t be a waste of money, because you have a 30-day money back guarantee. If you buy it and don’t like it, follow the refund procedures and get your money back.

If you learn from it, implement it, and reap the rewards, I’d love for you to come back here and tell us about your experience.

It’s time for you to decide.

Would you like an easy to use, step-by-step, take-you-by-the-hand, done-for-you, proven system that will change your game immediately?

Dan’s closing the cart for his GameChanger DNA tonight at 12 MIDNIGHT CST, on Saturday October 1st.

Simply click the Add to Cart Button on the following page to get access…

Click on my GameChanger DNA link or on the image above to see for yourself!

But there is more, much more than just the cart closing. Your chances of becoming a Game Changer are slipping away.

This science of influential communication has been of more value to professional marketers than a thousand techniques or gadgets or gimmicks. Now it can be yours for a small investment, fully guaranteed.

If you haven’t made a decision yet I urge you to finalize your plans, weigh the pros and cons, and make your commitment to achieve.

Go now, and see for yourself.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. As I said yesterday, Dan’s GameChanger DNA offer is not for everyone. It’s for business owners — and people who intend to own a business — who realize that effective marketing is the most important pathway to success, and who are willing to invest in themselves by studying and then implementing what you learn. Only with a steady stream of paying customers, will your business thrive.

If you do nothing else, get a copy of his Outrageous Advertising book. How much does it cost? If you go now, you can get a copy of Outrageous Advertising for free, and you’ll have to pay for shipping only.

It takes a lot to get me to do this, so let me tell you the back story…

Dan Kennedy is a marketing expert and is rapidly approaching the status of marketing legend.

I have read several of his books and I’m right in the middle of reading his “No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent” book, as part of my planning on rebuilding my marketing business, now that I’m recovering from my illness and I’m getting back to work.

I trust his advice and I know some of the back-story of how he has helped a lot of people over the years to build very nice incomes.

Yesterday afternoon, while doing some research for my new marketing plan, I took a short break and was playing on Facebook. That was a lucky thing for me.

Here’s why…

I have been following Dan Kennedy on Facebook and he sent out a very short status with a link. Out of curiosity, I clicked that link, and it changed the rest of my afternoon.

(Dan is known for not liking, nor using, modern technology, even though he understands it, so I doubt that he was the one that published the status update. Most likely it was an employee or someone he influenced to do it for him.)

That link took me to a video about the launch of his new GameChanger DNA product. As far as I know, this is the first time he’s used a big product launch like this for his own products, but he has been involved behind the scenes helping with others. (I’m almost, but not quite, positive that I have my facts straight here.)

Anyway, to cut a long story shorter, I dropped what I was doing and watched those videos. It was the first time I’d seen Dan on video and I enjoyed watching it. I also enjoyed observing how they were doing the marketing for the new product.

Note: This product is not the normal kind of product I promote. I don’t think it’s right for most of my readers. If you balk at paying a few hundred dollars for using a tool for a year, you’re going to cringe when you see the price of this product.

However, if you are already a business owner and you want to learn how to distance yourself from the herd of competitors in which you are surrounded and you want to learn how to raise your prices and earn more profit, then this is an indispensable and very valuable collection of information, techniques, and expert tips that Dan has spent 38 years learning and developing.

I’m almost sure that you could not afford a single hour of Dan’s consulting time, but you can get this package for a fraction of his consulting fee — a small fraction, at that.

So, since I know Dan by reputation and I know him from reading his books, I did some checking and applied for his affiliate program this morning. A couple of hours later, I was accepted, and an hour later, I’m writing this.

Again, this is not cheap, but it is very valuable information.

Now, even if you have no plans to purchase it, set aside a couple of hours (I’m not sure how long it is, because I wasn’t watching the clock yesterday while I was watching the videos), and open your mind and pay attention.

Even if you know a lot about marketing, I bet you’ll learn some new tips or look at some of what you think you know with a different viewpoint.

If you don’t know a lot about marketing, stop what you’re doing and watch these videos.

There are a lot of people out there who claim to be experts. Dan Kennedy is the real deal. He’s the one the experts hire when they need a consultant to help them.

I am not under any illusion here. I don’t think you’re going to buy this. But, if by some wild outside chance, you do, make sure you take the time to study it, absorb it and then implement it!

I have not tried this product.

I just wanted to reiterate that. This is one of the few times I’ll recommend something to you that I have not already bought, used, tested, and proven that it works for me.

Even if you’re not interested in buying. Watch the videos.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day for this promotion, and I don’t know if the videos will remain online, or not. If you want to watch them, don’t delay.

(That is not me trying to build artificial urgency. I honestly don’t know how long they will be available. They may be there from now on, they may disappear at the end of this promotion tomorrow night.)

Here’s a prewritten letter that affiliates can use to promote this. Normally, I would not send it, since I prefer to write my own copy, but I’m passing it along to you because I have to leave, and my driver is tapping his foot as he impatiently waits for me to post this.

So, any typos are mine. I just wanted to get this out before I leave.

Subject: Early Warning: The “GameChanger DNA” Finale is here

It made me sad to see Dan Kennedy’s last “GameChanger DNA” video today.

Here it is:

Click on my link or on the image above to see for yourself!

In case you missed it last week, Dan’s released 3 free videos so far – revealing the exact fundamental principles you need to SEE the profit potential for your business.

Tens of thousands of people have watched Dan’s tutorials and learned how to apply these fundamental principles to CHANGE the GAME of their business.

And those tutorials are PLENTY if all you want is understand the basics. But if you’re like me, the “basics” aren’t enough…

I see too much potential.

If you want to stop scratching the surface and become a REAL GameChanger, Dan has a LOT more to share with you in today’s video.

Watch the FINAL public “GameChanger DNA” release here.

And listen, this is a special EARLY notice from me to you (Dan told me it’s okay). You’re seeing this BEFORE the rest of the public.

For you, it could be just a start.

For EVERYONE ELSE, this really IS the END of GameChanger DNA.

Don’t miss it,

JD

P.S. Be sure you register for the “Early Gamechangers” list, they can close registration at any time, so if you want first dibs, get on that list.

Again, Dan Kennedy is someone I highly recommend. If you do nothing else, buy his books and study them.

Success is not in the tools and tricks, it is in the mindset and how you approach it. When you change your attitude, then you can start using the tools to great advantage.

Act on your dream!

JD

(Yes, I recognize the irony in asking you to comment about whether comments are overrated.)

I have built multiple websites, blogs, forums, and social communities over the years. With the exception of the websites, I have tried to start discussions that would lead to more understanding and different viewpoints about topics in which I am particularly interested.

I have been a miserable failure in that endeavor.

It seems that the people who want to discuss the issues don’t want to buy anything, and the people who click and buy what I promote don’t want to talk about it. They just want to buy it and get on with their own activities.

Yes, a few kind and learned souls have added comments to the discussions that have added to the topics, but most commenters, I am now sure, are more interested in getting a backlink than they are in the discussion.

I’m testing my theory

So, as of today, as a test, I have turned off both CommentLuv and the dofollow plug-in. I’ll see for myself over the course of the next few months whether the readers and commenters on this site will slow and/or disappear, or whether there are real, live people who are interested in the topics about which I write.

