Are you planning for more success in 2010? How?

December 28, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 10 Comments
Filed under: Sitesell and Site Build It, Success and Failure 

I’ve done my share of whining about how hard 2009 has been, and frankly I’m done with that and I’m looking for this year to come to a close in a few days.

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

I survived 2009 and I think that was a success!

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

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

I expect 2010 to be a much better year.

I’m doing things differently next year.

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

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

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

But that doesn’t pay the bills!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What has worked for me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you Define Success?

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

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

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

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

What about you?

What are you going to be focusing on in 2010?

Act on your dream!

JD

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

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

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

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

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

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SBI! Version 2.0 Now Available As Monthly Subscription!

November 22, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 1 Comment
Filed under: Sitesell and Site Build It, Webhosting 

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.

SBI! Monthly Billing Option

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

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Some thoughts about affiliate marketing

November 3, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 15 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Musings, Sitesell and Site Build It, Success and Failure 

I was reading several blogs and forums where people were talking about how much money they earned (or didn’t earn) from affiliate marketing in October.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those were products that real people were interested in.

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

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

Do you have any suggestions?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m going to be acting on that belief.

What about you?

What do you think?

Is affiliate marketing working well for you?

Have you identified niches that are good income earners?

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

I welcome your comments and look forward to discussing them.

Act on your dream!

JD

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What is Site Build It?

February 11, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 21 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Webhosting 

This originally started out as a reply on my friend’s blog, but it was too long and it looks like the reply was not accepted. Hopefully, it won’t duplicate what may still appear on his blog.

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

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Site Build It! $100 Harvest Special

November 1, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 2 Comments
Filed under: Sitesell and Site Build It, Success and Failure, Webhosting, Websites 

I was so busy the last couple of weeks that I didn’t even have time to promote the Site Build It! Halloween special, which ended yesterday at midnight.

I know you may be interested in building a successful online business using SBI, and I’m sorry I didn’t let you know about the special offer.

But, even if you missed the Halloween special, Sitesell is offering the $100 Harvest Special from now until midnight on November 9, 2008.

Yep, that’s right. For a little more than a week, you have the opportunity to purchase one SBI site for about $300 and you can get a second Site Build It! subscription for only $100 more.

Buy both for yourself, go in with a friend and each of you can get a subscription for $200 each, or buy one and give the other to a friend, relative, or colleague.

I’m not going to even address all the misconceptions about SBI this morning. I’ve had those conversations until I’m blue in the face.

Site Build It! may not be for everyone – I don’t use it for quite a few of my sites – but I know it is the absolute best way for someone to identify a niche for your online business, brainstorm topics, design the structure of your site, build it, host it, and promote it. SBI offers a variety of tools that cannot be found elsewhere – especially with the level of integration between the tools that SBI offers.

Then, you also get the step-by-step Action Guide, unlimited support, and a members-only forum that is extremely helpful and supportive.

Site Build It offers more than just a place to put up a website. There are many thousands of places and ways you can do that. SBI offers what I have come to think of as a success cooperative where people like Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell, really believes in your capacity for success and helps you achieve it.

Don’t listen to the naysayers and the uninformed. Site Build It! offers a comprehensive set of tools, procedures, tutorials, and support that you won’t find anywhere else.

I am a very satisfied Site Build It! customer and I invite you to visit my Act On Your Dream! site, hosted by SBI. I’m working on a plan right now where I’ll be greatly expanding that site over the coming year.

Whether you take advantage of the $100 Harvest Special, or not, do yourself a favor and learn about what you can do with Site Build It!

Why just put up a website when you can build a successful online business?

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. You don’t have to take advantage of this special offer to buy two SBI sites. You can always choose to purchase just one SBI subscription, even when the specials are offered. If you don’t need two sites, there’s no reason to buy more than one.

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Hi-Ho Back to Work Special Extended for Site Build It

August 30, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Webhosting 

I previously wrote about the Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It’s Back to Work We Go special that Ken Evoy is offering to anyone who subscribes to new Site Build It! sites.

The special was set to expire at midnight last night, August 29. However, it’s been extended until after Labor Day and will definitely expire at midnight on September 4, 2008.

This is your opportunity to buy one SBI site for the regular price of $299, or you can choose to purchase two for only $399 – that’s a $200 discount off the second subscription for the first year.

Keep and build both sites for yourself or give the second one to a friend, relative, or colleague.

If you’re interested in Site Build It!, don’t miss this opportunity to build an online business.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It’s Back To Work We Go

August 25, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 3 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Webhosting 

Summer is coming to a close.

No more vacations. No more lazy days in the sun.

