Site Build It Scam Review – Online Marketing – Websites

Hi Lissie,

Great post and highly informative. I know quite a few people (IMers mostly) with SBI sites, many of whom also push the affiliate side. I didn’t realize that you didn’t own your site and after my recent issue with my first blog on WP.com … I would be highly skeptical about hosting there. Even more so given the yearly fee.

Thanks for your perspective ….

Jim Hickey’s last blog post..May We All Be So Crazy – The Crazy Ones

Yup – I think its sneaky and I don’ t like being held to ransom – isn’t that why none of us want to work for someone else anymore ? LOL

Lis,

I have to agree with you on SBI. I have former members of a coaching site that are SBI members and the information they are given seems to me to be so far behind the times as to be harmful. Not to mention the fact that you can’t transfer your site or sell it. If you want to build a business online take the time to learn how to set things up yourself. You’ll have virtual real estate you can cash out with down the road and you can repeat your efforts to multiply your income. I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t shell out $300 a pop for each niche I want to get involved in.

Camilla’s last blog post..I admit it, I think Twitter is Pointless

That was definitly my impression – and I don’t know any former members, nor am I one, that was just from their own marketing material! The submitting to search engine thing worked in 1999 or some such – ie before Google and there is no mention of article marketing! Thanks for commenting

Hey Lissie,

I was tempted by SBI a while back because it seemed like the “easy way” but now I know better because there IS NO EASY WAY! I think I’ll be better off in the long run and your post just confirms my decision. 🙂

I think I looked at it at the beginning too – fortunately I didn’t have the cash! Their basic method of build/promote/build trust/sell definitly works, and requires work from you- its the stuff they don’t say which is annoying. I am very mad at Steve Pravlina – he should know better!

I have seen many reviews of SBI!, but never one that is so intellectually dishonest and lazy as this one…

https://lissowerbutts.com/site-build-it-scam-review/

I’ve debated with myself about whether to give this the undue attention that it does not deserve, or to sue for defamation and slander (I’m not litigious by nature, it’s just not worth the negative use of time), or to ignore.

But this review is simply too inaccurate to ignore.

Point by point (each point starts with a quote from the review, followed by my reply). The entire review has essentially been deconstructed and replied to…

1) “Site Build It has been around for a while and even has some good parts to it. But that doesn’t make it any less a scam.”

Actually, it does. Bad products don’t tend to last.

2) “Steve Pravlina (sic) is the reason I’m mad. I like Steve – his motivational writing is great – but now he has sold out to the other side and is pushing the old Site Build It scam!”

I’ve spent hours talking with Steve and he is one of the most honest, moral people I have ever met. He did an incredible amount of research and due diligence before recommending a thorough and accurate review of Site Build It!.

He even recently dropped Google Ads, which cost him over $100,000 per year, because he did not like some of the ads that were being delivered.

3) “What is Site Build It ?

Its a “one stop shop” for someone who wants a website but doesn’t know where to start.”

No, it’s the only product in the world that enables people to create profitable e-BUSINESSES. It’s NOT about building a Web site. There are thousands of easier ways to do that. The vast majority fail due to the lack of process and tools that SBI! provides. Like I said, there are easier ways to build a site, but no better way to build a BUSINESS.

4) “You pay them a heafty (sic) fee- PER SITE – around $300 ANNUALLY. And for this sum you get:

* “free” domain name
* “free” hosting
* drag and drop website builder
* newsletter manager
* autoresponder
* search engine ranking help
* traffic reports
* hand holding: forum, tutorial etc.”

No, you get much more. This is what you get…

http://tools.sitesell.com/

More importantly, you get results…

http://results.sitesell.com/

And the results speak for themselves. Like Apple or an early Google, a product does not develop a devoted following unless it OVERdelivers a great product.

5) “Now if you Google for “site builder scam” – you will find a lot of “reviews” which are just affiliate pitches? Why because Site Build It pays affiliates around $75 a sale, and that’s an annual fee to remember.”

I did that very Google Search and I find one article in the top 10 that discusses reviews such as this shoddy one that FALSELY call SBI! a scam…

http://blog.2createawebsite.com/2008/01/25/site-build-it-is-a-scam/

This post is by Lisa Irby, a former SiteSell Affiliate Manager who went on her own because she grew her own business as well until she was making too much money with her SBI! site and as a 5 Pillar Affiliate (and as an affiliate for other products, too). Lisa credits us for much of her success.

6) “You don’t even have to (sic) a user of SBI to be an affiliate – how can you sell something you don’t use yourself – that’s what I turned me off affiliate marketing initially.”

This is an absurd argument.

Site Build It! is the equivalent of a business degree in a box, with all the tools necessary to execute the “course.” You don’t have to take the Harvard MBA program to do thorough research and due diligence, and then write a reasoned review of the best MBA programs.

I have written about the dark side of affiliate marketing, where people are paid 50%-80% commission to sell Get Rich Quick programs that cost thousands of dollars. But any investigation of our program, how we have conducted business for 10 years, and how SBI! owners respond to our efforts for them would convince a serious researcher than this is not us.

7) “You will find no link here for SBI – if you want to join – type in their url direct and then sign up as an affiliate and pay yourself the commission as a discount!”

This is actually against the rules of our program. This dishonest suggestion to take advantage of what should be a partnership relationship is an unfortunate insight into the reviewer. If this advice resonates with you, please don’t join our program.

8) “So Why is Site Build It a Scam?

1. you don’t own your domain – the Anguilla-beaches .com site which features prominantly (sic) in the sales pitch is owned by Ken Evoy – who owns site build it – according to domain tools anyways;”

This is patently false. Of course you won your own domain.

Any research on any OTHER site EXCEPT anguilla-beaches.com would show that. And any research at all about anguilla-beaches.com would have revealed that this site was created by my daughter when she was 14 years old. She is now 20 and I have merely not got around to transferring the site into her name.

Her site, by the way, is the highest trafficked site about Anguilla (you can verify this at Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, etc.). She earns excellent income despite this being a 2-hour per week hobby for her.

9) “you can’t just move your website elsewhere to say cheaper hosting – you are tied up with SBI for life. You have to make $300/year just to break even on the deal!”

Flat wrong. Any Webmaster can suck these pages and move them to another Web host. Like any other transfer, you would have to hook up forms, etc. But SBI! sites are completely movable.

And $300/year amounts to $25 per month, cheap for all that SBI! provides…

http://www.sitesell.com/more-info/value.html

And cheap if you are at all serious about building a genuine, long-term, evergrowing business.

