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I lost focus with SBI and am looking for new systems to make money online

by garytanuser
23 replies
Hi everyone

I'm new to the Warrior Forum and I'm glad there's such an active community of Internet Marketers who can help and share thoughts and ideas.

A little history about myself. I started out in Internet Marketing about 2002 - back then I bought a little eBook called MYSS (Make Your Site Sell!) from Ken Evoy. It was a good book and helped me understand the basics - build a good content website, do pre-selling and then put on Adsense, affiliate links, etc.

I went on to buy Site Build It! (SBI) and was a loyal customer from 2002 until today. At its peak, I had seven SBI domains and the total income was about $4,000 a month. Pretty decent.

The unfortunate thing was that I was very dependent on Google traffic. I think 80% of my traffic came from 20% of the keywords in my sites. My content was decent but was not up-to-date. I was just sitting there and cashing in the Adsense checks and got complacent. I created some eBooks to sell and they did pretty well. But then Panda and Penguin hit in Apr 2012, my revenues completely tanked.

I was frustrated and sad. I picked myself up, started new SBI domains, and I had two up and running as of today. They bring in some money, but not near the levels I had in 2011 (which was the peak for me). I'd be lucky if my Adsense makes $100 a month these days.

As you can imagine, there are a few things on my mind now.

1) I refuse to give up on Internet Marketing because after so many years, you KNOW you can make decent money online. You can't make millions, etc. but you can make a couple of thousand a month and that's all I'm after. I believe that's fully realistic and achievable.

2) I know and see the core online business model changing.

Quality - It is clear you can't just slap up a site, throw in 30 articles and expect Adsense cash to roll in. You need to create and deliver value. So that is now my motto. My articles cannot be crappy - they need to be high quality.

Monetization models - it cannot just be Adsense alone anymore. You have to bring up more of you own products, email list marketing and also other channels like Kindle / iTunes bookstand, etc.

3) I also know the platform I'm using must change. I stuck with SBI for more than ten years. It was a good place and I truly believed in the system.

Now, I believe I need to build my own with Wordpress and plug-ins. I'm adjusting all my sites to move towards Wordpress and the learning curve for me is steep.

Also, the SBI community and I are totally disillusioned and I'm looking for new "mentors" to help me online.

If anyone knows of some mentor I can follow, please let me know. I've gone through these Warrior Forums, bought a couple of products but I guess I am still "lost". I'm afraid I will end up losing focus and just spending lots of money on different IM products and not knowing what to do.

Thank you all and I look forward to interacting with everyone here!
#focus #lost #make #money #online #sbi #systems
  • Profile picture of the author RSK3000
    Certainly one model you should consider is the development of an authority blog in a niche that aims to 'solve a problem' and which has hungry buyers with the means to pay.

    The key here would be to create compelling content and lots of it. Even better if you can create your own products to sell.

    SEO continues to be a problem with Google becoming increasingly unpredictable and unreliable.

    Nevertheless, 'content' sites can still make good money, its just a lot harder than it used to be.

    In terms of mentoring, I have been have been doing a bit of research into this and Yaro Stark (Entrepreneurs-Journey.com) does a 'Mastermind Group' and there is a Problogger (Problogger.com) private members community which looks interesting.
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    • Profile picture of the author garytanuser
      Hi RSK3000 - thanks. I think you're right to say we should focus on how to solve problems. I used to have a site that looked at how to build computers. But do you guys think that is too general? Should I go into more detailed or specific problems like how to treat a specific type of asthma for example?

      Thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stuart Walker
    As you've found out, like many of us did, Google traffic is unpredictable and should never be relied on.

    Focus on alternative traffic sources that you have more or full control over.

    Whether it's paid traffic, content marketing, blog commenting, forum marketing, social media, video or whatever suits your sites / niche.

    Your life will become much easier and less stressful. Checking your Analytics every day wondering if this is the day Google has changed the algorithms and tanked your site is torture.

