Has anyone used SiteSell's SBI ??

Hi Roger, SBI is used on more than 30,000 websites.

I own sites built with it. I've published a couple of SBI case studies on AssociatePrograms.com, written by a student I hired, Rupert Farrow. When I hired him, he knew nothing about affiliate marketing. I just gave him SBI and the instruction manual (there are now videos too) and told him to go for it.

One of its major strengths is the comprehensive business-building education that's included. The system is now taught in about 30 colleges and universities around the world. You'll be hard pressed to find an alternative that can make the same claim.

Some people find Ken Evoy's educational style too wordy. He tends to repeat important points to help make them sink in. Also, it's a definitely not a "get rich quick" system. It's all about learning how to do things properly for long-term, lasting results.

I use SBI for affiliate marketing, but they teach you a variety of other ways to generate revenue from a website.

SBI seems to be polarizing. People often either hate it or become raving fans. If you're reading reviews, you need to be aware that it has been around for a decade or so and many reviews are way out of date.

I'm in the process of interviewing an SBI user who gets more 30,000 page views a DAY to her site. She earns more than twice what she used to in her old job. Your mileage may vary considerably.

Disclosure: I earned about $100,00 in affiliate commissions from SBI in the past 12 months, a considerable percentage of it from residual commissions from SBI users who keep paying the annual fee because their SBI sites work well for them. If they weren't getting value, they'd stop paying, and I'd stop receiving those commissions.

Summary: If you're looking for a comprehensive online business-building education and all the tools in one place, I strongly recommend it.

I used it a long long time ago.

I'd recommend just reading his ebook and not buying SBI. However it is not a bad tool to help you get started and teach you a lot of good stuff (learning by doing) if you want to get started but don't really know what you are doing.

The ebook is good that comes with SBI.

SBI is really for people that are new to IM and need step by step help setting up a site and marketing it. For these folks, it's a good product.

If you have any experience at all, SBI is probably not for you.

Hi Everyone,

Stacy here, from SiteSell answers. It's been awhile since we've had a discussion here, and I need to clarify some things.

@doclind1 - The earnings argument is impossible to debate for many reasons. First example, there are 1000s and 1000s of SBIers, most of whom aren't on the SBI forums. I personally read the forums daily, but I never post. And I am not an exception.

There are people earning great income, with 10000+ visitors a day. You may only hear from them on occasion, but you will find their posts if you look.


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It is true that some SBIers were hit by Panda and Penguin, but not everyone. (I was not hit.) The traffic loss overall was roughly 8%, I believe. I would have to check the post-Penguin numbers, but I know that post-Panda, traffic rebounded to all time highs. And the majority of sites were not hit, either.

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This is actually a good idea in some cases. A lot of people come up with good ideas right away. Others, it takes time to develop one.

Some fair to poor earning sites can earn $600-$700 a month on a regular, near-passive income basis. That's not staggering income, but boy, it sure comes in handy!

It's important for people to undertake SBI as a business and do their due diligence, research etc. If some people need to take more time to make sure they're ready to commit before they start, then that's a good idea.

Also, the Brainstorming tools are invaluable when it comes to choosing a site concept. So that's why waiting is not always the best idea. Without that analysis, a person has no way of knowing if any idea is viable.

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As far as everyone doing the same thing - that's because SBI is an ebusiness building platform. They aren't doing the same thing at the same time, but they're using the same system.

It's kind of like a group of people following the same diet. Some people are at the beginning, some further down the road. Some people have lost their 80 pounds, others can't stop cheating and have actually gained weight.

If that is something that turns one off, then SBI is not for them.

But for most people starting out (or people who have been around for awhile, but still haven't "made it"), SBI is a good option.

Thanks, everyone, for posting your opinions and experience.

This is not true. While many SBIers use Adsense as a monetization model (it's one of the easiest to implement), it is not the only monetization model used with SBI!. Infin It!, for example, allows SBIers to plug in an Infin It! number of 3rd party solutions (shopping cart, ecommerce site, for example. But those are only two examples, the possibilities are infinite).

And SBIers are being encouraged to spread their wings and move away from Adsense. The most financially successful SBIers don't rely upon Adsense, by the way.
Some of them don't even use it.

I'm sorry that you have put in so much time on your site for that kind of return. But hearing those results, I can say that something is definitely not right and I'd encourage you to get an SBI site review to help debug it.

I personally would never have kept renewing a site that performs like that after all that time. ;-) And nobody wants you to. A better answer is to fix it or learn from your mistakes and drop it. Sounds like you've made some pretty fundamental mistakes.

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Folks, again, my job is to help correct wrong information about SiteSell and SBI, but so many responses on this forum end up being issues that are not debatable or can be easily construed into even more misleading issues.

Therefore, this is my last post on this thread and I leave you with this -

For those who are truly interested in SBI, I recommend reviewing our urban myths page, that covers most of the common misconceptions about SBI:

The SBI! Urban Myths

The bottom line is, SBI does have verifiable proof of success and a money-back guarantee. So those who don't find it to be for them, can give it a try with no risk. For every person here who says it doesn't work, there are thousands of SBIers who will say that it does. Those folks just aren't here.

Those who are interested, can check it out. Those who aren't can carry on.

As I said in my last post, if you're already successful, you don't need SBI. If you are new or have been around awhile, but haven't "made it," SBI can help you. But SBI is not for everyone and it's up to each person to decide.

Take care, all and good luck with your businesses!

Stacy Holmes
SiteSell Answers

I'm subscribed to an internet marketer by the name of Lisa Irby of 2createawebite.com, and she is a huge fan. She puts out quality stuff, so you might want to check out her channel. Just put in her name.

Joey

The ebook is good for IM starters. But I'd recommend Wordpress rather than pricey Site Build It programs. I also notice that they hate Wordpress I'm not sure why... :confused:

Other thing I found that I can't unsubscribe from their mailing list, I forgot my login to member area but when I contact support they never reply my emails.