10) “they spend a lot of time quoting Alexa rank of SBI sites – Alexa ranks just proves that you have a bunch of internet marketers visiting your site – probably because of the link from the sales page – as they are the only people who use the Alexa tool bar. Internet marketers are unlikely to buy your homemade chocolates or rent your condo in Puerto Rico;”

This is an Alexa myth. It’s not possible to fake hundreds of Top 1% sites such as on…

http://results.sitesell.com/

And we do not promote USE of the Alexa toolbar. For more on Alexa, please read…

http://www.sitesell.com/alexa.html

It discusses how to use several metrics sites to get a better picture. But the bottom line message is that no other company can show the type of results like SBIers get.

No metrics site is perfect. I can point out serious flaws with Quantcast, Compete, etc. Sampling always has some built-in bias. Understanding statistics helps to understand how to use these tools more effectively than this reviewer comprehends.

11) “the search engine help according the site build it’s own sales promotion video involves submitting your sites to the search engines – do not ever do this – this just prooves (sic) to Google that your site is not worth visiting cause no one is linking to it. Read Court on why you should NOT submit your website to Google.”

Also false. We may still use the word “submit” in our sales sites (I don’t recall, but if so it’s conceptual). I do know that it has been a long time since we submitted pages.

Here is how SBIers have been ahead of the curve throughout the past many years in this area…

We were one of the first to automate Site Engine submission, always according to optimal sequences that worked (according to an algorithm that tracked spider visits to every page, indexing, etc.) We were also THE first to create an automatic Google SiteMaps XML file, adapting it as Yahoo!, MSN and Ask all came on board.

We do NOT tell SBIers to submit pages. That’s ancient history and totally false as this researcher would know if she actually did research on SBI!.

12) “further more (sic) to rank your site they suggest you use pay per click (PPC) advertising – this is as about as risky as say foreign exchange dealing as it not something any new on-line marketer should be doing.”

Um, no… we don’t. The whole point is that SBIers generate tens, then hundreds, then thousands, and many with tens of thousands of visitors PER DAY. Without PPC, instead with…

http://ctpm.sitesell.com/

I have no idea where this reviewer would get such incorrect information.

13) “You don’t need a newsletter or autoresponder unless you are selling crap – sorry I mean affiliate products to visitors. If you site is just for attracting niche buying search traffic – you don’t need these products.”

This is opinion, one that I don’t agree with. At least it’s not flat-out wrong facts such as we have seen up to now. It’s just an opinion that she does not believe in e-mail marketing. Many people do.

Many SBIers use a combination of e-mail marketing and RSS feeds to allow their followers a choice of how they want to “subscribe to their sites.” The feed is a RAPID updater about what’s new and the zine is a regular (ex., monthly) reminder of what’s new, staying in front of their visitors. Others use it to sell products that they create such as e-books, artisan materials, decking. And others use it to promote products for which they are affiliates.

14) “So no SBI is not a traditional scam. They no doubt deliver on what is promised – though you no doubt have to pay extra from the PPC champaign.”

I’m not sure how to deal with this statement. I’m glad to see one accurate phrase…

“They no doubt deliver on what is promised”

Actually, we’re well know for OVERdelivering.

And we’re not a scam, “traditional” or otherwise.

And we do not actively suggest PPC as an integral part of business-building. For the most part, PPC is a high-risk, hard-to-learn science that is beyond most people. We even tell our affiliates that they should be very sophisticated, and ready to lose money while they learn, before using PPC.

At most, we mention PPC, that it can be good for high-margin, low-cost niches, for example. But in general, we steer SBIers away from it.

15) “Yes traditional hosting and free software won’t give you support on how to build your business.

But $300 for support is pretty darn expensive.”

No, it’s pretty darn cheap when you consider…

1) all that you receive

2) that you don’t waste a year of your life on regular hosting/blogging. Most people simply can’t fathom all the barriers that have to be overcome.

3) that ultimately you acquire a new life skill and a successful, profitable business that will grow with you for the long-term.

16) “What Does It Cost to Build Your Own Site:

* $10 for a .com domain name ;
* around $5/month for cheap hosting BTW that will cover more than one website to;
* Drag and drop software to develop the site WordPress free or MyStarterBlog $7 (lifetime) ;
* keyword research – free use adwords external ;
* traffic analysis Google Analytics or Statcounter – both free

Yes its not all in one place, you have to learn to do some odd stuff along the way – but you are building a business aren’t you?”

No, again, I have to emphasize that you are NOT “building a site.” SBI! builds businesses. The bulleted list above is NOT what it takes to build a business.

SBI! owners build a business through a rigorous process, step by step, with ALL the tools integrated right into the process, and with Support and the best small business forums in the world.

That is what it takes to build a business. And it’s a lot more than than a domain name, “cheap hosting” (that will not be so cheap as soon as you start generating significant traffic), and free software from a variety of places.

17) “SiteBuildIt is basically a franchise model applied to building websites – without the brand awareness that having “McDonalds” or “Avon” in your business does to customers in the real world. Your visitors won’t feel more likely to buy from you just because your site is a “site build it!” site!”

Honestly, I have no idea where she gets these concepts. SBIers build their OWN “Brand of One.” SBI! is process-and-tools, not a franchise to sell our products.

You would be amazed at how many SBI! sites you find every day, not even recognizing what has become known as “the SBI! look.” That’s because the 40,000 sites (out of 100,000,000) way outperform the average non-SBI! site or blog.

In fact, the average visitor has no idea they are visiting a Site Build It!-built site. All they know is that the sites provide the information they were seeking, they read more and become PREsold, they subscribe to their RSS feeds and/or e-zines deepening that relationship, and ultimately they monetize through several of 15 major monetization models.

18) “Yes they don’t promise that you will get rich in your sleep. Whatever tools you use to develop a website that’s the easy bit – getting the traffic is the work bit.”

This is perhaps the closest-to-correct statement in the entire review. Developing a Web site is indeed the “easy bit.” Building traffic is what SBI! owners excel at. And converting that into income, building a profitable BUSINESS, is what SBI! is REALLY all about.

NOT building a site.

19) “Bottom line with the Site build it scam you put the hard work in – you get your keywords to rank and you don’t own your website.”

Bottom line with SBI! is that you bring BAM (Brain-Attitude-Motivation). We provide the rest, the process…

http://ctpm.sitesell.com

and all the tools…

http://tools.sitesell.com

… and the support and community to build a thriving online BUSINESS. And yes, [b]you own your Web site.[/b]

This single statement (“you don’t own your site”) should alert any serious reader as to just how badly researched this “review” is. She then proves it with a series of flat-out wrong statements…

I have quoted virtually every word from her quote. Not one stands up, except for the couple of places that grudgingly admit some sort of left-handed compliment.

Never have I seen such a poorly researched butchering of a review. Or baseless besmirching of Steve’s name. Shame.