    You might actually find that when you stop focusing on G traffic you end up with bucket loads of it anyway.

    I haven't built a single artificial link to my newest blog.

    I've focused on creating good content, sharing it in places where my target audience hang out, and networking with influential people in the niche.

    Google is my second biggest source of traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author garytanuser
      Hi Stuart

      Thanks so much - I agree with your comments here. In my latest blog I've also focused on building up traffic and not worry day in and out about Google stats.

      Could I ask, do you use Wordpress for your blog? Do you have a system that you use to market your site, e.g. research couple of sites to reach out to per day, etc. Do you mind sending me a PM and we follow up from there?

      Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author KevinRB
    Originally Posted by garytanuser View Post

    I went on to buy Site Build It! (SBI) and was a loyal customer from 2002 until today. At its peak, I had seven SBI domains and the total income was about $4,000 a month. Pretty decent.

    The unfortunate thing was that I was very dependent on Google traffic. I think 80% of my traffic came from 20% of the keywords in my sites. My content was decent but was not up-to-date. I was just sitting there and cashing in the Adsense checks and got complacent. I created some eBooks to sell and they did pretty well. But then Panda and Penguin hit in Apr 2012, my revenues completely tanked.

    I was frustrated and sad. I picked myself up, started new SBI domains, and I had two up and running as of today. They bring in some money, but not near the levels I had in 2011 (which was the peak for me). I'd be lucky if my Adsense makes $100 a month these days.

    As you can imagine, there are a few things on my mind now.

    1) I refuse to give up on Internet Marketing because after so many years, you KNOW you can make decent money online. You can't make millions, etc. but you can make a couple of thousand a month and that's all I'm after. I believe that's fully realistic and achievable.

    2) I know and see the core online business model changing.

    Quality - It is clear you can't just slap up a site, throw in 30 articles and expect Adsense cash to roll in. You need to create and deliver value. So that is now my motto. My articles cannot be crappy - they need to be high quality.

    Monetization models - it cannot just be Adsense alone anymore. You have to bring up more of you own products, email list marketing and also other channels like Kindle / iTunes bookstand, etc.

    3) I also know the platform I'm using must change. I stuck with SBI for more than ten years. It was a good place and I truly believed in the system.

    Now, I believe I need to build my own with Wordpress and plug-ins. I'm adjusting all my sites to move towards Wordpress and the learning curve for me is steep.

    Also, the SBI community and I are totally disillusioned and I'm looking for new "mentors" to help me online.
    Hey Gary

    Unfortunately, like so many others you bought into the SBI gravy train, everything was fine and dandy up until Google started implementing the guidelines it had ALWAYS had in place, and like so many others you learned that FREE GOOGLE TRAFFIC + ADSENSE is a business proposition built upon sand!.

    Do I sound slightly pissed?.....i should do, I had 25 SBI sites at the point Google fell out of love with SBI, I hung around for 6 months after the first Penguin to look for "recovery stories" we were categorically told that Penguin had impacted under 10% of SBI sites, yet EVERYONE both in the SBI Forum and in the wider world who ran SBI sites was crying!.

    I moved all my SBI sites into WordPress, they were pretty decimated at the time, but having removed all the toxic elements that used to work so well, my sites are now showing good recovery, not back to the heady days pre-P&P but they are all making money again.....and I am just so happy to be away from SBI.

    Regards
    Kevin
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  • Profile picture of the author star007
    Hi guys,
    I just signed up with SBI this month. I have been trying to figure out the best way to make a 'real' living online for a while but so far have not been successful (a lot of shiny objects with little substance and no support)! So I decided to at least give it a try.

    I do like the Brainstorning software and being able to get a lot of information from it and not having to go to a lot of other websites or purchase other software (although I do own a copy of Market Samurai).

    Another thing I like about SBI is the fact that for the first time I am starting to look at the how my sites are structured vs. just throwing a website or blog up with very little focus or content, traffic, etc.

