Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 162 Location: Vancouver, WA
Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 3:43 pm Post subject: I'm taking the plunge!
I've been in my present web design job for seven years now and have been ready for a change for over year. In January, I told my wife, "It's all or bust this year, honey!" I mean, my gosh, I'm 42 years old and have nothing to show for my life, career-wise (this is where you are supposed to sob uncontrollably for me. Thanks.)
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:23 am Post subject: Re: I'm taking the plunge!
TonyT wrote:
I mean, my gosh, I'm 42 years old and have nothing to show for my life, career-wise (this is where you are supposed to sob uncontrollably for me. Thanks.)
No sobs from me.
I was 47 when I build my first website 10 years ago.
Let's see, if you live to 100, you still have 58 years of living to do - that's plenty of time to learn several new careers. _________________ Allan Gardyne
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Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 162 Location: Vancouver, WA
Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:30 am Post subject:
Allan, how could you wish a horrible thing on me like living to 100? I fight growing old with a vengence!
Anyway, I'm presently on Day 3, which is the Brainstorming portion and am ripping my keywords apart, analyzing the relevancy, profitability, etc. Wow!
Day 3 should be called Day 3 That Will Take You A Week! haha _________________ Take The "Tech" Out Of Website Creation I Made $75 Watching "Judge Judy"
I wouldn't let it worry you, I was only 29, when I built my first site seven years ago - and it sucked. Age makes you wiser. I didn't care that it sucked because everyone else had awful sites too back then.
Do let me know how you get on with SBI - it does sound fantastic. I'm tempted to try building one site with the program just to see what it's like. More commissions for poor old Alan. _________________ Catherine Lawson's Business Advice Blog
Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 162 Location: Vancouver, WA
Posted: Wed May 17, 2006 11:18 pm Post subject:
Catherine,
I finally got through the first 5-days of the Action Guild (boy, it's particular, but that's what makes it great!), registered my domain name (romantic-oregon-coast.com) and am building my little heart out.
I've fallen in love with SiteSell and Site Build It! and would whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone. The tools, guilds, support forums, etc are top-notch!
Tony, seems like you are still very enthousiastic with your purchase. I have considered time and time again to give up building the sites myself, and use SBI.
You have been tinkering for about a month, judging by your post. Have you developed any traffic yet? How are you doing on your ranking for your keywords?
Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 162 Location: Vancouver, WA
Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 2:53 pm Post subject:
Miles,
After my experiences this last month, I have determined that I will NEVER go back to doing things the old way. It would be like someone who drives a horse and buggy, discovers that there is a brand new thing called an automobile and opting for the horse and buggy.
My traffic in the first month has reached 80 visitors, my Alexa rating has made large jumps 4 times, the search engines are loving my keyword-rich pages (although Google is being a bit sluggish, but that is picking up). I'm part of one of the best communities I've been around, who are helpful and encouraging. It is truly 80% success with 20% of the effort.
You would be doing yourself a HUGE favor, Miles, by grabbing a Site Build It. Take a look at my Romantic Oregon Coast Vacations site, if you haven't already. Web building is a joy without all the tedious work of SEO, directories, blah blah blah. And Ken Evoy and his company is putting out new tools for us all the time. There is one called Content It coming out soon and, like the rest, I am SO looking forward to it. It will be a tremendous help to my site.
There is an unconditional, money-back guarantee ANY TIME, so you really have nothing to lose. Once you get into it, I don't see you ever using it.
You site looks great Tony, I too am with sitesell I am on day 6 at first I was totally lost but after reading day 6 it all has come together for me. I would have loved to have had SBI! a few years ago when I first started with building my own website.
Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 162 Location: Vancouver, WA
Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:50 am Post subject:
Thanks for the kudos. Keep hanging in there. Even after I started building, until I got past my 15th page, I was a bit overwelmed. Now that I'm up to 41 pages, I'm quite alright and having a ball! _________________ Take The "Tech" Out Of Website Creation I Made $75 Watching "Judge Judy"
Thanks for the kudos. Keep hanging in there. Even after I started building, until I got past my 15th page, I was a bit overwelmed. Now that I'm up to 41 pages, I'm quite alright and having a ball!