Ken Evoy
President, SiteSell.com

Ken Evoy’s last blog post..Time For The $100 Spring Special!: The SiteSell Edge #099

Ken,

What I find amusing, is that if you go to Google and do a search on “lis sowerbutts” you will find other blog entries that SHE has made personally that actually condone SBI!
How strange that a person who has NEVER EVEN TRIED SBI, has such a negative opinion on it here, but on other sites she is pretty much recommending it!?

Just in case this post does not make it up, i will also include a link to this site, as well as a links in the SBI forum to another blog that she has been a part of where SBI is metioned as a good thing by Lis!

Hmm interesting – I was curious to see who was using my name so I googled “lis sowerbutts” nothing came up with me recommending SBI -please provide links I am fascinated!

Here it is,

the 10th post down. You saying you didn’t write it?

http://lostballinhighweeds.com/i-bought-instant-payday-formula/#comments

LMFAO – I would quote what I said there -but people should over to check out Splork’s blog cause hes highly entertaining! The comment was an example fo what is known as SARCARSM – you may find this reference useful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

BTW the hosting looks interesting I am looking for another account and will check it out!

Hello Lis

If it’s ok, here’s somewhat of a “veteran” SBIer, and I’d like to share some of what I’ve received from SiteSell – and Site Build It! – over the past 5+ years. And I’ll add a few other pieces too…

“pushing the old Site Build It scam!” Ok, I’m not on Steve’s payroll, have never met him – but I am familiar with his writing, and some of his biographical material. My guess would be that a) he’s not a stupid man, and I know b) he researched SBI! thoroughly before recommending it.

“you don’t own your domain” – That is totally false. All you need do is find a few (or a lot) of SBI! sites, and then go to whois.com, and check who the Administrative Contact is. Every SBIer has full control (and ownership) of his/her domain.

“you are tied up with SBI for life” – False. Every single SBIer is free to “leave” SBI!, but by doing that they DO lose all the functions and tools, that make SBI! an integrated system.

“they spend a lot of time quoting Alexa rank of SBI sites” –

“search engine help” “prooves to Google that your site is not worth visiting” – The search engine help is actually the WorldSubmitter, which periodically submits the site to the major search engines, as *though being done by a human*. SiteSell work strictly within the terms of the search engines. This is just one of the many functions/tools that is available in the SBI! system.

“they suggest you use pay per click (PPC) advertising” – In my 5+ years with Site Build It! I’ve not come across any material that suggests using PPC. Certainly, there is a section in the Action Guide that offers basic info on PPC, and how to use it to our benefit.

“you don’t need a newsletter or autoresponder” – A business basic is that staying in touch with your customers (or visitors) raises the possibility of making a sale; all to do with trust. Having the newsletter and autoresponder in the system makes so much easier.

“They no doubt deliver on what is promised” – SBI! provides all the tools integrated into a process that is logical and natural, so that SBI! owners succeed like nowhere else.

“Yes traditional hosting and free software won’t give you support on how to build your business.” – I think with this line, you have summed what Site Build It! is really about. Site Build It is in reality all about *building a successful online business*, and not about the site design, hosting, FTP, or whatever. As you say, Lis: “you are building a business aren’t you?”

And lastly, there are now 3 options available to “do” Site Build It!… Do-it-yourself (SBI!), Teach-it-to-me (SBI! eLearning) or Do-it-for-me (SiteSell Services). As for SBI! being a scam, consider the fact that SBI! is offered in about 40 universities and colleges, all over the world.

Thank you for reading.

Best regards.

Colin

Man, Don’t drink the coolaid people!

There is one thing in this review that is true. You have to make $300 a year to break even.

I started an SBI site Dec 07. I was very cautious because of reading false reviews like this one. My goal was just to make the $300 back and break even, and I would be happy!

Let’s see, it’s been 15 months and I am now making between $8-9$ a month! No lie, I wouldn’t make that up. So, ya, you have to make $300 a year to break even. I’m doing that in less than half a month. The rest…. Pure Profit!

And the beauty of it? My site is young! My income is growing steadily each month, and this is all while the economy is in shambles…

So if you want to bash SBI go right ahead, but you’re the one missing out. Really.

I knew nothing about making a website 15 months ago. Now I am taking my 3 year old to Disney next week with earning from my site!

Please get all the facts before bashing SBI, or more importantly, passing up SBI.

Am I trying to promote SBI? Absolutely not, or I would post an affiliate link to them.

I am not promoting SBI, simply telling you the truth. If you don’t believe me, do some more research.

Or better yet, just try it. I guarantee it will change your life.

So please, don’t drink the Coolaid! Have a nice day!

Matt

Matt – as I explained above your comment was caught in Askimet – so I didn’t notice it until I checked my spam queue, same as Ken’s and Erwin’s. You need to get your blog re-included with Askimet otherwise your comments are a wasted as 99% of bloggers won’t check their spam queues. I am sure the SBI forums will be able to tell you how to do that 🙂

I saw this video about your rc airplanes website and thought it was hilarious you should check it out. Have things improved since then?
.-= Have you seen this video about your site matt?´s last blog ..SalesCopy…for dummies like me! =-.

“$8-9$ a month!” ???whuh???

“$8-9$ a month!” – What does this mean?? Eight to nine dollars a month??? Dude!!! You need to make $25 USD a month just to brake even!

Making money online via Adsense (for example) TAKES TIME. Lot’s of time, perhaps years. Yes years.

And alot of work.

SBI is definitely NOT you knight in shinning armor. People are just fascinated with the idea of making a quick buck.

People don’t go to your site to click on Adsense links, they go there because you have an interesting topic.

SBI is a waste of money.
.-= Xos´s last blog ..Kid From Helsinki Foments Linux Revolution =-.

Matt, if you are only making $8-9 a month after 15 months you are doing something seriously wrong. You should be making way more than that by now. SBI to blame?

Heck dude, I made more than $8-9$ a month after only a week selling pictures of my dog on CaféPress. For free, too. And you say you’ve been at this 15 months? Wow. Either you or SBI (or both) suck.

Note: It’s not Coolaid … It’s Kool Aid. OMG, you can’t even spell Kool Aid or format a proper paragraph, and we are supposed to take your comment seriously? No wonder you only make $8-9$ a month and think that adds up to $300, somehow. Or was that just another typo?

pS Your use of caps and punctuation need help, too.

What a load of crock you wrote. I have never read such nonsense. I am an SBI!er, have been for 6 years. My site is Customerservicepoint.com, and if it would’ve been as bad as you wrote I would have been gone a LONG time ago.

So, your ‘in depth’ research made you come to the conclusion that SBI is a scam? Well, let me address your points one by one.

