I had only one comment I could make as a reply, “Wow!”

And people wonder why I am a happy customer and a fan of Ken, Sitesell, and SBI.

“Wow!”

And that’s on top of all the tools that are already included in SBI.

I’m loving being able to work on my business and my websites, again.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. If you go to Sitesell’s Facebook page and like it, you can keep track of what’s happening with SBI, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Success is a process.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are a couple of reasons for this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. SBI is a bargain.

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

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

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

That’s a bargain.

I know.

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

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

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

Only for beginners? Not true.

Too expensive. Not true.

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

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

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

Act on your dream!

JD

Sitesell reached 50,000 fans on their Facebook page

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

“Best of Breed” photo competition

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second Prize: 1 Year SBI! + US$250

Third Prize: 6 months SBI! + US$150

Fourth to Tenth Prize: 3 months SBI!

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

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

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

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

Live demonstration of the new Block Builder 2

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

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

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

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

I’ll definitely be there.

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

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

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

Christmas Two-For-One SBI! sale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Act on your dream!

JD

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

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.

In the private 5 Pillar Forums, Ken Evoy, Founder of Sitesell, announced on September 18, 2011: 5 Pillar Program Switches To First-Exposure Cookie.

You must be a Sitesell affiliate to gain access to those forums.

So, how is this different, and why is it important?

The announcement about the change is rather lengthy, as are the reasons for making the change.

I’m going to summarize parts of that announcement here, but — for the full story, including background information — you’ll need to read what Ken wrote and then all the questions and answers that followed.

To give just a little background, the 5 Pillar Program was founded when Sitesell had one product: Make Your Site Sell!

(You can go to that site and read about it, and download it for free, if you’re interested. I keep a copy of this book on the desktop of my work computer and still refer to it on a regular basis.)

That was when I joined Sitesell’s affiliate program — in the late 1990s. I bought, studied, and implemented what I learned, and then I told more people about it. Even now, nine years after the last revision, I still use and recommend that book.

Here’s some of what Ken said about that…

Before SBI! existed, 5 Pillar Affiliates were all “Internet Marketers” (“IMers”). They reached people who were looking for information about SEO, or affiliate marketing, and so forth.

They promoted “Make Your Site SELL!” to them, followed by each book in a a growing range of Make Your __________ Sell!” books. Those were the pre-SBI! days.

Today, half of all SBI! owners become 5 Pillar Affiliates. They speak of SBI! with first-hand experience and with passion. Their sales cycle is different.

They are “regular” people who reach more “regular” people, folks who are specifically looking for information about Anguilla or turtle-breeding (or whatever). IMers’ audience seeks info about starting a business online or SEO or social marketing strategies, etc.

This shift in sales cycle dynamics happened slowly over time. As SBI! grew, more SBIers reached more “regular” surfers who were NOT seeking information on SEO, for example.

I’m in both categories. One of my SBI sites has nothing to do with Internet Marketing and the other has a few sections where I talk about it (or will, when I get all the pages written). On those sites, I have the “Powered by SBI” footer on most pages, and that’s an affiliate link.

I also actively promote SBI on other sites, including here. (I bet you’ve already noticed that!)

Before September 18, 2011, the 5 Pillar program used a last-visit cookie. When it was mostly IMers promoting the system, it pretty much averaged out. I might have lost a few commissions that should have been mine, and I may have received commissions that should have gone to someone else.

I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with Sitesell’s management and tracking. It’s just a natural way that affiliate commissions work with any program that uses exclusively first-visit or exclusively last-visit cookies to track commissions.

Sitesell has always had a hybrid system. It basically worked like this…

If you click on a link on Site A, Sitesell sets a cookie on your computer that shows affiliate A as the referrer. That’s a pretty standard first-visit cookie, but it’s also a last visit cookie.

If you then go awhile and click on affiliate links on other sites, each click will generate a new cookie that links to that affiliate (the last one you clicked on).

