Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 7:33 pm Post subject: My 2 newbie cents on SBI for affiliate marketer newbies
I wrote a posting looking for a "mentor" and was suggested SBI. I looked into it. Its interesting and reminds me of everything my mom told me NOT to do when Im trying to learn something which is- NOT learning how to do it yourself, like having your friend write your paper for you which you got an A on and all the glory but..... you still dont know how to write a dam paper- its like learning how to play the guitar with nylon strings- youll never be as good so learn the hard way and th elarning curve will be STEEP but in the long run you will play much better.
Now mind you, I think SBI is awesome for a lot of people who just want to use it for their business (non affiliate people that only plan on owning 1-2 sites selling their biz) and I think Ken Envoy is genius for creating it and it definitely provides a great service! My concern is only in relation to affiliate marketers: It does everything for you- you then need it, you never learn or outgrow it. If you want to be a serious affiliate marketer (one that builds and builds their amounts of sites and knowledge) you are stuck continuing to use SBI for them all OR doing what you could have done in the first place which is- learning yourself thru trial and error AND needed support from other makreters that are actually willing to give you real information and not sell you something (you gotta make friends). Another thing is- once your site is done on SBI-how can you get off it? I mean-it seems you are using THEIR templates, THEIR everything so you cant get away-its your lifeline to that site, you will be paying the $300 for the life of that site. Now imagine if you have plans of owning and buillding 50 sites- thats $15k a year plus..... you still havent learned how it really works (or rather how to apple that knowledge)-which I think is essential for being a successful affiliate marketer. Honestly, if you did have 50 sites on SBI and were making 200k a year off that 15k then yes, of course that is good numbers and maybe a lot of people want to do that-its just in my opinion, I just dont want to be ignorant, I want to be able to troubleshoot myself and have flexibility with my choices and KNOW what Im talking about (someday). I want to learn on steel strings.
Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 159 Location: Vancouver, WA
Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 9:57 pm Post subject:
I'm 43 years old and have driven a car since I was 16. I enjoy all the benefits of driving and getting myself from A to B. In all that time, I have never learned how an engine works, nor do I care. When something needs done, I take it to my mechanic.
If I ever want to learn more about the inner-workings of my engine, I can, but it's not necessary. Plus, there's more important things that I'd rather invest my time in.
What anyone does other than letting SBI help is up to them. I love to learn, like you, so I do extra things, but I don't need to and that's the beauty of it. The tools still need your interaction, but the technical stuff is "under the hood," making if especially nice and appealing to people who don't know and don't want to learn that stuff. They simply want a site and a business that works. They have a business mind and not a computer-world mind.
SBI allows people to concentrate on the really important things and leaves the technical by the wayside.
I know how to do the other stuff, by why would I want to spend that extra effort doing it when someone else is doing it for me?
The next time my car breaks down and it's in the shop, the last thing I'll do is tell the mechanic to step aside because I want to do it myself. I'll just kick back, let him do his magic and drive off into the sunset. _________________ Take The "Tech" Out Of Website Creation I Made $75 Watching "Judge Judy"
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5815 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 10:19 pm Post subject: Re: My 2 newbie cents on SBI for affiliate marketer newbies
Hi mcharvet, it's good to see you have the right approach. It's important to research things carefully before you buy.
mcharvet wrote:
...its like learning how to play the guitar with nylon strings- youll never be as good so learn the hard way and th elarning curve will be STEEP but in the long run you will play much better.
Well, something to consider is that there's a long list of things that SBI users DO learn while they build their first site. For example, they learn how to optimize pages for search engines, how to get traffic to their websites (in a lot of different ways), how create a website people will want to link to, how to create effective selling pages and preselling pages, blogging, how to make videos and put them on your site, how to publish a newsletter... and a whole lot more. So when you say "you never learn", that's not really the picture. To succeed with SBI, you have to learn a lot, and there are Action Guide videos and an instruction manual, how-to articles, and a private forum to help you learn it.
SBI does make things easier by hiding away most of the techie stuff, but it's not a magic button you press to build a website and make money.
Quote:
Now mind you, I think SBI is awesome for a lot of people who just want to use it for their business (non affiliate people that only plan on owning 1-2 sites selling their biz) and I think Ken Envoy is genius for creating it and it definitely provides a great service!
It's Evoy. Yep, I wouldn't be surprised at all if his IQ at the genius level. He's certainly a highly innovative thinker.
Quote:
My concern is only in relation to affiliate marketers: It does everything for you...
No. It definitely does NOT do everything for you. Some affiliates may give you that impression, but it's far from the truth. SBI creates the environment for you, but you have to bring your own brain and motivation.
Quote:
...you then need it, you never learn or outgrow it. If you want to be a serious affiliate marketer (one that builds and builds their amounts of sites and knowledge) you are stuck continuing to use SBI for them all
From my personal experience, I can tell you what often happens. Two of my assistants first built websites using SBI and then went to to create sites using other tools, one chose FrontPage and one chose Dreamweaver. They found the knowledge they'd learned by using SBI very useful.
Quote:
...doing what you could have done in the first place which is- learning yourself thru trial and error AND needed support from other makreters that are actually willing to give you real information and not sell you something (you gotta make friends).
My assistant found that the experience they'd gained by using SBI helped them greatly when building their next sites. As for help from other marketers... SBI has an incredibly helpful private forum where SBI users share ideas and help each other. They're not trying to sell each other things. One forum moderator, Debs, has answered more 20,000 questions.
