the SBI thread, tips, tricks and success stories

[alexplatups]

Hello everyone,

Considering that Steve Pavlina recommends SBI, and there are a few of us in
this forum, who actually created SBI sites...

...We decided to start an SBI thread in here, where anyone who has an SBI site,
or anyone who is interested in what SBI really has to offer, can make posts, ask
questions, and take a look at sites built using SBI

My name is Alex Platups, and before starting with SBI, all I knew was Word,
Excel and how to use e-mail, all three at the most basic level possible

the first site that I created is in my signature, and I started from zero on
December 1, 2008, so about 70 days, and this is with zero knowledge about
html, or anything else that has to do with site building

...and in about three months I will be starting my second site on another topic

I will not go into too much detail in this post, but whoever is interested can ask
questions, and we can go from there

later

Alex Platups

[Rebecca800]

Hi all

I have two SBI sites in the works (see my signature) and now earn my primary income from them. I started out in March 2008....

Feel free to ask about the process if you are considering starting your own hobby site. And if you're already an SBIer - please share your secrets with us!

My first tip is something I learned outside SBI, from a web developer colleague. But it certainly applies to any website. Three top SEO rules for titling an article:

1. Use your full character allowance (as close to 70 characters as possible, but don't go over the limit!)

2. Use your keyphrase at the very start, then repeat the individual keywords separately later (eg, Website Design | Professional Logo Design and Website Development)

3. Maintain good grammar so you don't put human readers off (use | or :: as separators if it won't make one smooth sentence)

Of course, these rules may not always be possible - some keyphrases are just stubborn like that! You can but try...

I did this with my natural vision improvement website which was difficult to find on the search engines. A week later, my entire site was re-indexed, with many pages appearing on Google's first page. So get your keywords in there!

[alexplatups]

Rebecca,

as always nice to see you, and those are some good pointers, since
most people underestimate the power of submitting good articles to
the right sites

...now with finding an idea about which market to enter with your site:

In my opinion what it all starts out with is finding that perfect balance
between choosing a niche that is on one side you feel passionate about
and on the other side has a large amount of possible buyers that will be
interested in buying something from your site

I just see too many people creating sites in markets that are either too
small or it is very tough to make money in them, and this is based on
posts that confirm that they are making very little money, or at least
a lot less than they expected

my strategy has always been to enter very competitive markets, this
is what I have been doing in my offline businesses for the last 15 years,
and this is what I will continue to do for the rest of my life, online and
offline

there is nothing that makes my blood flow in my veins like competition,
the tension that competition creates makes me want to work 24/7
until i hit all my targets that I set for myself!

...of course for someone...a tight niche might be the best strategy, I am
talking about my view about making money, because once you hit that
large flow of customers...that feeling can't compare to anything, and this
is what motivates to work up to 12 hours per day creating my site

later

Alex Platups

[JAX]

I just wanted to drop in and say HI!
I too have an SBI site (see my sig.) and it is the first site I have built. I started with a lot of excitement, but not a lot of knowledge about websites and I feel my site has come along way. I recently added adsense to my website and also a book recomendation page. I am looking forward to watching this thread grow.

JAX

[alexplatups]

Jax,

welcome along, to this thread

always great to see another SBI site creator

I think this thread will grow with time, since many people
suceed with SBI, and are always ready to share their knowledge

later

Alex Platups

[Rebecca800]

Hi Jax

I think you have picked some great Dream Quotes!

I had a thought browsing your site... you could add new pages with entire stories about your own life and feature quotes that relate to those situations. I think it would bring more of *YOU* into the site, what do you think??

Also, I'd be interested to hear how you will monetize this niche (if that's not sensitive info!)

I've bookmarked your site as I'll definitely draw inspiration from this and even use a few quotes on my own site too!

Thanks!!

[alexplatups]

Hi,

I invite everyone from SBI to The Water Cooler, and check out our Sharing
Every Day Progress Thread, I think you can all make a real difference, and
we can help each other, to take our sites to the next level

By the way Rebeccas, your Alex ranking jumped, so you should change it in
your content on the site-build-it.html....page

later

Alex Platups

[Dev]

Is there anyway non-SBI'ers or those yet to take the plunge, get a peek into the forum. As I see it now, SBI doesn't allow non-members/guests into their forums. It would have been great to atleast have an restricted guest account

[alexplatups]

Dev,

the only way this is possible if you sign up to become a 5 pillar associate,
it doesn't cost anything, and you can peak at the forum, even can post
in the 5 pillar forum, but not in the other parts

but just checking out the information will blow most people away, this is some
serious stuff, believe me

SiteSell.com, E-business Success. Simple. Real.

go here and sign up

good luck

Alex Platups

[Rebecca800]

CRIPES! How'd that happen so fast?! Thanks Alex!!