So, if you spent three months reading about SBI on this blog, but finally decided to purchase after clicking a link on the other site, the owner of that other site would get the commission.

Fair or not?

I think that’s fair. The last visited site that got the click earned the commission.

At the point of sale, things changed. As soon as you purchased Make Your Site Sell!, or, later, SBI, Sitesell wrote a permanent cookie on your computer. If you happened to purchase from one of my links, then you were permanently cookied to me and I would receive residual commissions when you purchased other products or renewed an SBI subscription.

To summarize, the affiliate whose site was last visited (and whose link was clicked) before you purchased earned the commission and was awarded the permanent cookie and a new lifetime customer.

Pretty cool, huh?

Over the years, however, as the number of SBI subscribers grew, the majority of them were not Internet marketers. They were regular people building websites about topics in which regular people are interested — people who may never have considered building an online business.

As time went by, some of these people (who are also affiliates) would spend time telling interested people about SBI and would set a cookie at the time, but, later, when the sale was made, would not receive a commission.

Why not?

Because, more often than not, the last click before purchase would be on an Internet marketer’s site.

Did the IMer deserve the commission? One view is that they did, because they closed the sale. Another view is that they didn’t, because the other person introduced the new subscriber to SBI and may have spent some time discussing it with the new subscriber, who just happened to make the final purchase decision after clicking on the IMer’s site. The “regular” SBI subscriber who did the introductory work did not receive a commission for their effort, and many of them felt it was unfair.

Sitesell could have changed to a first-visit cookie, but that would also be unfair in a different way. IMers could do lots of promotion and set cookies on lots of prospects’ computers, and even if someone else closed the sale months or years later, the original person would get the commission.

That’s not fair either.

(I’m not going to go into the discussion about a lot of the factors that apply due to the rather long sales cycle for SBI conversions. That’s covered in the announcement I linked to at the top of the post.)

So, this month, Sitesell went to a hybrid system that is more complicated, but may prove to be more fair for all affiliates.

That’s one of the things I really like about Sitesell. The people in charge really care about their customers and their affiliates and those who fit into both categories. So, they decided to correct this emerging and ever-more-unfair path to conversion of prospects to customers…

A while back, we realized that the current cookie arrangement, “last exposure gets the commission,” was not fair to SBIers who were 5P affiliates.

When we first chose “last-exposure” instead of “first,” it really did not make much of a difference since all affiliates were IMers. They generated their own traffic, “competed” for that last-exposure. There’s no perfect system, but it all worked out fairly in the end…

Sometimes, you might get the last-exposure just before a purchase. Sometimes, you might lose it to someone else.

In the long run, it all evened out.

But, now that the 5P Program has two different groups, it no longer evens out…

Net marketing professionals reach people who are much closer to purchasing a business-building solution. They are often just a click away from purchasing.

SBIer-affiliates reach folks who do not even know (yet) that they want to start an online business. Some of those seeds start to germinate, of course. Months later, sometimes, years later, they purchase.

First, though, those prospective SBIers search for information related to IM. And that is when they encounter an IMer, one of tens of thousands of 5P affiliate who focus their efforts on some aspect of IM.

As a result, many of these about-to-become-SBIers (originally exposed to SBI! by “regular” SBIers) have their cookies “overwritten” by IM affiliates.

The median time for conversion of “first-time exposure” people is 9 months. They would not otherwise have been interested in building an SBI! business.

Whereas it used to “all even out,” it no longer does since folks interested in Net marketing do not head in the opposite direction (ex., towards SBI! sites about Anguilla — SBI! sites that MIGHT be on the pathway go onto a no-overwrite list).

They considered several alternatives, including splitting the commission between first visit and last visit cookies, but that would have been a nightmare to track, because of the resulting permanent cookies and lifetime customer status that is assigned at the time of purchase.

