SBI 2.0 is now SBI 3.0

Yesterday was an exciting day at SiteSell.

The long-awaited launch of the new SiteDesigner and BB2 page editor were launched. Three years and $3.5 million in the making, and several months after the expected launch date, the propeller heads threw the switch yesterday and made the big change.

Anyone who purchases SBI now, will start out with BB2, and I think you’ll like it.

Those of us who are already using SBI will see a phased implementation. I’m in Group 2, so it will be a week or so before I get access to BB2 on my sites. I’m looking forward to completely revamping and expanding both of my sites, but I’m waiting patiently for access to BB2, because it’s going to make it so much faster and easier.

After my experiences beta testing SiteDesigner and BB2, I’m looking forward to unleashing their power.

So, with the flip of the switch, yesterday, SBI! 2.0 became SBI! 3.0. It’s going to be a new era for building online businesses with SBI.

Plus, in a bit of serendipity, the milestone of 100,000 fans of SiteSell’s Facebook page was reached on the same day as the launch of BB2.

How cool is that? (grin)

Is everything working smoothly, after the launch?

Most things are working well. I’ve already seen a new website built with SiteDesigner and BB2, and it is written entirely in Russian. That was not possible with SBI! 2.0.

Yes, there will be bugs — even after extensive beta testing. When everything is redone and is moved to new architecture, there will be bugs.

Support is on alert and the programmers are standing by to squash bugs as quickly as possible.

No, it won’t be perfect right from day one, but it’s very good and will get better as each bug is tracked down and stomped.

Now, let’s talk about the price increase…

There isn’t one. Not a penny more.

SBI! 3.0 costs exactly what SBI! 2.0 did. More power. Greater ease of use. Same price.

Thanks SiteSell. I’m looking forward to many more years of being a very happy customer.

Rebuilding my business with SBI in 2012!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Success is a process.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are a couple of reasons for this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. SBI is a bargain.

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

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

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

That’s a bargain.

I know.

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

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

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

Only for beginners? Not true.

Too expensive. Not true.

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

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

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

Act on your dream!

JD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day in and day out, for years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s a bargain.

I know.

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

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

Only for beginners? Not true.

Too expensive. Not true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get off the fence.

Do something.

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

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

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

What will it cost? $300.

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

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

There is no hard sell.

$300 per year. That’s it.

Order SBI today.

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

Try it for up to 90 days risk free.

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

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

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

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

Sitesell and SBI are going to help me.

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

Act on your dream!

JD

Can you succeed online?

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

Can I succeed online?

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

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

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

Right.

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

The real world does not work like that.

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

Nonsense.

Code Red! General Quarters!

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

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

At least, for most people.

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

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

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

Good business deals don’t need fake deadlines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some actually do work.

How can you tell the difference?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you succeed online?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, who the heck am I?

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve been building websites for almost 20 years.

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

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

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

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

Those are my bona fides.

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

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

So, let’s get back to the subject…

Can you succeed online?

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

Welcome back!

(if you left to look at the other site)

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

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

Let’s address these questions one at a time:

Try learning who the owner of the business is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s the address of their home office?

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

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

Do they have a phone number and physical address?

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

Can you contact them?

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

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

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

How long have they been in business?

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

What do people say about them?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SBI is taught in colleges around the world

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

I am a satisfied customer and affiliate

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you be successful?

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

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

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

How much will I earn?

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

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

Success often depends upon your own definition of the word.

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

Let me reiterate. I am NOT saying that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can you gain?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You may even change your life. Some have.

Act on your dream!

JD

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

Unrealistic expectations about building an online business

This morning, I was reading a forum message from a very unhappy new online marketer who was complaining of all the hard work he put into his business and the complete lack of results he had gotten out of it.

I think we can all relate to that, at some point and on some level.

So, out of curiosity, I went and looked at his website (a blog, in this case) and wasn’t surprised that he was getting no results.