Been several years trying to get rid of Ken Evoy's emails with no luck and I'm very annoyed with it.

Great methodology, but outdated designs. I would stay away unless you need step by step, even then, there are better and more relevant info here for FREE. I like to think of SBI as a way for a geriatric person to get into online markting.

~Lane

SBI is a good tool if you don t knwo anything about IM. But you don t have any freedom. So if you can build a wordpress site, add all in one seo, etc... Then I d say you should rather go with wordpress.

Princessleia - I just built numerous pages on my site over the weekend. It was smooth, simple and yes - for one page, I used the "build workaround" because there was no save function. But it worked perfectly and did the trick. The save function will come out on the dev schedule when there's time. There are other projects in the pipeline and these are prioritized in terms of what is the most helpful to the most SBIers.

Your concern about unlimited domains at other hosts has been addressed numerous times in this forum. Your concern about deadlines and promises was answered above. The concerns from others about being free is an age-old issue, but it too, has been addressed numerous times in the past.

The purpose of encouraging the building of one website at a time is that many/most people need to devote attention to one project before moving on. It is very easy for people to get involved in too much at once and never see light at the end of the tunnel. Keep in mind, SBI! has a broad client base and strives to adhere to principles that benefit and is safest for the widest range of clients.

If you have outgrown SBI!, Princessleia, it is perfectly okay to move on. But you are beginning to resort to inflammatory (and contradictory) accusations. So it's time for me to end this thread. I won't be coming back to this, because from experience, I know it will not get any more productive at this point.

It's easy for you to complain about dev schedules and save function workarounds, Princessleia, because your site is established and making money. But for those people who have tried for years to earn an income online, who have tried and failed, SBI! helps those people. For as many people who complain, there are 10x who praise it and would rather see the programmers focus on projects like Mobilize It! to help them expand their business and increase their success.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying SBI! is perfect, because nothing is. But what I am saying is that it SBI! has helped many people, including Princessleia. And it is not possible to make every single customer happy 100% of the time.

Good luck to all and have a Happy Thanksgiving!


Stacy Holmes
Answers.Sitesell.com

Hello Oven Key,

Yes I'm back. But I didn't come back to debate. The "critics" are NOT here to debate either, they're really just here to blast. It's the "same old, same old" merely said with different words. There are a couple of new twists of late, like carefully taking a few out-of-context words from Ken's forum posts to make them sound terrible, but leaving out all the positive things that have been happening and ignoring the strong, helpful voices that have emerged.

I sent the above posts to Ken and he said, "same old lies, myths, half-truths and distortions by folks who prefer to hide behind personas." He respects, at least, folks like Kristi Linauer and Joe Trent. He doesn't agree with most of what they say, but at least he respects that they stand behind their words.

Rather than repeat the same answers that have been given before, here are just of few replies from the past...

http://www.warriorforum.com/internet...ml#post2807764
http://www.warriorforum.com/internet...ml#post2812773
http://www.warriorforum.com/internet...ml#post2822704
http://www.warriorforum.com/internet...ml#post3996819
http://www.warriorforum.com/internet...ml#post6957571

In regards to the few new falsehoods being created, since you ARE following the SBI! forums and already know that our sysadmins have reported that those numbers (of domains) are not accurate, it's obvious you're promoting these new myths for other reasons.

Instead of addressing your self-interested myths, I have a suggestion: why don't all you SBI!-haters get together and debate Ken, personally and directly?

Here's how...

1) Step out of the shadows. Sign your name to this debate. If you really did have an SBI! site, name it so we can cross-check your statements for the truth. If you never did have a site, well, I guess we won't be seeing you.

2) Make a list. A real good solid, documented list of all the things that you find wrong with SBI! such as Ken, the approach, the tools (all of them), etc. I'll offer a word of advice and I offer it only in the spirit of saving you time and embarrassment...

Drop the ridiculous speculations and accusations that you really have no way of knowing. Like this example by "effervescent".

Ken oversees operations, but there is no way he could do all that. He focuses mostly on new product development and participates in the forums as much as he can. As the team has grown, he has gradually been limiting his role to product development and overall direction.

So regarding content (aside from his posts in the forums which most people seem to value)....

1) He assembles the SBIX (the weekly SBI! newsletter with news and launch announcements, etc). He will probably let this go soon, since Theresa could do it just as well.

2) The Action Guide is constantly updated by the Content team, as are the articles in the various HQs. Ken may suggest certain topics to cover, but content is mostly driven by the staff, who have a great deal of autonomy.

He was heavily involved in the Panda Audit and Recommendations, which reversed an overall 8% loss in traffic to Panda with a 26% gain in the 4 months following its release. Ken jumped out, very front and center, and organized an exhaustive study on that issue.

The resulting Panda report was based on an objective study of over 200 SBI! sites, some hit by Panda and some not, comparing them for over 65 variables which might conceivably have had an impact. Because it is an analysis based on statistical data, it remains one of the best articles on dealing with Panda. The results more than recaptured lost traffic.

Similarly, since Penguin, average site traffic grows month on month.

In short, we're back to normal.

3) As for the "marketing materials," the affiliate team writes the 5 Pillar e-zine. Ken may or may not suggest topics, but he is usually pretty hands-off. He may suggest directions for a new page or an idea for an AB-split. But he never writes them. In fact, Ken recently appointed someone to oversee the 5 major, non-product-dev teams. That person reports to Ken weekly, reviewing the important projects that are going on with each team.

That frees up Ken to do more important things than write everything SBIers read, while still making sure that the big picture is correct and incorporating what is new and important.

So that statement is just silly...

A more accurate description would be, "Oversight and high-level direction, as we gather information from both the forums and external best-of-breed coverage in every area of online business-building.'"

In fact, Ken's main role nowadays is prioritizing product development, setting the specs and then letting an outstanding team of sysadmins, UI experts, and programmers do their thing. They, too, have much more latitude. Many years ago, Ken set the specs in detail. Now he sends high-level specs for a new tool, the team lead returns a proposed UI and may revise the specs. Ken approves and off they go to build the tool.