The solution is rather complex, but is essentially this…

The first time someone clicks on an affiliate link, they receive a cookie, but, instead of being a temporary cookie that will be overwritten by any subsequent clicks on other affiliate links, it results in a fixed cookie, and that cookie will not be overwritten for nine months — approximately the time it takes for most sales conversions from first exposure to the sale.

So, this gives all affiliates a more equal opportunity to get a commission, if the sale occurs within this nine month window.

After nine months, the cookie changes from fixed to temporary and will be overwritten by any other affiliate’s cookie, until the sale is made, like the original system.

There are some other conditions in the new arrangement…

If a visitor with a FIXED cookie clicks on a link of the same affiliate some time later, the FIXED date is extended to 9 months from the date of the NEW exposure.

For example, suppose Affiliate A is a “first exposure.” 90 days later, suppose that the prospective customer clicks on another link BY THE SAME AFFILIATE. The date of expiration of that cookie is now 9 months FROM THAT MOST RECENT EXPOSURE.

However, as usual, once the 9 month period has expired, the next RR URL link that the person clicks will overwrite the previous cookie to the NEW affiliate’s cookie.

You can see that this is a more fair arrangement for the “regular” SBI owner who is an affiliate, since it increases the likelihood that he/she will receive a commission.

It should also be remembered that this also helps the IMer who actively promotes SBI, because their first visit cookie can be extended indefinitely, if subsequent clicks happen during the nine month term of the fixed cookie, or the new nine month term, if it is extended.

After the fixed cookie expires, then the commission is “up for grabs” by whomever generates the final link that results in a sale.

I think this is a rather elegant solution to a problem and I like the fact that Sitesell’s management analyzed the situation and came up with a solution that may very well be more fair to all affiliates.

Most companies would not go to the bother. Most use either a first or a last visit cookie and most have very short time spans for being credited with a sale.

If you are a 5 Pillar Program affiliate, you should read the thread and follow through Ken’s longer and more detailed explanation.

If you would like to become an affiliate, then you can apply for the 5 Pillar Program.

As I’ve stated many times, I am a very satisfied Sitesell customer and affiliate. I use the products and I’m happy to recommend the service and the people behind the service. They are one of the best groups of people with whom I have had the pleasure to be associated.

This is a rather long and complicated post. The main point I wanted to get across is that changes have been made in an attempt to correct what had become an unfair system. I think it will make a difference.

If you are an SBI affiliate, what do you have to do differently?

Nothing. The affiliate management team and programmers did all the work. Your links will continue to work as they always have, except that you may receive more sales commissions.

It’s too early to know for sure how it will work. I’m optimistic.

I’m going to leave the last word to Ken Evoy, the man who founded the company and conceived of SBI. It has changed the lives of thousands of customers — including me.

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.

Last night, we had a celebration on Sitesell’s Facebook page that started around 10:30 pm (EDT) when we passed the 25,000 “likes” milestone. That’s when the party started. It was fun.

Now, they’re running the 72-hour-only, buy one, get one free celebration special. That’s a deal that doesn’t come very often. It’s been awhile since they offered it.

Just go to their page, like it, and then click one of the images at the top of the page to go to the special order page. Only people who have “Liked” the page can get the special offer — it’s for fans, only.

Early this morning, Ken Evoy, the founder of Sitesell (who is on vacation in Scotland) saw that there was a glitch with the special order page. Ken contacted the CEO and they got the right people onto the problem, which was fixed in a few minutes.

I posted this note on the private Sitesell forums this morning:

I enjoyed the 25K celebration last night!

As a bonus, I won a couple of the prizes (each worth a free month of SBI) and I wasn’t expecting that. Thank you, Sitesell, it made the party even more fun.

On a side note, I watched on Facebook this morning when Ken realized the special offer order page wasn’t working as planned. Even on vacation, he got right on it. A few minutes later, Daniel was on the case, too. I don’t know who else was involved, but the glitch was fixed in short order.

I don’t know of any other company where the Founder and the CEO would both get involved in an order page glitch.