    I do like WP because it is very versatile and easy to use and customize. Thanks for your comments...lots of food for thought.

    I have purposely, NOT visited any of the forums as I have found that doing so diverts me from main goal (building my site(.

    I have found some positive comments and a lot of negative ones but decided to give it a try for just one website to see how it goes and also I want to be able to write a online review of the product based upon my experience alone.

    I am thinking that for $30 month, the brainstorming software might be worth it or are there other less expensive (free) options that are just as good?
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    • Profile picture of the author JKSCSU
      I started off with SBI back in 2004ish. What I will say about the program, is that it does provide solid information about how to build a site. At least it did back in 2004. I have not been to the site to see what the updated information is looking like these day.

      The problem I have with SBI, is the software to build their sites. It was very outdated. Also, if you build a site using their platform and decide to leave, there goes your site.

      What I would do is read and absorb the info, because it is sold white hat info, and look for other software to build the site of your choice. Always take bits of information from different people and courses to form your own process.

      I am grateful to SBI, as the program did teach me a lot about online marketing back during that time. As far as the keyword tool on SBI, there are much better tools out there. One that I use is Longtail Pro. Go check that out!!

      Hope that helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author Oven Key
    I used SBI for quite a few years, but I wish I had followed a different path from the outset. Here is what I wish someone had told me when I was starting out:

    SBI teaches you to put 90%+ of your time/work/content into Traffic-building. This sounds plausible, but turns out to be incorrect. You should put most of your work into things like: relationship-building, product-development, and conversion-optimization. When you get these things right you only need a very small amount of traffic, which greatly reduces your dependency on things like search engines, and eventually means you can pay for traffic.

    In short: Focus on improving how much you earn per visitor. When you get that right, traffic is actually the easy part. Chasing thousands of long-tail keywords is self-defeating. Even if you get traffic from it, it converts very poorly, and you'll make very little per sale because you haven't spent time building anything valuable in the back end.

    The other thing is, if you do decide to give SBI a try, whatever you do make sure you use their WordPress product and not their proprietary product. If you use the WP version, then you can give them the flick with the click of a button, because the site-hosting is all done on your side. With the proprietary system they offer, extracting yourself from their unusual hosting system is a very long-winded and expensive exercise, and a ton of stuff will break because you were using their proprietary tools.

    And speaking of tools... with WordPress you can pretty much achieve anything you want feature-wise, whereas SBI's proprietary tools are famously deficient in so many ways.

    But seriously, I would really recommend that you don't go down the SBI path as it will teach you to spend so much of your time and resources on the low-return tasks, and lead to a very risk-prone business model.

    Where to get tuition on the approach I am recommending with such broad brush-strokes?

    Well, if you're a pretty independent and confident learner, follow a small group of experts and read everything they have written. I thoroughly recommend Perry Marshall, Pat Flynn, Derek Halpern, and CopyBlogger.

    If you really like to have your hand held in a step-by-step fashion, I am most impressed with Chris Farrell's internet marketing membership site. Like SBI though, you'll have to pay for it (from memory it was $40/month, plus hosting, making it more expensive than SBI but a far far far more responsible long-lasting business model.)

    Let me know if you want me to drill down on anything here. Like I said, I sure wish I had this advice when I started out.

    In my opinion, it's not really that SBI is a scam exactly (as many claim nowadays), but just that you spend years of your precious time building a business with an extremely low Return on Investment (ROI) with a very dangerous level of Risk (having one breaking point starting with 'G'). Plus it turns out to unscaleable because you can't afford to pay for traffic or other lead-generating mechanisms.

    Anyhoo, I hope that helps.

