Sites with SBI and elsewhere - your take on it?

What other conventional marketing methods are you utilizing? PPC? Blogging? Back links? Social bookmarking? SEO?

The key is to employ as many different methods as possible, and try to interlink those methods. SBI is great, but a little elbow grease can alleviate the need for the cost.

Stacy,
I'm not planning on leaving SBI. I still have a site there and plan on keeping it there. I am just concerned about adding more sites @ 30.00 per month each.

Most stock templates that come with website builders are garbage, no matter it's SBI, xsitepro, or Wordpress. You can customize all of them, so I wouldn't base my decision on what kind of templates you ahve available.

But to the question, SBI hosting is not better than any other type of hosting. As long as the SE can crawl the page, it doesn't matter where you host.

SBI does a nice job of giving you a set of tools to use to properly build a site that has demand. In a sense, they are building a wall around you and getting you to only follow their system without outside help for the most part. It's good for you in the sense that you keep your eye on the ball, it's bad for you because Sitesell wants to keep you focused on their products.

SBI is generally a good value if you're going to bulid a straight-up contnet site. I think it's a really good starting point for people that tend to take their eye off the ball a lot. It kind of focuses you to work on one site.

Lots of limitations though like lack of FTP and the fact that you can't upload many types of files. Overall, good program, but mostly for beginners.

Katie,

There is no single best way, you really shouldn't rely on any one method to build links.

1) Write quality content that people naturally link to
2) If possible find other sites in your niche that are quality ask the owner to do an interview with you(9 times out of 10 they will like from their site to yours). You may have to link to them(but not always). Either way it is a link although a recip link isn't as good).
3) Blog directories, website directories
4) Blog Commenting(related blogs, really good comments no spam)
5) Article Marketing
6) Linking programs(seolinkvine, backlink solutions, linkvana many others too)
7) Write guest posts for other sites/blogs

Some ways are better than others, but this list should get you started.

Stacy:
Sent you a pm.

Hi Katied,

I also have an SBI site as well as Hostgator. I believe it comes down to learning more on your own... especially traffic.

I liked SBI for the training I received because IM is so overwhelming. But I did not learn how to make money until I came here. In my experience, I fell into the trap of "just keep creating content," and Google will recognize you. I did that with only some backlinking and it did not work.

At the same time, in my experience, learning how to make money with IM is not simply a matter of building a site, linking, rinse and repeat for every niche is different and building backlinks just does not to seem to be as easy as some people make it out. This takes time, more than anything (imho).

One example: Adding blog comments does not work in my niche very well since most blogs do not allow comments with links or even profiles.

You have to study your competition to see what works for them. No one can do that for you.

I did not find the "snowball" effect to be true for it does not just happen after getting some links. Links will add and drop. You have to keep at it.

While I do get organic links from people using my SBI site as "references," they have not been enough to get the traffic to my site that I need. People have to find your site in order to link to it while Google will not list you highly (in some niches) unless you have plenty of backlinks. And just because some people use your site for a reference or put a link to it does not mean that this person is "respected" or authority enough to get other people to come to your site through that link.

I am not trying to "bash" anyone or any service, but I am being realistic considering my experience. The internet is a huge place. Getting more links out there and the recognition you need takes a lot of time and experimenting/tweaking/effort that no one can do for you.

Personally, I would never move my SBI site to another host. However, due to the cost I will not add more sites. I feel it is in my best interest to learn how to build sites, list my sites (which is not really hard), and get traffic to them myself.

If I were you, I would find some of the posts here on "making money" and "building traffic," and study those. I would also read about the many ways that people make money and compare it to what you are now doing. Use everything you learn to see what you can do better.

I hope this helps at least some.
Sincerely,
Cindy P.

Sydneypm said:

But it does happen. It happened to me, personally, so that's coming from actual experience.

I'm not disputing what you're saying Sydney, because I believe you are being honest. But because it didn't happen to you, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

There are factors to take into account.

Some niches, like Making Money Online for example, are very very competitive. Also, how broad is your site concept? If you pick a broad site concept in a competitive niche, it will be very very hard to get the snowball rolling. It will be almost impossible to breathe.

Then, how well does one use the tools? Does one brainstorm correctly, choosing the correct keywords for the T2 and T3 pages? Or does one pick only high demand/high supply keywords? How is the content written? What is the voice and is it cohesive? And what about theme sexiness. You could have a highly profitable niche, but if it's boring, it's not going to attract much traffic or excitement. Etc., etc., etc.

So to say the snowball doesn't happen as a general statement is not fair. It does happen. I do agree that every niche is different though.

Katied: I can't PM you from here. I will send you a message on your SBI site.

Have a good day, and best of luck to everyone!

Hitanshu, I can't leave a pm as I need to have over 50 post to do so.
But yes I am earning a regular income from some of my sites, and the rest of them I am still working on.
If you want to get in touch with me, go to one of my site,s in my signature and leave a comment and I will get back to you with more detailed information.