I have updated item number 4 on my Comments Policy to reflect this change.

As far as I know, there is no way to set CommentLuv to leave the old links on the comments, so that means all of the CommentLuv comments are now gone.

That one part of the test may very well doom this blog to oblivion…

…if I am correct in assuming that people comment more for the backlinks than they do for wanting to take part in the discussion.

This is one more test in an ongoing series of marketing tests I have run over the last decade.

I enjoy the social aspect of blogging and commenting

I enjoy talking to real people who comment and add to the discussion at hand. I enjoy thinking about differing viewpoints. Some of them make me re-think my own understanding of a topic and some actually change my mind.

I really dislike having to moderate my comments.

I hate dealing with all the spam, and it is getting increasingly difficult to discern whether it is a real person commenting, or a hired wordslinger, or a well-programmed robot.

Will the readership of this blog drop?

Will disabling CommentLuv and going back to the no-follow default for WordPress blogs make a difference in the number of people who respond to my diatribes?

I’m betting it will.

I’m betting that the number of readers and the number of commenters will drop. Perhaps it will drop precipitously.

How will the test affect profits from this blog?

I’m also betting that it won’t make a bit of difference to the profit I can track back to this blog. It has never earned nearly as much as my tier-structured websites.

Now that I am adding Facebook comments to those sites, I’ll see if comments are as important as I once thought they were.

Blog or build websites?

Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell, Inc., has been saying for years that building well-structured, niche-oriented websites will produce more profits than blogging, and I have been having an internal argument with myself about that topic since he first wrote about it.

I like blogging. It’s easy. It’s inexpensive. It’s fun.

However, for me, it does not produce profits.

Blogs are, however, good for when I want to express my opinions about something that has just happened or a new development, whether or not it qualifies as news. That’s what blogs excel at doing. Their reverse-chronological structure is ideal for late-breaking news and/or developments, so I’ll most likely continue to use this blog for that purpose — regardless of the outcome of this test.

I get an idea, do some quick research, and write a new post to the blog. Depending upon the topic and how much I want to say about it, this can take from a few minutes to two or three hours of work.

It’s different when building a money-making website.

I plan those sites carefully. (Sometimes it doesn’t look like it, however.)

I do weeks or months of keyword research. Then, I research my competitors for the keywords I intend to write about. Then, I research ways I can monetize the pages I write.

I’ve been planning for several months on how I’m going to revamp my Act On Your Dream! site, and it will take me a few more weeks to finish the plans and start writing the pages. I know going into this project that it will be profitable. Perhaps quite profitable.

I know how the site will be structured, how the various topics fit with the central theme, and how I will monetize each page, before I write it.

I have brainstormed and organized sections and topics for the site (using NovaMind mind mapping software) and I’ve almost completed building a site blueprint that I’ll finish before rebuilding the site.

I have prepared reader profiles and will write each page to appeal to that particular person. (As well as I can.)

Each page will have one most wanted response (MWR) and I’ll offer two or three secondary actions that I’ll encourage. For most pages, the most wanted response is for someone to click a link and go buy what I’m recommending. Failing that, I want the reader to subscribe to my newsletter (which I’ll resume writing). Finally, if they don’t do either of those, I hope they’ll click on an Adsense ad or look at another page on the site.

The pages will be simple so that readers aren’t confused by a plethora a links as they are on this blog. People said I needed a three-column blog theme with links to lots of things and RSS feeds from my other sites, so I tested it. It has not increased my profits.

I will be changing Act On Your Dream! to a three column format, but it will not look like this blog. I’ll test the three columns. If it increases my income, I’ll continue to use it. If it does not increase my profits, I’ll go back to a simple two column format.

Readers tend to look at more pages and stay on that type of site longer than they do on a blog. Bounce rates are lower, time on page is higher, the number of pages viewed per visit is higher, and profits are higher — all without commenting.

I like the social aspects of commenting.

This was especially true over the last three years when I was sick and mostly unable to work. The online discussions got me through some days when I felt horrible, had no energy, or was in quite a lot of pain.

Now that I’m better, it’s time to get back to work and earn my keep, again. It’s time to do my best and move off of disability and food stamps and back to being a productive tax-paying member of society.

I am grateful for the assistance I got when I was unable to care for myself, but it’s time to move forward.

I just don’t think that blogs will do that for me. I’ve tested them for years and that’s the conclusion I have come to, reluctantly.

Please sir, can we have a blog module on SBI?

I even asked Ken Evoy on the private members-only forum for SBI subscribers, if he would ever add a blogging-with-comments module to SBI, and he said that would not happen. Blogging just doesn’t fit into the structure of an SBI-style tier-structured website.

So, I tried for months to think of a way to trick the system, and never found one that would work. I was pretty hard-headed and stubborn about this.

SBI gets Face-It!

So, now, I can have my cake and eat it, too, and it isn’t nearly the treat I expected.

SBI now has a module that helps us promote our pages on social networking sites. Click a button and it’s active. It’s called Socialize-It! (Note that all the modules end with an exclamation point and that sometimes makes for awkward sentences.)

Actually, Socialize-It! has been around for awhile, but it’s changing and merging with Face-It!

Sitesell recently introduced Face-It! version 1, which makes it easy for us to add Facebook Like buttons to our pages, and we can optionally add Facebook comments to the pages, too.

I thought that would be great. Less spam, because someone has to be a Facebook member to comment and there is less anonymity, as well, and now people could discuss the topics I wrote about.

Each page can have lots of comments, and that will percolate through the Facebook system and bring more readers. The jury is still out on this, but I don’t expect it to bring a deluge of new readers. I’m open to the possibility.

You know what?

Now that I have comments on my SBI sites, it’s really a let-down. I’m disappointed. It seems to me that comments are highly overrated and just add work. I don’t see any change in income and there have been only a few comments, so far.

I think the main reason for this is that the readers of my tier-structured websites are not commenting because they are not bloggers who mainly want backlinks to their blogs.

So, now, we’ll see what happens when I de-emphasize comments on this blog.

By de-emphasizing comments on the blog and offering comments on the website, will there really be any change in profits and my workload?

Has Ken been right all along?

Have I wasted years of efforts in building blogs, forums, and communities? Would all that effort have been better directed to building more and better niche-oriented websites using SBI.

I’ve almost come to the conclusion that he was right, all along. At least, for me and the things in which I’m interested.

I freely admit that Ken Evoy is a much better businessman than I am. He is a millionaire several times over (before founding Sitesell and creating SBI) and he builds real businesses that employ people around the world. SBI has tens of thousands of customers, also around the world.

Not only does he have more experience, but I believe he has a better, more refined thought process about building a business.

I’ve been happy — and remain happy — with my little microbusiness that makes it possible for me to work at home in my home office, or out on the front porch, in these beautiful mountains of western North Carolina. I’m living where I want to live, doing what I want to do, and I’m not interested in building a multi-million dollar business.

I would enjoy, however, earning more than I have the last couple of years!

So, what will I do after the test is over?

That remains to be seen.

I’m going to let this test run until the end of the year.