I don't think you can find that level of support anywhere else online. Debs, by the way, is also a successful affiliate, so you get real experience and knowledge, not theory learned from a book.
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Another thing is- once your site is done on SBI-how can you get off it? I mean-it seems you are using THEIR templates, THEIR everything so you cant get away
You don't have to use their templates. You did several years ago when SBI was just starting. However, for years you've been able to create your site in FrontPage or Dreamweaver or whatever - you can make your site look as unique as you wish and still use the SBI tools. And if you've created it in FrontPage or Dreamweaver, you'll have all those files on your own computer. It's your choice how you create it. You can use simple templates, or you can use templates plus design your own headers, graphics etc, or you can use FrontPage or Dreamweaver, or any other similar software. You can choose the site-creation method you want depending on your own your skills and how much of a challenge you like.
For your very first site, I strongly recommend you do it as simply as possible. That way, there's a much stronger chance that you'll get it up and running start generating money from it.
When I was starting, I did things the hard way, creating my sites in raw HTML. I wasted months and months fiddling with stuff. If I'd got a site up quickly, I could have been generating revenue in all that time.
Yes, if you choose to use the templates, it is messy if you later want to transfer your site to a different web host or different site-building system.
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...you will be paying the $300 for the life of that site.
True. That's under $25 a month, in exchange for very reliable web hosting, domain name fees included, and you get a whole suite of very useful tools. If you had to buy all the tools separately, you'd pay a lot more than $25 a month - and waste an awful lot of time finding them and learning how to use them and how to incorporate them into your plans.
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Now imagine if you have plans of owning and buillding 50 sites- thats $15k a year plus...
Yes. If your business plan is to build 50 sites, then SBI probably is not the ideal choice.
However, if you're going to build a bunch of websites, you'll be planning for each site to generate a LOT more than $25 a month. I see the $25 for each site as a tax-deductible business expense, just part of your business costs - and a jolly good investment.
You can find web hosting which costs much less than $25 a month. But web hosting is only a small fraction of what SBI provides.
Quote:
... you still havent learned how it really works (or rather how to apple that knowledge)-which I think is essential for being a successful affiliate marketer.
By the time you've built a successful site using SBI, you'll inevitably have learned a great deal. You're not just getting software, you're being taught how to build a business.
You'll even have learned quite a bit of HTML, even if you use the templates option, because you'll find you more than likely want to tweak your pages to add individual touches. Just about everybody does. Doing these "little" tweaks slows you down horribly - that's why I try to talk people out of doing them.
SBI is an excellent choice but it doesn't suit everyone. You may want to choose a different method. In my free Affiliate Program Tutorial I recommend a different option for people like you who are strongly independent.
However, it's interesting looking at the wide diversity of sites built using SBI and seeing the wide range of personalities on the private forum - there are some very talented, original thinkers who have chosen to use SBI to build their sites. _________________ Allan Gardyne
... earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998.
Learn how.
Subscribe now FREE Affiliate Program Tutorial
great information Allan thanks. I was in no way intending to put SBI down (but I dont think that came across otherwise i wouldnt be asking questions about it)- just a strict newbie thoughts- I was hoping to get a great response from someone not directly related to it. Thanks for the thoughts on the affiliates you know that used it, very helpful!
oh i forgot to add.....(on a praiseful note) its very inexpensive.... i meant to mention that in my post.... i mean- its only 300 for an immense amount of service-which is kind of overwhelming. For that reason I may choose to do one site thru them just fot the experience and gauge it next to a non sbi site I do- I wont be ashamed either to come back here at somepoint and post that my sbi site has 3x the visitors as my non sbi site :-/
I used SBI for my first site and have learn tremendous amount of knowledge on the importance of website optimization and how to achieve that.
I am now using xsitepro which is a great tool for newbie. I find myself applying lots of knowledge I gained fr. SBI esp in the area of webpage optimisation.
so, it might be good for your to develop your first site using SBI (if you are a newbie like me) and once you know how, you can move on to other tools.
SBI is a good product for many people. Apparently it's not what you are looking to accomplish.
Find an HTML editor, learn to read the code. Create a site. Publish that site. Write some content. And don't plan on making any money during this process. Then your eyes will be opened more as to what is involved.
BUT BEFORE YOU DO THAT READ BELOW...
I recommend that people who want to get their feet wet, start a small blog on a free host and see what they like or dislike about it. See if it's something they can do. Then grow from there. You can use that first blog later as a link to your next project(s).
I am not a fan of letting other people host my work, but for this purpose they are well suited.
I have learned far more using SBI than I would have learned doing it all myself. And what if I would have not used SBI and found it so difficult creating a website that I would have... quit. I'm glad I found SBI.
Even with the tools Ken supplies, you still have to make a lot of decisions. As an affiliate, you still have to decide what companies to promote. It's still you who decides how to word the page you're going to use to promote a product or service.
And Allan was right about the Forum. I really don't think you could put a price on the worth of the help a newbie can get from that forum.
Debs is amazing. We wonder if she ever sleeps. She has helped so many people on so many topics. If not for her, I know my first site would not have been near as profitable.
Finally, it's not as if a person can't go through other means to learn affiliate marketing. There are books, courses, and so much more.
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