It’s time to go back to school and back to work.

This raises the question, “Do you like your work?”

Over the years, I’ve had a few jobs. I liked some of them and had a hard time dragging myself out of bed to go to others.

It’s incredible how much of a difference it makes if you like your work.

These days, I love to wake up and get started. First, I make a detour to put on some coffee, and then I go turn on my computers and printer. I log into the account I’ll be using (I have several accounts set up on my Mac and each is customized for specific tasks) and go get a cup of coffee while my computer loads the applications and documents most commonly used for the things I’ll be doing.

Total elapsed time, under five minutes, tops. No commute, no traffic, no outrageous gasoline prices. If I didn’t make coffee, I could be at work in about one minute.

You’ll notice that I didn’t say anything about getting up in the morning. That’s not the way I work. As I write this, it’s a few minutes after midnight and I’m going strong. I had a nap this afternoon and I’ll be working for a few more hours, probably.

Work has been a bit slow this evening, because I was keeping one eye on the closing ceremonies of the Olympics while I worked. I was reminded of how much I enjoyed watching Michael Phelps win his eight gold medals. I was also happy to see Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh win their gold medal in beach volleyball, making it a history-setting back-to-back win in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics.

But, now the Olympics are over and I can return my full attention to what I’m doing.

It’s the time of year to get back to work. I love what I do. Do you?

I could make more money if I went back to consulting or being a systems administrator, but I just don’t need the stress and long hours, any more.

I enjoy researching products and services and recommending the best I can find to you and other readers of my blogs and websites.

I love working at home, on my own schedule. If I’m tired, I rest or sleep. If I don’t feel like working, I watch a movie or read a book.

When I feel like working, which is most of the time, I work on improving and expanding my websites, forums, blogs, lenses, and communities. I meet interesting people all around the world and receive very welcome commission checks from the few companies I recommend.

It’s not at all like it was back when I was paving roads and pouring concrete in the heat of the summer and cold of the winter. I never slice into the palm of my hand as I did back when I used to open about 200 dozen oysters at a seafood restaurant every evening. I don’t suffer from millions of stinging glass fibers as I did when I packed fiberglass insulation. Those were not my favorite jobs – not at all.

So, what makes it possible for me to work at home and make money using my computer and an Internet connection?

I’ve invested a lot of time and effort to learn affiliate marketing, and I’m doing better every year. This is a fairly easy business, but doing it as well as I can takes some effort and discipline.

If I’m not careful, I spend all my time building new websites, starting new blogs, and doing all the other things I can do half-asleep. Up to a point, this is a useful exercise, because I’ve been able to test lots of things to see how they work, or don’t work, for me.

I’ve joined hundreds of affiliate programs to learn how they work from the inside and have found that most return either very little or no return on my investment of time, effort and money. However, I’m determined to be successful at this and every time I learn something I don’t like about an affiliate program, I recognize what I do like about the programs that work for me.

As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite is the SiteSell Five Pillar affiliate program. Not only do they offer an outstanding product, Site Build It!, they also have the best affiliate program I’ve been able to find.

It has all I’m looking for:

  • An excellent product
  • Great support and training
  • An active and supportive forum
  • Lifetime commissions
  • Recurring annual commissions
  • High commissions per sale

So, I enjoy promoting Site Build It.

You know what I say, right, “If it’s not good enough for me, it isn’t good enough for you.”

I’m a very happy SiteSell customer and I use Site Build It! to power my Act On Your Dream! website.

I have big plans for that site and I’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work on a complete redesign and expansion of that site that I plan to complete before the end of the year. It won’t look much different, but I believe you’ll find it more useful.

Gee, John, get to the point, already!

Sorry about that. I do tend to get long-winded (or should that be long-fingered), don’t I?

OK. Here it is.

My life has changed for the better because of Ken Evoy, SiteSell, and Site Build It! I’m living my dream of working at home in the mountains far from the nearest city and doing what I want when I want to do it. That’s what I call freedom.

It all started when I found, and bought, Make Your Site Sell! a few years ago. I learned from that ebook what I needed to do to redesign and rebuild my websites so that I could make money via affiliate marketing. I was happy to pay for that book and I earned back my tiny investment hundreds of times since putting into action what I learned there. Now that ebook is a free download.

I liked Make Your Site Sell! so much that I became a Sitesell 5 Pillar Club member and started earning money by recommending it to other people who were looking for legitimate ways to earn money online.

Later, when Site Build It! was introduced, I bought a subscription and put it to work. One of these days, when I have more time, I’m going to buy another subscription and create another niche site.