Disabling the CommentLuv plug-in may have doomed this blog, already. If that proves to be true, then I’ll repurpose most of the content that I’ve written here and move what is appropriate to my income-producing websites.

I am already starting to plan for a website that will replace this blog, if it becomes necessary. Yes, it will be powered by SBI. Yes, it will take more work. Yes, I’ll happily pay another $300 per year to build and host it using the SBI system.

What do you think?

I welcome your opinions, thoughts, and observations.

Act on your dream!

JD

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.

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

A business mindset and other lessons

In his post, he refers to an email he received from one of his customers, Louann (owner of wedding-flowers-and-reception-ideas.com), who was thanking him for what he, the team at Sitesell, and SBI had done to impact her life in a very positive way.

Then he offers eight lessons and an insight into his philosophy. I found her letter and his lessons to be touching and valuable.

I am delighted when I read that someone is having real success with their online business, and Louann has worked hard for several years on a site based on her passion about weddings, receptions, and flowers. Now, she is reaping the rewards for all that hard work.

Her site is about a subject that she loves and understands. She has developed real knowledge of her subject and presents it well. If you are interested in wedding flowers and receptions, you’ll find a wealth of knowledge on her site and links to lots of products you can purchase for your wedding.

What she is not doing…

She’s not trying to tell you how to blog, or make money online, or do any of the other things that most people associate with an online business. She’s not telling you that it is important to promote your business on MerchantCircle, LinkedIn, Yelp, FourSquare, or other similar sites.

Notice the lack of hype. No long form sales letters.

She did not invent a whole new thing. She did not write a book and then look for readers.

She doesn’t market on Facebook or Twitter. She doesn’t have a membership section on her site. She doesn’t have a mailing list or a newsletter.

What she is doing…

What does she have? A large, well-organized site that provides what her readers are looking for.

She uses a very simple design. Two columns. No widgets. No fancy javascript menus. Just a simple, easy to navigate, tier-structured website.

Then, she presents information for free and gets paid for advertising and commissions on sales.

She is providing information for people who are interested in wedding flowers and receptions and she is actively selling them the products they want to make their own wedding dreams come true.

She has identified a niche for which she has passion, interest and knowledge.

She has built a site dedicated to providing what people are looking for in that niche.

People find her site in the search engines and buy the products she provides.

Everyone is happy.

That’s a great example of niche marketing that is completely unrelated to the “make money online” niche.

She provides information that people are looking for. Have you ever wanted to know how to fold napkins into fancy designs for your reception? I haven’t. But some people really, really want to know how to do that. They can learn it on her site.

There are a number of designs available and they link to individual pages that show step-by-step directions and videos.

How much does it cost to get the information?

Nothing. It’s provided for free.

Each of those pages is designed around a particular keyword phrase that people are already looking for. She used the tools in SBI to research those keywords and then designed and wrote pages to put her information in front of people who were already looking for it on the search engines.

When her visitors were happy with the information she provided for free, they were more inclined to trust her and to buy the products she sells: wedding gifts, floral arrangements, photo gifts, and other products related to weddings and receptions.

Years of hard work is rewarded…

I think she has done a great job.

I’ve read many posts on the members-only Sitesell forums where she has discussed building her site with other people who use SBI. (We refer to ourselves as SBIers.)

She has helped others along the way, too, by providing great advice to help us build our sites and attract new visitors. And, eventually, to make sales and profits.

I hope you’ll go read Ken’s post and follow the link to read the email she sent him.

A business or a website…

Back in January, I addressed part of the difference between making money online and building an online business:

Make money online vs. Build a business online

Louann provides a great example that shows the difference between making money online and building an online business.

Well done, Louann! Congratulations on your success.

Act on your dream!

JD

This is the last post to this blog and I will be shutting it down in the next few days or weeks, as I have the time and energy. I’m closing my marketing business and I’m out of affiliate marketing.

It’s amazing how much of a difference two months can make in one’s life.

Two months ago, I went to the emergency room because I could not get out of bed. After 7 units of blood, I felt a bit stronger, but that lead to the discovery of colon cancer, which was followed shortly after with intestinal surgery, gall bladder removal, and today I learned that I need surgery for cancer in my liver and a biopsy for possible cancer in one of my thyroid glands.

For the foreseeable future, I’ll be putting my energy into kicking these cancers’ butts. I don’t intend to let them beat me, but you never know.

I don’t know for sure what will happen to this domain name. If you’re a regular reader and contributor to this blog, I’m willing to listen to your ideas.

It’s been a wild ride for the last several years, and I’m sad to see the ride coming to an end.

I plan to continue posting (now and then) to JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com and to my Facebook account at facebook.com/johndilbeck .

Thanks for reading, contributing, and making affiliate marketing just a bit more interesting as we shared ideas and thoughts about the subject.

Continued success to you.

All the best,

JD

I bitched and moaned about it for several months and I’m not going to do any of that now.

Last month, I turned the corner and feel like I’ve finished a dark chapter in my life’s story and now I’ve opened a new, brighter chapter filled with hope, opportunity, and challenges I’m looking forward to meeting.

You know the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog and found a very short post that linked to the movie Lemonade.

I took a half-hour and watched that movie and it was inspirational. I want to share it with you, if you haven’t seen it.

Here are several people who were fired or laid off and took the opportunity to do something they really loved, instead of just working to earn a paycheck.

The last year or so has been rough for a lot of people. Maybe you.

Have you considered that maybe this is your opportunity to do something you love?

Act on your dream!

JD

I wrote about it on my Act On Your Dream! site:

I survived 2009 and I think that was a success!

(If you have any interest in doing so, you’re welcome to comment on that page. Although you can’t use HTML in your comments, if I recognize you as a regular commenter here on this blog, I’ll be happy to make an active link back to you in your comment. Just post the full URL you want me to link to and I’ll take care of it. Of course, it has to be a link to one of your sites, not an affiliate link or anything inappropriate.)

So, as I said, I’m done with whining and I’m done with 2009. I still have a few more days to generate a little more income before the year is over and then I’m turning all my attention towards the future.

I expect 2010 to be a much better year.

I’m doing things differently next year.

For the last few years, I’ve tested a lot of things and most of them didn’t work at all, or had limited success. I don’t know if all of that was wasted time and effort, or if it was just a necessary part of testing the options and learning what works best for me.

Since I depend upon the revenue I earn from my online marketing, that’s what I use to evaluate if something has been valuable and successful for me. However, even the things that did not produce any appreciable income had other aspects that were very successful.

For instance, I’ve met lots of great people that I may never have met otherwise and I value that.

But that doesn’t pay the bills!

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time blogging and I’ve learned a lot. Even though it has not been successful as a way of generating income, I believe it has been a valuable learning experience and it has helped me spread my brand to a much wider audience.

I’ll be doing much less blogging in 2010, but I’m not going to abandon it entirely.

I built a number of portals over the last few years using Mamba and PHP-Nuke. Every single one of them was hacked and I finally got tired of rebuilding them. All of them are closed.

The only thing I learned from that experience is that it was wasted effort and there are serious security holes in open source scripts. I won’t be going that route again.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with forums (fora?) over the years.

I’ve met lots of great people and I would be worse off if I had not participated in them.

I have had better results from participating in forums than I have in building my own. That’s a lesson I’ll remember.