SBIers have been delighted with the speed and regularity of all the new features since BlockBuilder 2. And yes, BB2 was a "difficult birth," but since the bugs were fixed, and with the continuing release of new features, many SBIers who have tried many sitebuilders including Wordpress, now call it the "best sitebuilder in the world."

There is no way to measure that, I agree, but it's a sign that BB2 is a beloved core of SBI!, yet is only one of many modules included for free, that you would otherwise have to pay for. And it is only going to get more and more powerful.

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But there I go again. Rather than continuing on,

If you are so sure of how terrible SBI! is, why don't you...

1) Unmask yourselves and build a list of complaints, weaknesses, etc., and sign your names to them and add your true history (or lack of thereof) with SBI!, including sites.

2) If you've left SBI! and have complaints, please do include real examples of your sites/blogs as examples of how extraordinarily well you are doing. If you are worried about revealing your niche, that's just immature thinking combined with a lack of confidence in your ability to stick.

If you truly think that someone who knows nothing about breeding Siamese cats is going to start competing successfully against your knowledge-and-passion fueled site and social presence, you really can't have much to begin with.

If you are successful, believe me, your REAL competitors have already discovered you. Some free exposure in results.sitesell.com is not what is going to do you in.

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In other words, it is impressive to see Princess's continuing rage at SiteSell (by the way, are ALL your posts here only going to be about SBI!?) and it's great to know that she continues to earn income with SBI!, but it's not so impressive when she hides her accusations behind a pseudonym and dedicates herself to finding new ways to twist whatever is happening at SiteSell, ignoring all the great stuff that has been happening, including the weekly, on-time releases.

I know Ken would love to debate claims such as...

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To anyone reading this, there is almost ALWAYS an excellent answer to these. And Ken will be the first to admit where there are weaknesses with SBI!. The problem here is that there seems to be no limit to the creative twisting by haters (you can tell by their tone and the BIG RED remarks) to make matters seem bad, when in fact SBI! delivers amazing value and no other company anywhere has documented nearly the type and number of success stories that SBI! does.

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So put your names where you mouths are and make a really good list of complaints and accusations. I expect answers such as "Ken will be mean to me" or "I choose to remain private."

No, Ken won't be mean to you. And if you choose to remain private, I trust that people reading this will give anonymous criticism the regard it deserves.

Please, do get together and let's settle this once and for all. Include complaints like this one...

You'll know how foolish you sound after Ken answers. And please, DO include the names of the "several friends" who had to "fight tooth and nail to get their sites removed." Facts count because facts make it easier for Ken to expose your distortions and exaggerations. The rest?

It's just hate. The fact is, Melissa, you got into a disagreement with Ken and you've held a grudge ever since. So go ahead...

No need to hide behind names. Get together, name your names and your sites, make a well-documented list and Ken will be glad to publicly answer and then debate you ALL in public, once.

I mean...

ALL against Ken. That seems about fair.

The transcript will be posted on a third party site which you can gladly post to, as evidence of how bad SBI! is, whenever you want to slam SBI!. Just post to it... or not.

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Yes, I have run this past Ken.

He would be very interested to actually FACE the cowardly hate-mongers and falsehood-spreaders who hide behind pseudonyms, face to face, ONCE and reply to every complaint and objection you can come up with.

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On a happier note:

It's nice to see there are others with positive and balanced points of view. I know this is not "home field advantage," but the fair voices do have a calm and factual tone, with a good, simple suggestion...

"Try it." You may hate it immediately. You may love it and see the value. You may try it for a few months, learn a lot and then decide to move on. But please don't let the angry fool you.

SBI! is not perfect (what is?), but it really is the best way to start and build a successful online business.

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The ball is in your court, haters. I look forward to hearing if you are ready to come out from the shadows, work together publicly and openly, the way that several of you work together secretly already, except that you're going to have to be much more rigorous and do away with the so-easy-to-do mud-slinging that can't be backed up.

You know by now that if you don't, that Ken will expose your accusations with a very bright and clear light, for all to see the truth.

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To the fair-minded, I really have no more to add but I'm sure the haters will. I ask you to post a link to this post as my reply to whatever else they sling in the future. I have tried, but there is no end to what can be made up. Ken invites the haters to come out of the dark land of make-it-up and twist-and-shout, join forces with Joe Trent and Kristi Linauer and Lis Sowerbutts and do your best.

Have one, complete debate with Ken. You don't have to attach you names to PAST posts that you have made here, since you would be embarrassed, knowing how irresponsible many of them are. But you DO have to step forward and stand behind your statements going forward.

We will find a mutually agreeable moderator so you can rebut, as can Ken.

We will both then have a place to send people to when the wild mud-slinging recurs. It's the facts that count - hard, documentable real facts.

If you refuse, well, that pretty much speaks for itself, no matter how you try to justify it.

I do ask the fair-minded here to link to this post when yet another hate party gets going. It is the only answer that is needed from here on in.

Warm regards,

Stacy Holmes
Answers.Sitesell.com

Stacy,

I was doing a search just out of curiosity to find the best host for a large WP site (high traffic) and this thread caught my eye in search results.

I've two SBI sites the first about 7 years old now. The first site I sell my own line of products on and have been more than moderately successful doing so. Although recently other projects have led me to neglect my SBI sites a bit.

This thread seems to me to be a bit of an exposure of some of SBI's short comings and those whom simply weren't a good fit for SBI type of sites. And of course testimonials from those like myself who've learned much from SBI and also have developed those skills using other resources online.

Is there any chance SBI will ever integrate wordpress as an alternative? My latest site I went with it simply because my developer was much more skilled with WP instead of coding a PHP site from scratch for me. (not to mention all the plugins for WP are really handy)

I'm going to bookmark this thread as I'd love to see Ken interact with some of the detractors, and even some of us who might have some questions/suggestions etc.