[alexplatups]

Yes, Rebecca

Alexa is showing some true love to your SBI site

can you tell me what is the html that you use to put the small
alexa bar on the right side?

I am using the large alexa bar...on my Home page, at the end, since I do
not know html

596,582....2 months after starting SBI, guess Ken has friends in the
Alexa company

...and google too, at least from my traffic stats

later

Alex Platups

[JAX]

Originally Posted by Rebecca800

Hi Jax

I think you have picked some great Dream Quotes!

I had a thought browsing your site... you could add new pages with entire stories about your own life and feature quotes that relate to those situations. I think it would bring more of *YOU* into the site, what do you think??

Also, I'd be interested to hear how you will monetize this niche (if that's not sensitive info!)

I've bookmarked your site as I'll definitely draw inspiration from this and even use a few quotes on my own site too!

Thanks!!

Thanks for the comments and great idea, I've been brainstorming ways to add more of me into the site without taking away from it being a resource of inspirational quotes. On some pages I have opened up with a short paragraph, but others I don't. It's something I will consider expanding upon. For monetization I just started- I put up a page of recomended inspirational books through amazon, I'd like to continue that with music and movies. I have also just began monetizing with adsense- only a small percent of my pages to give it a trial. I am also looking into inspirational and motivational products utilizing successories and art.com. That's as far as I've taken it so far. I am open for suggestions.
Jax

[Rebecca800]

Alex... Awesome - your site is flying along and it's still so young! I can see you're putting a lot of work into it and am so pleased it's paying off for you.

To get an Alexa Widget: search your site on Alexa.com, click Webmaster's Corner and then Widgets. Enter your URL and click Build Widget, then it gives you a choice of big, small or banner widgets. Then I copy & paste the code into my site.

It looks like this:
<SCRIPT type='text/javascript' language='JavaScript' src='http://xslt.alexa.com/site_stats/js/t/a?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com'></SCRIPT>

I guess if you don't want to use HTML, you could copy and paste the widget image from Alexa, although it obviously wouldn't update automatically. But it's an option...

Jax... I understand what you mean about straying from being a resource of inspirational quotes. Although, bear in mind that there are already some big websites like this that might trump you on Google (Ken: "you're not Wikipedia"!) so it could only be a good thing to personalize yours. You're already thinking down those lines, so I'm just saying: go for it!

Great ideas for monetizing... I especially like your idea for motivational products. They are rarer and you can review them and get a good commission. (Unlike Amazon books and DVDs, which personally I have a hard time selling and even then you only get 50c per sale! Ouch!!)

In fact, you could stray right into the personal development realm while monetizing. I'd consider meditation music CDs and self-hypnosis CDs which have a huge range of applications and seem to sell very well.

[alexplatups]

Rebecca

Thanks, for the code for the alexa bar, I used it at the bottom of my Home Page

I think Alexa uses many different factors to give the traffic rank, since
60 unique visitors per day is not really that much...lol

but except for a few 2nd tier directories, I have not worked that much on
attracting traffic

weight loss has massive demand and supply, so the trick is to tap into that
huge demand using effective traffic generation techniques

...and I will start doing this within a month, as soon as I put my own e-book,
and a few more monetization models up on my site

...then I will start to use an affiliate program to sell my e-book, and then will
start working on my second site

...it will be self development, but it will be very focused, and will be a
content site, without any forums, just my own e-book on self-development
and other high-quality effective products

...what you wrote in another thread in this forum about entering a more
focused niche in self-development...this is exactly my idea for my 2nd site

because I am only attracted to a few parts of self-development, and
no matter what I do, the other things never attracted me for the
last 27 years which I have been studying self-help information

...and practicing it in real life

...I guess you can say I am interested in what can produce real results,
and not mumbo-jumbo that sounds interesting and different, but in
real life is almost impossible to use for most people

...most people are not smart enough to use advanced techniques, to
be really honest

...first of all...I do not think I am that smart, compared to many
of the really smart people, and I do not want to be someone that
I am not

...I just know exactly what I want to achieve in my life, and I consider that
to be most important, as a first step...for achieving...any goal

...and the second step...viewing objective reality, we can all learn with practice,
even people like me who are not Einsteins.