    All the best.
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  • Profile picture of the author skyro
    SEO is really unpredictable. How about start email marketing where is much easier to control. There are many courses in the topic. A good one I seen recently is "stealth funnel profit" by shane farrell.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris-
    I recommend Amazon affiliate marketing, one reason being because it gets BETTER as Google improves its algorithms, especially if you use a traffic strategy like Article Syndication (or guest posting on blogs which is similar) rather than the usual approach of trying to trick Google with lots of backlinks you've made yourself.

    For the time you spend, Amazon affiliate work will make much more money than AdSense anyway (I tested both for several years) if you do it right . . . you need to write specific product reports on individual products, using what real customers say to tell the buyer genuine reasons for buying the product or why an alternative is better for specific uses. I wrote in another thread yesterday the criteria for choosing which products to write about . . . it's all fairly obvious once you see it written down and understand the reasons.

    Hope that helps

    Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author Assignmentwriter
    I suggest you to get coaching by best online marketers they will guide you about right path to focus plust what best for you ?
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    • Profile picture of the author princessleia
      I found SBI to be a one-trick pony. Their SEO information is dated, and their blockbuilder doesn't allow you to make any kind of decent landing pages.

      I'd definitely use Wordpress and follow Derek Halpern's blog as well as Pat Flynn's blog.

      For anyone curious about SBI, it's a sinking ship with very outdated information. You can tell by their horribly outdated tools and how they keep losing domains that the company does NOT know anything about internet marketing TODAY.

      Seven years ago, they were great, but they didn't keep up with the times. In the forums, the owner, Ken Evoy, even ASKS his CUSTOMERS for ideas on how to market his failing SBI product to Wordpress. The man has MILLIONS of dollars at his disposal, and he can't stop LOSING customers. (Proof: Sitesell.com - Name server Changes on 2014-11-02/ )

      You can't trust a marketer that had a DECADE LONG headstart online with millions of dollars at his disposal to teach YOU how to market if he can't sell his own product.

      Check out Pat Flynn and see how he shows you EXACTLY what he's making and how he's totally transparent on his work for a real up-to-date marketing perspective: My Income Reports

      Honestly, I believe that SBI/Sitesell and Ken Evoy is the slum lord of hosting. They kept charging premium rents when everyone else became less expensive, and the they didn't keep up the property enough. Now, it's just run-down and operating on spin. A few people who don't know any better just keep going, but it's a losing battle.

      Most people who are there won't make the $30 a month back, and the ones that do would be better off somewhere else.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jack Sarlo
    I never liked SBI or any done for you business type of things - formuals/systems you just plug-and-play I think are lame.You're just a small fish amongst a million other small fishes doing the same thing. In fact I hate them not just doesn't like them. Probably they're screwing up newbies.

    Build a real company online, selling your own products/services and learn how to beat competition and: "You can't make millions," yes you can because it has been done.
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    • Profile picture of the author archer0830
      I still have 6 accounts with SBI (along with WP, Weebly, and most other web building tools out there). I started my first site with them in 2011, quit my job in 2012, and consistently earn over 10k per month between my SBI sites. People need to understand what SBI is and what it isn't. SBI is not a "web host" and it's not for people who know how to build a profitable site already. Their service is designed to take the total newbie who doesn't even know what a web server is and teach them how to build a profitable business without having to buy and integrate a dozen other products / services. Everything needed is in one place. While I no longer need SBI for my new sites, I'm so incredibly grateful they were there for me to help get me started. For that, they earned lifetime loyalty from me.

      Panda and Penguin hurt Wordpress users, too. There is nothing inherently bad about SBI when it comes to P/P. It's the same as all sites... If you have a shit link profile or have a site filled with crappy affiliate links and adverts, you'll suffer. A LOT of SBIers went way against Kens advice and bought links. It worked for a while, but then they got hit hard.