BW,
Zac

Facts:

SBI does not have an autosave like WordPress does. They also do not have a single button save solution aka (a save button). Building a page and marking it no follow no index is not saving a page. It is building a page and marking it no follow no index.

You cannot change your domain name with SBI. if the better domain name becomes available or you want to split your site into 2 domains, you cannot do it with SBI. This is also tied to the fact that you do not have 301 redirects with SBI.

If you want to add a store, a dedicated blog, host PHP scripts, media heavy files, or have a podcast, you will only be able to do that if you purchase additional hosting elsewhere.

SBI costs either $300 a year per domain name or $30 a month per domain name. There is no discount for multiple domains with the exclusion to the occasional by one get one free promotion, however, the free is only for one year. Each subsequent year he will have to renew at the 300 a year or 30 a month price.

SBI sites are currently not mobile responsive. Yes, with considerable scrolling you can view their sites on mobile, however, unless you purchase a mobile response of template and learn to uploda your own HTML, your sitse will not be responsive until their mobile module is ready. No release date is given for that in progress development.

The recent upgrade for their block builder was indeed over a year late and contained many bugs.

FYI: You can do all of the things above if you use WordPress as your content management system and get a simple basic account at host gator. You can buy a premium WordPress theme for less than $100 that you can use on multiple sites that will allow your site to be mobile responsive. Installing WordPress is easy using host gator or any number of host services.

effervescent

Thanks, I'll agree, it is unlikely SBI will add WP as an option anytime soon, if ever.

I'll have to disagree that Stacy is Ken incognito. I'm not a casual SBI member....quiet the opposite, SBI has changed my life. If Stacy's online "voice" sounds a bit like Ken's I can relate to that.

I find myself sounding much like him simply from reading so much of his writings.

Now before you think I'm just going to side with the "cult", think again. I'll admit SBI, and particularly Block Builder in general were limited, particularly years ago.

Fact is most of the templates where quiet clunky if that makes sense to you. I used one on my first SBI site for a year and then hired a designer to make it look professioanl, which btw was a SBI recommendation and did the whole upload etc for just over 100 bucks.

OK, IMO to put this discussion into perspective, I'll have to say the detractors are having a platform to dis SBI simply because they choose to use cheaper hosting which they can manage, or they are not really that successful online and want to bash one of the avenues they tried buy failed at due to their own lack of effort.

_________________
Side Bar

Think of it this way. How many successful MLM leaders have tons of their downline who didn't succeed simply because of a lack of effort ect?

End of Side Bar, No Resemblance To Ken Intended....
___________________

Now to those who have succeeded after their SBI experience, well good for you! Why not engage this thread with some positive feedback as to what you would do to improve SBI?

Not sure why there is this angst against SBI in general and from Warriors in particular.

I will tell you one thing. There is no substitute for hard work. If you want to succeed online, you'll have to work hard at it.

SBI will work for you, if you choose to go that direction. If not, then there are ton's of other hosts and platforms to use.

The Warrior Forum has tons of advice from successful marketers, but it also has tons of offers from those who simply want your money, and are only concerned with their ROI and CPC etc etc.

I'm a WRM and know many of the biggest WSO people here.

I'm not thrilled with the way IMers concentrate on their sales copy, one time offers, second time offers, etc etc etc. all mostly a bunch of crap. (all designed to make them and their JVs more $ and add very little value)

Want to bash Ken, pretty easy target. But IMO I think there's much more wrong with internet marketing than his approach and company.

OK, rambled enough.

What say you?

While the discussion rages on, I think you will get more and more confused and not know what to do!

Like some one said in one of the posts above, once you start using it you can either become a raving fan or just hate it(you must have figured that out from the comments above).

Here's a simple solution. SBI had come out with a monthly payment option some time back. Choose the monthly option plan and try it out for a couple months. If you don't like it just discontinue. An important fact that you may like to be made aware of is that when you use SBI you do not own the domain, SBI does.

What!!! Not true. You've been misled somewhere.

It's easy to prove... Go to DomainTools.com or a similar site and search the domain ownership records. Type in the domain of any SBI site. You'll be able to see who owns to domain.

You'll see the SBI user's name and address. That's who owns the domain.

No wonder Ken gets works up and says over the top nasty things when people spread such misinformation.

Princess Leia,

I think you'll find SiteSell protects itself against such claims now by:

1. Not providing estimated delivery times, and
2. Not being clear about what exactly is going to be delivered

SiteSell has proved time and time again that it is incompetent at estimating, designing, and rolling out large projects. And they have become so petrified of yet another public humiliation that 1. and 2. above are the only coping strategies they've been able to manufacture.

If you say they are late with Mobilize It, they'll just say they never gave an ETA for it, so how could they be late. And if you say they haven't delivered on their promise of 301 redirects, adequate Email Marketing tools, save buttons, and so forth, they'll hide behind the ambiguous 'little surprises' they have in store for you.

Fortunately though, if somewhat ironically, the Keep It Real mantra always comes through in the end, and that is why SiteSell's subscriber base is in an unstoppable freefall.

P.S. Late newsflash from SBI: "P.S. Work on BB2 Mobilize It! for BB2 is proceeding nicely. I may even be able to give an ETA in 2 weeks."

Speak of the devil

worst purchase i ever made wasted an entire year trying to go through the reams and reams and reams of reading , then trying to apply it. this is all about affilate marketing the hardway.

As far as I can remember he took 40 pages to say what he could hace said in half a page. it was like doing a university degree all theory. I never got past the keyword toll.

long time ago and never going back there. Nice people though.

SBI=CRAP

FOOLS GOLD

Those who succeeded would have succeeded anyhow

Nice people though -very caring- but stone age

For those wondering about the comments above implying SBI is 'broken', it so happened that while this conversation was taking place, SBI's sites all went down. As Ken Evoy put it...

"By the time it was figured out, all sites were down until 9:30AM EST. The issue (which turns out to be human error) has been resolved. 2.5 hours."