I made so many mistakes in my life, it would make Steve look like an angel...lol

anyway...once we have these two things down, (what we want and see where we are
standing currently) the path toward our dream will show up, and be very, very clear

...and all you do is start walking down this path, one baby step at a time,
something like what Ken talks about....tortoising it

later

Alex Platups

[alexplatups]

Hello,

just wanted to make a comment if anyone is thinking about starting an SBI site

from my experience in the last two months, I see many people starting SBI
sites that are focused on their passions, but without doing real brainstorming
and research in the area how they will monetize on their sites

...monetizing your targeted traffic is where you will actually earn the income
that will hit your bank account, without knowing how you will make money
from your site, you might be very dissapointed when you invest money and
time into your site, and will have very little return on this investment

...please remember that you are building a real business, and not only a site!

later

Alex Platups

[bluedragon]

It's about time I posted here.
I started my website 3 months ago, and I thought I was doing pretty well. Lately I haven't been working a lot on it, and my traffic seems to have diminished a little bit (about 30 visitors per day), but I'll take care of it by writing more articles.
I think SBI is great when you're just starting out, but using a blogging platform with you own domain name is also great if you are prepared to master the technology. I'm planning to build my second site with Wordpress, but I'm working on another SBI site in collaboration with my Tai Chi teacher and his wife, who is also a teacher and feng shui consultant. Hopefully with 3 websites all providing new value and a unique angle, something good will come up.

[Andrew Gubb]

Damn Rebecca, your site looks like a message to me. My spirit guides have been telling me that the two most important things right now are making a stable income and learning to lucid dream, and I haven't been listening to them. They sent me to your website just to show how annoyed they were

[Rebecca800]

Heehee! Andrew I hope that means your guides like the site too

You can start learning to lucid dreaming here: An Introduction to Lucid Dreaming

Go for it!

[alexplatups]

Hello everyone,

well a few changes in my life

I decided I will pursue my life long dream and will move to Amsterdam by 4/20/2009
and will find a job in a coffeeshop, and my free time will spend on working
on my two websites, the weight loss and self-development

the whole idea is to see if I can support myself with only a job, in an unknown
country, with nothing but the English that I know, and my desire to create
two profitable websites

currently I live in an eastern European country Latvia, and my offline businesses
will continue to operate under the supervision of my family and relatives

so after 4/20/2009, I will be reporting from Amsterdam and will let you know
how everything is going, so anyone interested on making money online
can see if I succeed or not

...if everything more or less goes as I plan, I will stay in the Netherlands, and
live here year round, since I simply have fallen in love with this country, after
my frequent vacations there in the last three years

anyway that's it for now, later

Alex Platups

[Rebecca800]

That's awesome Alex. Good luck, I'm sure you will enjoy the new lifestyle. Keep us posted!

[gerber]

Hey Alex, great to hear you're coming to Amsterdam! I work there and live in Zaandam (a less than 20 minute drive from there).

There's no real need to learn Dutch if you work and live in the centre of Amsterdam. With all the tourism in this city, English seems to be in many places the number 1 language. A while ago I ate at a restaurant there and when I ordered in Dutch the waiter didn't understand me .

Good luck with living your dream!

At the moment I'm reading the Affiliate Masters e-book by Ken and a lot of it makes great sense. I've used SBI a year ago, but didn't spend enough time on it. I've learnt a great deal by reading the action guide and other material though and I'm applying that to my blog (see signature). I do have a challenge with sticking with a particular niche before moving on with another subject. Just to many things I'm excited about .

[alexplatups]

Gerber,

are you Dutch, or from another country?

my plan was to live in the center of Amsterdam, and find a job in one of the
cs chains, like Greenhouse, Daampkring, Barneys

I like a lot of other coffeeshops, especially the Green Place, but it is mostly the
larger chain coffeeshops that are hiring, at least that is what I am told by the
people I know living in the Nethrlands, currently

What about The Hague, is English widely used there also? It has many organizations
there, and I figured maybe to check out that part since it is right by the
water, and not as crowded as Amsterdam

what do you think?