1. You don’t own your domain. This is bull. I own my domain. You said you checked anguilla-beaches.com and found that it’s owned by Ken Evoy? That can be correct, because this site is run by his daughter! Now, please check out all the sites at http://results.sitesell.com

2. you can’t just move your website elsewhere to say cheaper hosting – you are tied up with SBI for life. More nonsense. Of course you can move. What you can’t do anymore is use SBI’s tools, which is only fair since you no longer pay for them.

3. they spend a lot of time quoting Alexa rank of SBI sites. Yes, that’s true. It doesn’t mean that SBI is a scam though. However, it’s not like there are a whole lot of websites out there that estimate website traffic. Alexa was one of the first, that’s why SBI uses them to show actual results. Alexa btw is owned by Amazon. Also a scammer?

4. the search engine help according the site build it’s own sales promotion video involves submitting your sites to the search engines. It’s obvious that you don’t know your stuff just by this line alone. The Search Engines (all important ones that is) have added XML possibilities so they can spider sites more easily. They haven’t added this to weed out nonsense sites. It’s this XML file location that you submit to the Search Engines. I’ve done it with all my SBI! sites, and none of them have been penalized.

5. further more to rank your site they suggest you use pay per click (PPC) advertising. I’ve read most if not all material by Sitesell, and it doesn’t say that. Period. I don’t do PPC because I have very good free Search Engine traffic (mainly Google).

6. you don’t need a newsletter or autoresponder unless you are selling crap – sorry I mean affiliate products to visitors. I use it to deepen the relationship with my visitors, and to send them my thoughts on the subject of good customer service. As a result, they visit my site more often. Do I make money? Yes. From ads. So, more visitors is good for me.

Obviously, you have a very one-sided idea about SBI!, which did NOT come from actually using it.

I’m just sorry for other people who may read your words and actually give SBI! a miss. It actually IS the real deal, and I’m sharing this from experience.

Kind regards,

Erwin.
A very happy SBI! customer with 4 SBI! sites.

Lisa, you are going to get sued by the Big Guys. You made a lot of -false- comments about big companies without due diligence research.

Pretty much everything you said was untrue. I am sure you won’t post this comment, which is WHY I sent it to you personally. This is not meant to be posted.

This is in no way a threat, it’s of concern. I’m not here to defend SBI! I’m sure there are several who’ve already tried, but you were probably not brave enough to post their comments, and only accepting comments that fit with your ‘review’.

I have several different types of hosting services, and I know how they all work, due to my given line of profession.

You can BET Steve and Sitesell are not happy with this ‘review’ simply due to all the untruths. Pleeeeease be careful. Your review -is- most definitely libel and slander.

Bloggers who falsely portray companies get sued BIG, especially for internet lies.

Teej

*LOL* Teej. Slander? Libel? Nope. That’s hilarious. Just one blogger’s opinion. The courts are way too busy with rape, murder and theft to give a rat’s tail about anything so completely irrelevant in the big scheme, not to mention the issues of discovery and proving damages. Do you really think a company like SBI wants to give Lis, Griz and pals full 100% access to eveything they’ve ever said, done or written in their lives for the sake of a petty lawsuit that would take years to bring to trial, cost them tens of thousands to pursue, and would likely result in a hung jury or dismissal? I think not.

It ain’t some fricking Perry Mason episode, dude. It’s reality. Lawsuit? Over a review on a blog? *LOL*

Ignorance is bliss 😉 It just amazes me how little these “professional webmasters” know about building a long-term and successful business. But oh wait, you’re building just a website, right?

And what do you mean about PPC campaign?

My SBI website about fashion has been up and running for almost 6 months and I’m getting around 370 TARGETED unique visitors a day. And I haven’t even really started! I’ve just been writing compelling content that people love. And the search engines love my website because it’s genuine.

I couldn’t have done it without SBI’s extensive and thorough keyword tool, helpful forum members, online videos and e-books on building a sustainable, serious and successful online business:-)

You guys, it’s about building a long-term online business, and not some Get Rick Quick website. And like any real-life business, results take time and you have to work hard to get there.

You get so much more than what this dude is telling you. Do your own darn research… SHEESH!

Gre-e-at Post,

How can you tell?
You’ve got Dr. Ken hopping mad! Wah, Wah, who’s gonna pay for my new home in Anguilla?

I was an SBI’er for 6 years (one of the first), and ended up owning several SBI sites by taking advantage of the 6 times a year 2 for 1 offers.

I must say the good doctor has an excellent support staff. Excellent at running interference for Mr. Evoy.

He also has a “Rapid Response Team” to combat, Delta Force style, any negative blogs or comments on the net.

Evoy would often refer to the “Churn rate” of other web hosts without ever revealing SBI’s drop-out rate. SBI’s rate, I’m sure is higher for the simple reason of it’s high cost.

I have watched, many times over the years, Evoy (by proxy) ban SBI’ers with honest and accurate criticisms from the forums and immediately refund their fees (pro rata of course).

You will never find a more servile group of forum moderators.

Like Hitler, he can be hypnotic and persuasive (at first). Courtly and engaging with his “boot-lickers”, he ruthlessly crushes all opposition in the forums. Like all cult leaders, he allows No discussion.

I must say, it was such a relief when I finally transfered my domains, and was through with the constant sales mantras, and yes brainwashing (it was relentless).

Expect a barrage Lis. You’ve been “targeted”.

.

@ X-SBI-er.

Strong words you use… why do you hide behind an alias?

Kind regards,

Erwin.

@ Erwin
Probably because he had a hard time getting out of the SBI organisation I should think! Actually he’s not hiding – I have his email address and IP and certainly won’t be publishing them here! I am completely amazed at the response to this post from the “insiders” – I hope they are being paid for their time!

Righty oh – first thanks for all the looong comments, well written to! I am delighted to see that I am currently on page 1 for my blog’s title phrase in quotes – its good to know when some of my own SEO is working! Please feel free fee to subscribe to my feed for updates!

Hi X-SBIer – thanks for your explanation – I can see from the stats that all my new fans came here via their in-house forum, clearly they discuss important stuff there like my little-old website 🙂 Did you manage to get your domains and websites out as well? Hope its all good with you!

You know I wrote this post a whim but the good doctor has now made me very mad based on your comments! I don’t like bullies – or cults of any form! If Site Build It is talking about churn rates of web hosts he’s certainly not comparing like with like. There are probably no real statistics out there but a figure of somewhere between 95% and 99% failure rate for those who try to make a serious business online are oft-quoted. That is probably not going to change – making it on-line is hard work – I am just trying to make sure that people don’t lose substantial hard cash on the way!