"We have not had any type of outage, and certainly not an unplanned one, of anywhere this magnitude in many years."

Now, don't get me wrong, all hosts have some level of downtime. It's just not possible to be perfect. But they DO have some explaining to do in the honesty stakes.

Firstly, when Ken says they haven't had any downtime for "years", is he forgetting the downtime that occurred just last year??

And given that they HAVE had downtime of all sites, how is it that they have the audacity (read: dishonesty) to display error screens like the one I've attached below?

Are they serious?? They KNOW their sites have gone down in the past, and yet they claim their sites are NEVER down??

It's CRIMINAL. And it's been pointed out before. Just like the false claim they make about having 40,000 customers when they most likely have around half this number.

If you're here to find accurate information about SBI before purchasing, I hope this helps.

Hi Folks

Catching up on this thread quickly, I see that many of the recent posts have already been addressed in this thread. However, I am not here to rehash those arguments today. I am here to address the SiteSell downtime issue that occurred recently:

Oven Key, Ken openly shared what occurred with SBI!ers in the forums and the fact is, SiteSell was extremely upset over this. That's because SBI!ers' sites were impacted. We pride ourselves on our uptime and deem any unplanned downtime as unacceptable.

No one at SiteSell has a cavalier attitude towards this and as Ken said, things like that just CAN'T happen. We are not passing it off nor are we indifferent towards it happening again. We are doing everything we can to ensure it does not recur.

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For those who don't know, here is what happened:

We have a long-standing relationship with a company that manages the physical location of our servers. They are a world class company with super security and a top-notch networking team. Routine router work was performed that was not supposed to have any effect on Sitesell . . . but it did. It was not a failing of our servers or equipment that caused the outage, it was a human's error.

After the incident, a transparent accounting, a sincere apology and instructions for reparation were posted in the SBI! forums.

Ken said:

"Naturally, when something goes wrong, after you've fixed it, make sure that it never happens again."

and

"Bottom line -- don't only fix the problem, improve how well you handled it, including how quickly you communicated it."

Daniel Kornitzer, CEO of SiteSell pointed out:

"during the 2.5 hrs of outage, our bandwidth usage dropped by only one-third. This means that two-thirds of the SBI! traffic still went on undisturbed (i.e. cached pages, cached IP addresses, etc)."

Ken added:

"That means, on average your site received 2/3 of the traffic that it would have anyway. . . While 2.5 hours is our longest outage ever, it brings the actual impact down to less than an hour."

However, while those facts may help offer some perspective in the matter, they are not intended as an excuse. Measures have been taken to rectify and prevent such a thing from occurring in the future. Those measures are openly posted in the SBI! forums.


You have omitted a few words. What Ken actually said was:

"We have not had any type of outage, and certainly not an unplanned one, of anywhere this magnitude in many years."

Planned downtime has occurred in the past when servers were upgraded to accommodate future growth. They are announced in advance so folks can plan. Things like increased speed and improved performance make these planned outages worth the necessary hassle.

On the other hand, vicious folks worked hard at trying to bring down our servers last year but we recovered within minutes. It is impossible to be 100% secure against these types of attacks, but SiteSell made adjustments/improvements and further increased security.

----

In regards to the screenshot posted and this:

Please realize that the message you received is an error message that displays when a temporary glitch has occurred (see the screenshot above). It means that you've encountered a process or a glitch that needs to be resolved.

Typically, things return to normal within a few minutes after encountering such a message and all moves along fine afterwards. Sometimes, things need to be reported to Support so a fix can be implemented.

But that does NOT mean that a site is down.

----

Let's take a look at the text of that error message as can be seen in the screen shot above.

"If you are an SBI! user, your site remains available -- SBI! sites never fail."

"Fail" = die, expire or cease to function. The message is a factual reassurance to people that their site is not lost and that all will be okay in a few moments. And it will, because all SBI! sites are kept in a data base they can be retrieved at any time. Even if the most unthinkable were to happen, an SBI! site can be brought back.

Our extensive database is part of what allows SiteSell to do what no other webhost in the world can do. Those terabytes of data allows us to analyze trends across tens of thousands of sites. We can glean information from across the Net about which others are only able to speculate. (And that's just one example.)

In contrast, other sites can be hacked and brought down. To demonstrate this, go to Google and type in a phrase like "i can't get my site back" or "i lost my site," etc. You will see this happens too frequently across the Net due to security issues, faulty platforms, etc.


SBI! is more unhackable than others due to the locked-out nature of our hosting. There's no FTP (Melissa, if you're still upset about that, I urge you to look up the article "The Why Behind no FTP" in the Tips and Techniques articles) and we don't have the security issues you might find with Wordpress and others.

----

To summarize:

There was downtime at SiteSell recently, much to our dismay. It turned out to be human error - a type of error that is nearly impossible to foresee. However, we have worked to correct the situation doing everything possible to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Stacy Holmes
SiteSell Answers
http:// answers.sitesell.com

Just a few quick observations about this ongoing thread. I'm in a hurry so I may pop back in a few days with more details...

1. It turns out that our friend Zacman is an SBI affiliate. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. But in a thread asking for customer experiences and opinion it is an accepted protocol, if not a rule, to let your affiliation be known so that prospective purchasers may give your posts the appropriate weight. I also think this little discovery might render a 'How SBI Changed My Life' post a little redundant, given that there is no shortage of such affiliate declarations. As for genuine customers publishing declarations of love for SBI, they have become somewhat scarce in recent years. To the point where SBI must pay for them in the form of competition prizes.