The blog had only 19 posts over a bit less than two months and there was no theme or niche orientation that I could see.

I don’t see any point in mentioning this man’s name or the URL of his blog. I’m sure I could do a little research and come up with dozens of similar examples.

In his complaining forum post, he said that he had been working very hard on his online business and wanted to quit his job and do this full-time. He was behind his planned schedule.

What?

Does anyone really believe they can start a website or blog or anything else and make enough profit in two months to replace a full-time job? If so, they need to face some facts.

If you want immediate income, sell something you already own or get a job (if you can).

If you want to build a business and live off the profits, it’s going to take time, a plan, lots of energy and creativity, and the investment of money to succeed.

Yes, it costs less to start a website, but you’re completely invisible until the search engines start referring visitors and you won’t get a lot of that without writing pages with quality information and building links to your site so the search engines will find and index those pages. This takes time, and I don’t mean two months.

(I’m assuming that you are not buying ads on other sites, using Google Adwords or Facebook ads or anything similar. That can drive immediate traffic, but it adds to your expenses, too. If you can make a profit, it can be a good way to get visitors to your site.)

If you want to build an offline business, it takes tens of thousands of dollars and more time. Most new businesses should expect to have losses every month for at least the first couple of years and often for longer than that.

Business isn’t a game of days or weeks of work before earning a profit, it is often a game of years of work before you realize an income from all the work you’ve done during that time.

People with get rich schemes tell you that you can earn tens of thousands of dollars (or pounds or Euros or whatever) in a few days or weeks. They are lying to you to get you to buy their products.

If you’d like to prove me wrong on that point, I’m listening.

Just today, I did not approve comments from two people who were linking to the same get rich quick scheme from their comment. No thank you. Life is too short and there are too many other real opportunities to build a business for me to be a part of promoting such wastes of time and money, even from the link from a comment.

How long does it take to build a business?

That’s kind of like asking, “How long is a piece of string?”

The answer, of course, is, “It depends.”

It depends on a lot things. What are you selling? How big is the target market? How well can you reach them? Can you overcome their objections? What else can they buy with the same amount of money?

Those aren’t the best questions, but they are apropos to the point I’m trying to make.

It takes time and work to build a business.

Do you think large businesses like Sears, J. C. Penney’s, and Walmart were built overnight? No, they weren’t. Each of them started from humble beginnings and the owners invested years and most of their revenue into growing the businesses.

(I’m just using those three as examples, because they were the first that came to mind, since I already knew some of the history of their businesses and how they built them. There are thousands of other examples that could be chosen.)

Except for a few exceptions, most large businesses started very small and grew over time.

Richard Sears got into the retail business when he purchased a shipment of watches that a local jeweler didn’t want. He was a train station agent and he sold these watches to other station agents for a tidy profit.

The first Sears catalog was published in 1888. They didn’t open their first retail store until 1925, nearly 40 years after he started selling those watches.

James Cash Penney opened a small dry goods store in 1902. Over the years, the company grew and opened more retail stores. They published their first catalog in 1963 and what was the forerunner of their current website started selling on the online in 1994. It took them over 60 years to start their catalog and over 90 years to enter online commerce.

In the 1940s, Sam Walton began his retail career when he worked for J. C. Penney. In 1950, he opened Walton’s 5 & 10 store. In 1962, they invested most of the company capital to open the first Walmart store. In 1968, after opening several stores in Arkansas, they opened their first store in a different state. They opened their first Wal-Mart Supercenter in 1988.

The point I’m trying to make is that these retail pioneers started small and invested a lot of time, energy, and money into building their business. They reinvested their profits and grew. (Of course, unlike most small businesses and almost all micro businesses, they also received capital from investors who bought their stock and that gave them more resources to continue growing.)

None of them had a successful business with less than twenty pages of questionable content on the Internet. None of them had a profitable business in less than two months. All of them invested lots of money (for their time) in opening their stores and purchasing inventory.