They set the standard and the whole Sitesell team rises to their level. That’s one of the reasons we get so many great things and such good support from Sitesell in return for our small subscription fees.

Facebook needs to add a “Love” button on Sitesell’s page. I’d click it.

Act on your dream!

JD

I really mean it. That is an amazing group of people and an outstanding service.

I’m looking forward to working with everyone at Sitesell for years to come.

Now, I gotta go work on my websites.

Act on your dream!

JD

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

Some of it has been accurate and truthful.

Some of it has been inaccurate and misleading.

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

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

I’ve been there.

Really.

I mean, I’ve really been there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What doesn’t work for me?

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

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

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

I could go on and on with many other examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SBI is one of the gems.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(About time, JD!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey, JD!

What?

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

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

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

So, what do you think? Questions? Comments?

I always enjoy hearing from you.

Act on your dream!

JD

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

Sitesell reaches 10,000 fans milestone on Facebook

Later, I wrote about how Facebook had closed their page with no warning, and then, just as mysteriously, had reinstated it just over a day later.

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

Last week, Sitesell hosted a live question and answer session with Michael Stelzner:

Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner – Live Q and A Session on Facebook

And, now, I’m writing about how they will pass the 20,000 fans milestone in the next day or two on their Facebook page.

How are they attracting so many people to their page? Why are so many people liking it?

I don’t know the answer for everyone, but I can tell you some of the reasons why I like their page and why I like the folks who make up the Sitesell business.

• Sitesell UnderPromises and OverDelivers — this is the opposite of so many companies I run into every day
• They offer so much, for so little — I won’t even try to list all they provide to help me run my business (here’s a partial list and explanation of the tools they offer), and I’m more than happy to pay them the $300 per year for each of my sites powered by SBI. In my book, that’s a bargain, because I earn back much more than I pay. (It’s like renting a building when opening a brick and mortar store, or buying a truck when you’re in the trucking business. You don’t expect to get that for free in the real world, so why would you expect to build an online business using free tools? I just don’t understand that thinking.)
• Their staff constantly keeps up with emerging trends and evaluates them. When something has proven its worth, they help us make better use of it and do most of the tech work for us, in the background, so we can concentrate on our business.
• They provide the best training and guidance to help us build our businesses and they have outstanding support and a great members-only forum.
• They practice what they preach. Most of the 100+ employees of Sitesell work from their own homes around the world. Only a handful have to be on location at corporate headquarters and in their data center. And, we get to know some of their employees from their interactions on Sitesell’s Facebook page and Sitesell’s Twitter account.
• For over 10 years, I’ve read everything I could find that Ken Evoy, the founder of Sitesell, wrote and he has always been open, honest, and on target. For over a decade, he has gotten much more right than wrong, and when he’s wrong, he admits it and learns from it. I’ve never worked with any other company where the founder of the business was so involved with his customers. I don’t know how he finds enough hours in the day to do all he does.

I could go on for several more pages.

And so could other SBI webmasters. See what some have said on SBI version 2 Site For You.

The fact that I get lots of people reading what I write on my SBI powered sites is almost a bonus. The fact that I earn income from them is the whole point. That’s the name of the game when you own an online marketing business.

It’s why I can sit here on the porch on a bright sunny day on top a mountain not too far from the Great Smokies and run my business on my own schedule. My morning commute was walking from my bedroom to my office (where I turned on my computer) to the kitchen to make coffee and then out to the front porch.

Do I miss the morning rush hour commutes I had to deal with when I lived in Atlanta, Georgia and Phoenix, Arizona? Not at all.

I learned how to build websites that sell over a decade ago when I read a book that Ken Evoy wrote. I followed his advice, and now I’m living my dream.

Can you tell that I like Sitesell and the people who work there? (grin)

Get to know them. Maybe you will, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

When Sitesell introduced the $29.99 per month plan, they discontinued all their other sales, except for this one.