2. In response to the increasing outcry over SBI's ridiculously archaic, buggy, and feature-deprived email marketing tools, Ken promised an upgrade in the first quarter of 2013:

"The first quarter of 2013 will see an overhaul of MailOut Manger (using the BB2 engine and offering unlimited lists)"

Well, we guessed right. This was yet another empty promise made by Ken Evoy to put out yet another public fire, and within days of making this promise he published a 'road map' in which the overhaul has disappeared from the plan. That's how it works at SiteSell. Much like politics. Make the promises, then once you're elected change your story. This is consistent with advice others have given in this thread: Never base your decision to buy SBI on the promises Ken offers for the 'near future'. Most of Ken's promises are fly-by-night. They will suddenly disappear between the cracks, or turn up 3 years late in a form which is by then primitive.

3. As for this SBI marketing message: "If you are an SBI! user, your site remains available -- SBI! sites never fail.", we now find out that this message is only a lie if taken at face value, the way normal human beings would interpret it. The 'correct' interpretation is apparently something like this: if somebody trips over the power cord of SBI's main server, and pulls out all the network cables just to be sure, and your website disappears from the face of the Web, Ken has some Good News for you. It turns out your website did not fail!! That's right folks. Your website is still being stored in the form of electron configurations stored deep inside a machine somewhere, and even though nobody can visit your site, and your business will vanish for the duration of this episode, your site has not failed.

The online business world has not taken to calling Ken Evoy "Dr Spin" for nothing folks. It's almost becoming hilarious. If you can't succeed, just redefine 'success'!

4. It is now known with almost 100% certainty that SiteSell's claim to have over 40,000 customers is incorrect, despite being plastered all over the Web in their marketing materials, and being boasted unashamedly by their ever-withering affiliate base. Ken now claims that we are not entitled to know the correct figure (apparently forgetting THE LAW which requires marketing claims to be substantiated).

REMARK - I am impressed with the honesty of what is probably SBI's most important affiliate, Allan Gardyne, who at the start of this thread repeated Ken's claim of 40,000 customers. In the face of contrary evidence, he has invoked a little-known concept called 'integrity' and revised his figure to 30000+ domains. That figure is at least possible to substantiate, even though it far far less impressive than the original one (the frequency of multiple-domain customers would suggest that the number of customers might even be lower than 20,000). Perhaps SiteSell can take Allan as a role model.

BTW -- For anyone thinking this issue is being nit-picky, here's why it is most certainly not. For someone who takes their online business seriously, and who is thinking of investing thousands of hours over many years to build it, they need to know that they are locking themselves into a proprietary system that is falling like a lead balloon. 3rd-party services measure SiteSell's net losses at around 500-1000 domains per month (which, incidentally, Ken describes as 'horizontal sales').

Again, despite posting on the subject in a typical evasive, tap-dancing, Google-esque style, Ken refuses to tell the world his true customer-base, thereby leaving customers ignorant of the steep nosedive SiteSell has entered in the last 12 months at least.

And if Ken (aka Stacey) enters to comment on this one, be prepared to watch Dr Spin in full flight. Read his words carefully and see if he answers this question: "How many active customers does SiteSell have? And how exactly do you define an active customer?"

Seriously, he is even better than Google at answering a question without actually answering it. As you can see from Stacey's delightfully irrelevant post about how much downtime SiteSell has compared to other companies. That wasn't the issue. The issue was, why do you say SBI! sites never fail, when they provably do.

At least she answered that one I suppose. And her answer made my day :-)

Well I definitely agree that people can waste a lot of time fooling with SBI as apposed to other systems. I know I've wasted years there myself weeding through all the thick puffed up materials and doing things the slow tortoise way. I'm not saying they're totally garbage and have no knowledge to offer - but when the Internet is moving at the speed of light and they're moving slow as molasses then yes, they are stone age royal waste of time.

The final draw for me was about a year ago...

One of the "benefits" I paid for with SBI was to be able to participate in their private forum. And more than half the time when I had questions I never got an answer (or got useless responses from people who didn't have a clue what they were talking about). So I had to do a lot of digging and reading just to get their clunky outdated system to work many-a-days.

But what really pissed me off was when they censored me for including one of my wordpress sites in my sig in their private forum, that mind you I was paying to be a member of. Yes, here I was paying $300 a year and they kept deleting my sigs because I had Wordpress sites included in them. They are obvious intimidated by Wordpress, and I guess they didn't want my inclusion of Wordpress in my sig to influence others in their cult-like community.

So after going back & forth with them as to why they kept deleting my sigs, they gave me lame excuse after excuse, and finally a real lame excuse saying that it was because I have privacy protection on my domains and they couldnt verify that I owned the sites in my sig. Oh yeah I said, well funny that I had privacy protect on my SBI site too and that wasn't a prob so really what the issue? After all, it's not like privacy protect on a domain is something uncommon. And they just eventually couldn't give me a straight answer and just kept switching over to different "customer service" reps, for days!

I knew right then & there that SBI was on some BS and it really surprised me that a company that I once believed in was that intimidated (or intimidated at all) by a competitor - Wordpress. Sad.

When I told them I wanted to cancel my membership for good and leave for good, they sure as heck made me jump through hella hoops. After being a customer of theirs for years, they wanted me to go overboard to prove that my SBI site/membership I wanted to cancel was in fact mine. They made me go through the hassle of digging up multiple original receipts, original payment info, tracking numbers and everything they could think of just to make it extremely difficult for me to just leave after all this nonsense. Had I not saved all my emails from years back, it would have probably taken a court order for me to to cancel that darn SBI! ...and that's no joke.

I will never ever use SBI again - and I Do Not recommend that anyone waste their precious time fooling with them. There are so much more advanced systems to earn money and build a solid business. Even they know it themselves, which is why they are so intimidated by the growth, ease-of-use, and popularity of Wordpress and other systems.

SCREW SBI!!!

SBI might not be the right solution long term for a lot of folks, but for most newbies, it's far better to invest a year or two there and actually get a clue about building websites that earn rather than pay attention to the get rich yesterday crowd and technique of the moment. How are those four slice toaster sites working for you?

Curtis, if I remember rightly, you are swimming pool robots website guy who came blazing onto reviews done a couple of years ago. Either that or half of the SBI rapid response navy seals are called Curtis.