SBI, has so much information, sometimes it is overwhelming, I am currently
working one step at a time, doing the most important steps, and then once
finish them, moving to the next steps, and so on

the free information Ken provides is worth tens of thousands of dollars,
in my opinion, and anyone can read it for free, this just shows that information
is power only when it is properly used, because as we all know only a few
people are rally making the kind of money they dream about...online

it is not as easy as most people think, there are exceptions of course, but the norm is a long uphill climb

later

Alex Platups

[gerber]

I'm Dutch but I'm not really into coffee shops, so I have no tips there. Amsterdam is far more a city for tourists compared to The Hague, I think.

I totally agree that actually using the information you read about makes the difference. Ken gives some great information, but it's useless if you don't act on it. I think that goes especially for the preparation (topic of your site, keywords, profitability, demand/supply).

[alexplatups]

Gerber,

a lot of the Dutch are not into the coffeeshops, from the statistics at least,
in fact it is one of the lowest percents per person in the world

this just shows that allowing them to operate on a level that is under the
control of the government has worked so far

My idea was to start in Amsterdam, and once I learn the language, and decide
that I will definately stay in the Netherlands, I will move to the Hague, since
living by the beach is something I would really like, in the long run

later

Alex Platups

[Angela Leeds]

Those are very exciting plans, Alex...wishing you allhe best with them!

Say, did any of you actually use one of the basic design templates that SBI provides to build your site, without any additional customization? Am curiouswhat approaches you each used to get your site to display the way you wanted.

I started with Ken Evoy's Affiliate Marketing ebook, then bought the SBI product and did all the groundwork. But when I got to the point of starting to design the site, I was horrified by how ugly and old-fashioned the out-of-box templates were. I figured I'd just deal with it and do it anyway, but the built-in design features were too limiting and clumsy for me. It seems to me I'm going to have to learn html and design a site myself to upload into the SBI framework.

That will take time, so for my first site I've switched to Joomla. But I've encountered problems there as well. Am still wondering if there's a way to make it work with the SBI design software.

What did you guys do?

[alexplatups]

Angela

I am using their two column template, and have done nothing to it at all

I will switch over to a three column SBI template when it comes out in
the future

there are many people who redo the SBI templates, or use theirown html, etc

in the forums, help can always be found, for whatever you want to change
in your Look and Feel

unique high quality content is the first thing that must be created, because
without it, there will be no success

once the content is there, you can always find a way to make your Look and
Feel, the way you want it to be

but the best way to go now, is the new 3 column template that will comeout
shortly...any day now

good luck

Alex Platups

[Angela Leeds]

I didn't realize there's a new 3-column template coming out any day. I posted on the forum about my frustration & I was told just that there are some new templates coming sometime in the future, but no certainty when.

I'll keep an eye out for it.

I'll have no problem with high-quality content. My challenge has been building it so it doesn't look amateurish. I played around with the existing templates and couldn't find a look and feel that was a decent starting place.

But I'll keep an eye out for the new template...thanks!

[Rebecca800]

Hi Angela

You do have a few options for your SBI website design...

The SBI templates are rather limiting. But what I think is worse - when people customize them with all the wrong colors and fonts... this is what makes it clash so badly! SBI does provide some guidance but people seem to go crazy with their own styles and it can all so easily go wrong. They are ignoring the primary rule: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). You don't need to be a creative genius to have a nice-looking SBI site. That's the point!

I used a basic SBI template for the first six months and it looked fine (the logo with the clouds). Once I had the content established, I allowed myself to take it up a notch and spend some time on the design. I nagged my partner (who is a website designer) into making an SBI-compatible template for me... You can see the result in the web links in my signature.

He's now selling this template to other SBI users (as it's 100% compatible, unlike many free online templates which will require a lot of work to integrate). The template alone is $49 or we recommend the template PLUS a professional logo design for $249. It's not dirt cheap but then most graphic designers charge hundreds or thousands for this kind of design work. As a result, you'll have a unique, professional website design that's easy to upload to SBI.

Another alternative is the new 3-column template by SBI. These have been hotly anticipated for a long time now, but I hear it's due VERY soon, ie within weeks. It's unclear if these will be just like the traditional SBI templates (but with a 3rd column) or something fresh and new altogether. We will see!

[Angela Leeds]

I look forward to seeing what the new 3-column template looks like. In the meantime I'm going to try to set things up with Joomla. My next site, or the one after that, hopefully by then I'll know enuf html to customize a 3-column SBI template myself.

[ken nubo]

alexplatups -- how are you making money off your site? I checked your website and see no ads or products. Enlighten me