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02-22-2011, 11:28 PM
| #1 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 632
 |  Why I canceled Site Build It but I still recommend it
I think site build it is a great service. It can guide you from complete novice to having enough knowledge to set up a profitable online business. What I found though after setting up some other websites while using sitebuildit is that I can do everything site build it can do but with more flexibility using a good ContentManagementSystem such a wordpress, or now Concrete 5 (an absolutely incredible cms). I learned a good amount from sitebuildits tutorials though and I highly recommend that you subscribe just to get a clear idea of how to steer yourself toward creating a profitable authority site. |
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02-23-2011, 08:31 PM
| #5 (permalink) |
| Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Anguilla
Posts: 10
| SBI! or WP?
Hi Jonathan, I just happened to spot this intriguing headline, so I thought I'd check it out. I'm glad you still recommend SBI!. :-) I'd like to correct some common misconceptions, though. Wordpress is a CMS. SBI! is a business-builder -- a combination of process-tools-guidance-updating that is far more than a CMS that is focused upon people who want build online businesses. Go to... WordPress.com — Get a Free Blog Here -- you won't find the word "business" on the site. Tod asked abut what else SBI! provides (beyond content management, which is a fancy word for sitebuilding). I think the answer is more than "extensive tutorials," Jonathan. As far as I know, no other company provides the means to success at the rate of success that SBI! does. That's what SBI! really delivers. It's not for everyone, of course. Nothing is. And that's OK. It's also not the only way to succeed. Look at Steve, for example. But, as Steve says, HE can do it. But he can't teach most people to do what he does so well. Some folks will say "you can do it all (i.e., all of SBI!) with wordpress." However when you check those folks WP sites/blogs at alexa.com or compete.com or quantcast.com (or better still, build a traffic profile by using all 3), you find that the sites they are building with WP get very little traffic. I always find that curious. Somehow, they're missing the point... Anyone can put up a site or a blog. Heck, weebly.com and yola.com are both easier, far easier than wordpress. But it's not about the site. It's about building a profitable business. For a more accurate comparison of Wordpress vs. SBI!, please see... WordPress Or SBI! -- It includes all the standard things that those who are devoted to WP say about why it's better than SBI!. But they miss the one key point. It's a better CMS (until we release BB2 this summer, anyway). But it's nowhere near the business-builder that SBI! is. It simply does not approach the success rate of SBI!. No one has ever published proof of success like SiteSell does. Hope that helps, Ken |
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02-23-2011, 10:42 PM
| #6 (permalink) | |
| Banned Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 12,690
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Hi Ken, I have an SBI account and I love it. Except for one thing. The block builder is a gigantic pain in my ass. Do you have plans for upgrading that puppy? Thanks, James Quote:
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02-28-2011, 04:15 AM
| #7 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posts: 636
| Quote:
 And the underlying concept - that SBI turns average Joes into online business owners - is what makes this offering so strong. WordPress does not even try to compete with that. | |
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02-28-2011, 04:30 AM
| #8 (permalink) |
| Banned Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 12,690
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Well, I understand that word press is his competition and all, but it makes me laugh when he tries to compare the two. It's like saying that your tv can never do what your car does. Lmao. I like SBI, but I also love wordpress. Might wanna keep that in mind that there are peeps like me who use SBI and wordpress. And that currently THE most successful websites are using wordpress. In other words, tell me how you are making SBI better and more user friendly and leave wordpress out of it. |
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02-28-2011, 07:18 AM
| #9 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 2,950
| Quote:
Notice that every move SiteSell as a company has made to talk about SBI vs. Wordpress has been in response to criticisms from Wordpress users. As far as I can tell, SBI has never gone out of its way to criticize Wordpress users without first being provoked; just defend itself from criticisms. | |
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02-28-2011, 09:43 AM
| #10 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posts: 636
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Too true, Curtis. I actually think WordPress is pretty cool too. But it's not directly comparable to SBI, because they're very different offerings. It's people who don't understand SBI who write it off, saying "Yeah just use WordPress and learn everything else for free online". That kind of argument is unfair to SBI and it makes us pro-SBIers want to defend it against hollow WP comparisons. Can't be helped.  |
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03-01-2011, 01:08 AM
| #11 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 632
