Try this 1 minute experiment...

[Loxy]

Hi guys, humor me for just a moment, and try this...

Do a google search for "homemade dessert recipes" (no quotes). See the site homemade-dessert-recipes[dot]com somewhere in the first few results?

Do a google search for "how to play tennis" (no quotes). See the site tennismindgame[dot]com somewhere in the first few results?

Do a google search for "hair style trends" (no quotes). See the site style-hair-magazine[dot]com somewhere in the first few results?

So, what do the websites tennismindgame, homemade-dessert-recipes, and style-hair-magazine all have in common? How the hell do they rank so well?

Well, it turns out they were all made using SBI (Site Build It). And they all generate good money for their owners.

Before you ask, I'm NOT an affiliate for SBI (yet). So I'm not trying to score commissions here.

I've seen some negative things said about SBI on these forums (I've lurked here a while). But I'd like to point out that, at the end of the day, SBI sites have a remarkable success rate.

My wife and I have our own SBI site homemade-gifts-made-easy[dot]com. It's less than half a year old, and it already ranks in the top 1% of most visited sites on the web (look up our rank on Alexa). It gets over 700 unique visitors a day, with ZERO ongoing advertising budget.

Right now it generates around US$300 per month in passive income (through Adsense), and this income has been growing fast. Doubling each month, in fact.

So, I just wanted to let other aspiring New Rich know that I think SBI is a pretty decent system for starting a business. It's not perfect, but I'm impressed with its effectiveness so far.

Wishing you all much success in building your muses,

Tobias

[Loxy]

Re-reading my post I realised it might come across as a bit agressive - oops

To put things in more context...

Tim's 4HWW *really* struck a chord with me. I first read it over a year ago, and I've re-read it since then. There were so many ideas in that book that I'd already been half thinking about, but never really organised clearly in my head. Tim spelled it all out so clearly in 4HWW, and made it fun and motivating read to top it off.

After reading 4HWW, I was all fired up and ready to build a muse. But my wife and I weren't sure where to start. What product would we sell? Tim's idea of creating information products seemed like a good idea. No overheads, small startup costs, and long product lifetime. It sounded great. Then, somewhere along my internet searches, I came across Steve Pavlina's blog and the idea that your website could be an information product in itself. Basically you can write a great website with lots of information that people are searching for, and your site generates autopilot income through ads and affiliates. Sweet!

But how do you know what people are searching for? How can you guarantee that your site will get lots of traffic? This is where SBI (site build it) came in really useful for me. I'm sure there are other sets of tools that can do similar things, but SBI certainly made it really simple. Using their tools you can find out exactly what things people are searching for, and what sort of supply and demand there is. So you can pick a niche with high demand, low supply, and lots of potential for profit.

Then they have a bunch of tools to help you build your site etc etc, but this post is getting long and I don't want to bore you.

The summary of it all is that I'm really pleased with SBI, and I wish I'd found it earlier in my search for muse building ideas. Just wanted to share in case it's useful for some of you other budding new rich out there

Tobias

[DaveinHackensack]

Tobias, if you know enough about investing to understand what my site does and write effective copy about it, you may want to consider putting your SEO skills to use as an affiliate of it.

[officer_dibble]

None of my sites are built with site build it and many of them also do well in search engines.

If I were a potential customer it would worry me that if I do a search for site build it some of the top results are discussions about whether it's a scam or not and many of those who heartily recommend it are also affiliates for it. And those giving it negative reviews complain of being hounded for them.

Seems a tad strange for a company apparently doing so well for it's customers in the area of SEO...

I am glad it is working so well for you though. Which other tools/approaches did you evaluate before adopting site build it?

[Loxy]

Hi Officer_dibble,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Glad to hear your sites are doing well. What are they about? I agree that you can certainly do well without SBI. I think SBI just removes a lot of the trial and error, and saves you time. I think of it as outsourcing. I think I've saved at least 100 hours of trial and error, and my time is worth more than $3/hr.

Yes, it is sad that searching for SBI brings up a lot of "is SBI a scam?" type links. Most of those links are affiliates. Marketers realised that lots of people search for "Is SBI a scam?". Everyone searches for that before they decide to buy. Not just for SBI, but for any product. So, as an SBI affiliate, you can generate lots of traffic to your sales page by optimising for keywords like "SBI scams" etc. It's rather unfortunate really.