If you’ve been considering purchasing Site Build It so you can learn how to build a successful online business, this is a good time of year to get started.

Did you know that over half of SBI! owners own more than one SBI site? Some own several.

But, SBI isn’t magic. It provides the tools and training, but you have to bring your brains, inspiration, knowledge, ambition, creativity, and motivation to the party. It takes a lot of work to build a successful business, even if you have the best tools available.

When you take it one step at a time, however, and follow the action guide that is part of the SBI process, you’ll find it manageable and achievable, even if you’ve never built a website before.

I’ve watched thousands of people on the members-only SiteSell forums go from that wide-eyed deer-in-the-headlights stage to offering sage advice to others a year later.

If you’re willing to invest a year or two in learning the tools, following the guide, and building your site, you may become one of the success stories featured in the case studies or have your site featured on the results page.

Of course, not everyone succeeds, and SBI doesn’t do your work for you, so if you’re not willing to spend a year or two to build something that can provide profits for years to come, then this isn’t for you. It’s work, no doubt about it.

But, if you have a passion for something and love researching it and telling others, then you already have the personality and some of the traits that make building an online business easier and more enjoyable.

Between now and August 29, 2008, at midnight, you have a choice. You can buy a one-year subscription to SBI for $299, or you can get two subscriptions for only $100 more.

Sure, you can keep both sites and build them yourself, but you may find that it’s better to give that second site to a friend, spouse, parent, child, or colleague. By giving that site to someone else, he or she will become your lifetime customer. If they join the affiliate program, they’ll be on your second-tier, a part of your team.

You can change your business life, and that of someone close to you, for the better.

Just remember to do it before the special ends on August 29 at midnight.

SiteSell and Site Build It! have helped me change my life and it’s working for thousands of other customers, too.

Why not you?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Updated Site Build It! 5 Pillar Program lens on Squidoo

August 15, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Squidoo Lenses 

If you don’t already know it, I’m a huge fan of Site Build It!, Ken Evoy, and their 5 Pillar Affiliate Program.

I’ve joined and tested hundreds of affiliate programs, and the 5 Pillar Affiliate Program remains at the top of the list.

You can earn generous commissions from each sale, and recurring commissions from each annual renewal. This is true lifetime commissions, and the folks at SiteSell go out of their way to make sure you are credited for the sales you make.

It is a two-tier program, so you can earn residual commissions each time someone you refer to the affiliate program makes a sale.

SiteSell offers outstanding training, a regular newsletter for affiliates, great promotional tools, dedicated affiliate managers, and free members-only forums.

The 5 Pillar Program remains one of my highest paying and most reliable income streams.

Have you joined, yet?

It’s free, you know.

Come learn more about the Site Build It! 5 Pillar Affiliate Program.

If I were going to recommend only one affiliate program, this is it.

Act on your dream!

JD

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What other webhosting company can show results like SiteSell can?

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

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

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

Why? Because there aren’t enough successful sites?

Hardly!

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

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

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

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

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

If they can do it, why can’t you?

Seriously.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Site Build It! – now you can hire a specialist to build your website for you

March 25, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Webhosting 

Until now, Site Build It! was for the “Do it yourself” crowd.

I’m part of that demographic and I love building websites of all sorts, but that’s what I do.

There are many thousands of us who want to learn all the skills that are necessary to build a successful, profit-making website around which we can build our business.

But, there are many millions who are part of the “Do it for me” crowd.

Maybe you are one of them.

You already have a business and you want a website that actually brings new customers and clients. You want your site to add to your bottom line, not subtract from it.

You know how to run your business and now you want to find someone who can build a website that gets results.

You already hire specialists in other areas, including your lawyer and accountant. Maybe it’s time for you to hire a specialist who will work closely with you to build a website that promotes your business and attracts new prospects to your business.

Where will you find a specialist who knows how to do this and won’t charge you more than its worth?

SiteSell Services now offers very attractive packages that include hosting using the un-matched Site Build It! system and a specialist who will work closely with you to target your niche market and build a website that will work for you night and day.

SiteSell Services is brand new, but it is based on a decade of proven techniques and technology combined to build websites that produce results.

From the SiteSell Services page:

Build a professional Web site with SiteSell Services, using a process and tools proven by tens of thousands of people. Each page is aimed at pulling in Web site visitors. More Web site visitors means more new business.

Your SBI!-built site will work. Built from the ground up, you reap the benefits of 10 years of SiteSell experience, all packed into a truly professional site.

Don’t waste your time and money. You deserve a website that will work for you.

Why don’t you spend a few minutes and see if SiteSell Services is what you’ve been looking for?

Act on your dream!

JD

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