Site Build It, SBI! from Sitesell.com

Look for a hosting account that gives you cpanel with fantastico. Then you can install wordpress with one click. Pretty much any of the big host providers have this - hostgator, hostingzoom, etc.

I own a very well-established website in a niche I love. It is just over 4 years old now. My site does very well. It is built with the SBI! system and I have been very, very pleased with it.

I think to say that a SBI! costs what it does for "domain and hosting" is very simplistic. It's much, much more than that.

It's just a different mindset. People want to do different things online. You can pay $299 for your SBI! authority site, and all the tools you get with that.

You can blow through $299 a year for domains for your mini-site empire.

You can spend way MORE than $299 chasing WSO's right here.

In my opinion, if you want to build a successful authority site on a subject that you're interested in, SBI! is the best way to go.

Let's see... we're at the 22nd day of 2010 aren't we? And my SBI! site has already made its fee for the ENTIRE year... with plenty left over for me to pay the bills and buy some goodies.

Is my $299 worth it? Oh yeah. Am I ever glad I didn't go with "wordpress and browse around the warrior forum to learn niche research?" You'd better believe it.

Now, there are other ways to make a lot of money online. Different strokes for different folks. But don't reduce SBI! to "hosting and a domain."

It is way more than that.

I agree completely, and I have read a lot of negative reviews about them, as well and some key points are that what they charge is WAY too much for stuff you can learn for free, and not be tied to them forever.

@ TheUnknownGuru & ksburgess

I've always been curious about SBI. Since you are users and fans, please take a little more time and tell me what you like about it, the various features and such that make it different from just domain hosting. Thanks in advance.

Dennis

Thanks Dave, but I wasn't asking for myself so the free trial isn't useful to me. I'm perfectly happy with my own system of doing things, but I know someone that needs a lot of direction and hand-holding, so to speak.

You mentioned the newsletter feature, so let's start with that. Is there a limit to how many subscribers you can have or how many email you can send? Is it confirmed out in? Do they have mail merge? Do they work with the major ISP's so the delivery rate is as high as possible?

There are many ways to kill a bird. That is another option for people who are comfortable with this model. I don't feel that SBI is limiting me. Do you have an idea how people waste time moving from one tool to another and finding Gurus to teach them? One should choose what is best for them depending on them

How can't you expand your business any way you like with SBI? I've never been limited in mine...

This isn't a comment about their website interface itself but about their affiliate program. I have had someone renew in 2008 and also in 2009 their website package but I was told I cannot get paid my commission until I make a sale. I never heard of a policy like this and if you do promote their affiliate program it is important to know this. In terms of it being a site builder, a friend of mine found she got very good results using similar keywords with a self-hosted wordpress blog being sure to use proper seo (like the all in one plugin etc).

Debbie

There seems to be a fairly even argument here over the pros and cons of Site Build It; here's my thoughts after using it for over 7 years.

I have 3 SBI sites, all profitable, that require very basic maintenance to keep them up to date. I outsource most of this now, so it's pretty much hands off. I also have several Wordpress Blogs and a number of 'ordinary' websites selling differnet products, consulting services, etc.

The things I like about Site Build It as opposed to other options are -

You don't need any technical ability to build a website that makes money. If you don't know how to use an HTML editor and don't want to try, you can build a real website using the block by block builder, with an orginized link structure that gets your pages found pretty quickly. If you know basic HTML, you can simply format your text the way you like it, and upload that into a text box and your site looks fine.

SBI comes with a blog module that 'pings' the main services anyway, so the 'blogging' function is covered as well.

The Action Guide and other free training they offer when I first started was a godsend because I knew nothing about building a website. I couldn't write content to save myself, and just had no idea of what I was doing. For most people, that training (which has evolved into a much more comprehensive course with video and written lessons now) is still a solid foundational course to learn from.

I like the fact that their Content 2.0 system allows people to create additional content for you, content that you or your VA can edit and make changes to if needed, which means less work in keeping content growing on your site.

You can do this with a blog, but I've found (as have my students and other SBI users on average judging by their feedback) the Content 2.0 pages on the sites I use it for rank more highly than blog comments (again, just my experience).

I think this may be because I can include keyword focused titles, headlines and page copy in my replies for each post - you cannot do that so easily with blog comments submitted by others because you can't easily change what people have written or which keywords they use (at least I have not found a way to do that).

Also blog comments are typically all on one page - the Content 2.0 system lets you create a new page for each comment, giving you more leverage - you can have 200 additional pages of content instead of having 200 comments on one page. This means more work, but you can outsource this very inexpensively if you want to, and the payoff of having all that additional content is long-term profits.

I like the Value Exchange system, although that is available in limited form to anyone as a marketing exercise from Sitesell.

I like the way they constantly work behind the scenes updating programming and making changes as search engine technology deems them necessary.

I like a lot of things about SBI, but most of them have been mentioned here in this thread by others already. I would just say that most of all, I like the fact that my SBI sites keep pumping out money I can spend or invest in stuff, without me having to spend any time working on it...don't get me wrong, it took time to set the sites up, but now they just work on their own with a small amount of input from a VA.

The main recurring theme on the negitive 'SBI Sucks' side of the equation seems to be 'It costs too much'. To my way of thinking as a business owner, what something costs is irrelevent. A million dollar piece of equipment that returns 50% per year for it's 10 year lifespan has to be considered a bargain.