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Well, I mean if you really get down to it, SBI really IS just a combination of extensive tutorials and a cms. It's just that in addition to providing detailed tutorials about how to use their cms, they also provide detailed tutorials about how to build an online business. Basically, they are teaching people how to build authority sites as opposed to just blogs. This is why SBI sites tend to have much higher traffic than your average wordpress blog. You can use a cms like concrete 5 and make a fantastic authority website. You can also use wordpress although I would personally not use it without a premium theme like headway. Again though, for your average joe looking to just take their knowledge or passion or whatever and start an income producing business.... SBI is great. |
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03-01-2011, 01:23 AM
| #12 (permalink) |
| Family Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Home
Posts: 2,578
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After running a flailing website for 4 or 5 years without any technical knowledge, I've decided to make the jump to SBI! I just wish I would have decided this when there was a discount in place. It's no matter, because I'll eventually recoup the money I spent on SBI! anyway. I'm planning on signing up by the end of March, and I just need to search my soul to find a niche in which I can truly both love to write and create, and that can earn me significant income.It's not easy to come up with a targeted website, as I have many interests, but a few topics jump out at me, and I'll have to resolve which ones I want to discuss in further detail. |
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03-01-2011, 02:06 AM
| #13 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: USA
Posts: 155
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I'm going to invest in the program once I figure out what kind of a website I want. I normally wouldn't pay $300 for it, but it is highly recommended it so it must be legit. I guess it's easier to just pay the money then it is to take months to learn the skills. I'm curious to hear other peoples experiences. |
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03-01-2011, 05:37 AM
| #14 (permalink) | ||
| Family Member Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 2,950
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It can get somewhat complex choosing a website topic. It has to be something you can write about (or at least hire people to write about) and not lose all your motivation after 2 months. It also has to have good demand in the search engines, but low enough competition from other websites that you can succeed with it. And finally, you have to have some way to make money off of it. Unfortunately, a few SBI'ers make great websites and get tons of traffic, but then have trouble monetizing the traffic because they didn't fully incorporate the idea of monetization into their considerations when choosing a topic in the first place. Of course, SBI helps you with this. I don't mean to make it sound too hard, as there are tons of niches out there that you can be successful in. Quote:
It ends up being more expensive in the long run, but you can always transition (I believe) into paying for a full year at a time for a lower cost, if you decide to stick with it for the long run. | ||
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03-02-2011, 11:06 AM
| #15 (permalink) | |
| Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Anguilla
Posts: 10
| WP or SBI!?
Hi James, Regarding this... Quote:
When you say that "THE most successful websites are using wordpress," where do you find the documentation for that statement? Please show me documentation of proof of SUCCESS, such as SBI! provides at... SBI! - Proof Of Success If you mean that well-financed VCs using Wordpress to put up their site/blog, that's not really relevant. Restrict yourself to solo proprietors (individual), because that really the marketplace that we are talking about here. Note that everything at the above proof.sitesell.com URL is verifiable. Just one example -- note that Case Studies are not vague rah-rah testimonials. They are multi-year success stories. If you had visited the same URL ( case-studies.sitesell.com ), you would have seen many of the same people, somewhat scared as they start off. 8 years later today, you can literally trace their growth. I'm not aware of any type of documentation of success as SBI! provides. Each type of proof provides a different aspect. It is TRUE that Wordpress builds the MOST sites and blogs. It is NOT true that they have the highest rate of success. Let's estimate that WP has about 40,0000,000 million active site/blogs, while SBI! has 40,000. That is a 1000-fold difference. Just because most people start with WP, does not make it better. It does not make you, the individual, MORE likely to succeed. In fact,your success rate is far lower. SBI! sites "punch way above their weight." You'd be amazed how many times SBI!'s 40,000 sites turn up in comparison to the Web's 100,000,000+ sites. It would not surprise me if a study showed that there are just as many INDIVIDUALS who succeed online with SBI! as there are folks who use Wordpress. Remember, though... that is out of 1000x more WPers. For argument's sake, define "success" as being in the Top 100,000 sites, traffic-wise (a rough indication of traffic). It would not surprise me to find more individuals using SBI! than WP. In any event, what is certain (without any evidence to the contrary).. SBI! delivers the highest rates of success. The difference is NOT dues to the CMS -- both come with a sitebuilder and WP's is better (until BB2 comes out this summer). To answer your question, BlockBuilder2 (BB2) is like a combination of Weebly, Yola and WP, simplified with all the built-in tools and education present and enhanced. While the current BB1 looks like a toy compared to Weebly, Yola and WP, it still gets its job done really well. It teaches folks, simple block by block, how to build a page that works -- i.e., it has solid content, looks great and gets visitors and PREsells. It does little things, too, like raising the priority of pages in your sitemap xml file if an important page is dropped at Google. It does many things that advanced users don't know how to do. But it's not about the SITE-building. It's about BUSINESS-building. SBI! comes with all you need to build a profitable business (a "site" is not a "business")... 