Buy one SBI subscription now and get one free. You can build one and wait up to nine months to activate the other one.

Or, you can give one or both of them as gifts to someone who will put them to use.

It’s up to you.

Or, you and someone else can decide to go in together and get one year’s subscription for only $150 each.

This does not apply to renewals and the monthly price is not available with this special. You must buy a new subscription to qualify for the free gift.

When the following graphic reverts back to the $29.95 monthly price, you’ve missed your chance.

As Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell, noted, the acronym for “Buy One Get One Free” = “B1G1F” and you can easily read that as “Big If.”

He says, “And that’s appropriate if you consider the question, “Should I purchase SBI!” The answer is “BIG IF.”

“IF you are ready to work to impact your life positively by building your own e-business, you’ll know it was the best decision of your life.”

It made a big difference in my life when I started paying attention to what Ken said and ignored most of the other things I read online.

It could make a big decision in your life, too, if you’re ready for it.

There are a lot of urban myths about SBI that have already been addressed on a new page on the Sitesell website, and this is our chance to ask questions and get the answers from the team that makes SBI so great.

On Wednesday, 24th of November, 2010, at 12 noon ET, Ken Evoy and his entire team will be live on Facebook answering your questions about SBI (Site Build It), Sitesell, and how to build a successful online business.

This note on the Sitesell Facebook page explains it in more depth.

I’ve set my alarm so I’ll be sure to be there.

Next Wednesday at noon, USA Eastern Time.

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

Mitch Mitchell recently wrote an article called The Ads On This Blog and we got to talking about Site Build It.

He asked…

John, I have to admit that I kind of don’t get it then; we’re talking about Site Build It. I was under the impression that it was a program to help you build websites; that would seem to be inaccurate. I read this post of yours, I did watch the video, but I’m still missing it. Can you explain it better?

I wrote what I hoped would be a better explanation, but when I submitted the reply, the page reloaded and didn’t show the comment or state that it was awaiting moderation.

So, since it may be too long for a comment, here’s what I tried to say in reply to Mitch’s question…

Good morning, Mitch.

I’ll try to do a better job. Sometimes I over-complicate things. I’ve been told that I could describe a pencil and make it hard to use.

Here is what I think is the central concept of SBI: the C-T-P-M process.

The idea is that people don’t search for us on the Internet. They search for information about something, a solution to a problem, or something that will scratch their particular itch.

If they knew about us, they’d come right to our site, but they don’t.

So, they go to Google and type in something they want to learn more about.

If our site offers information about that topic, we want to be on page one so the person doing the searching will find us.

To do that, we offer quality information (C = content) that the search engines rank well.

When someone finds us on the SE, that leads to free traffic to our site (T = traffic).

While the visitor is on our site on a page that is targeted to what they are looking for, we want to provide information that will help persuade them that we have something that will satisfy what they were looking for. (P = PREsell).

Then, if they decide to click on one of the links or perform an action for which we get paid, we can earn an income and build our business (M = monetize).

That’s the C-T-P-M process in a nutshell.

This may sound like common sense if you’ve been marketing on the web for any time, but it was a rather remarkable idea a few years ago when Ken Evoy introduced it.

So, our goal is to place ourselves between the person searching and the merchant from whom they can buy.

To do that, we research the keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for and compare the number of searchers to the number of competing websites.

Ken coined a term for this comparison: profitability. He probably wishes now that he had chosen to call it something different, because some people think it is some kind of absolute measure of how much money they can make. It’s not. It’s a simple comparison of Supply (website pages) versus Demand (number of searches). Still, it make it easy to find the low-hanging-fruit so we can create pages targeted to those searches.

SBI offers a bunch of integrated tools to help us make pages that rank well and get free visitors.

Brainstorm It! is the keyword research tool and I can do more research in a couple of hours with it than I can do in days with other tools I use.

As a result of using Brainstorm It!, we build a master keyword list (MKL) that is stored on the SBI servers.