I have two forums that are still open at AYearFromNowForum.com and WesternNorthCarolinaForum.com, but I’ll be shutting them down in January, after I’ve had the time to find any content that can be repurposed on my static sites. Then, they’ll be gone forever.

Social networking has been a lot of work, but it has been satisfying in several respects. Although I can’t attribute any specific revenue to social networking, I do believe it has contributed by widening my readership to people who may not have found me otherwise.

It’s also been a great way to interact with lots of different people. That’s very important to me, because I live alone and work at home. There are times when I go several days without seeing another person in real life, and the interaction on the social networks has been very important to me.

I’ll be narrowing my social networking to just a few sites and don’t feel the need to be on nearly as many as I’ve tried over the last few years.

Things have changed and my focus in social networking has changed, too.

For example, I used to be very active on Ryze.com, but I hardly ever go there anymore. They fell behind the times when they didn’t implement RSS and they missed the boat when they required their community leaders to be upgraded members.

I was enjoying MySpace.com for awhile, but they jumped the shark when they started redirecting external links from our profiles to their own home page. As soon as they did that, I jumped ship.

I’m still enjoying Facebook.com, but I don’t spend a lot of time there. One of the most annoying things about Facebook, for me, is the plethora of applications and the ease with which my “friends” can spam me with them. I don’t know how many of those applications I’ve blocked, but I still block several more every time I go there.

My two favorite social networking sites are communities I’ve built on the Ning.com platform. I created and manage Squidoo Marketing and Murphy Connections, and I intend to do much more with each of them in the coming year.

I’m not earning any money (well, not much money) from either of them, but now that I have sponsors for each community at least they’re not expenses out of my own pocket. I’ll be working hard to make sure the sponsors get their money’s worth, too.

I have mixed feelings about Squidoo.com and HubPages.com. I’ve earned some money from Squidoo every month for the last several years, but that income continues to decrease. If the lenses I have there weren’t already built and attracting some readership, I probably would not make the effort to build them, now.

On the other hand, sometimes building a lens at Squidoo.com about one of my other sites is a good way to get the free traffic started both through referrals from the lens as well as free traffic from the search engines.

When I started Murphy Gold this year, I built several lenses for the site and for my first several clients. By syndicating the RSS feed from Murphy Gold through the Squidoo lenses, it attracted more visitors initially and continues to bring new people to the site.

However, now I’m getting many more visitors from Google, Yahoo, and Bing than from Squidoo, so it isn’t as important to me now as it was initially.

I have never really understood article marketing and I don’t think I have given it a fair trial, yet. To learn more about it, I opened and managed 21st Century Articles for over a year. I put a lot of work into that site and met a few good authors, but most of what was contributed was drivel and I deleted at least 95% of all the contributions.

It was built using a popular article directory script and was hacked several times. Eventually, it was no longer worth recovering the site and continuing.

I learned that there are some good authors writing quality content, but they are in the minority. I also learned that it takes a lot of time to manage an article directory, if you’re interested in quality. Since I moderated every submission, I believe I had a high-quality directory, but it would never have been a top-tier article directory, so closing it down was not a hard decision, in the end. Also, even with thousands of pages of content — all with Adsense ads on them — it generated only a few dollars a month and that certainly was not enough to pay me for my time and effort.

So, what have I learned about online marketing over these last few years?

I’ve learned that you can invest a lot of time and effort into something that never produces the results you want. It is very easy to do.

I’ve learned that every time you try something new, it takes you away from other things that are working for you, so you need to be careful and keep your focus. I believe that it’s always good to learn something new, but not to the point where it impacts your business negatively.

So, I’m happy that I learned how to use lots of different scripts for building portals, my article directory, and blogs, but I’m not happy that they did not produce any significant revenue.

What has worked for me?

Now, I know that what works for me, may not work for you, and vice versa. So, just as successful bloggers recommend blogging, I’m going to recommend building static niche-oriented websites.

I have a couple of large websites that I built over the last few years, and even though they are pretty much running on automatic now, with just the occasional addition or modification, they consistently produce revenue from several sources. Over time, their popularity rises and falls, but they are getting more readers and page views now than they were when I was actively building them.

The problem with them is that they don’t provide a way of getting easy feedback from their readers or to engage in any online conversations. I’ve tried using blogs and forums for each of these sites, but that really didn’t produce the results I wanted.

So, now, they just sit there and serve pages to people who are interested in the subjects, with very little input from me.

Most of my effort in 2010 will be building my two static sites that are powered by Site Build It!

Now, up until this year, it was appropriate to consider them static sites, but that has changed with the introduction of SBI version 2.

With the introduction of Content 2.0 as a standard part of SBI sites, now we can take advantage of some of the web 2.0 features that allow interaction with the readers without having to deal with all the insecurities of open source software.

So, I’ve been working hard over the last couple of weeks to update and revise my Act On Your Dream! site and to get it ready for lots more work in 2010.

I’ve added several pages that invite readers to submit their stories or articles and once they are accepted and published on the site, we can comment and/or rank them.

In some ways, this is similar to blogging, because we can carry on conversations in the comments. It is different from blogging, because it doesn’t just make it easy for the webmaster to add content, it also invites the readers to add content.

Yes, it’s similar to blogging, but different. Only time and experience will tell if it is better or worse, for me, than blogging has been.

Many people consider all the plug-ins that are available for WordPress to be one of its primary benefits. I’ve come to consider them to be drawbacks that waste my time at least as much as they help me.

With SBI version 2, there are no plug-ins. I don’t have to do anything to deal with security updates, plug-in updates, or anything else. I just use it and let the propeller-heads at Sitesell manage all the technical stuff for me. I like that. It allows me to concentrate on producing more content and not on just keeping the sites running.

From a blogger’s point of view, especially those who believe that commenters and do-follow links are important, there may be some drawbacks.

For example, this blog, and many others, use the CommentLuv plug-in which makes it easy to link back to a commenter’s blog via their RSS feed. That’s a nice feature, but I’m not personally convinced that it is valuable economically.

Contrary to what some bloggers believe, I have not seen any correlation between the number of comments on a blog and the income it generates, but I’m not even nearly an A-list blogger, so what do I know?

Yes, leaving comments on others’ blogs brings more readers to my own blog, but I believe that most of those readers, especially the ones who leave comments, are primarily motivated to bring other readers to their sites. This isn’t a particularly bad thing to do, but I do believe that it is unproductive in terms of generating revenue, if that is your primary motivation.

Having said that, I value a number of people who read this blog and some of my others and regularly comment on what I have to say, no matter how bone-headed I might be now and then.

I enjoy the conversations and I’m happy to link back to their blog posts. I don’t see anything wrong with it.

But, it doesn’t help me pay the bills, and until I get that firmly under control, that’s going to be my primary motivation.

It is my belief, in most instances, that bloggers are sellers, not buyers. We’re interested in promoting products and making sales through affiliate links. Or, we’re interested in selling advertising to generate revenue. Perhaps we have sponsors who cover the costs. For most of us, we want to either supplement our income or generate all of it from our online marketing.