1) information and process (all you'll ever need as it is constantly updated) and 2) tools ( SBI! - All the Tools -- see bottom half for all the new features) and 3) guidance -- support and the best e-business forums in the world and 4) constant updating -- business people should not have to try to make sense out of all the noise that is the Web (and getting noisier). WE do that. The SHOULD stay in touch/up-to-date with their niche by developing a monitoring program, something that covers all the forums, blogs, news sources, Facebook, Twitter, etc, for you particular niche. And that brings us to our latest release. There are services that charge $18 per month to do what it does (ex., trackur) -- Monitor It! lets you same up the 90% of the same benefits (the important ones) for free. Besides BB2, Socialize It! 2 and Face It! will be released this year. In the same way that Blog It! enabled SBI! sites to take full advantage of RSS and have all the advantages of blogs, AND all the power of evergreen theme-based content sites... and in the same way that C2 took TRUE advantage of the power of Web 2.0 ( see 2.sitesell.com )... These two modules integrate SBI! fully into social media marketing. Instead of blog comments at the end of every page (a weak feature), there will be Facebook comments (if the user wants to, that is). So the conversation, while it occurs on the website, also moves to the friends of those who are commenting. THAT is leverage. I won't give away everything these 2 new modules will do, but I will sat that it will be unique. Also in development... new tools for Content 2.0. There are sites with hundreds, even thousands of high-quality pages built by visitors, for FREE, because they love the niche and want to share. This has been so successful, we are adding new management tools, as well as integrating Face It! and Socialize It! 2 here, too. Think of a high-quality page that is built by a visitor, automatically added to the sitemap xml, appears in the blog page and all the RSS readers subscribing to it, AND now appearing in FB, too. Brainstormer will release v3.3 and v3.4, completing the conversion of a high-end brainstormer into a site management tool. For example, if you have an important keyword that is not ranking well and has no deep link to it. BI! will flag that fact AND send you an e-mail to build a quality link to that page. James, the difference is that with WP, you have to find and assemble all the information and tools and plug-ins to even get close to what SBI! delivers. I know from my early days of selling MYSS! (the "Bible" of Net marketing" in the mid-to-late nineties), that people need much more than information and a CMS. They need everything that SBI provides, all in one place. That is why SBI! has the highest success rate in the world. I challenge you to show me any other company that can product a document as thorough and complete at SBI! - Proof Of Success WP probably delays most people's e-business success exactly because it is so different that, as you say, you are comparing a "TV and a car." If you just want to build a wonderful little hobby site, use Wordpress and cheap hosting. If it's a hobby, use the free hosting. Because you don't have to worry about all the other things you need to do to build a successful business. Like I said in my post above, just to to wordpress.com - you wont' find the word "business" on the site. Yes, you can read a ton, figure out things on your own, try and buy, and then try and buy software and plug-ins... and a few (like Steve) will succeed. But for most people, that ends in failure. -- James, there are many people who use both, yes. But the flow of one to the other is different... 1) Folks who start at WP mostly fail. They say, "what the heck, I'll try SBI!. It's guaranteed." And that is the moment that they "get" the difference. 2) Folks who start at SBI! become successful using SBI!. Or some don't (not everyone does.) They figure they don't need SBI! anymore, like the person who started his thread. I've seen that before. And some of them do succeed, once they have learned all they need to learn with the info/process-tools-guidance-updating of SBI!. When you see those statements, though, check to see if their WP sites are successful. Check their performance using Alexa.com, cross-checking with compete.com -- neither is perfect, but the two together give you a pretty good idea of what type of traffic any site is getting. Most folks who succeed with SBI!, stick with it and build a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. For the $200 extra ($20/month) above the cost of decent hosting (which SBI! includes), they understand the value, given what they have achieved with their first set. You pay more than that for a 3rd party brainstormer, for a subscription/mailout service, for so many of SBI!'s modules. Is SBI! the only way to succeed? No. But it's an INDIVIDUAL's best chance. [b]I am very comfortable debating that point in public with any Wordpress success story, or with Wordpress themselves. /b] I know WP sounds impressive because "everyone" uses it. But SBIers somehow just keep tortoising ahead with what counts... success rates and levels that can't be matched. All the best, Ken | |
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03-03-2011, 03:10 AM
| #16 (permalink) |
| Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 8