I looked into a few different options before SBI (wordpress, cheap hosting + dreamweaver, google-hosted webpages etc). I chose SBI in the end because it's a complete set of tools + information. They market it as "an MBA in an action guide", and in a way it's true. It teaches you both the web side of things and the business side of things.

Another reason I picked SBI is that it's very inline with the 4HWW way of thinking. For instance, SBI and 4HWW
- both promote 80/20 time management
- both promote "income autopilot", freeing up your time for your real passions.
- both promote niche businesses
- both suggest outsourcing once you've set up your business

For me, SBI was a good complement to 4HWW. I'm sure it's not the only way build an online business, but for me it was a simple and effective way to get started. My wife and I have never built a website or any sort of business before, so to be making a passive income of $300/month within 6 months is a big achievement for us.

Hope this answers your questions, and I hope I'm not coming across as too "evangelical". I guess I'm just a very happy customer

Best wishes,
Tobias

[officer_dibble]

Thanks Tobias. Most of my sites are information based or provide a service (usually free). I don't have any sites which sell products. I custom built them or used free services like blogger, twitter (and in some cases free hosting like awardspace). I rarely pay for anything other than a domain name.

If I was the owner of SBI I think I'd still be worried. You should not be encouraging affiliates to market the product in negative terms and the amount of positive independent press should certainly outweight the negative stuff.

Searching for business/product names like Wordpress, Godaddy, Open University, Mint and in fact most web based brands does not come up with "xxxx is a scam" or "Is xxxx a scam" in their first page of results.

Why should people think it was a scam? If I'm buying something from Apple - I don't type "Is Apple a scam" into a search engine or expect to see pages heavily criticising them featured so prominently in the search results for their name.

The only time I type "xxxx scam" into search is if I think the site/product looks a bit dodgy...

Sorry to call you out on this point - I agree with most of what you say elsewhere in your post. If you have it - it is better to spend a few bucks to save time.

[Loxy]

Hi Officer_dibble

Yes, if I were Ken Evoy (owner of SBI), I would be worried too. It's bad publicity. If you follow the SBI scam links, you'll find that most of them are actually promoting SBI and in favour of it, but many people wouldn't look into them closely enough to realise that that's the case.

You're right, most products won't come up with results like "Is XXX a scam?". The only products that comes up with these results are "how to make money on the internet" type of products. For instance, a search for "Wealthy Affiliate" (a scheme which I've heard of but know little about) brings up links like "wealthy affiliate scam", "don't buy wealthy affiliate" etc. Once again, these links turn out to be by affiliates who are actually promoting Wealthy Affiliate. It's just a marketing ploy, exploiting the fact that people are naturally (and probably rightly) sceptical of money-making schemes in general. It's a dirty marketing tactic, and I don't like it, but there you go.

BTW, I think it's great that you've figured out how to build a business using mostly free tools. How did you figure it all out? Did you have any background in web design or business?

All the best,

Tobias

[officer_dibble]

Different aspects of the web has been part of and then wholly my day job for around 15 years. I have variously dabbled in many things relevant setting up and running an online business - including web design, build, editorial and online marketing.

I currently manage a team running a charity website.

Online muses are mostly a hobby for me and a way of keeping me from getting too rusty/developing new skillsets - it's nice if some of them make some cash but still interesting if they don't.

[Loxy]

Sounds like you've got a strong web-business skill set! Awesome that you're involved with a charity website. Which one? I've been thinking that once I have a few solid muses set up I'd like to use my newly developed web-skills to help out with charity work. The web is such a powerful tool for reaching lots of people... it seems like the idea medium through which to promote a worthwhile cause. Just need to decide which cause I want to promote...

[officer_dibble]

I hope you don't mind but I'd like to keep my day job separate from my forum life. It is vaguely related to green/environmental issues though.

If you have the time, passion and resources I very much recommend working for or volunteering for a charity though. They are very different from other sectors (I'd previously worked in commercial and academic environmnents before) though and at times have their own unique frustrations.

There is nothing like working on something you feel passionate about though - it's a great way to filll the void.