Now, the pace of change has quickened. It’s not unusual to hear that someone started an online company and became millionaires or billionaires after a decade or less. Those are the exceptions. They are not the norm.

People, maybe you, have acquired unrealistic expectations on how long it takes to succeed with an online business. They have unrealistic expectations about how much money they’ll make.

Unless you are very lucky, or very talented, or both, you will not become the next uberbillionaire. If you were working on that project you would not have time to read my quaint little blog.

Even a company that I respect and admire — Sitesell — makes the mistake of using terms that lead to an unrealistic expectation for how long it will take to build an online business.

They use a 10-Day process for analyzing and building a new niche-oriented business.

While they make it very clear in their documentation, Action Guide, and most of their online marketing, that a “Day” in this process does not equal a 24-hour day in the real world, I think it is misleading to folks who try to rush through the process without slowing down, reading the documentation, watching the videos, and proceeding at a more reasonable pace.

It’s true that some of those “Days” tasks can be completed in two or three days in real time, but some of them will take months to complete, or represent ongoing activities that may be performed for years as part of building and promoting an online business.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Sitesell used to have the entire Action Guide online, but it has been privatized for the benefit of their customers, only. However, they do have a series of videos about the process they teach for building an online business and those videos are available free on YouTube. They are an abridged version of the videos that are part of the Video Action Guide that comes with a subscription to SBI.

Nowhere, though, do they say that it will be easy and free and your inbox will overflow with people rushing to send you money with no work on your part.

Others, however, say exactly that. They try to sell you software and systems that they claim will make you rich in a few weeks.

Who are you going to believe?

Think it through for yourself. If someone has an automatic system for making huge amounts of money online with no effort nor experience, why would they sell it? Wouldn’t they use it themselves and reap the benefits?

If you had one, would you sell a goose that laid golden eggs?

Of course not.

It is possible to build a business that makes a good profit. It can be done offline in a brick and mortar business or it can be done online with a website that does the selling.

In neither case is it easy nor guaranteed. Some of us succeed. Some of us don’t. Then, we try again.

I love working on my sites from the comfort of my home in the mountains. I don’t just like it, I love it.

I’m not rich and I’m not even doing as well as I was a few years ago before I got so sick. Now that I’m much better, it’s time to get back to work and equal or exceed the success I enjoyed few years ago.

I’m using a combination of affiliate marketing on some sites and promoting locally owned brick and mortar businesses on other sites. There are countless niches in which a profitable online business can be built.

It can be done.

Can you do it?

I don’t know.

Act on your dream!

JD

Today is the first day of the rest of your life

This phrase, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” was so popular when I was younger that over the years it morphed from being a wise observation to being only a trite saying and something we saw on lots and lots of t-shirts, magnets, and stickers.

Kind of like a yellow smiley face that became ubiquitous, too. (Look it up.)

Still, there is a lot of wisdom in this saying.

Unless you are fortunate enough to have a “way back” or time machine, it’s darn near impossible to go back and change your life in the past. At least, that’s true for most of us.

If there is something you want during your lifetime, there’s no better day to start than today.

That’s one of the things I’ve been doing most of the day. I’m still a long way from being well, but I’m feeling better, and I’ve been researching a few affiliate programs I wanted to join. I’ve been approved for several of them and I’m waiting to hear from the rest.

If you’ve been following this blog for any time, you know that I, and all the other affiliates in North Carolina, were kicked out of the Amazon.com affiliate program back in the summer of 2009. That threw me for a loop, and, coupled with my health crisis, I’ve not yet recovered from it.

Now, I’ve taken the first steps. I’ve applied for, and was approved, by MacConnection
and Barnes & Noble. Now I can start back to marketing a lot of books I like to recommend and my beloved Macintosh computers and other Apple Computer products. That’s a good start.

Both of those are managed by the Google Affiliate Network.

I also applied for, and was approved by CoffeeForLess.com, which is managed on Commission Junction.