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Honestly, I've never used Site Build It. I've always stuck with WordPress, and my WordPress theme of choice has been Thesis (I'm the marketing guy there too). There are also other great WordPress themes out there that add a ton of functionality and they're worth checking out too. Last edited by Datasta; 03-03-2011 at 03:14 AM. |
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03-03-2011, 11:27 AM
| #17 (permalink) | |
| Member Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: UK
Posts: 42
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One of the best things I found about SBI was that I went in with a couple of less than half-formed ideas and the SBI process walked me through the process of evaluating each. The online analysis toolset to help me to decide on what kind of site I wanted for my first one. | |
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03-03-2011, 11:36 AM
| #18 (permalink) |
| Banned Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 12,690
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Lol. Kenny, you are posting on a site that uses wordpress. Yahoo uses (or used) it. Lifehacks, Tim ferris, all use it. There's more, but I'll stop there. Remember, I'm a fan and user of SBI, I just don't like the block builder part of it. |
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03-03-2011, 02:23 PM
| #20 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 2,950
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You are saying that instead of using a content website-building service (SBI) to build a content website, you should instead use a blog-building service and modify it to build a content website. So basically, a lot more work, and a lot more technical blabble, to deal with for the users. Honestly the more that Wordpress users criticize SBI, the more I feel that they are just being stuck up "tech hipsters" so to speak; ie, they use Wordpress because "it's the cool thing to do" and not because it actually makes sense to use it. Notice that some of the loudest critics of SBI have never actually built a profitable online business of their own. Not to mention the plain and simple fact that SBI markets mostly to beginners in online business, and to non-tech-savvy internet users. If you already are making all the money you want with a Wordpress site, then you don't need SBI and SBI isn't even trying to market itself to you, so I really don't see the conflict here. To me, Wordpress users who criticize SBI are like a douchebag driving a jacked up truck with giant wheels who claims to be "better than" the guy who drives a normal car that just gets the job done without looking fancy. The real reason behind this situation is not that the jacked up wheels and truck are any better, but that the person using them feels threatened by others (Wordpress users feel threatened by the idea that an alternative service, SBI, may be better than Wordpress in some regards) and thus they try to over-compensate by lashing out against the competition. Admitting that an alternative service may be better than the one you use in some areas does not make yours any less viable or valuable. Ken and the rest at SBI do not feel unneccessarily threatened by Wordpress, so they readily admit that it is the superior blogging format. But for some reason, Wordpress users seem to feel like they are being attacked by SBI when it says that it is better at building online businesses, when in reality all SBI has done has been to denounce false criticisms that were first voiced by Wordpress users to begin with. tl;dr: Many Wordpress users are whiny tech hipsters that just want to be the cool kids of the internet. Move along, people, move along. Last edited by Curtis2011; 03-03-2011 at 02:30 PM. | |
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03-03-2011, 09:57 PM
| #22 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posts: 636
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James, did you ever use the 'Upload Your Own HTML' feature of SBI? For people who are a little more tech-minded, it means you don't even have to touch BlockBuilder. I transitioned from BB to HTML after I made about 2 pages of my SBI site. The whole site building process becomes way more flexible and creative once you do this. I've used WordPress too, and I still prefer doing my own HTML pages in DreamWeaver. Their CMS is too fussy in comparison. The fact that SBI supports this HTML function (and Wordpress... doesnt? correct me if I'm wrong) makes SBI a better choice even for tecchies when it comes to online business. |
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03-04-2011, 03:38 AM
| #23 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 632
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Actually, you can create your own html pages with wordpress. However wordpress is by no means a fantastic cms right out of the box. You need to get a good theme for it to really shine. Personally, I prefer concerte 5 (concrete5.org) far more. Now that's a badass tool for building an authority website, and for people developing websites as a business, right out of the box. SBI is cool though. They do offer some great features. It's slightly disengenous to compare the additional features they do have price wise with getting seperate subscriptions to other services. A lot of the other services out there for instance for mailing lists, are MUCH more powerful. But again, SBI can do what you need it to do. If they seriously update the block builder to the next level that will be a huge step forward. If your not confident about your ability to learn tech and search engine optimization and everything else, on your own, then you should get SBI. It's that simple. |
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03-04-2011, 12:27 PM