@Colin: I checked the whois record of the first “Site Build It” website highlighted in the sales pitch -the Anguilla Beaches one – its registered to: Ken Evoy, PO Box PW5134, The Valley, AI-2640, AI. I have now checked other whois records and yes it seems the registered owner is the real one – though the registration provider is “sitesell .com” presumably a related company. So on paper you own the domain – how easy is it to redirect the name servers to separate hosting or transfer the domain names to another registrar?

And why is Dr Evoy passing this site off as being owned by a 14-year old girl when clearly it is not?

What do they lose when they leave Site Build It! Colin – do they lose the site ? If so they just lost all their hard work

You submit more than ONCE to search engines: that’s even worse! Read the reference I gave. If your site has been deindexed for some reason, then use webmaster tools to request reinclusion. And I certainly use software to submit to the search engines: there are only 3 that matter, in fact there is only really 2 that matter!

From the comments I am seeing you are building a site build it franchise – that’s not quite the same thing as an independent business. The thing with the search engines prooves it – this site has been around since – what early 2000’s? Do they mention blogs, RSS, pings, social media article marketing – stuck in a time warp re SEO is my impression.

If they are not using PPC maybe it should feature as the way to generate traffic in the initial pitch video?

How exactly do they teach people to rank in the search engines? That was the question I asked – its the only question really with these systems: search engine traffic is the only way any of these websites will make money. The only 2 answers in the sales pitch were PPC and submitting to search engines – can you clarify?

Speaking of Hitler lol, why are you so cowardly that you will not post my first post on your site.

You are seriously misinformed and off the mark. I am MAKING cash thanks to Dr. Ken, not loosing it.

Nothing wrong if you want a healthy debate. But only approving posts that fit your agenda is the cowardly thing to do…

@Teej – I am happy to post views that disagree with mine – its called free speech a concept I believe in. You can’t sue someone for their opinion – and no I don’t think I have said anything libelous. The company isn’t that big BTW, its a privately held Canadian entity based in Montreal http://www.sitesellinc.com

My name is Lis BTW

@Anna – the site engines do NOT love your website because its genuine – there is no algorithm to define genuine. That’s great you are getting the targetted traffic where is it coming from, what percentage is converting, how much cash have you made so far? BTW – if you had commented using your keywords as your name and pointed to your website url you would have gained an anchored backlink. I’m not disagreeing the keyword tools are essential – its just that google provides an excellent one for free: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal#

@ oh and Colin -the fact that SBI is offered by “over 40 universities and colleges around the world” just means that the software is given away for free and is probably used in one department or even one course. Dr Evoy is a doctor of medicine and obviously has some contacts as his education partners list reflect some fairly small and obscure insitutions. BTW the Australian – partner is the South Australia TAFE – not quite the Uni of Sydney as I am sure that SATAFE would agree with!

“My first site is a destination-related web site that receives around 1,000 to 1,200 visitors a day. In mid-2008, I was able to quit my job as a result of the income from my site and I work from home, full-time.” ~ Tony Thomas.

Wow! a site that has 1,200 visitors a day and you can quit your job already? Must be one hell of a high paying site.

Costa Likes The 7 Dollar Script’s last blog post..Free Niche Keyword Research ToolBar

Hi Costa – always a delight to have you visit – I did wonder the same thing …

hi lis,

great, great blog you’ve got going. i love this stuff which was NEVER allowed in the SBI forums.

ok, i know some of these people.

colin was going to quit SBI a couple of years ago and dr ken gave him a FREE RENEWAL to stay on board. great PR, since it didn’t really cost evoy anything.

erwin is one of those “moderators” i mentioned, a “true believer”.
(sorry erwin, you wanna call me for a date?)

i hope this rolls on and on lis. dr ken, who fired up “the faithfull” can only lose and you can only win.

great work!

LOL X-SBIer – I am a big fan of free speech, not defamation, just free speech! Every system has its pluses and minuses – and any company that thinks it knows all the answers and can control information on the Internet is really living in the dark ages! Yup freebies work well for marketing purposes – that’s why college’s are often quoted as references for companies – free works very well in that sector!

Lis,

There’s a lot of probably’s, and think so’s in your post and responses. But let’s face it… even your big supporter (x-sbi-er) says in his response that certain points you use to back your statement are wrong: “I must say, it was such a relief when I finally transfered my domains”

If he didn’t own his domain name, and he didn’t own his site, how could he have done it? Yet these are points 1 and 2 of your Why SBI is a scam ‘review’.

And now you say that Colin is wrong about owning the domain because Sitesell is showing as the registrar? Balony! Your site’s registrar is GoDaddy… do THEY own YOUR domain?

Want more clarifications? Sure here they come:

You ask: “And why is Dr Evoy passing this site off as being owned by a 14-year old girl when clearly it is not?” — It’s his daughter who builds and maintains the site. I have a site for my son… and yes, it’s in MY name.

You ask: “What do they lose when they leave Site Build It! Colin – do they lose the site ? If so they just lost all their hard work” — No. The content is yours and you can take it anywhere you like. You cannot use the software anymore though when you leave. Which makes sense, since you stop paying for it.

You say: “You submit more than ONCE to search engines: that’s even worse! Read the reference I gave. If your site has been deindexed for some reason, then use webmaster tools to request reinclusion. And I certainly use software to submit to the search engines: there are only 3 that matter, in fact there is only really 2 that matter!” — My sites statistics fully disagrees with what you say.

You state: “From the comments I am seeing you are building a site build it franchise – that’s not quite the same thing as an independent business. The thing with the search engines prooves it – this site has been around since – what early 2000’s? Do they mention blogs, RSS, pings, social media article marketing – stuck in a time warp re SEO is my impression.” — Check out my site. It has RSS, it automatically pings when I add articles, it has social media links and an XML file for the search engines to spider the site. All this is part of and kept up to date by SBI! I honestly don’t have the skills to put that up there, yet I have it all. So obviously your impression is not correct.

This statement: “If they are not using PPC maybe it should feature as the way to generate traffic in the initial pitch video?” counters your earlier statement: “to rank your site they suggest you use pay per click (PPC) advertising”.

You ask: “How exactly do they teach people to rank in the search engines? That was the question I asked – its the only question really with these systems: search engine traffic is the only way any of these websites will make money. The only 2 answers in the sales pitch were PPC and submitting to search engines – can you clarify?” — It is explained in the Action Guide (http://action-guide.sitesell.com = no aff link). Days 1-5 is about researching a niche… after all, you don’t want to find yourself pouring all your efforts in a niche where you have a hard time to rank at all (Internet Marketing would be such a niche). Then, it’s a matter of diligently building page after page for keyword research you have done, casting a wider and wider net across the search engines. And building links. And strengthening the relationship with your visitors by keeping in touch with them through a newsletter and such, and… and… and…

But why all these questions, Lis? I thought you had already done your research and found it all to be a scam?