So, increased readership from other bloggers may be satisfying on several levels, but I have no statistics that show that it adds to my bottom line. Some bloggers are generating six and seven figures a year in income, but they are rare, and they don’t include me.

So, as I’ve said previously, I’m going back to what has worked for me for about a decade.

In 2009, my income, such as it was, was generated primarily from three sites. Two of them produced affiliate income and Adsense ads revenue, primarily. One of them generated direct advertising revenue from paid clients. The latter one produced several times the revenue the two others did.

But, all three of them consistently bring in money and are easy to maintain and expand, so I’m going to focus on them primarily in the first six months of 2010.

To put other things in perspective, any one of those three sites brought in more revenue than all my other websites, blogs, forums, and social networks — combined!

But, I don’t think they would do as well in total isolation. So, I believe that blogging and social networking has brought more readers to those sites and helped them. The syndication of their RSS feeds on a variety of sites brings in readers, because I can see the referral numbers in my statistics.

So, I’ll continue to maintain quite a few sites that will not be my primary focus, but which add to the funnel that brings readers to the sites that I will be focusing on. Fortunately, most of the work in building that infrastructure is completed and just needs a little maintenance work now and then.

Even though I totally lost focus on my Act On Your Dream! site over the last three years, now that I’ve almost completed rebuilding the site, updating all the pages, and adding some pages that hopefully will lead to more interaction with the readers, I’m once-again looking forward to helping others identify their dream(s), setting goals, and working to achieve them. I enjoy helping others get what they want. I may not be able to do a lot to help, but I’m happy to do what I can.

Perhaps you would like to be a part of that process.

To get started, I have a couple of pages that I’d like to invite you to visit. Each of them has a form where you can contribute a story or article, and all submissions are moderated. Even though the form says otherwise (which is something I can’t change, yet), you must use your name and location when submitting something, or I won’t accept it.

To put it bluntly, submissions from anonymous people or from anyone who uses keywords as their name will be summarily rejected and trashed.

On the other hand, quality submissions from real people are welcome and I look forward to publishing them on the site and maybe in my ezine.

You are invited to visit and submit your entries to the following list of pages. They are new and may not have any, or many, submissions yet, so you can be a trend-setter!

Reader submitted entries are listed below the forms, so even if you don’t want to submit anything, you can scroll down below the form and see what has been published already.

Your comments and ratings on the items are welcome, but please use your real name. As with the submissions themselves, I don’t accept anonymous comments.

Do you have a dream? (I’m talking about something you aspire to achieve or acquire, not a sleeping dream.) You’re invited to share it with us at Your Dream.

Do you have a success story you’d like to share? Successes come in all sizes, so it doesn’t have to be a blockbuster, runaway success to be valuable to our readers. Share Your Success Story.

How do you Define Success?

Do you have an original article that you’ve written about success, failure, time management, goal setting, making your dream come true, the law of attraction, or similar topics? If you do, you’re invited to Submit Your Article.

(I turned off article submissions in early November, because I was being bombarded by off-topic, spammy submissions every day. Now, I’m trying a different approach and look forward to publishing your quality original articles on topics related to the Act On Your Dream! site.)

I’ll be adding more pages to the site and asking for your participation. In the next couple of days, I’ll add a new page that lists all these pages where you are invited to submit your thoughts, opinions, stories, and articles. I’m not sure what I’ll call it, however. I’m leaning towards “Your Thoughts,” but I’d welcome any suggestions for a better title.

So, those are my plans for the first half of 2010 and I’m looking forward to working on them.

What about you?

What are you going to be focusing on in 2010?

Act on your dream!

JD

BTW, while I’m thinking about it, the SBI version 2 two-for-one holiday special has been extended until Monday, January 4, 2010. This will be your last chance until next Christmas to get two SBI subscriptions for the price of one.

Of course, you don’t have to buy two, even if the second one is free, if you don’t want to. The choice is yours.

As long as we’re thinking about our futures, I think SBI, and all it includes, is an excellent investment, and, yes, I get a commission if you buy from my link. More importantly, however, I know from experience that my investments in SBI have produced very good returns. It’s not magic, but it is a time-tested process and set of tools that has produced great results for a lot of others, too.

As with all things of any value, it takes work, effort, time, and money to succeed. If you want overnight success without working for it, don’t bother trying anything. It won’t work for you. Go play another video game or watch some more TV.

On the other hand, if you’re willing to devote some time to building your online business, and you’re willing to follow a guide that has helped thousands succeed, then maybe SBI is right for you. If you try it and don’t like it, you can get a full refund in the first 30 days and a prorated refund after that, so there’s very little risk in trying SBI to see for yourself what you think of it.

The more I read, the more I realized that I’m not doing as badly as I have been feeling.

After all, I earned a living from this for quite a few years, and, even if my income has dropped quite a bit over the last year, I’m still earning more than many people are.

Now, I know that sounds selfish and I hope each of you has greater success with your affiliate marketing efforts in 2010 than you’ve had in 2009.

What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been reading about many people who are working hard to earn something and still haven’t made any money at all. I can remember how frustrating that is. When you’re doing everything you know how to do and it isn’t producing any results, it can be a very difficult and disheartening experience.

I remember how happy I was to get that first commission check from Amazon.com quite a few years ago. Over the years, I’ve received checks from a number of companies and I still get a thrill when I endorse and deposit them.

Although they aren’t coming nearly as frequently as they used to, a few are still arriving and I’m thankful for each of them.

I’m wondering now if I’ve lost my way with affiliate marketing. At one time, I worked hard to send people to Amazon.com and looked forward to commissions from them. It was fun finding products and telling my readers about them.

Those were products that real people were interested in.

When I say “real people,” I’m talking about folks who aren’t interested in affiliate marketing. They were people who saw a link to something that interested them and they purchased it. Sometimes they purchased several things totally unrelated to what I was writing about and I earned a commission on each of those sales.

Now that Amazon.com dropped me after NC passed the new tax law this summer, I’m wondering if there is another company that would be a good substitute. I still love recommending books and some other consumer products, but don’t know of a good company with which I can work.

Do you have any suggestions?

As those of us in the United States get closer to our annual Thanksgiving Day holiday, I’ve been looking at things from a different perspective.

I think I’m over being stressed out about all the things that have gone wrong in the last year or so and I’m starting to focus more on what can go right over the coming year. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to hang on this year and now I’m setting my sites once again on prosperity instead of mere survival.

A year from now, I expect to be in much better financial shape than I am today, and to get there I’m going to have to create a new plan and work hard to achieve it.

One of the things I’ve identified is that this blog is not an income producer. Lots of people read it, but few purchase anything. Most of my sales come from sites that have absolutely nothing to do with making money online.

Years ago, I was advised by someone who knows a lot about online marketing and he said then, and it is even more true now, that the world doesn’t need any more websites and blogs about making money online, especially when the people building those sites are not very successful themselves.

I’ve talked about being interested in too many things for my own good, and not being specifically interested in a few things I could build a site around.

My brother, before he became disabled, loved drag racing. It was a life-long love and a few years ago I started building Georgia Drag Racing for him. He was working to write a book about the golden years of drag racing in the Atlanta area and was making great progress before he got to the point where it hurt too much to sit at a computer for very long.