I’ve started doing some research on creating links for products at Apple’s iTunes and App Store, which is managed by Linkshare. (Interestingly enough, I can’t find a way to build a simple text link to their iTunes home page, although there are lots of links to different departments.)

So, even with the slow thinking caused by my chemo mind fog, I’ve been doing some real work today.

Why?

Partly because today is the first day of the rest of my life, and in the future I want to rebuild Dilbeck Marketing to what it once was and then surpass that and take it higher than I have in the past.

I got to thinking about this blog post, because my friend Suzanne Prochaska has just been featured on SBI’s – Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life page.

It starts with an interesting video that goes from someone being dissatisfied with their job and continues through until…

Well, I’ll let you see for yourself. (grin)

Currently, right below the video, my friend Suzanne is featured, and she has quite a success story to tell. It shows one line to the left of her photo and you have to click the link that says, “What happened after SBI? Click here for the rest of the story.” That shows another line of her story.

If you want to know more, and it’s quite an impressive story, click the link that says, “Click here for more details about Suzanne’s story.”

I continually exhort people to, “Act On Your Dream!”

Suzanne is a great example of someone who did exactly that. She had to work hard and her life went through some major changes, but now she’s living her dream.

A few years ago, she did something that changed the course of her life.

You can, too.

Every day, each of us has the choice to continue as we’re going, or to do something new that will help us make our dream come true.

I know that not everyone wants to build websites or blogs. Some of us love it and others would hate doing it.

But each of us can identify a dream and take action to make our dream come true.

There are two things I constantly recommend to people from my closest friends to absolute strangers. They are SBI and Think And Grow Rich.

Both of them have valuable information to help you identify what you want to do with your life and then take steps to act on your dream. SBI comes with a complete set of tools to help you.

If you start today, a year from now, you’ll be much closer to realizing your dream. It may take less time, or a lot more, but every year — if you stay on track — you’ll get closer to making it real.

So, what about you?

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Are you happy with where you are? Are you living your dream life?

If not, what are you going to do about it?

Act on your dream!

JD

SBI annual Buy One, Get One Free Sale

On a regular basis, I tell you why I recommend SBI as the best way for most people to build an online business that really brings in profit, so this is going to be a short post.

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.

Site Build It Annual Buy One Get One Free Holiday Special

Have you been interested in trying to build your online business with Site Build It?

If you have, and you haven’t taken the plunge and tried it, yet, now is the best time to get started.

Throughout the year, at major holidays, Sitesell offers a buy one get one for only $100 more special offer. Since SBI costs $299 per year, that means that you can get two sites for only $399.

You can get the two sites for one year at the discount price, but remember that each of them will cost $299 to renew each year — a bargain when you consider all you get with SBI.

But right now, until Christmas 2009, you can buy one and get one free. That’s right, get one SBI subscription for $299, or get two of them for the same $299.

Why would you want to buy two subscriptions?

Buy both of them for yourself. You can start one site now and have up to 9 months before you have to activate the second site. That gives you time to start earning some money and staggers the renewal cycles so you don’t have to pay both of them the same month.

Or, buy one and give one as a gift. Helping someone learn how to build an online business is a much more valuable gift than something they’ll play with for awhile and then lose interest in.

Or, buy them and give both of them as gifts.

The choice is yours.

I have a couple of sites powered by SBI and I intend to build more in the future. I’ve been a satisfied customer for years.

So, I recommend Site Build It version 2.0 to you without any reservations, and, yes, if you buy from this link I’ll earn a commission. I recommend SBI, however, because it works. I can earn commissions from lots of other things, but you don’t see me promoting them, do you?

Site Build It is not magic

Don’t misunderstand me.

This is not some pie-in-the-sky, get-rich-quick deal.

Building a successful website takes time, energy, money, creativity, dedication, and work. There’s no way around it.

I can’t tell you how much time and money I’ve wasted over the years trying lots of different ways to build an online business. I hope you don’t have to waste all the time and energy I have.