| #24 (permalink) | |
| Banned Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 12,690
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03-04-2011, 02:31 PM
| #25 (permalink) |
| Banned Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 12,690
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I think the real issue here is that some of you fine peeps are thinking that it's SBI vs. Wordpress. That you can't use one with the other. That Wordpress is in direct competition with SBI. And I think that's a distinction that's made from SBI, not wordpress. In fact, go onto the wordpress website and see if you see the words Site Build It anywhere on their pages. You won't. And, yes, this phenemonon (Christ that's a hard word to spell  ) happens with the die hard wordpress peeps as well. I understand that SBI talks about wordpress because it's wordpress peeps who can't seem to see the value in SBI. But it's a competition that's incredibly unnecessary. There's no need for SBI to defend itself from the wordpress naysayers. SBI is a great product, with tons of value. I love the Brainstorm It tool, I love the tier structure, and I love how it teaches people how to rank well and find a niche that not only is inspiring, but has the potential for profit as well. But it need not resist using wordpress or any other CMS. In fact, can you imagine how many people would sign up for SBI if SBI offered to let you use wordpress as a CMS? Holy crap, that would be the best of both worlds. A truly win-win solution to this perceived conflict. If SBI were to embrace the use of Wordpress, I think it would be a truly unstoppable force full of value on every level. It'd be pretty amazing. And don't just stop there, either. Let peeps use Joomla or any of the other CMSes that are out there. The one weakness of SBI is that it corkscrews everybody to either use their blockbuilder (which is clunky and a downright pain in the ass) or to build their own HTML pages (Hello? That was cool back in 1997! Not today). Or even worse, pay some other company to build HTML pages for you. What a waste of resources to outsource the design of a website to another company when there are already so many free templates out there on the web that are very professional looking. Give people the freedom to embrace the technology of the internet as it stands today, and don't relegate them to forms of building pages that are horribly outdated. Either that, or package the Brainstorm It tool with Niche Choose it and the action plan and let people pay for THAT, and then go buy their own host and use whatever CMS they want. For someone like me, who enjoys Hostgator and Wordpress and the freedom that comes with that, I'd buy that up in a heartbeat because it would probably be cheaper and it would be tailor suited to EXACTLY what I want from SBI--the information and tools to build a business that ranks well, while allowing me the freedom to use all the other stuff I learned and know works better in building the actual site. Last edited by James81; 03-04-2011 at 02:36 PM. |
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03-04-2011, 03:39 PM
| #26 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: New Delhi
Posts: 1,065
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03-04-2011, 03:51 PM
| #27 (permalink) | |
| Banned Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 12,690
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Just because you USE wordpress does not mean you have to structure your website like a blog. I could very easily embrace the site tier template structure using wordpress. (Don't go by the site in my sig btw. That's just an old blog site that's more of an archive of posts these days than anything else.) You know, I may even take the site in my sig and tinker with it to embrace the SBI template. I've considered that. | |
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03-04-2011, 07:34 PM
| #28 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posts: 8,749
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Which percentage of people finds it worthwhile to keep paying for a SBI website after the first year of using SBI? | |
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03-04-2011, 10:40 PM
| #29 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posts: 636
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Now they have a monthly payment system so I guess you could go on monthly renewals, though I have no idea what that be Although there must be several reasons for quitting, the biggest one is lack of motivation. They want a money making website but they can't be bothered to put the work in to achieve it. | |
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03-09-2011, 06:47 PM
| #30 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 151
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I used SBI when I first started my site Chilean-Wine.com It was the best $300 I've spent. I learned alot. I milked as much knowledge as I could from it. After the first year, I switched to WP and have not looked back. From a technology-features standpoint, there is no comparison. My forte is tasting wine and writing about it, not worrying about how to load html and making a pretty site. I recommend SBI to anybody that wants to make money from their site. Free learning on the net is not a realistic option for most people. Consider it a $300 investment in learning the marketing and content creation fundamentals that make the difference between a website that gets visitors and one that does not. And to second James' comment, if SBI offered to host my WP site at lower fee with access to their Keyword tool, I would still be using them. Providing an upgrade path even to a different platform could be a good move for Dr Evoy. |
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