As for this: “I am completely amazed at the response to this post from the “insiders” – I hope they are being paid for their time!” — Um, no. Actually we’re NOT paid to write this. I’m not even writing this in defense of Ken Evoy, as I think he can hold his own.

I do take personal offense when someone says that SBIers are mindless beings, brainwashed boot-lickers of someone who is comparable to Hitler no less. (I know, these were not YOUR words, but you did let those words pass on your moderated comment list.)

You speak of free speech, yet anything we then say in our defense or in the defense of a great tool you’ve decided to knock down without proper research (and probably only because you found that a lot of people are trying to find out through the Search Engines whether or not SBI is a scam), it’s because we’re “brainwashed”.

SBI is not a scam. And that’s the last I’m saying about it.

Kind regards,

Erwin.

P.S. since you’re so big on free speech, I challenge you to post this comment, since you didn’t think it necessary to post my earlier point-by-point rebuttle of your ‘review’.

Wow. Someone clearly has a lot vested in this very interesting dispute. I am only going to take on one thing out of this …

I don’t have issues with the dad owning the kid’s site, but I do have serious issues with lies used to promote things to the gullible. If she is 20, you would think they could at least use all the technological genius they have to update the numbers on that in the past six years?

Lis darling, believe it or not, we DO own our own domains.
Anguilla-Beaches probably got registered with Ken Evoy’s name. The girl running the website is his daughter and she started the website when she was 14… Pretty logical. She’s 20 today by the way.

Let me tell you what you’ll recieve with SBI. This will give you an idea of WHY we SBI’ers are so crazy about Ken Evoy, his business concept and his company.

You see, Site Build It gives you everything you need in one package. You just log into your SBI account and you’ll find a guide to help you through the process and presents to you all of the tools you need to build your business.

Now, at the top you’ll find a link to your webmail, account, support etc. And further down you’ll find the Brainstormer, Master Keyword List and Niche Choose it. Just below those tabs, you’ll find your graphics library, form library, etc. Then comes the HTML/page uploader, not to mention an alphabetic list of all of your pages. You’ll also find Mail Out Manager (newsletter), Blog it tab, traffic stats, search engine rankings report, link exchange library, click-through data. And at the bottom you’ll find the Action Guide, tips and tutorials, monetization advice, resources… And much, much more! And in ONE page. Can you imagine how much time you’ll save?

Why waste your time logging into different accounts and doing the whole nine yards of analyzing– comparing the keywords here, the keywords there, stats here, stats there.

Whether I “own” my domain or not, 300$ spent annually on all these time-saving tools are well WORTH it. SBI basically does most of the technical stuff so you can focus on building your business — building (yes, that’s when the newsletters come in) relationships with your viewers.

The search engines are getting smarter, y’know 😉 they detect which websites get the clicks, returning visits, referrals, how relevant those referrals are, etc. I believe THAT is what “genuine algorithm” is. So why would I place my link here when my site’s about fashion?

Search engines focus on relevancy. They seem stupid, but they really aren’t. Their algorithms are constantly changing. They want to find out which websites (over)deliver what the surfers are looking for.

Just because SBI tells us to focus on writing quality content, they still, as Colin said, work strictly within the terms of the search engines. But they also encourages us to add that little extra to our websites. Because friendliness and genuine interest in helping the viewer will win them over.

I receive my traffic from Google, Live and Yahoo. People from across the globe are even translating my site.

If a website is good and gives people what they need, they will buy. Maybe not right away, but they WILL come back later and buy from you because they trust you! And if they think your site’s awesome, they’ll refer your site to others, and it will spread from there, sending you lots of targeted traffic.

Because that’s what business is all about. Make them want more, more and more. Without a lot of effort from your side 😉

I haven’t earned money yet because I haven’t placed any affiliate links on my website. But I know from my stats that I have a high CTR on my pages. SBI detects what people are clicking on (affiliate or not).

I agree, Google Adwords keyword tool is great. But I think SBI’s tool is better. In fact the adwords tool is already implemented in our master keyword list tool. It’s just a small part though. SBI calculates how many real competitors there are on each keyword — opening up a window with the first page of each SE; Google, Live and Yahoo. Giving us an overview of who we’re competing against. Plus our tool calculates the profitability of each keyword, +++

Lis, I really don’t think you know what you’re talking about..

And no I’m not getting paid for spending so much time on “defending” SBI. I do this because your false accusations struck a chord with me.

I spent five months on SBI faithfully working their program, then started reading between the lines in their forums, put two and two together, and ran like the wind. Geesh, reading comments from all these SBI faithfuls is like a flashback from a bad nightmare.

Hey SBI trolls: tell us about the forum advice you gave the poor lady with the ghost stories site who followed the program to the letter and had written over 300 pages of content, had 5,000 unique visitors a month, and was making less than $50 a month. You didn’t tell her that “Site Build It is in reality all about building a successful online business,” like Colin said. You said, “Well, some niches just don’t monetize well.” Hm, that wasn’t mentioned in any of the 10 videos in the tutorial.

Multi-level marketing is one of SBI’s recommended monetization strategies in the 10-day tutorial. No surprise there.

Ken’s daughter’s site ranks well for “Anguilla Beaches” in Google because it has at least 100 backlinks from SBI’s site (which is a PR5) anchored on “Anguilla Beaches.” The quality content is to make everyone feel good about it. Aggressive SEO tactics from a guy who last fall proclaimed “the death of SEO.”

Did you ever stop to think that the topic of your site wasn’t really intertesting enough for your traffic to grow further? Did you actually do any research PRIOR to choosing your niche to find out about all the monetization possibilities?

The way i see it, ( and a Google search seems to concurr) that affiliate programs for ghost story stuff aren’t too plentiful.

So really, did you follow the instructions to the letter? Or did you skip ahead just the way the tutorials told you NOT To?

I’m not about to enter into any kind of argument about it. I know from my personal experience that this is just plain wrong.

I have 2 SBI sites that I began in 2006. My latest site is pretty new, so I needn’t talk about it yet; I am expecting some really groovy things from it though.

My first site is a destination-related web site that receives around 1,000 to 1,200 visitors a day. In mid-2008, I was able to quit my job as a result of the income from my site and I work from home, full-time.

Site Build It is what it says it is. There is no denying the proof. No affiliate links, no straight links, no links to my web sites to advertise. The only reason for this post is to let you know that SBI does, indeed, work.

Congrats Tony.

