Building a serious business website that gets results

March 17, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 3 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Attracting Visitors, Sitesell and Site Build It, Web Services, Webhosting 

I have people asking me all the time how I get so many people to visit my websites every month, and I think most of them think I have some kind of magic trick up my sleeve. That’s not it at all.

The secret?

Hard work, lots of content that people want to read, pages optimized on particular keywords and phrases to help the search engines know what they are about, and continually updating the information as it ages and things change. That’s all it takes.

No tricks. No fancy SEO techniques. Just simple HTML pages (on my big static sites) that are each built around a particular topic that fits within the site’s main topic.

As you may know by now, if you read my blogs or sites regularly, I learned what I know about this (over a decade ago) by studying Ken Evoy’s Make Your Site Sell ebook and putting into practice what I learned.

In the interim, millions of people have visited my sites and many of those visitors have made purchases based on my recommendations for what I think were worthy products and services. That’s how I’ve earned my living for the last decade or so.

I have one website that attracts thousands of visitors per month and remains a profitable site, even though it hasn’t been updated in over a year. It remains my top-earning site for Adsense income and it is a basic HTML-only static site built on the principles I learned from Ken Evoy’s ebook way back in the 20th century.

Since then, I’ve built many websites, most of which failed, using a variety of content management systems (CMS) and blogging software.

There is a lure that’s hard to resist when it comes to blogging and using a CMS system. They are easy to install and start. You get a big rush from registering a domain name and putting up new information in a few hours or days.

The problem is that the rush you get from starting the site isn’t enough to keep up the enthusiasm for continuing to build the site, and there probably was not enough good planning and research put into the topic of the site to see if it was going to be profitable or not before starting it.

At least, that has been my experience.

I’m learning that the same thing can be true when hiring someone else to build a site for you.

I’ve talked to quite a few small business owners who have wasted thousands of dollars and years of their time because they hired someone to build their website who knew how to build it but had no clue about how to attract free traffic from the search engines.

A nice site with no visitors will never be successful. A large and growing number of visitors each month is the lifeblood of selling anything on the Internet.

So, what are you to do if you know nothing, or very little, about websites, but you need one that will help you generate income and not just be a constant money drain?

You could do what I did and spend ten or more years of your life reading and studying everything you could get your eyes on and building dozens of sites to test what you learned, or you could hire someone with the experience and tools to do the job right the first time — while you concentrate on running your business and satisfying your customers.

How much would you be willing to pay to have a website that attracts serious visitors — potential customers — every month for years to come?

As a serious business owner, you probably would not throw out a number at this point, because you’d want to know more. How many visitors? How much income? What are the initial costs? How much does it cost to maintain it? Who’s going to do the work? What are the monthly hosting fees? How much trouble will it be to modify the information on the site when things change?

There are a lot of things to consider and most of them have nothing to do with HTML, CSS, FTP, and all the other alphabet-soup of acronyms associated with the technical side of building a site.

(You might be surprised at the number of websites I’ve looked at in the last couple of years that did not immediately tell what the owner was offering and why you would be better off buying from him or her. People on the web have short attention spans and they are generally in skimming mode when they first visit a website. You only have a few seconds to state your case and give them a reason that will benefit them in order to get them to slow down and actually read what you have to say. Don’t waste your visitors’ time with non-essentials — give them a reason to consider buying from you so you’ll have time to persuade them. Of course, how you do this differs with the type of site you have — sales, informational, and so forth — and the type of business you run.)

One of the things I’ve learned about most of the small business owners I’ve talked to is that the most prosperous of them are not “do it yourselfers.” They don’t have the time, energy, or desire to take on more tasks and responsibilities, because they are already doing all they have time for just running their business.

Most of them depend on others who specialize in things they need.

If they want legal advice, they hire a lawyer, or have one on retainer — they don’t go to law school at night for several years just to learn how to write their own contracts or deal with litigation.

Most of them hire an accountant and/or bookkeeper to keep their business on track and help with financial issues and taxes — they don’t become a CPA just to do it themselves.

Most of the small business owners I know who have survived the recent economic downturn have learned the hard way that there are times when it just makes sense to hire someone with experience and expertise to get the job done quickly, efficiently, and right the first time.

Perhaps you’re one of those successful small business owners who knows how to prosper by running your own business, but who feels clueless when it comes to evaluating people who claim to be experts at building websites. After all, every town has people who claim to be able to build good business websites, and some of them really do know what they’re talking about.

Unfortunately, most of them don’t.

You don’t have the time and money to pay someone to learn what they’re doing at your expense.

How do you separate the experts from the want-to-be herd?

That’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it?

This can be especially difficult when you don’t have the experience to know whether what they tell you sounds reasonable, or not.

One way to separate the experts from the herd is that they tend to spend more time asking you questions about your business and the results you want from your website than they do telling you how good they are at building them.

Another way is to talk to someone who has already been vetted by others who do have the experience and expertise to know.

That’s why I’m personally recommending Sitesell Services to you.