So, that site has seen its best days and will be declining over time as less content is created. Still, surprisingly, it remains one of my best-earning websites, even though it has many links to Amazon.com that aren’t earning me anything and which I haven’t had the time or energy to remove.

It’s not at all about earning money online and I think that’s the key to its success. It attracts people who enjoy drag racing and they’re willing to spend money on their hobby.

I’ve watched as others have done the same thing. I know of people who have built successful, money-earning websites based on such diverse topics as dealing with insurance problems, telling Halloween and ghost stories, juggling, repairing computers, kitchen counter tops, organic gardening, hydroponic gardening, modeling advice, and dozens of other niche subjects that interested them and which they built into sites that produce a substantial annual income.

I have been trying to find a niche for myself in which I could do the same thing, but so far I haven’t found it.

At least, now, I know all the things I will need to do to build and publicize such a site if I can ever identify a topic that I can love and be willing to write about every day.

I’ve come close to such a niche, but it is not really what I’m talking about.

I love living in the mountains of Murphy, NC and I love the people, scenery, and pace of life here. I’ve been promoting the area and a few businesses off and on over the years and this year I’ve been concentrating on building Murphy Connections, a social networking site, and Murphy Gold, a site for promoting a few locally-owned, small businesses that are located in the Murphy NC 28906 ZIP code.

I’m starting to have some success with those sites and look forward to spending a lot of time working on, and improving, them over the coming months.

Another site that I enjoy, but whose earnings have dropped dramatically since I removed all the Amazon links is my Act On Your Dream! site.

Basically, I lost focus on that site, but I’ve been brainstorming a lot of ideas and now have a plan for updating that site on a regular basis. Now that Sitesell has made Content 2.0 free for all SBI sites, I’ll be adding more interactive features to it over time. In fact, I think that I’ll be blogging less as a result.

In fact, I’m going to be taking some of what I’ve written in my blogs and repurposing it on that site to see how it works.

Even though I’ve just gone through the worst 12 months of my life, I still believe that we can achieve what we want if we identify our goals, make good plans to accomplish them, and then put in the required work to make it happen. In as little as a year from now, we can make big changes in our lives.

I’m going to be acting on that belief.

What about you?

What do you think?

Is affiliate marketing working well for you?

Have you identified niches that are good income earners?

What company do you recommend as a substitute for Amazon.com?

I welcome your comments and look forward to discussing them.

Act on your dream!

JD

As much as I love writing, it’s almost impossible for me to string two sentences together when I’m running a fever and feeling terrible. So, a whole month of fall allergies combined with some gut bug I can’t seem to kick have kept me off the computer for most of the month.

There is an upside to this, however.

Since I no longer get TV since the switchover from analog to digital, I don’t waste a lot of time watching TV.

I am a happy NetFlix member, however, so I’ve been rewatching the entire StarGate SG-1 series and the StarTrek Next Generation series. The beauty of this is that I can pick the time I want to watch, instead of being forced to watch on someone else’s schedule.

So, when I was feeling bad and could manage to stay awake for awhile, I’ve been watching a couple of my favorite science fiction series.

When I was feeling good enough to concentrate on something more serious, I’ve been re-reading three books that have made an incredible difference in my life over the years.

So, since I really don’t know where I’m going with my affiliate marketing business right now, I decided it was time to get back to the basics and rethink my goals and strategies to achieve them.

I’m not giving up on affiliate marketing. I enjoy getting paid to recommend quality products to people and I’ve earned thousands of dollars over the years as a result.

Even though I’m going through a slump, I won’t let it continue indefinitely.

So, what am I reading, and why?

Napoleon Hill

When I was a teenager, a friend at church gave me his personal copy of Think and Grow Rich. He was employed at IBM and knew that I was interested in computers. This was way back in the 1960s. He told me that what he learned in this book was one of the major reasons he was enjoying his career at IBM.

The book was full of underlines and margin notes. He had questions about certain paragraphs and notes about how important some of the main points were in his success and for others he knew who worked through this book.

Now, since I am a good affiliate marketer, here’s a link to MindPerk, where you can purchase several items authored by Napoleon Hill, including Think and Grow Rich.

I am happy, also, to link to a page on my Act On Your Dream! website that offers some quality quotations from Napoleon Hill and his best-selling books.

It’s easy enough to find. You can borrow it at just about any bookstore. I’m pretty sure there are free versions available online.

Or be nice to a struggling business in your town. Go to your local bookseller and buy a copy. If they don’t have it, they can order it for you.

When my friend gave me his copy of the book, he said there were two conditions. I had to actually read the book, work through the exercises, and apply what I learned to my own life. And, when I met someone at a crossroads in their life, that I would give them my own copy of the book, with the same conditions.

Over the decades, I’ve given away several dozen copies of that book and I’ll continue to do it as long as I’m able.

As much as I love what’s in Think and Grow Rich, however, I’m currently re-reading Napoleon Hill’s much larger book, Law of Success.

Earlier today, I was reminded of the self-assessment test in Think and Grow Rich, and it sparked an idea I’m going to put into action on my John Dilbeck And Friends blog.

There are fifty-four questions in that test, and I’m going to be giving my answers and thoughts on one or two of them as close to daily as I can manage. I may miss a day here or there, but I’m going to follow through until I reach the end of the test.

I’ve started the series of posts on John Dilbeck and Friends with:

Think and Grow Rich self-assessment test

I could do this just as well in private, but I’m going to answer the questions publicly. I may reveal more than I want about myself in a few of them, but that’s okay.

Even more importantly than giving my answers, I hope the series of posts will spark some intelligent discussions and maybe lots of people will benefit, instead of just me. We’ll see how it goes.

I plan to answer the first question or two this evening.

There are many, many good pieces of advice in Think and Grow Rich and Law of Success and I’ll be blogging about them, too. Even though some may be related to affiliate marketing, I think they’re better suited for my John Dilbeck and Friends blog than they are for here.

One reason I’m mentioning it here, though, is that Law of Success has been called a master course in salesmanship and I think there is a lot of truth in that.

So, who else am I re-reading?

Ken Evoy

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I am a huge fan of Ken’s Site Build It! service.

Currently, I’m using SBI to manage a couple of my static websites and I’m getting good results from both of them.

A Year From Now is a site where I talk about setting goals, and then acting on achieving your dream.

I haven’t done as much with that site over the last couple of years as I would like, but I’ll be adding more to it in the coming months.

One of the things I’ve discovered about myself while reading Law of Success is that my Definite Chief Aim is no longer what I thought it was a few years ago, and I’m going to be revising that.

I truly believe, if you are honest with yourself, assess your skills and limitations accurately, set goals you really believe in and want to achieve, plan how to approach all of it, and then act on your dream, that you can be substantially more successful a year from now.

So, I’m going to do that and apply it to my major websites and blogs, in the process.

My other SBI-powered site is MurphyGold.com and it is all about promoting some of the best small business owners in Murphy, NC and the goods and services they provide to our friends and neighbors in our small mountain community.

Even though the site is barely more than two months old, it’s already doing well and I have several more business owners I’ll be adding to the site in the next few days.

I liked the product so much I bought the company

I’m sure you’ve seen that commercial. It made a big impact on me the first time I saw it.