While SBI is not magic, it does offer a proven, time-tested, set of tools, support, training, and step-by-step guide to help you find a niche for which you have a passion. Then, you’re taught how to structure that site, publish the content, and start building an audience who is interested in the same subject.

You will not be an overnight success!

If you want to do something free and get rich, stop reading right now. This is not for you.

But, if you are willing to spend the same amount of time and energy that you would expect to learn anything else of value, then you owe it to yourself to try the best.

You get a full 30 day money back guarantee. If you don’t like what you see, ask for a full refund. If you refund after 30 days, I think the refund will be prorated, and I think that’s fair.

Even though there is a special going on right now, you don’t have to buy two of them if you don’t want. The choice is yours, but as long as you can get two for one, maybe you can find a friend or relative who would like to try it. You can split the money and each of you can get a full year of using SBI for only $150 each. Now, that’s a real deal!

You can learn together, motivate each other, help each other get over any rough spots, and each of you can learn valuable new skills.

Or, just buy one site and get started building it.

Or, if you can’t afford the $299 right now, and in this year of unemployment and lowered incomes, many can’t, you can now subscribe to SBI for only $29.95 per month, right from the start. However, if you choose this monthly payment approach, you can’t take advantage of the two for one offer.

As soon as I publish this post, I’m going to log in at Sitesell and spend the rest of the day working on my two SBI sites.

As I’ve said in a previous post, I’m leaving blogging and going back to what I know works for me – and earns money – and that’s building more websites focused on particular topics and powered by SBI.

While SBI isn’t for everyone, I know many more people who have been successful in building their online business using what it offers than from any other approach.

Your mileage may vary, close cover before striking, etc.

It works for me and for dozens of people I know who purchased from my recommendations — most of whom are renewing their subscriptions every year.

Sure, some people don’t like it and they get a refund. That’s fair enough.

But the ones who really take the time to study and understand the action guide, learn how to use Brainstorm It!, and build a site around a profitable niche for which they have passion, are succeeding.

I can’t tell the future and I can’t guarantee your success, but I can tell you that Sitesell guarantees their offer. You can’t lose anything but a little time by trying SBI.

Learn how to build your own online business. Buy SBI version 2.0 today. (And, yes that’s an affiliate link.)

The choice is yours.

Act on your dream!

JD

SBI! Version 2.0 Now Available As Monthly Subscription!

Breaking news!

For years, SBI has been available only as an annual subscription.

For awhile, it has been possible to switch to monthly payments when it was time to renew after your initial first-year subscription of $299.

Now, you can subscribe to SBI starting with monthly payments of $29.99 instead of a lump-sum annual starting cost of $299.

Here’s what Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell, had to say about this…

Times are tough. Money is tight. So demand for a monthly subscription format for SBI! has been high, according to the good folks who handle questions from the Web site.

I’ve always believed in an annual model, using the $299 as a reasonable way to make sure folks are COMMITTED. The Guarantee protects new SBIers…

… But the psychological impact of “$299″ and “1 year” sets the correct mindset. Now, though, I believe that we’re in a period where, with unemployment rates so high and cash so tight, more people are simply MOTIVATED. Period.

And more than ever, they want something real. So…

Starting now, your visitors have the option of paying $29.99 per MONTH for their SBI! 2.0 subscription instead of the usual $299 yearly price. Check it out at the Order Page.

This is a limited time “soft” launch, without the usual shout-it-from-the-rafters pomp.

Why?

We’re not sure about the level of commitment. So we’ll observe how they’re doing. Frankly (very frankly), we don’t market SBI! to collect cash like a cable company if people are not serious about really using it to build the kind of business that will change their lives.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be watching the commitment level of these new SBIers with great interest. If the monthly option results in less serious SBIers, the time limitation will expire.

Have you wanted to try SBI but couldn’t afford the initial annual fee?