      I hate to say it, but 90% of SBI sites are shit. That's not SBI or Googles fault - it is the fault of the people building them. I've reviewed hundreds of dropped SBI sites and nearly all of them deserved to be hit. SBI has never taught people to buy links, have thin content, or have 100 pages of sales pitches. Their motto is and has always been CTPM

      Content
      Traffic
      Pre-sell
      Monetize

      How is this outdated? They were the ONLY ones telling people to focus on content a few years ago when "churn and burn" was what everyone else was doing. It isn't Kens fault so many people took the advice of WSO's instead.

      Am I happy with SBI right now? Definitely not. I think many of their tools really are outdated and Ken had made some awful business decisions of late. I've been extremely vocal about my concerns in the SBI forums. But this SBI hate train is getting ridiculous. Not only is SBI one of the few who have been saying all along to focus on content and building authority niche sites through proper planning and research, but SBI showed me personally how to go from nothing to online business owner in one year and still going strong today. In fact, my main SBI site shot up 200% this year after the new animals. This week is the best week I've ever had.

      If you're brand new to making money online and don't know how to set up a legit web business through legit effort, SBI is for you and you might start seeing success in 6 to 12 months. If you already know how to build a web business, SBI had nothing to offer you. And if you want to get rich quick, there are thousands of WSO's that promise results, so have fun!

      SBI is a unique product and isn't for everyone, but take it from someone who earns fantastic revenues through SBI sites - what they teach can and does work. All of this bashing and hatred towards Ken and SBI is just baffling to me....

      For you former SBIers, you might find WordPress to be delightful. I absolutely love WordPress. But be prepared, because it might not be as pain free as you expected.

      Success has very little to do with whether you choose WorPress or SBI. You can't just blame a CMS for your success or failure. In either case, success or failure is in your shoulders. Welcome to business ownership.
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      • Profile picture of the author Oven Key
        Originally Posted by archer0830 View Post

        SBI has never taught people to buy links, have thin content, or have 100 pages of sales pitches...

        It isn't Kens fault so many people took the advice of WSO's instead.
        This is certainly the way Ken tends to present history nowadays, and he's done a masterly job at getting people like yourself to repeat this revisionist history verbatim, however the truth is quite different.

        Ken not only devoted months and months in the forums to link-building strategies, but he went to the trouble of building at least two active link-building tools as well.

        The first is his now infamous program which encourages new sites to gain artificial links from a pool of other low-quality sites (high-quality sites having no need for the program tend to me absent from it).

        The second is a tool called Search It! which has several sub-modules designed to help find directories, hubs, and blogs etc. that represent inbound-link opportunities.

        (These programs and tools still exist by the way!)

        Ken seems to think that by using innocent names for these programs (e.g. Value Exchange and Outreach Opportunities), that they are no longer active, artificial link-building strategies.

        It doesn't make sense to devote so much effort to long series of forum posts, TNT articles, and link-building tools, and then deny that you ever recommending active link-building.

        I might also add that as far as link-buying is concerned, I spent something like one or two hundred dollars getting an entry in Yahoo's directory on the strength of Ken's personal recommendation. I didn't even know anything about link-buying until I joined SBI and read that advice.

        Oh, and Ken advised many times over that Google would never penalize inbound links, because it would make sabotage too easy. I'm not saying he said you should spam the web, of course, but he was adamant that if you did, you would not be penalized. Oops!

        And as for 'thin content', it was Ken who built the C2 module which aims at filling your sites with user submissions (most of which are thin, and much of which is duplicate) in order to attract traffic to more long-tail keywords. Most people now regret ever touching that module. To use it effectively is to do so much work on the submissions that you might as well create the pages yourself.

        As with much other bad advice (e.g. the use of hyphenated domains), Ken has now erased much of it after discovering it did indeed correlate with P&P hits, however there can be no denying that an entire generation of SBIers followed it.
        Originally Posted by archer0830 View Post

        Am I happy with SBI right now? Definitely not. I think many of their tools really are outdated and Ken had made some awful business decisions of late. I've been extremely vocal about my concerns in the SBI forums. But this SBI hate train is getting ridiculous.
        What this says to me is that even though you think SBI is heading in a bad direction nowadays, you want to recommend it to newbies anyway because you are grateful for having used it yourself years ago.