Victor Kiam was the man who coined the slogan, “I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company.” The company was Remington Products, a maker of razors and similar appliances.

I like Site Build It! so much that I’d love to buy the company, but that hasn’t been possible. So, since I can’t buy the company, at least I can help recommend the service and earn a commission in the process.

So can you.

But, first, I want to talk about a couple of ebooks that Ken Evoy wrote a few years ago that changed my life almost as much as Think and Grow Rich did.

A few years ago, I quit working as a computer consultant and systems analyst and intended to take life easy as an artist blacksmith. I started smithing Steel Roses That Never Wilt and wanted to sell them to as wide an audience as possible.

I added a section about blacksmithing to JohnDilbeck.com, but was getting practically no responses.

I don’t remember exactly what year it was, but it was about ten years ago when I stumbled across an ebook called Make Your Site Sell!.

It was written by Dr. Ken Evoy and sold for $17.

I didn’t expect much for that much money, but I bought the ebook, downloaded it, and started studying it.

I rebuilt my website, following his advice, and before I knew it I was getting requests for more information about my Steel Roses from around the world and I was selling as many as I could make to people across the USA and Canada.

That little investment brought in thousands of dollars of revenue. The ebook didn’t do it, however. I did.

I had to study it, learn the principles involved, and put them to work for me. So, in a way, it was a partnership between myself and Dr. Evoy.

I learned a lot from that book and it changed my life for the better.

Later, in 2002, the book was revised and the price was raised a bit. I bought the new book and put into practice what I learned from it, too.

So, how much does it cost now?

Not a single penny.

In fact, you can download Make Your Site Sell! at no cost, and you don’t even have to give your email address to join a mailing list.

The book was recently revised and now it tells how Site Build It makes much of the old tedious handwork obsolete.

In fact, that’s how Site Build It came about: to help people put into practice what Dr. Evoy covered in the book.

No matter how you build your website, or even if you prefer a blog, you can learn something of value from Make Your Site Sell!

But, don’t expect to discover the secrets of making a gazillion dollars with no work.

This ebook weighs in at about 1,500 pages over several PDF files. If you want to learn what it offers, you’d better set aside some time and be prepared to spend some effort.

Otherwise, don’t bother. It won’t do you a bit of good sitting on your harddrive.

I didn’t buy the business, but I did become an affiliate

If you know anything about me, you may know that I had to close my blacksmithing business in 2002 when I became the full-time caretaker for my mother, following her cancer surgery.

I cared for her 24/7 for over six years and I was as much of a shut-in as she was the last two or three years.

I had to find a way to make a living while not being able to leave the house, and affiliate marketing became the vehicle to make this possible.

Again, it was an ebook written by Ken Evoy that made the difference in my life.

Many people, including me, think that the Sitesell 5 Pillar Affiliate Program is the best on the planet. I’m happy to be one of their affiliates and recommend them to you.

Over the years, I’ve received thousands of dollars in commissions and I’m still earning for residual sales of annual resubscriptions from happy SBI webmasters.

I was a happy Sitesell affiliate long before Site Build It became available and I’ve earned a lot from Dr. Evoy about affiliate marketing from his weekly newsletter for affiliates, his frequent postings in the Sitesell forums and from his ebook, the Affiliate Masters Course.

This free ebook, which was originally available as a multi-email course, offers valuable advice for anyone who wants to be a successful affiliate marketer.

I’m re-reading it as part of my efforts to get back to the basics and redefining my marketing company and the goals I want to achieve.

I’ve read over a dozen books and ebooks about affiliate marketing, some of which cost over $100, and, to me, this continues to be the very best.

I can’t say that will hold true for you, but it seems that Dr. Evoy and I think quite a bit alike, even though he is a far better business owner, team builder, and marketer than I ever expect to be.

I don’t try to model myself on him and what he does, but I do try to learn from him and adapt what I can to my own business.

Over the years, Dr. Evoy has never lead me astray. He offers solid advice for building a real business and shares what he has learned about websites, blogs, and selling.

How much are you willing to invest in your future?

You can get Think and Grow Rich from your library, and you can freely download Make Your Site Sell! and the Affiliate Masters Course.

You don’t have to invest a single dime in a quality education, great advice, and information about the necessary skills you’ll need to become successful with affiliate marketing and selling from your own websites.

But, even though you won’t have to invest any money, you will have to invest time and effort and a lot of study if you want to learn all that is offered in these books.

Nothing works for everyone

Now, no matter how much I have learned from these books and how much my life has been made better because of them, the same may not hold true for you.

Each of us has our own skills and limitations. Things that work well for me may not work for you, and vice versa.

But, I believe it is true to say that nothing will ever work for you if you don’t learn how to focus on your goals and the plans you have made to achieve them.

If you flit from one thing to another, you’ll never become successful.

It takes a commitment and lots of work to achieve what you want.

Even though I’m not a glowing advertisement for affiliate marketing right now, I’ve been successful with it for years, and I fully intend to reinvent myself and become successful, again.

Getting back to the basics, redefining my goals, making new plans, and getting back on track to achieve those goals is what I’m working on right now.

What do you think?

I’m always interested in hearing your opinions and experiences related to what I write about.

Are you an affiliate marketer? How are you doing?

Are you involved in sales in other areas? How is it working out for you?

Do you have any advice you’d care to offer on affiliate marketing in the 21st century?

When you have to get back to the basics, what books do you read that inspire you to dig deep, reinvent yourself, and start working again?

I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Act on your dream!

JD

Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest

This is another article that shows how easy it is to start a blog, but how hard it is to continue it over time. Things change. We lose interest. We become too busy with other things.

In many cases, we become disillusioned by the lack of success we had originally imagined.

Although the same can be true for a traditional website, the difference lies in the amount of traffic that continues when we are busy doing something else.

I have static websites that continue to bring in thousands of readers every month, even when I do nothing to them for extended periods.

The same just is not true for my blogs.

If I go any length of time without posting something new to a blog, regular readers notice and new readers may perceive it as just another abandoned blog.

I know I feel that way when I visit a blog that hasn’t been updated recently. Do you?

But, and I think this is important, I just don’t feel that way when I go to a traditional website. While on one of them, I’m looking for information, not necessarily the latest thing written.

As you know, I’ve been debating the issue of blogging or building traditional multi-tier websites for some time…

Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

I think both have promise and I can argue both in favor and against both of them.

It is much more difficult to design and build a multi-tier website that presents information in a way that is easy to navigate and update. I know, because I’ve been spending much of my time every day for the last few weeks designing a new website.

On the other hand, I can throw up a blog in a couple of hours. All I need is an inspiration, a topic, and a little free time. I know this, because I’ve started several dozen blogs, but now I’m maintaining only three of them on a semi-regular basis, and updating a few others sporadically.

When looking at the traffic stats for all my sites, I see a definite correlation between frequency of posting on a blog that just does not exist on my traditional websites. Just as in academia, with blogs you have to think publish or perish.

Easy to start – easy to abandon

The longer I do all of this, the more I realize that blogs are easy to start. There’s very little barrier to entry. Start one free on Blogger in ten minutes. Host one on your own domain using WordPress in a couple of hours (plus whatever time it takes the domain to propagate, if it’s newly registered). Cost, little to nothing.

