Earn Online CashHow To Earn Cash Online with Site-Build-It
Can you earn cash online using the Site-Build-It system? Recently Lissie wrote this post, Site Build It Scam, on her blog and it created quite a response there and elsewhere. To quote Ron Burgundy from Anchorman, “Boy, that escalated quickly… I mean, that really got out of hand fast.” But, behind the flames and pit bull attacks the question remains, is the Site-Build-It system a good way to earn cash online?
I decided, to be fair, that I’ll consider it like I do a lot of online business opportunities by doing due diligence based on the sources that I can find.
Who is Site-Build-It Intended For?
Well, looking at their sales material and comments posted around on blogs and forums, it’s apparent that the primarily audience for their system are people who are new to marketing on the Internet and who lack tech savvy. They seem to offer a ’soup to nuts’ online business, including web site hosting and coaching, for the complete newbie, all for $300 a year. OK, some people may benefit from the hand holding and a cookie cutter system. After all, there are people who panic at the thought of FTP’ing a few files to a web server. It would seem that this system would be ideal for the small business owner who wanted to establish a web presence. After all, these guys sometimes hire a local web designer and pay them $300+ a month for much less. But, from what I can gather, this isn’t their true target.
It seems that their target are people who want to make money online with a website but lack the technical savvy to do so and want their hand held. So far, so good. Not everyone is up for learning tech stuff so why not provide a service that helps them with things like installing a web site, SEO and so forth? There are plenty of membership sites that have sprung up that do that to some degree.
So, What does Site Build It Bring to the Table?
Unfortunately, from what I’ve been able to determine, is that what they bring is rather outdated techniques and a proprietary system that seems lock in users. Also, it appears that, at least on the surface, that the sites are not monetized in the best way possible. Lastly, the per domain price for hosting seems way out of whack with today’s prices.
First of all, the price for their service is $300 per year per domain. This pricing, which may have been quite a deal in 1999, is terribly overpriced for hosting a single domain in 2009. These days, hosting companies like Host Gator allow you to host as many domains as you want with as many WordPress blogs, forums or whatever that you want. Being locked into a single domain is overly restrictive in today’s online marketplace.
Next, the websites that they offer use a proprietary “cookie cutter” content management system that they control. From what I understand it is impossible to fully export data from their system should you decide to leave their confines. Most modern day hosts allow you to easily export from them. Once again, this is something from circa 1999, not 2009. To make matters worse, adding on features like a blog that allows comments is an extra cost feature. Extra? For something as common place as blogging? That seems out of whack to me.
Lastly, we’ll look at monetization. They seem to encourage using Adsense a lot. Unfortunately, Adsense ads aren’t always appropriate for the subject matter of a site. For example, one site I looked at featured RC planes. That’s a great niche, but not for Adsense. Adsense payouts are quite low and a product niche like that is more appropriate for eBay EPN or other product based affiliate offers. I saw several other Site-Build-It sites where Adsense was being used inappropriately. This, in addition to the proprietary content management system, is what gave me serious doubts about the whole system.
There is one interesting bit to the monetization equation though. They pay their affiliates $75 for a new member sign-up. So, if you’re able to bring new members into the system, you’ll make nice money. When we dig down deep we find that this is the real way to earn cash online with Site-Build-It, recruiting new people to the opportunity. However, this does lead to another problem.
Site-Build-It Does the MLM Attitude
Perhaps the most distressing thing I noted about Site-Build-It was the MLM-ish cult-ish (multi-level marketing) attitude by some of the members, especially in their attacks on Lissie on her blog and from what I’ve heard from others who participated in their program. This is something that really bugs me because I strongly dislike the MLM approach to doing business. This, on top of the “selling the opportunity” and “fake it til’ you make it” thing really turned me off.
So, Can You Earn Cash Online with Site-Build-It?
My take is that yes, you probably can if you put a lot of work into it and make all the right moves, such as recruiting a lot of new members by hook or by crook. But, in doing so, it’s likely that you are overspending to purchase an outdated product and to get questionable advice so far as Adsense goes. On top of that, you have the whole ‘business cult’ thing that seems to be going on with it.
My opinion is that in today’s Internet marketing environment it’s better for you to find free and low cost resources that are more up-to-date and don’t have the baggage that Site-Build-It has developed over the years.
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Hi,
Great post and I must say I generally agree with your review. I started my first website with SBI in 2005. It was a health and fitness niche and I finally converted it to a blog last year. Before I decided to cancel, I took advantage of the “buy one get one free” deal and I only have one of those left, which is my current site. At this point, I am trying to decide whether I should convert it to a blog, too, and I think I probably will because it’s so much work to do both. Kind of silly to hang on to it as a web site since it’s the same content as my other blog about internet marketing.
To be fair, I think it’s a good deal for a beginner because you learn a lot even when using their cookie cutter CMS. But after the first year, it just makes economic sense to do what you suggest about using a regular hosting company like Hostgator. When I moved my first site, it took a lot of persistence. SBI support were no help at all in explaining what I needed to do on my end to get everything switched over. Glad I had made some online techy friends who could help me out. They do have a nice keyword tool and that’s about the only reason I might stick around. But for the price of the yearly subscription, I could probably find some software that does the same job.
Their forum is a great place to learn stuff that’s outside their system but be careful. Their moderators don’t take kindly to criticism.
I totally agree with you about their outdatedness. (Is that a word?lol) They added “new” things like blogs and other Web 2.0 features about a year after they appeared on the scene. They also charge extra for interactive features where people can add content and it’s not set up very well for people to participate.
You’re also right about the monetization. There’s virtually NO HELP with that at all except whatever you’re able to glean from the forums. I wanted to learn more about how to DO affiliate marketing but there’s no coaching about that at all. Only help for actually building your site.