All of this is done from a browser. It is not a program we buy and use locally. It is a series of integrated tools on their servers.

As we complete the process of brainstorming, following the SBI action guide, we can identify a niche that matches our interests and looks like it will be profitable based on the keyword searches and competition.

In fact, the Action Guide recommends researching three different niches and comparing them to choose one that we’ll develop into a site.

This is a radically different approach than just posting a few pages about us that nobody will find. I’m talking about the typical “brochure” website that most small businesses put up.

Now, if someone doesn’t want to use all the tools that SBI offers for less than a dollar a day, they can go watch the video version of the Action Guide or read the text version and build a site following those principles. They would not have access to Brainstorm It, the MKL, the world submitter, the ezine management module, nor any of the other integrated tools that SBI offers.

I’ve used what I learned from following the SBI method to build other static sites and write blogs. I have found, however, that they are harder to manage and don’t get results as good as I can get from using SBI and all it offers.

Site Build It! does include a simple browser-based site building module that operates similarly to posting to a blog. For anyone who does not want to master the complexities of writing HTML, it takes what we enter into the sitebuilder, parses it through a format we can select for presentation, and produces the HTML page. It then hosts that page, submits it to the major search engines automatically, and adds it to the RSS feed for the site.

It does other things in the background, as well.

Over the years, some people have complained about the templates (themes) that are available for SBI customers. I think there are a couple of dozen basic designs.

So, a few years ago, the ability to customize the themes was added.

Later, the system was upgraded so that a customer could use any design tools they preferred to build a page and could then upload the HTML to the SBI database.

One of the major differences between Site Build It! and typical hosting is that SBI is a huge, integrated database that helps us analyze what we write, preview the pages, publish them, and then hosts and serves them to our visitors.

Some people get hung up on the lack of FTP, because they’re so tied to traditional webhosting.

Lately, a lot of SBI sites have gone to three columns. I think this is partly because of WordPress blogs, but don’t know it for sure.

I choose to continue to use a simple two-column design on my SBI site that has a navigation menu in the left column and the page’s main content in the larger right column.

Let’s go back to considering the beginning webmaster for a moment.

The included sitebuilder module makes it easy to use headlines, text, graphics, links, and even tracking links, even for someone who knows practically nothing about HTML tags.

Most will learn to use simple bolding, italics, and the like. Some will progress to unordered and ordered lists.

But, they don’t have to.

Anyone who wants to concentrate on writing quality content around their topic of choice can do so easily using the sitebuilder.

I did that for years with good results.

Eventually, instead of using many different modules per page, I started dumping all the content I wrote into a text module. I wrote my own HTML and used the sitebuilder in a way in which it wasn’t designed, but still worked.

When Mom went into the nursing home last year, I spent about six weeks reprogramming the Radio Userland database I use to build all my other large sites so that I could write HTML pages that would work properly with the SBI database.

The reason I did this is because I’ve spent years programming my system to make it particularly easy to include links, navigation bread crumbs, and other things that I’ve grown used to using.

Now, I have rewritten my SBI site and put it into my own database. This allows me to make major changes to an entire site, or section of a site, very easily.

It took a lot of work and a lot of time to make this an easy process, but I believe it was worth the effort. Most people would never approach building a site as I have.

So, with SBI, you have your choice of tools on how you’re going to create a page. You can fill in the blanks using the sitebuilder; write your code in a text editor; use a WYSIWYG HTML editor; or even do something like I did.

If you use the sitebuilder, it’s as easy as filling in the blanks and pressing a button.

If you upload your own HTML, it’s a simple matter of creating the page using the tools you prefer and then uploading the page to SBI. This is similar to uploading a photo to a blog or photo hosting site. Browse on your computer, select the file, click upload.

The difference is that, once your page is in the SBI database, you have access to the analyze it module that helps you optimize the page using common SEO techniques, coupled with advice from the system on how you can make it better.