If that’s true for you, now is the time to take advantage of this offer and start your SBI version 2.0 site with an initial investment of only $29.99.

Folks, that’s only a dollar a day starting from day one!

Now, I don’t know how this impacts the Thanksgiving holiday special offer, but I do know a good deal when I see one.

Let me caution you

However, before you jump on this, let me caution you that building a site with SBI version 2.0 is not like what you may have done in the past or what you may have observed others doing.

If you want immediate gratification, don’t subscribe to SBI. Go with a traditional webhosting package somewhere and throw up a blog. You can be publishing to your new blog in a few hours.

When you don’t get the success you expected, however, you may find that the initial instant gratification you felt is nullified by losing the one thing you can never replace – time.

Building an online business with SBI is different

You will not get instant gratification with SBI. This frustrates a lot of people.

Instead, if you take the time to read and follow the action guide, you’ll learn to use the tools that help you identify a niche with profit potential, plan the site, research keywords to help you get free traffic from the search engines, and then build an evergreen multi-tiered website according to the plan you developed while working within the SBI C-T-P-M system.

So, you’re going to have to invest some time up-front, reading the action guide and/or watching the action guide videos. Some people don’t like to do this, and they’re the ones who typically fail with an SBI site.

Sitesell contrasts the hare approach to the tortoise approach. Blogging and free websites, including sites like Squidoo and HubPages, are more for the hares among us.

SBI is for the tortoises. We like to research and plan something before we do it. We like the slow and steady approach. We like to learn from others how to build an online business using time-tested methods.

We don’t like to run hither and yon looking at every shiny red ball that happens to bounce by.

That’s why the tortoise is the mascot for SBI.

If you’re not going to follow the guidelines, don’t bother subscribing to SBI.

But, if you truly want to learn how to build an online business, I personally recommend SBI version 2.0 as the way to go about it – especially if you’re a beginner.

There are many advantages to SBI if you’re a grizzled old-timer like me who has built many websites using lots of different tools and platforms.

I have to admit that I have both tortoise and hare qualities and that I’ve done a lot of research using lots of toys. I think that I’ve been building expertise in learning all the different approaches, but, in truth, part of it may have been enjoying playing with the shiny red balls that bounced along the path in front of me.

Either way, I’ve learned my lessons and now I know effective ways to build websites that attract lots of visitors. While I admit that there are several ways to do this, I’m positive that the SBI method and the tools they provide are the best combination for the majority of people who want to build an online business.

All of my new sites will be built using SBI version 2.0. I’ve tried lots of others, but I recognize the best when I see and use it.

With the addition of Content 2.0 as a standard feature of SBI version 2.0, I don’t see any more advantages to blogging, unless you’re building a site based on news or other time-sensitive information.

Content 2.0 adds the interaction that we look for with blogs, such as comments, and also makes it easy for your readers to submit new pages to your site.

(I’ll be adding these features to both of my SBI-powered sites over the coming weeks.)

This interactivity ratchets up the effectiveness of SBI sites to a new level.

And, now, at least for a limited time, you don’t have to swallow hard and spend $299 up-front.

You can get started for only $29.99, payable as a monthly subscription.

If you can’t afford that, I really don’t see how you can afford to build an online business at all. Just give up one cup of coffee or a sandwich every day and that will cover the cost.

Of all the products and services I recommend, SBI version 2.0 stands at the top of the list. I’ve been a happy Sitesell customer for several years and don’t see any reason not to continue for a long time to come.

Try SBI version 2.0 for yourself. Get started today.

Act on your dream!

JD

Site Build It – the best time of year to buy

Are you familiar with Site Build It!?

If you’ve visited any of my sites, blogs, forums, and communities, you’ve most likely seen ads and articles about Site Build It! and why I like it so much. Still, you may not have taken the time to really learn about it and why it is like no other online business solution. Site Build It! is much more than just a webhosting company.