I know this is a long post. I hope you don’t mind but I just thought I’d respond with my own personal experience.
Eunice
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Thanks Frank, as always a great post about real ways to make online cash! The comments went from bad to worse but ended up in a great Roo v. Truck (semi) debate with the beginner v. Grizz AND Vic – I hope she learns something from it – I thought the comments were so good – I made a hub higlighting them – because between the 2 of them you really can earn online crash for free!
Lissie
[...] How to Earn Cash Online with Site Build it – by Frank Carr [...]
Great review, I totally agree: SBI is technologically a dinosaur, it’s outrageously priced, you get locked in, it’s MLMish (affiliate program is highly promoted to users)…
I wrote a detailed review based on my experience: A Negative Review Of Site Build It (SBI)
I think a lot of what you say here is true. My biggest complaint about SBI is the “1997″ feel of a lot of what they have to offer. Though I do feel they do a great job in many areas. They could use updated templates, something several SBI members have complained about on the forums, only to hear: “It’s not a site it’s a business, stop being so obsessed with how it looks.” Um, okay. One of the first rules you learn in business is about your IMAGE and how to cultivate it. And for a website, the look of it is a big part of that image.
Then there is the “cult mentality.” To be fair a lot of products have a cult mentality, but if you have opinions that strongly differ from the “official opinions” it’s probably best not to post them on the forum because many have been banned and lost their SBI sites from that.
While there is some argument over the truth of this accusation and claims that it’s not disagreement but “how” they disagreed, that’s a little too loose and fluid to risk my “business package” on. So what results is the forums tend to have a lot of lurkers, and the participators are people who march in step. But most of them don’t realize that’s how they are coming off.
I find that behavior questionable.
The cult mentality can easily be avoided by just avoiding the forums as much as possible though you usually don’t tell others you’re a part of SBI (hence my “anonymous” name) because of that image.
One point I will argue with you on though is the “only way to make money with SBI is by selling SBI to others.”
I think that’s a big misnomer, though I do wish they would discontinue the affiliate program. Part of what is causing them their PR problems besides the “cultish” replies and how they all rush to defend the product wherever on the internet it’s being criticized, is the affiliate program and how it creates a conflict of interests.
It also creates the misunderstanding that that’s the primary monetization model. It isn’t. Many SBI users (including myself) do NOT sell the SBI site to others through their site. But instead use many other monetization models. I don’t include it because I do feel it’s a conflict of interests and it makes it look like I’m involved in an MLM.
Mostly I try to avoid the forums and avoid the drama of many of the SBI militant users and militant non-users. It’s a useful tool for me at the moment, despite some of it’s failings, but down the road I’ll want to move on to something else, not in small part because of the image of militancy they portray and refusal to really “update” things.
Yeah well you want a well moderated forum if you are using it as a marketing tool and letting anyone who is interested in with a view only username wouldn’t you?
HI,
I agree with you that SBI is trying to cash on the newbees.
I must tell here that I also lost some 200$ on a similar version of scam.They never delivered a site to me.SO I m extra cautious.
That’s a pretty fair review. To start, I am an sbi user. For me, sbi was useful because when I first started my idea of internet marketing was, I’ll write something and if people like it, maybe they’ll click on my ads. Because of SBI, I think in terms of keywords and seo and stuff like that.
So what’s wrong with SBI? Well at first, I didn’t think the price was too high. It was just slightly higher per month than my last webhost… from 2001. So yeah, from a “it’s just webhosting” outlook, it’s way overpriced. Frank’s comments about the one domain thing are really valid. Once you buy your domain, your locked in and there’s no way to test a niche first before committing to the domain. It took me a year of hard work to realize that people are not looking to buy anything in the niche I picked–there are tons of free resources. And despite the fact that SBI analyzes your webpage for seo before you publish them, my niche is very competitive and so after a year and 100 pages, I’m still not in the google top 10. How nice it would be to buy another domain but for $300… I don’t think so. To combat that though, they do have a keyword analysis tool. If you’re totally new to the idea of keywords and niche though, the tool isn’t going to be much use to you because you won’t know how to interpret the data. Personally, I find market samurai to be more useful.
Their forums are a little creepy but that’s been pretty much true for every forum I’ve seen… a bunch of forum old timers are the gods with the new people running around giving them hand-jobs.
The affiliate thing is also sleezy. I mean you’re expected to drop three hundred bucks on this program and when you try to research the program, all you find are a bunch of “site sell is a scam” links that then tell you how great it is. But then again, I’ve seen a lot of affiliate stuff like that.
So while I won’t call SBI a scam, I certainly wouldn’t renew.
My site, http://www.capecod-beaches.com/, is an SBI site. I stuck Adsense in it, plus some affiliates. It make a few cents per day. I don’t do much with it anymore because I have 50 other wordpress blogs and they don’t do that well either. I make about a buck a day from all of them. One of my more successful ones is http://www.gettingridofwoodpeckers.com/. It got over 1K uniques last month. I do not have adsense on it yet. When I started doing this stuff in Feb 2005, I wanted something that was fast and easy and SBI met the bill even tho FTP or html never scared me and I use them a lot on my blogs, even html in SBI.
I agree that it is way overpriced and I will probably not renew next year and transfer it over to Hostgator which host my blogs. I have a SEO Elite but it is complicated to use and I find that free woodtracker and the adwords tool with cpc work pretty good for finding profitable keyword and from reading your blog it seems like I need to do a lot more keyword research and find more profitable keywords for my blogs. I have sold a few SBI’s as an affiliate, but I do not concentrate on that. I make about 225$ a year from them-almost pays for my sBI site! LOL.
It seems there are 2 types of webmasters.
Those that love SBI and those that don’t.