        To me, that just isn't a responsible basis for a recommendation.

        Especially when...

        Originally Posted by archer0830 View Post

        I hate to say it, but 90% of SBI sites are shit.
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        • Profile picture of the author archer0830
          Originally Posted by Oven Key View Post

          This is certainly the way Ken tends to present history nowadays, and he's done a masterly job at getting people like yourself to repeat this revisionist history verbatim, however the truth is quite different.
          Ken didn't "get me" to repeat anything. It's a bit hilarious how anytime someone says anything good about SBI, they are "drones" or "part of the cult" or repeating what Ken programmed into them. I own over 100 websites at this point and manage about a dozen virtual assistants. Of all the different platforms we use, SBI consists of 6 of my sites. If SBI were to fail, I would be bummed, but my business would move on just fine without it.

          There is no affiliate link in any of my posts here. So why would I care about going out and spending time being Ken Evoy's personal spokesperson? I simply saw this thread randomly and decided to give my 2 cents. Sorry it goes against your SBI bashing agenda. It has clearly touched a cord with you.

          By the way, the definition of VERBATIM is: "in exactly the same words as were used originally."

          Nowhere in my post will you find anything I said verbatim to what Ken has said. Maybe you were confused about what the word verbatim means or maybe... just maybe... you were exaggerating a little bit? Seems to be the common theme with your response.

          Originally Posted by Oven Key View Post

          Ken not only devoted months and months in the forums to link-building strategies, but he went to the trouble of building at least two active link-building tools as well. The first is his now infamous program which encourages new sites to gain artificial links from a pool of other low-quality sites (high-quality sites having no need for the program tend to me absent from it).

          The second is a tool called Search It! which has several sub-modules designed to help find directories, hubs, and blogs etc. that represent inbound-link opportunities.

          (These programs and tools still exist by the way!)

          Ken seems to think that by using innocent names for these programs (e.g. Value Exchange and Outreach Opportunities), that they are no longer active, artificial link-building strategies.
          I suppose I should have been more clear about link building. As I joined in 2011, maybe Ken was singing a different tune before I joined, but I never saw Ken recommending link networks other than the big and safe paid networks like Yahoo! (which used to actually be relevant). What I remember back when I first joined was to specifically satay away from purchasing links and link networks.

          Value exchange was supposed to be used in moderation and only for high quality and relevant sites. It's a way to find other HIGH QUALITY sites related to your niche so you could link to each other. I found a handful of high quality links through that program early on and I am still linking to those sites today. There has never been a problem with link exchanges - I just did a link exchange about a month ago with someone (through private contact, not through value exchange). The problem occurs when people take things to excess. I always thought this was pretty clear, but I suppose some people get greedy and exchanged links with anyone. I never felt compelled to do so. SBI isn't going to pick and choose the sites for you - they supply you with a list and you have to be the judge. Most sites are crappy, period. SBI or otherwise. The trick is finding the gems, which is exactly what I did.

          As far as Search It!, this is one of those tools I find to be outdated, but it is still relevant. I'd actually like to see an updated version of it. You can use it to find industry related blogs for many purposes such as outreach, networking, competition analysis, etc.

          I see no reason to disable either of these features as long as people follow the advice given in the Action Guide. They do certainly have room for misuse, but I don't think Ken plans to babysit people to use the tools as instructed. Somehow, neither of those tools have caused my business to sink. I'd venture to say they have helped.

          It doesn't make sense to devote so much effort to long series of forum posts, TNT articles, and link-building tools, and then deny that you ever recommending active link-building.
          I'll concede your point about link building. When I was talking about link building, I meant things like paid link networks. My apologies for not being clear.