Then, you click publish, and SBI does its behind-the-scenes work helping you promote the page.

The majority of people I talk to get hung up on one of two things: (1) the sitebuilder and its lack of the options they want, or (2) the lack of FTP.

The actual process of creating the page is not the important part of SBI. What is important is the process of planning, researching, and presenting a well-organized site related to a single theme, with each page being written and optimized to rank well in the search engines for a particular (usually long-tail) keyword phrase.

By creating quality content that people are searching for, and then following the steps to help the site rank well, the site starts getting visitors. Once that is accomplished, and relatively late in the process, we can start monetizing the site.

Most people want to start with monetizing as the first step, before they have created the information that leads to free traffic, and that doesn’t work nearly as well.

If you read the Action Guide, you can learn the SBI systematic approach to building a site – for free.

You won’t have access to all the tools, support, and forum, however.

There is no magic in Site Build It! It’s just a systematic process for building a tightly-focused site on a particular topic of your choice, coupled with a lot of tools that makes the process easier and/or more effective.

Does that explain it better?

Act on your dream!

JD

This is not a step-by-step how-to book for new Internet marketers. If that’s what you are looking for, you should probably look elsewhere.

Click Here To Order tells the stories of some of the earliest Internet marketing entrepreneurs who succeeded beyond their dreams. You may know some of their names, already.

In fact, if affiliate marketing is part of your business revenue model, you may even promote products that some of the people in this book created.

From the product description:

While the general public is familiar with the larger Internet companies such as Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon, very few are aware that small business is thriving online like never before, especially in the realm of information products. Click Here creates an entertaining and instructive narrative that provides an in-depth look at the unintentionally underground movement known as Infoproduct marketing, and the people who have profited and succeeded in the industry.

This edition of Click Here to Order is a 300-page paperback book. The list price is $17.95 and, as you probably know, is offered at a significant discount by Amazon.com.

Marketing on the Internet can be a very lonely business since we spend lots of hours in front of our keyboards and sometimes lose sight of what we want to accomplish because we get so bogged down in the details of what we’re doing.

Sometimes, it’s good to get away from the details and learn about the pioneers in this business. Who are they? What did they do? How did they do it? Why did they become so successful?

You’ll find some of these answers in Joel’s new book.

If you are interested in the history of the Internet marketing pioneers, and you want to learn more about how some of the best copywriters made their first dollars with online marketing, you’ll probably enjoy this book.

This is just one of the books about Internet marketing that I recommend in my Amazon.com bookstore.

Do you want to learn about Infoproducts and how to create them?

You can download, for free, Monique Harris and Ken Evoy’s excellent ebook, Make Your Knowledge Sell!.

While it won’t do the work for you, you’ll learn how to create an infoproduct of your own.

They provide great information about picking good ideas, writing to persuade, packaging your infoproduct, marketing it, and making sales.

Make Your Knowledge Sell! sold thousands of copies over the last few years, and now you can get it free. What are you waiting for?

Who knows, maybe you’ll be one of the people who’ll be featured in some future book about successful Internet marketers!

Read Click Here to Order for background knowledge of the business and how it has developed. Get inspired to do more by reading about the people who blazed the trails some of us are following.

Study Make Your Knowledge Sell! to learn many of the details and skills you’ll have to master to create your own infoproducts.

You can get started by learning affiliate marketing before you create your own products

Perhaps you’re not yet ready to create and sell your own infoproduct or service.

One of the best ways to get started in online marketing is to become an affiliate for a company with top-selling, high-quality products and services and then earn commissions by recommending them.

That’s my preferred business model, as you can tell from the name of this site.

I highly recommend Ken Evoy’s Affiliate Masters Course, and you can download a free copy here from my site.

Even if you choose to create your own products and sell them, you’ll want to know more about affiliate marketing. After all, you may create a great product and want to have affiliates helping you sell it.

Act on your dream!

JD