The most important metric to look at and consider is the ROI you are getting for the investment of time and money. I think a $30 a month investment + a couple of hours a month in maintenance (after you have it up and running, but you have to do this with a blog too) is nothing compared to the money you can make from a website set up using the solid fundamentals taught by Ken in his training guides.

Just saying...

The things I don't like are -

I don't like the Brainstormer tool. It tends to generate a lot of long-tail keywords that have little or no actual search demand. The Value Demand, Real Supply and Profitability numbers it generates can be misleading for new people, and these days I ignore them completely.

I use other keyword tools such as Keyword Elite and Market Samuari (I LOVE Market Samuari) for my keyword research. I find the numbers I get from them are more reliable and 'real world'.

I DO NOT like the Mailout Manager email system SBI comes with, because it's too clunky, too limiting and only lets you create one list. It's not a true autoresponder, so I use Aweber for all of my sites, and have found it a perfect match for what I do.

SBI also comes with a system called Form Build It which does have a 7 message autoresponder in it, but again, it's clunky and you can't do much in the way of editing once messages are created and set up. Plus at the end of the 7th message, your subscribers disappear into a black hole, never to be seen again, unless you can somehow migrate them to another list.

The other problem is that it only sends out your messages in a rigid, pre-sequenced fashion, and you cannot insert a broadcast message anywhere. This is just too limiting.

I have upwards of 60 pre-programmed follow up messages in some of my Aweber follow up message series, and combined with regular email broadcasts, I 'touch' many of my subscribers over 100 times. This long-term follow up is the key to building a successful business.

I use Form Build it for FORMS - nothing else.

The final thing I don't like about SBI is their training's almost evangalistic mantra of focusing on 'free' organic traffic and the 'build it and they will come, hope the content you write will convert into sales and profits' philosophy.

Marketers know that you need to find profitable 'money' keywords quickly, and only then build additional content around them. We do this using Adwords or some other more aggressive strategy, rather than simply building pages around keywords we hope will be profitable, and waiting for them to get found. Once you find a profitable keyword, it's time to maximize your exposure to that one phrase, but you find it by testing, not hoping for the best.

If more emphasis were placed on testing before going all out and building a 100 page site on a topic that may have little or no monetization potential, I think more people would be wildly successful. There are many successful SBI sites though, which is a testiment to the other mantra they have - Slow And Steady - The Way Of The Turtle.

Having said all this, I have in the past taken a new SBI site in a very competitive niche from a standing start to $17,000 net profit in less than 2 months. I didn't wait for free traffic, we used MARKETING to generate that initial traffic (not expensive stuff; article marketing, Google content network ads, that sort of stuff), and we were selling a high ticket product so we didn't need to make many sales (there is a secret to making a LOT of money online or offline right there if you were paying attention...)

That site still generates hundreds of visitors a month totally free of charge for it's owner because of work done 2 years ago - it hasn't been touched since. 30 bucks a month is not a bad investment for the return it brings.

Could I have used Wordpress? Yes, but I was more confident in being able to rank for the keywords I wanted using SBI. Would I still use SBI in that application now? Yes. The ROI makes it extremely worthwhile.

The bottom line is that while Site Build It isn't perfect, their long-term history and numerous case studies showing successful users are a testament to the fact that for many people, the system works.

it won't work for everyone - nothing does, but to say that the tools and training you receive, the incredible friendships being created in the Forum, the ongoing development of backend tools and services they provide, and everything else that Sitesell stands for (without increasing the price in 5 years) is just 'a domain and hosting' isn't accurate.

It's really about buying into an exclusive club, where you have a system to follow and the vast majority of the people are there to help and share knowledge (much like the Warrior Forum) and to grow their businesses together.

If you have used SBI and found it wanting, I certainly understand. If their support desk didn't give you a refund or get back to you, that sucks.

But I think you would find these are isolated incidents (things that need to be addressed by Sitesell of course), and the vast majority of users I know of (numbering in the hundreds) have found the system to be robust enough to build a business or a website for their existing business, and while not everyone succeeds, more do that don't (using the evidence I have available).

My advice would be - if you haven't succeeded using all the free stuff, all the WSO's, taking the free advice available here in the Warrior Forum, using a Wordpress blog, and anything else you can get without using SBI, give Site Build It a shot.

Hey it's certainly NOT get rich quick, but if you have any marketing knowledge (and most people reading this will have more marketing knowledge that the average newbie SBI'er) then you should be able to throw up a basic site, get some links pointing at it, build some traffic, and make money.

The key to succeeding with SBI or anything else if you haven't so far is this -

1. Focus On Building A List From The Very First Visitor

2. Sell Products Or Services To A Starving Crowd Who Are Already Buying Online...

If you are already successful and making tons of cash, then you could benefit from giving SBI to one of your staff (like Alan Gardyne did) or a VA and just let them build a case study business for you so you can do a real comparison.

Whether you like Site Build It or not, there's no denying that many people have found financial freedom by simply following the Action Guide, learning a bit about marketing, and then just going for it.

Hope this helps,

Rocky Tapscott

P.S. Regarding the Sitesell affiliate program. Yes I think it sucks that you can miss out on your renewal commissions if you don't continue to make sales. It is explained in the 5 Pillar Manual, but it's only when it affects you in a bad way that it becomes obvious. This is something I would like to see changed, but after discussing it with a couple of Sitesell affiliate managers over the years, it ain't a policy that's going anywhere. Just be aware of it if you promote SBI as an affiliate.