Or maybe not. If you're doing well with SBI, come out and tell us about your sites. How about these thousands of people you know about?

If you're not working for SBI, how do you know there are thousands of hugely successful people there? We'd love to see their sites.

And if the Warriorforum is such a joke and the laughing stock of the internet, then why are you here with 241 posts to your name?

Anyone would think you were paid to masquerade as a real guy on forums by SBI. Oh...hold on.

On the topic, I do remember the guys on SBI forums who they pay to pretend to be regular customers and masquerade on the forums outing 'haters' and deleting any non-pro-SBI comments.

And Curtis...if you think SEO is a secure business model, hey go ahead and use it. I'm not stopping you. Good luck.

That was a cause of another storm on their forums last year, the discovery that half of the cheerleaders in their forums are actually SBI employees in disguise!

But don't take it from me, just read the links to reviews that I posted above. Like I said, they are give far more information than people posting here have time to.

sbi is for noobs plain and simple, if you're scared and don't like to read and learn on forums and love to spend $300yearly for that assurance go ahead. i mean really that's what they're providing you, a security blanket, too bad the blanket is old and tattered.

yea, if you're a noob, you want a security blanket and you have 300bucks to throw away, then sbi is for you. everyone who starts out at anything is a noob, if however you want to learn by messing up, reading forums and saving 300bucks stay away from sbi.

I really feel bad when SBI is criticised. It is in fact the finest routes ever, one can go on to learn and practice internet marketing. I completely owe my IM knowledge to SBI and I use it in my business all the time.

While there are plenty of affiliate marketing guides, tutorials etc but what SBI teaches is far superior in quality. Enrolling in SBI is like pursuing MBA in online marketing from any top notch business school. It's that feeling I get as someone who has been a SBIer.

I believe in constructive criticism and completely support what Stacy mentions above.

Thank you, Ken Evoy and thank you Stacy Holmes. Keep it up. Ethical business practitioners would always stand behind you.

Wow, Stacey up there, telling big fat porky pie lies yourself.

I'm not an SBI basher as you call it, who just tries to create confusion and the people I see posting here are just ex SBI customers.

Stacey's weird post above labelling ex SBI customers as people who like to create confusion is typical of what you see in the forums there: weird ramblings from Evoy about how SBI is perfect and those who don't say so are haters and bashers.

Creepy, strange stuff.

My only point in posting here was to make noobs aware of what SBI is, nothing more, nothing less.

I will be an exSBIer within 3 days, I have run multiple sites with Sitesell for 4 years now, SBI is a system built upon gaming the search engines, total over-optimization is the name of the game, from the template that every SBI site carries, to the keyword stuffed articles written for the search engines rather than the visitors....it worked very successfully for years, now it is called webspam!.

What SiteSell (and specifically Ken Evoy) have trouble admitting (publicly, at least) is the idea that they really do have extremely disgruntled, angry customers who have every right to feel disgusted with their service (and with their behavior toward customers); especially in recent years.

Rather than face (or perhaps admit publicly) that they have actually wronged people, they prefer to concoct conspiracy theories, and suggest that the anti-SBIers represent some kind of organized network. The sad fact for SBI however, is that there simply is no such organized network.

What you are seeing here, and in a recent explosion of blog posts, and even entire blogs dedicated to exposing SBI, are real, infuriated exSBIers (as well as current ones who are forced to act anonymously until they succeed in untangling themselves from SBI; why? Because Ken is a very very vindictive man, and they are scared about what he will do to their businesses).

I think anybody who reads the angry posts here, as well as those outside this forum, can see that there is no 'organization' about it. I'm sure one or two might know each other from their time at SBI (I know one other contributor here reasonably well; although we certainly don't 'plan' any kind of cohesive attack), but there is no private discussion forum (that I'm aware of) in which some sort of systematic assault is being planned.

Ken would like you to think that, because it releases him from the task of facing up to the fact that he really has done the wrong thing by an awful lot of people, and continues to do so in greater doses as SBI finds its back against the wall.

And as for the idea that these nasty 'dissenters' are trying to make money by diverting people from SBI, that is so ridiculous that Ken should be embarrassed at even suggesting it. It is impossible that the loudest voices of dissent could be making any real money out of this cause, and most make an explicit attempt to NOT do so to avoid that incorrect accusation.

How for instance can I make money out of my posts here? I am acting anonymously, to protect myself, and I do not link to a website where it would be possible for you to buy anything from me. Heck, you can't even Google me to find out how to buy something from me if you were desperate to line my pockets!

Now let's take pro-SBI blogs and posts on the other hand. It's all about affiliate income. The fake reviews full of SBI affiliate links are everywhere. Does anyone bother to set up a blog dedicated to saying how much they love SBI WITHOUT using affiliate links? I don't know of any. Yet there are now at least a dozen fully fledged blogs, with NO affiliate links, dedicated to warning people about the dark side of SBI. Think about that. No, I mean REALLY think about that.

Ken Evoy is no dummy. He knows all this, but he is a desperate man unable to stem the torrent of exiting customers and the proliferation of angry, appalled (ex)customers all over the web.

Viewers thought so. After notching up Dislike after Dislike, Ken Evoy ordered his staff to switch off the Like/Dislike counter!! (Yes, I have screenshots to prove it!)

How long can you stay awake?...


P.S. How many LIES can you spot? I stopped counting at 13. And what's with all the belching? Is he drunk?

I bought into SBI back in 2006(or was it 2005?) and paid $300 two times. Of course they have a nicely crafted answer for why you can't pay monthly -- to show you are really motivated and give it enough time to work. Yeah, whatever. And I hadn't figured out how to get my site OFF of SBI in time, so I paid the second year.

I learned a lot about online content, and basic SEO over the year and a half, but I could have learned it in about a month on my own. The forum was filled with total beginners, who were nice, but so non-techie it was a joke. I knew more than the tech support line. And the whole place had this nicey-nicey attitude, and the moderators and Ken were great at having calming talk and delivering spin.