Sitesell is the company that Ken Evoy founded and which has grown into a top-notch service over the years. The Services part of the business is for business owners like you who want to hire someone to build an effective business website that is custom-tailored to market your business around the clock.

The people at Sitesell hire only experts with demonstrated ability and experience, and they help you select the right person to build your site for you.

Here’s a short video about how they can help you…


Once one of these experts is working for you, they follow a time-tested system to build a custom site that will market your products and services to people who are looking for what you have to offer, and these are the hottest prospects.

Is Sitesell Services for everyone? Obviously, the answer is no.

Is it appropriate for every business? Again, no.

But, you’ll never know if it could be a good match for your business unless you learn more about it and contact them.

Of course, there is no obligation.

If you’re interested in hiring someone to help you build your business online, watch the video and see what they offer.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, you can download a free copy of Make Your Site Sell! and learn more about what I’m talking about, or you can learn about SBI version 2.0 and see if it offers the tools you want to build and host your own site. I use SBI to build and manage some of my sites and it is easily my tool of choice for any new business sites I may build.

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New marketing books added to my bookstore

August 24, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Books, Marketing 

As you may know, I’ve been an Amazon.com affiliate since shortly after they introduced the program way back in the 20th century.

One of the main ways I promote books and other products from Amazon these days is through my John Dilbeck’s Amazon Store.

Today, I added about a dozen books to the Blogging and Internet Marketing Books section of the store. You can see this section by clicking on the link under the Browse By Category menu in the right column of the store.

How do I select new books for the store?

I only add specific books to the store if…

  • I have read them and would recommend them highly, even if I weren’t paid to do it
  • The book has been recommended to me by someone I have come to trust and I plan to purchase it, read it, and put into action what it recommends
  • The majority of ratings for the book on Amazon are either 5 or 4 stars.

I spend quite a bit of time looking at new books, but the great majority of them will never make it into my bookstore. As I’ve said elsewhere, “if it’s not good enough for me, it’s not good enough for you.”

I try to put the best books on page one of my bookstore, but there is only enough room for nine books, so some really good books slide to page two and subsequent pages. I added several books to page one, today.

You’ll also find newly-added books on the last page of the main section.

My philosophy on buying business books is this…

If I can earn back at least twice what I paid for the book in additional revenues, then it was well worth the money and time reading it. If I can earn back twice the price I paid, then, with more work, I can earn back several or many times the cost of the book, by putting into practice what I learned from it and by adding it to my bookstore so you can buy it, too.

I looked at about 40 books today and added a little over a dozen new books to the store.

I’m looking forward to reading them as soon as I can make the time.

Come on in and browse

I hope you’ll consider the books I recommend in my bookstore.

Act on you dream!

JD

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What other webhosting company can show results like SiteSell can?

May 3, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Sitesell and Site Build It, Webhosting, Websites 

I was reading the members-only SiteSell forums and read Ken Evoy’s announcement of a revised results page showing hundreds of websites created with Site Build It!

Not only can SiteSell show hundreds of successful websites, they’re actually finding it more difficult to revise the page.

Why? Because there aren’t enough successful sites?

Hardly!

It’s because there are so many successful sites that they are finding it difficult to pick only the best for the results page.

A few years ago, when there were only about 60,000,000 active websites, an SBI webmaster could make the results page even if their site was only in the top 3% of all sites on the Internet.

Now, with the number of active websites somewhere between 100,000,000 and 160,000,000, you have to rank in the top 1% of all those sites to be listed on the Site Build It! results page.

What other webhosting company do you know of that shows hundreds of websites that rank in the Top 1% of all sites on the entire Internet? The really important thing is that the vast majority of those sites were created by normal, non-technical people who wanted to build a successful online business, and, in many cases, the sites they built are outperforming websites created by experts.

These are normal people, some of them probably a lot like you, who have followed the Site Build It! Action Guide and have built high-traffic websites in only a year or two that have risen to the top of the heap. Most of them knew little or nothing about building an online business before they subscribed to Site Build It.

If they can do it, why can’t you?

Seriously.

Act on your dream!

JD

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APsense – A Free Business Social Network

October 3, 2007 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Act On Your Dream!, Advertising, Business Networking, Communities, Forums, Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It 

I’ve been looking for a good social networking site that is specifically targeted at helping us promote our businesses and meet other business owners and entrepreneurs.

Of the dozen or more I joined, each has it’s good and bad points, but most of them don’t work the way I do and I’ve had a hard time finding one with the members I want to meet and interact with.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I took some time to really look into APsense and liked what I saw.

So, I’ve decided that the majority of my business-related social networking will be done on APsense and I invite you to join me there – it’s free.

One of the things I like about APsense is that you get a profile page (as every other site offers) and a business center where you can promote business opportunities, advertise your products and services, collect testimonials, list resources you recommend, promote your business, and do other valuable promotional things.

When I got there, I searched the groups and found that several niches in which I’m active were not represented, so I created five new groups:

I’ve joined several other existing groups and started meeting interesting people.

If you want to try out APsense, come check it out for yourself.

Act on your dream!

JD

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