          Link building was and still is an extremely important factor to SEO, but I have never considered what SBI teaches to be dangerous or black hat. I thought the Action Guide was pretty clear on moderation and how to build links in your niche community safely. Hasn't seemed to have harmed my sites any.

          I might also add that as far as link-buying is concerned, I spent something like one or two hundred dollars getting an entry in Yahoo's directory on the strength of Ken's personal recommendation. I didn't even know anything about link-buying until I joined SBI and read that advice.
          I also purchased the Yahoo! directory when my site was new in 2011. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with my traffic increasing, but there is no doubt the Yahoo! directory used to be relevant. It obviously no longer is, but I see no problem with Kens recommendation and I'm not angry with him for recommending that when it was still relevant. Nobody got hurt by Penguin because they were in the Yahoo! directory and it's not like Ken was making money on the side if you purchased it. Let's get real here.

          Oh, and Ken advised many times over that Google would never penalize inbound links, because it would make sabotage too easy. I'm not saying he said you should spam the web, of course, but he was adamant that if you did, you would not be penalized. Oops!
          I'll have to take your word for it on this. I never saw where he said this and this certainly isn't in the Action Guide, I know that for certain. I'm sure you're not lying about it, so shame on Ken I guess. But it's not like this is a staple hold of SBI and in almost 4 years I've never received that memo.

          And as for 'thin content', it was Ken who built the C2 module which aims at filling your sites with user submissions (most of which are thin, and much of which is duplicate) in order to attract traffic to more long-tail keywords. Most people now regret ever touching that module. To use it effectively is to do so much work on the submissions that you might as well create the pages yourself.
          I can't argue with this. C2 was a disaster and I'm glad I had the foresight not to use it. Just a horrible, horrible idea and it can be directly attributed to peoples sites getting nailed by Panda. No excuse whatsoever.

          As with much other bad advice (e.g. the use of hyphenated domains), Ken has now erased much of it after discovering it did indeed correlate with P&P hits, however there can be no denying that an entire generation of SBIers followed it.
          Can't argue with this, either. I specifically remember setting up my first domain and re-watching the part that said hyphens don't matter and to focus on an exact match domain (although they didn't call it that). As you stated, Ken backed away from this and no longer recommends hyphens in domain names. Whether or not he deleted things about that I'll leave up to you. I never investigated that because.... who cares? Why leave outdated information out there which is searchable by any new person to see and misinterpret?

          To be fair, hyphens didn't really matter until the big animals hit. But I will concede this was just plain ol' bad advice. See, we can point fingers in the same direction sometimes! I've never claimed SBI is perfect, just better than alternatives for newbies.

          Fortunately, switching your domain name isn't a huge deal. I did it with one of my SBI sites that had 4 (count em') hyphens in it. Now I have a nice 7 letter domain name and the site is still kickin'. Times change, problem solved.


          What this says to me is that even though you think SBI is heading in a bad direction nowadays, you want to recommend it to newbies anyway because you are grateful for having used it yourself years ago.

          To me, that just isn't a responsible basis for a recommendation.

          Especially when...
          Most websites on WordPress are shit. Most websites on Weebly are shit, most websites PERIOD are shit. You are completely missing the point...

          SBI provides people with what I believe is the best training available for brand new internet marketers... period. I don't see a competitor. You can't compare SBI to WordPress or HostGator or Weebly, etc. It's a completely different product for a completely different segment. Who would you suggest I recommend instead of SBI to teach people how to build a profitable business online? WordPress? Yeah, cuz all WordPress sites end up being profitable, especially by people who know nothing about web servers and keyword research and SEO.

          Again, I still have 6 sites with SBI so I didn't use it "years ago". I started with them years ago and still use them today. So I put my money where my mouth is. Nice try on the personal attack, though.

          My new sites are not using SBI because I am now out of SBI's main consumer segment. I've graduated to other things. I can't run 100 sites on SBI for a lot of obvious reasons. But if I didn't initially start with SBI, I highly doubt I'd be where I am today. SBI laid the foundation of my business.