On the other hand, when I start a new website, it’s not so easy to start. There’s planning time that nobody but me sees. I may spend months working on the design, researching keywords, researching the competition, deciding on how much information is needed to make the site viable, and designing a three- or four-tier site structure. All of this is done before I do anything else.

I may register the domain in advance, just to make sure it will be available when I want it, or I may decide upon the domain name after I know what’s going to be on the site.

How much does it cost to host one of these websites?

If I go with traditional hosting on a Linux server, my cost is nothing. I’m already paying that cost for my other sites and have both the bandwidth and storage available to host several more domains.

If I go with Site Build It!, the up-front cost will be $300 and that pays for the first year of hosting. More and more, I’m finding that I’m not interested in building a site that isn’t powered by SBI, but I’m going to leave that for another discussion.

Getting back to the main point…

With the new site I’ll be introducing in a few more weeks, I’ve already put months into getting ready for it. I paid $10 to reserve the domain name, and I’ll be paying another $300 to host it. That’s a pretty large barrier to entry from my point of view.

It’s also one thing that will keep me motivated to continue developing the site. After all that time, work, and money, I’m not going to stop working on it until it is profitable and I’m getting income on a regular basis from it.

With a new blog, I find that I’m more of the opinion of easy come, easy go. When I abandon a blog, it’s no great loss.

But, there really is a loss. I’ll lose the time I put into building it, and in the long run that’s more valuable than any money I may have invested or not. I can recover money or earn more. I can never get back the time I lost.

When I first started debating this with myself, I was clearly in favor of blogging with WordPress over building a multi-tier website. I just seemed to make more sense.

Now, however, as I spend more time doing both and look back on the results of what I’ve gotten from each, I’m leaning much farther away from blogging and towards a content-rich, structured website.

I almost hate to admit it, because I disagreed with him when he originally wrote it, but I am more and more coming to agree with Ken Evoy and what he wrote about this subject: Blog or Build?

Finally, I’m going to disagree with some of my good friends, including Mitch Mitchell and Aussie Sire. I respect their opinions and truly enjoy interacting with them on our blogs.

What do I disagree with?

I’m finding that the number of comments or the length of the discussion on a blog post has almost no correlation with income.

Yet, it takes time to monitor the comments and respond to them, so there is a cost involved without a commensurate income to offset the effort.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll discontinue comments or discussions here. I won’t. But, I’m realizing that I’m doing it more for the enjoyment, debate, and socializing, rather than for generating income.

I earn far more from my traditional sites, and after their original design and building, I spend much less time maintaining them.

The choice is becoming more clear all the time.

I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m just passing along what I’m learning on this topic.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

Now, on to the questions of the day…

If you look back on the last year – assuming you’ve been building your online business that long – have you been making progress or just chasing your tail?

You know what I mean.

We all love to watch a kitten or puppy chase its tail and run in circles until it falls over. It’s entertaining. It’s amusing. To us.

To the kitten or puppy, it’s frustrating.

If they don’t catch their tail, they get tired and quit. If they do catch it, they learn not to bite so hard the next time.

You’ve seen this and laughed. If not, do a search on YouTube. I’m sure you’ll find many hours of interesting pet videos that illustrate the point I’m making.

In fact, the very act of searching on YouTube and watching these videos is a good example of chasing your own tail. After spending minutes, or hours, doing this, what do you have to show for your time and effort? Not much.

The same principle applies to building your home business.

Are you making progress, or are you simply chasing your tail?

Are you running off, hither and yon, looking for the secret to Internet marketing success? How many websites have you visited? How many newsletters have you subscribed to? How many gurus have you followed? How many ebooks have you bought and downloaded? How many of those ebooks have you read? How many affiliate marketing programs have you joined? How many social networks have you joined? How often do you tweet on Twitter? How many friends are you trying to keep up with? How much email have you read?

Or, are you spending your time developing and promoting your marketing business?

If you’ve done your basic homework, you probably already know all you need to know to begin building your online business. There are no secrets. Much of what you need to know is available to you for free. For example, read Ken Evoy’s free ebooks, the Affiliate Masters Course or his best selling Make Your Site Sell!, which is now free to download.

But, if you don’t plan to study those books – or whatever guides you prefer – and put into action what you learn, what’s the point? If you don’t learn and act on what you learn, you’ll never build a business, no matter how busy you are.

Are you building your business or are you simply chasing your tail?

If you intend to earn a living from marketing, don’t you think it is time to learn how to build a marketing system that will work for you? A system that will help you focus on what works best and do more of it?

There are so many distractions and so many things are promoted as the best way to become successful with your online business, but most of them don’t work for most of us.

How do we stop chasing our tail and focus on what works best when we don’t yet know what works best for us?

It is especially frustrating when what works well for me may not work well for you, and vice versa.

Still, there have to be some basic marketing fundamentals that will apply to all of us, don’t you think?

Which is better? (A) Posting free classified ads on a dozen sites or (B) building your own focused marketing blog or website?

Which is better? (A) making 100 Squidoo lenses on assorted topics or (B) making 100 Squidoo lenses on different topics related to your marketing niche?

Which is better? (A) promoting a hundred different products and services or (B) promoting the top ten products for your particular niche?

Which is better? (A) talking about everything you think about or (B) focusing on your particular niche and branding yourself so others will think of you when that topic comes to mind?

Which is better? (A) promoting hither and yon hoping for one-time sales or (B) building a marketing funnel (or funnels) for your business and each of the products and services you recommend to your readers?

Which is better? (A) spending hours a day clicking on a traffic exchange or (B) spending a few days creating a new marketing funnel for a particular product, including writing a benefits-laden report about the product, creating an autoresponder series for it, writing a page about it on your website, blogging about it, creating a Squidoo lens about it, tweeting about it, and promoting everywhere that is appropriate, with the goal to get your readers to join your list and download the report you wrote.

I’m asking these questions just to get you to think about this. There are no right or wrong answers. Well, maybe some choices are more right than others, especially if you’re serious about building your online affiliate marketing business.

What do you want to accomplish at the end of the day, week, month, or next year? Do you want lots of visitors to your sites? Do you want good ratings on your lenses? Do you want lots of comments on your blog posts? Do you want lots of people to subscribe to your list(s) and download your report(s)? Do you want larger commission checks every month? What do you want to accomplish with the time, effort, and money you invest into your business?

Are you just chasing your own tail?

I’ve done a lot of that and I’m starting to realize how much time I’ve wasted, and time is much more valuable than money.

What do you want to earn as payment for the effort you put into your marketing efforts? Enough for a movie and dinner? Maybe make a car payment? Pay your rent or mortgage every month? Earn enough to quit your job? Build a business that enables you to thrive and not just survive? What is your time and effort worth?

I hope this post sparks a good conversation. What are we doing that gets us nowhere and how can we substitute better methods to build our businesses?

I know which way I’ll be going in 2009. Have you thought about what you are going to do?

What do you think will work best – for you – in 2009 as you work hard to define your niche, target your best customers, promote the best products and services they need, and increase your revenue?

I’m all ears.

Act on your dream!

JD