I can see why it gets called a cult. That fits.

I could just no longer take the ridiculous block builder system and the uploading of images manually. When I asked about FTP, I got the whole calm and carefully-worded BS about why FTP is not allowed -- I'm better off without FTP, etc. Yeah, whatever. But eventually I just woke up, blinked out of it, and abandoned SBI, and moved to a real host that follows the normal standards.

It was interesting. My biggest complaint was the people like Zac, Stacey, and the affiliates constantly reciting the company line. If you just repeat it over and over it people will doubt themselves and wonder if what you say is right. Actually, that would be my biggest take-away from the SBI experience -- the whole cult-like chanting "you will succeed".

And another thing, to this day, when I get on a rude or vulgar forum, I frequently wonder exactly how or what SBI did in their forum to make everyone so passive.

I kind of resent all the time and money I spent on SBI. For some reason back in 2005 or 6 it seemed promising. But hey, Hostgator has been great for six years now.

I actually enjoy the forums, and find the so-called nicey nice attitude refreshing after having spent many years on toxic forums of one type and another. Having said that, there are many irritations to using SBI, I'm just not convinced that moving to WordPress is a great solution. Vitriol does not convince me; facts do. It's hard to sort fact from hatred in this thread, and I have to say I'm more confused than I was before I started reading it.

Just how much effort would be involved in moving a 130 page site from Block Builder 2 to WordPress? It seems like an enormous learning curve to me :-/

I have heard about it But Never Try them.

Many thanks Kevin, now I recognise you ;-)

i am a member of sitesell for about 3 years now, they are excellent when it comes to starting a online business. I f all you are looking to do is to build a single website in one niche Sitesell is by far the best way to go..but on the other-hand if you are looking to go into affiliate marketing full-time with many websites in several niches "Affilorama" would be a better choice. I have been a member of Affilorama for about one year.

Thanks, I will head over to your blog and check it out. I guess one of the reasons I don't buy all the sales pitch for WordPress is because so many sites in my niche are on WordPress but don't seem to have very good traffic. One of the guys who taught me to trade, who is far more advanced in the sphere of Internet marketing than I, with a website that is much more polished than mine, has an Alexa rating (yeah, I know it's not the be all and end all) that is absolutely woeful. And he's not the only one. Then again, I guess I can't point to anything in SBI that explains this disparity either. Certainly the mantra to concentrate on Keyword Focused Content Pages hasn't done me a jot of good. All my traffic comes from ridiculous long tail keywords that you could never optimise for, or from dint of my own efforts at being social.

Not looking to get into the bunfight here, thanks to your advice and I will check out your blog...

Dunno Kristi, but nothing would surprise me any more.

Possibly a little off topic but I just wanted to cut and paste this somewhere in case they deleted it. It's my latest post on a particular issue I've had with them. Once more, expressing my exasperation with the shoddy toolset I have been taken to task by Erwin, who rushed to assure me that block builder in fact could do everything I required of it:

>>>
Erwin,

Look, seriously, so you have the time and the skills to do this? Well, bully for you. I bought into the SBI promise based on the fact that I would be using best of breed tools which freed me to write website pages. That simply isn't true.

I'm not going to go into another of those interminable SBI rants where anyone who dares to question the idea that block builder is superior to WordPress gets jumped on by those who disagree. I've wasted enough time already. However, I concede some justification for my attitude is necessary, so here it is.

In the spirit of "one picture speaking 1000 words" please view the graph below. It shows SBI's Alexa traffic rank over the past two years.

Sitesell.com Site Info

As a trader, looking at a graph like this all I can say is God I wish I could short this sucker! I can tell you that that is a sunset trend. So if your vaunted block builder is as great as you seem to think it is how come people are leaving SBI and taking their sites with them in droves? And if you care to point out that this is an Alexa Rank, and not SBI subscriber trend, I'll happily provide the latter, which paints a similarly depressing picture.

You may care to know that the final straw that broke this camel's back was when - SBI lacking a horizontal NavBar solution - I ponied up the extra cash to have a do it for me coach provide a solution. I've just discovered that that solution breaks the navigation and display in Chrome: far and away my most popular browser with visitors. I would never have found this out if I hadn't paid even more cash to have another firm investigate why my bounce rate was so stubbornly high. Again, this is a development environment for propeller heads only. And even then making code changes to provide the kind of functionality WordPress users take for granted opens you up to risk!

Somebody is not listening to valid criticism here. Somebody is shooting the messenger. And it ain't me, and it ain't all those people who have blazed the trail I am about to enter upon either.

Good luck,

Erron
<<<

I will be interested to hear the answer to your question. Part of me thinks "how dare they?" But then you are getting traffic from anyone who follows that URL LOL! I actually had someone I interviewed for my site request that they could re-direct a URL they'd set up that contained their name and the suffix "scam" to the overall positive interview page.

Hope you sort it out,

Erron

Stacey,

I don't think you, SBI, or Ken are evil. But I have been warned many times that posts get deleted on the forums. If that has been misinformation I apologise, but I'm afraid I'm in a very exasperated mood with SBI at the moment.

I agree with most of what you say above. The hatred is unhelpful at least, and pathological at worst. SBI is NOT a scam, and Ken is not a scamster. All that stuff is just silly. But the fact is I bought into SBI believing their sales spiel that the tools for building a website were the best. I just completely disagree with this after eight months experience. I have made the decision to shift to WordPress over the coming months. I believe this will free me to concentrate on the aspects of running a business site that I am best at.

Do I believe SBI is worth $300? For someone like me who started out knowing very little about website development in this day and age, absolutely! The two things SBI does really well are education and the forums. I'm ambivalent about most of the tools, and I absolutely hate site builder/block builder, but am willing to concede there are plenty who don't.

In closing, I can well appreciate your exhaustion with having to deal with all these posts. But you know, you wouldn't have to be doing this if SBI just properly incorporated WordPress tools :-)

Erron Adams