          Not only do I recommend SBI!, but I know close to a dozen people who are personal friends and family members that are using SBI. I earn my living traveling around the United States in a camper and work wherever I want and whenever I want and I've never earned this much money before in my life. People close to me are obviously curious and want to know how I'm doing what I'm doing. Where do I send them? SBI. My brother-in-law has a money making website and will hopefully replace his full-time job soon. My cousin has a pretty good site going and I just got my 68 year old father to start a site because he's retired and bored. My best friend finally caved and just started a site last month. So yeah, I recommend it.

          When it comes to any business, most people will fail. The "system" SBI teaches takes WORK. I didn't see my first penny for 6 months. That's why most SBI sites (and sites from any other platform) are shit. Because people aren't willing to make the sacrifice to run a real business. Soon, 800 word articles become 400 word articles. Good content becomes adsense and affiliate stuffed crap. Then the site doesn't get updated and is left to collect dust. That's why most sites, including SBI sites, are shit and deserve to get hammered by Google. Only with SBI, people feel instead of pointing the finger at themselves, they can point it at Ken Evoy. Almost every site I've looked at where people are bitching that SBI ruined them are sites that deserved to get penalized because they didn't follow the Action Guide properly. Almost every one of them. I'm willing to bet if I looked up your old SBI site in the archives or checked your backlinks from back in the day, I could tell you exactly why your site didn't do well. For some people, taking personal responsibility is just too difficult.

          I highly doubt we'll change each others opinions - you seem to have an axe to grind with Ken. Not sure what happened, but I'm not going to spend hours having a pointless back-and-forth debate that will never be settled, and quite frankly, I've already spent too much time on this. You can take the last word.

          I still believe SBI is one of the best ways to teach brand new marketers how to earn a living online and that's why I recommend it. Sometimes people disagree on things. I guess this is just one of those things.
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          • Profile picture of the author desbravador
            Is word-press a good place to be hosting an affiliate site, Ive always have had problems with them. Depending on Google traffic these days you need a lot of content and lot of updates of your site. Best is other ways of traffic
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            The Secrets To Self Made Wealth


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            • Profile picture of the author princessleia
              Is word-press a good place to be hosting an affiliate site
              Good question. When we talk about Wordpress we mean using the software NOT using the hosting company. I wouldn't use wordpress.COM as a host ever. I use hostgator. They've had a few off days, but mostly they've been cool.
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  • Profile picture of the author Oven Key
    Just as an update to this thread, SBI!'s customer base has now plummeted to around 50% of what it was just a few years ago, and customer dissatisfaction is at an all-time high. Just check out this poor guy's experience with SBI! over the last 6 months:

    http://www.addicted2decorating.com/s...omment-1117174

    Absolutely disgusting! I sure hope he gets his money back.
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  • Profile picture of the author slammer81
    It's interesting to hear another SBI story. I had one back in the day.Always thought that something didn't click there but then again, I made a few bucks back in the day as well.

    They sure were everywhere on the net back in the mid 2000's, the good ol days for adsense.

    You seem like a resourceful guy. I think you'll work it out.
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    This is How I Make Money : Try it Yourself
    Make some cash hanging out at home

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  • Profile picture of the author discrat
    Originally Posted by garytanuser View Post

    Also, the SBI community and I are totally disillusioned and I'm looking for new "mentors" to help me online.

    If anyone knows of some mentor I can follow, please let me know. I've gone through these Warrior Forums, bought a couple of products but I guess I am still "lost". I'm afraid I will end up losing focus and just spending lots of money on different IM products and not knowing what to do.

    Thank you all and I look forward to interacting with everyone here!
    I've seen many former SBI members say the same thing.

    I would look at a Mentor like Matt Bacak who is really good at email marketing. And follow some of the things he does. He has several affordable products at Warrior Plus that are pretty dang good !



    - Robert Andrew
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