See you at the top.

blah blah blah…

“i’m so successful but i won’t give you any proof. that’s how successful i am!”

haha!

Clearly there is a post on your private forums regarding this article. Its a shame no one has the guts to come and post a comment here about what that post says! Please feel free – I will approve all comments and have done so to date!

I suspect that you are right that the Anguilla Beaches site is owned by Ken’s daughter – I didn’t want to assume. Its a little bit misleading though don’t you think …

Anna – I didn’t say that the tools you are provided were rubbish – I don’t know I haven’t seen them! I do however have severe doubts that you have control over the site and url – how do get them moved over to third parties. I have seen comments elsewhere that ex-SBIers can get their url and content – but that it costs money to do – can anyone clarify?

Geez – I am not used to keeping up with comments at this rate!
@Lorecee – thanks for your input – the inside view is always the testimonial or not – my heart goes out to the ghost stories lady. At the end of the day some sites work some don’t – not everyone gets it right every time even if they do all the right research. You can’t hitch yourself to only one website – but at $300 a pop that really is what SBI is encouraging people to do

@Tony – I never said it didn’t work! Let me guess you have now developed other sites outside of SBI and had further success. I sincerely hope so because you don’t want to rely on a a single site for all your income – that would be as bad as having a job!

hi lorecee,

i think i’m in love.

.

Lis,

It really is too bad and very sad that you couldn’t be bothered to do a tiny bit of research before writing such a misinformed post about Site Build It. On your home page, you say. “I am no expert – I don’t make a decent wage doing this yet – but what I write here is the truth.” Well, at least the first part of that statement is the truth. The last part isn’t even close to being true, because what you’ve written about SBI is mostly outright lies.

Either you simply couldn’t be bothered to do even minimal research and find out the facts or you just don’t care if you are lying. Or you have some hidden reason to hate SBI and its thousands of users who are clearly far more successful on the web than you are.

Where to start? This will be a very long comment and I really doubt you’ll post it, but there’s a lot of incorrect BS to wade through, so here goes. Let’s look at some of the points you made.

1) Steve Pavlina (whose name you couldn’t bother to spell right): as anyone who has read Steve’s blog for any time at all well knows, he is one of the most ethical and thoughtful people on the web and one who acts from a deep sense of personal integrity. If he recommends SBI, it’s because (unlike you) he has researched it in depth and he knows it delivers very high value for money.

2) “You don’t own your domain.” Hogwash! As an SBIer, I most certainly own my domain. If you had bothered to go to betterwhois.com and check even one single SBI website other than Nori Evoy’s, you would know that. And yes, Nori was really 14 years old when she started the Anguilla site, with the help of her dad, and it is registered in his name because she was too young to be paid in her own right when she started it. I OWN MY DOMAIN, I can sell it, I can transfer it to any registrar I want, I can redirect it to any site I want, as easily as I could with any other hosting company. It’s mine.

2) “You are tied up with SBI for life,” “you don’t own your website,” “you can’t sell your site.” Nonsense. I OWN MY WEBSITE, no one else. I can move my site anytime I want (although why on earth would I want to?). I can move it to any hosting service I want. I can sell it to anyone, SBIer or non-SBIer. It belongs to me, it’s my business, and I can do what I want with it. I know people who have sold SBI sites (for very good money) and others who have bought them. No problem. It is true that in transferring to another host I would lose some of the unique SBI functionality, since many of those functions are tied to SBI’s own database. But I can easily copy the code for the entire page, save it to my computer, then dump it into any other website builder I choose and host it wherever I want. I know a few people who have transferred their sites away from SBI (like X-SBIer above). There is NO extra expense in moving it off the SBI platform. In fact, SBI will always give a pro-rated refund to anyone who leaves, for whatever reason. I also know dozens who have transferred UNsuccessful sites TO SBI, because they were tired of getting no traffic and making no money and they knew that with SBI they had a much higher chance of getting both.

3) Re: submitting to search engines, you say “do not ever do this.” And yet, thanks to SBI’s World Submitter, my site is averaging 400+ visitors a day and more than 25K pages views a month. Many of my pages show up on page one of a google search for their keywords. And more than 50% of that traffic is from search engines, most of that google. Obviously, Google is not punishing my site, they are rewarding me… with traffic and high rankings.

4) SBI “suggests using PPC”: Wrong again. In fact, SBI and Ken Evoy personally actively discourage most users from trying PPC, stating correctly that it is too risky, especially for inexperienced web business builders. It is covered in the Action Guide as a valid tactic for those who really understand it, but it is not “suggested” or even encouraged. I personally have never used PPC and never intend to. I don’t need to. I have never paid a penny for any of my traffic; it is all organic.

5) “How exactly do they teach people to rank in the search engines?” The first step is a tool called AnalyzeIt. Once you’ve written a page, you put it through the page analyzer, which then tells you if the page is not correctly optimized–and tells you exactly what you need to do to get it right. It’s almost impossible to build a page that is not correctly optimized for that page’s keyword. They also teach us the importance of getting backlinks and how to get the ones that count.

6) “you are building a site build it franchise”: Huh? I certainly don’t own a SiteBuildIt franchise. I own a business, MY business. SBI gets no percentage of it, earns nothing from it except the annual fee I happily pay to use their tools. You might recognize mine as an SBI site because I use their very simple Block Builder rather than some more complicated program. But I know of hundreds of SBI sites that you would never guess were SBI sites unless someone told you. How on earth is this an “SBI franchise”?

7) Money: You called Anna on her stats and asked how her pages are converting. I can tell you that I am defintiely making money with my web business. My site is about two years old, but I have a job that requires me to basically abandon my site for 6 months every year while I travel. Yet still it grows, in money and income. Yes, I AM making money from it. It’s not a full-time living yet, but I’ve paid for my site at least 20x over, and I already have the advertising contracts in hand that, by the end of this year, will allow me to quit that job that keeps me on the road half the year. Can you say the same? I know scores of SBIers who have quit their jobs to work full-time online. And it’s all because SBI teaches us how to do it right, then gives us the tools to make that happen. That’s why there are some 40,000 SBI sites out there.

8) “Do they mention blogs, RSS, pings, social media, article marketing?”: Yep. I have a site blog, I have an RSS feed, I check my subscribers thru feedburner, my blog gets pinged. I have a lot of backlinks (SBI taught me how to get them), I do article marketing (because SBI said I should and showed me how), I use twitter/facebook/squidoo/myspace etc, (because SBI told me it was important).