It’s an all-in-one hosting, site-building, and online-success-making system that can possibly change a life. SiteSell, the manufacturer, actually guarantees online success if you follow the proven system.

Here’s a short video that explains the product…

Take the video tour, now.

Over 100,000 customers, including me, have already used it to create real online businesses that let us work from home or wherever we want (it’s a Web based system). Sitesell has plenty of testimonials to prove it too. Take a look at their Case Studies page.

Or this page of videos that were actually done by their customers…

I Love SBI

But the best news of all is…

Now is the absolute best time of the year to buy Site Build It!. They have a Holiday Special going on where you can buy-one-site and get-one-free. It ends up being about $150 per site.

(Although Sitesell offers discounts on purchasing two sites at other major holidays, this is the only time of the year where you get the second site free. All the other holiday specials offer the second site for $100 when you purchase the first site at $299. This holiday special is a true buy-one-get-one-free discount. Don’t miss it.)

I know what you’re saying. Why do I need more than one site?

You don’t! You can always give the other one away as a New Year’s gift. Or sell it. Or find a friend who wants a great deal too.

But you might want to keep it. Did you know that the majority of people making a full-time living online have more than one site. You just might double your pleasure… and income.

When you get one site to where it is producing a reliable income stream, you’ll understand why you may want to create other niche-oriented, content-rich sites to increase your revenue with additional income streams. Not everyone wants to manage more than one site, but many Site Build It! subscribers do.

And did I mention that Sitesell guarantees your success. Yep! You can get your money-back if you don’t feel that it will help you build a successful online business. There’s really no risk involved. (If you ask for a refund in the first 30 days, you’ll get 100% of your money back. After that, Sitesell will refund your subscription price on a prorata basis at any time during your one-year subscription period. Their site offers all the details.)

Once you understand the Site Build It! process, you’ll be hooked.

Most people think that all you need is hosting and site-builder software to make a Web site. That’s technically true. But getting people to find that Web site is the key to building a long-term business that actually makes real money. Without traffic your site will be lost in the wilderness.

One reason webhosting is offered so cheaply by so many companies is because of the few resources most websites require. Since most sites get very few visitors, some other webhosting services, not Sitesell, put hundreds of domains on a single server (computer) and rake in the cash from domain owners whose websites sit there waiting for someone to visit.

On the other hand, the Site Build It! system helps you build a site that people are looking for. Their C-T-P-M system teaches you how to create a site that’s in demand. Once you have traffic, then you can choose many ways to turn that traffic into revenue. Here’s a page that explains their proven process…

Site Build It’s C-T-P-M system for online business success.

Doesn’t it just make sense?

But I don’t know anything about the Internet, you say. Or HTML. I’m no computer geek, you’re thinking.

Can you send email? Have you used a word processor? If you can do that, you can build a Site Build It! site. It’s really a simple process that is doable by anyone. All you need is the motivation and commitment to follow the process.

If you can’t do that then Site Build It! is not for you. It’s not “Get Rich Quick.” There’s really no such thing. But if you have the motivation and a little brains you CAN do it.

After all, your success is guaranteed. What have you got to lose.

Here’s where you can go to read about that guarantee…

Site Build It’s order page with a link to the guarantee.

And maybe use that Buy-One, Get-One-Free Special to start a whole new life.

But hurry. This holiday special offer ends at midnight on December 25, 2008.

(If past history is an indicator, there is a good chance that the offer may be extended until just after January 1, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Don’t procrastinate; you don’t want to miss this special.)

Who knows, perhaps you or someone you know will be able to change your, or their, life in 2009. Why give someone a gift that will be a flash-in-the-pan and will be forgotten or ignored in a few days or weeks. Give the gift of Site Build It! and help someone develop one of the most important skills of the 21st Century.

Do it for yourself or someone else you care about.

I’m happy that I am a Site Build It! subscriber and I’ll be adding a lot to my site in the coming months.

I hope you’ll be one of the new SBI success stories in 2009.

Act on your dream!

JD

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