I looked at your site (http://romantic-oregon-coast.com) and I must say I love the colors and layout of it. Only suggestion I have is try to reduce the vertical "white space" between paragraphs, as it really makes your page longer than it should be and could cause people to scroll too much. And some people don't like to scroll.....
The only other thing I see is that the "ADD TO YOUR SOCIAL BOOKMARKS" box maybe should be broken down into two rows instead of just one for the links. It causes your page to be scrolled left-to-right by making your page bigger than 800 pixels wide for people using 800x600 screen size.
Other than that, love your site and especially the beach pics! _________________ Tom
Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 8:57 pm Post subject: SBI Journey
I would like to endorse what Tony has said about SBI.
The forum is an excellent community where SBI owners support each other as they progress in building their businesses.
When you consider the collected wisdom and experience amassed in the SBI forum you would have to try very hard NOT to succeed!
The system is very user-friendly for someone like me who didn't know any HTML (now, it's a little!) yet it facilitates those among us who are HTML experts. In other words, a very versatile system.
And as Tony mentioned, Ken Evoy and his team are driving forward with developing new features and modules to keep us at the leading edge of the ever-changing frontier of e-commerce.
I feel confident and in safe hands with SBI, and would strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to build a site that can be in the top 1% (Alexa) and then go on further.
Last summer I made an excellent decision to join the SBI community. For those of you still undecided, I urge you to go for it. And when you then look back you will ask yourself why you didn't act sooner. _________________ David
Editor, Anglesey Today
http://www.anglesey-today.com
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
http://www.anglesey-today.com/Anglesey.xml
Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 9:29 pm Post subject: My Experiences With SBI
Tony,
While I recently renewed my SBI site, I haven't been all that happy with the results. I do get good traffic (good is relative, I know). I get the traffic not due to the search engine help SBI gives, but due to the RSS feeds I have with the site. I get consistently around 5,000 unique visitors per month (8,000 to 10,000 total visitors). I'm making around $75 to $100 every other month on Google Adsense and about $35 to $45 every other month in affiliate commissions.
As you can see, this is not a lot. For a few months, I actually was making about $100 a month with Google, but then it dropped for no apparent reason. Throughout the past year, my site rankings have been high on some keyword terms and totally non-existent others. I find my pages (the site is over 200 pages) often just drop off of Yahoo, MSN, and Google for no apparent reason. I've done nothing black hat with the site, just white hat stuff. I've done nothing questionable in other words. I also have a PR of 4.
I've tried SBI with another site too and while I got a PR of 3, I made only about $30 with it through Google Adsense -- after about 6 months of its existence.
Pros -- yes SBI is a good all-in-one solution. It's good for beginners too. It's also easy to create a page even if you know nothing about HTML.
Cons -- it's way over priced. You can get a reseller account for $47 a month for unlimited sites, something I'm planning on going to in the next week. Yes, while I renewed my site, I plan on migrating it to another ISP.
I put a LOT of time into these sites -- especially the second one. I means weeks and weeks and hours and hours and hours.
Ken Evoy, owner of SBI, says just stick with it. Well, it's very disheartening to spend so much time building a site and tweaking it and then see your rankings disappear for no apparent reason. For the 14 months I've had this site, it has NEVER, I mean NEVER had nothing but >30 rankings for Google. And again, I have done nothing illegal. I've played by the rules. I've been ranked #3 by both Yahoo and MSN at different times for my home page.
I'm not trying to rain on your parade. I think your wanting to go online is awesome. I just think there are better options than SBI. If I was you, I'd get Xsite Pro and build your sites that way while getting a reseller account. SBI is too limiting and I've outgrown it. It has its place, but for anyone serious about making money with it, you need some magic dust or something.
Hope this helps.
GR
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