9) As for SBI being taught in more than 40 universities and colleges around the world, you said: that “just means that the software is given away for free.” Wrong again. What it means is that the students in these classes are buying an SBI package, as well as paying tuition to learn how to use it. And they are getting their money’s worth, because they come out of the course with an online business. And while it is offered in many small community colleges, it is also being taught at Penn State (a “Big Ten” US University), The University of Arizona, The Citadel, Univ. of Wisconsin, Univ of Alaska–hardly what I’d call small potatoes in the academic field. These universities believe in the program and know they are offering lifetime value to their students by teaching them how to build a successful online business.

Sure I could get free or cheap hosting elsewhere, a cheap domain registry, a cheap autoresponder, etc, etc. I can and do use Google’s keyword tool (SBI taught me how), but I wouldn’t have SBI’s BrainstormIt keyword tool (which gives me MUCH more information than google’s). I wouldn’t have an automatic site blog that I can post to as much as I want or just let it announce my new pages and send out my RSS feed with no work on my part. I wouldn’t have your despised World Submitter that has managed to get many of my pages indexed in google in less than 20 minutes after building or get my latest page at #4 on google in three days. And I wouldn’t have access to the best, most focused, most success-oriented, most helpful and friendliest private forum on the web (where, BTW, I made a contact that recently got me an $8000 writing gig).

You certainly have a right to your opinion. As you said, you believe in free speech. Does that also give you the right to spread lies and misinformation with impunity? And do you believe in free speech enough to actually post this comment? And maybe even do a little research and admit your own errors? Hmmm, I guess we’ll see.

Donna

Lorecee–If you’d stuck around you would have learned that the “ghost story site” builder has turned her site around and is making considerably more money now–thanks, in part, to advice she received in the SBI forums.

BTW Lis: I have not yet read Ken Evoy’s post in the SBI forum– only know that there was one. I wanted to come see what you had to say for myself. I imagine he simply pointed out all the inaccuracies (or lies) in your initial post and in many of your follow-up comments. I also want to say that I find it personally offensive to be referred to directly or by implication as a member of a cult. I’m a business person, using a great tool to build my business. And succeeding at it. The fact that I found a company that operates at the highest level of integrity of ANY company I’ve ever been associated with, as customer or employee, and one that continually improves its product without raising the cost and consistently overdelivers on what it promises is the icing. And I get it all for less than one dollar a day.

Of course I will publish your comment and any others that come in. Bare in mind that I am in a different timezone and do sleep!
I regret spelling Steve’s name and will go back and edit that.
I don’t say don’t submit – it was a reference to someone who knows a lot about SEO – I am delighted for you that you are clearly ranking for your keywords – but you can’t SAY that is because of search engine submission. The pain of ranking is that you never quite know what works but I’d say you are getting visitors because you have quite a good selection of anchored backlinks pointed at your site.
This post was indexed and anchored within about 1 hour of posting – how do you think Ken found it ? There are plenty of tools available which provide more info than Google’s I’ve talked about them on this blog. They require an upfront fee (of a lot less than $300 BTW) and you then get free upgrades for life – that is how software is supposed to work!

OK my responses are out of order because some of the comments had been caught by askimet! That’s Ken Evoy, Matt and Erwin Steneker ( I think one comment was caught and one wasn’t). You may want to ask for re-inclusion with Askimet because few bloggers bother to check their spam queue.

@Ken thank you for your very long reply. I have two other questions:
1) IF someone decides to leave SBI how quickly can they transfer their domain name to a 3rd party register e.g. godaddy.com and what does it cost if anything?
2) Do they own the webpages on their site and cant they take these with them?

@Matt – $9/month doesn’t equate to more than $300/year the last time I took maths

Wow I have never seen comments as long as these! I think 300 usd a year is way to much, that is what I pay for my reseller hosting!

I think the product is overpriced but there is a market for it. The marketing is pretty well done, it makes you feel like a winner and that everything is done for you.
99,9% of people don’t need to be internet marketers and don’t give a rats ass about seo and believe in the “tools”.

Lis, you really pushed some buttons because these guys are freaking out!

Pieter,

Thats kinda funny! I get my reseller hosting for Free!
With absolutely fantastic tech support, options, website builders, script installations…..all free.
Now….who is paying too much for what???

Free with the $300 per a site you pay to SBI no doubt …

Actually, nothing to do with SBI at all. Check it out here:

http://www.resellerspanel.com

Liz,

For the past 3 months I have made approximately 7 HUNDRED dollars each month. Right now, if the second half of March is the same as the first half, I should be over 9 HUNDRED dollars this month.

I don’t usually feel comfortable sharing all the details, but this situation is an exception. Plus I heard its against googles rules to share exact numbers.

I can tell you that my google adsense, Infolinks, ebay affiate, and red rocket afilliate earnings combined for the month of march thus far is $518.39 and its only the 19th.

Before SBI I knew nothing about how to build traffic or how monitize. SBI has taught me everything.

It isn’t get rich quick. I have worked by rear end off, but SBI provided the road map and tools.

It’s the best $300 I’ve ever spent. I am constantly telling friends and family about SBI. Sure, it’s nice to get $74 for referring someone to SBI, but the real reason for sharing is because I truly want my friend and family to know about SBI so that too can benefit from it.

With all due respect, your review is totally false. You ask how people can sell SBI without having used it? I understand this argument. But on the same token, how can you bash it without having tried it? That’s unfair.

Lis, 2 + 3 does not equal 6. That’s not my opinion, it is fact.

The lies you posted about Sitesell (SBI! And Ken Evoy) are LIES. There is a difference between lies, defamation, libel, and opinions.

You may enjoy all the undue attention, but you’ve provided the opportunity for more than one screen shot of your poison.

No matter the size of any company or ANY being, if you defame, you pay. Period. And imagine the message this would send out.

Its not that you’ve pissed off the big guys for stating negative opinions and comments, it’s that you’ve ruined their reputations with comments that are not true.

You say that you’ve a problem with promoting affiliate products because of the lack of research. Yet you can drag a good name through the mud a product and software tool that you’ve obviously never used (nor clearly researched in full)?

That doesn’t make sense, Lis.

You also state on your blog that you are new to this all and haven’t really made any money yet. Why anyone would believe a blogger with a mere 130+ “followers”…who hasn’t made any significant income that BLOGS about earning money online? This discredits your so called “review” also.

I do know that Ken refunds those who are nasty in the forums. There is a Kudos and Complaint forums in which you may vent all you wish, however be it tactfully. “Ken, I hate how you have this new tool set up. It sucks and so do you!”, vs “Ken, I’m having problems with this tool, is there a way to make it better?” There is a difference.

Again its not your negative opinions, its your NON-USE of the TRUTH.

Erwin is right on ALL accounts. And if the world simply lived on heary-say, itd be way more messed up than it is.

X-SBIer is obviously disgruntled and didn’t read/follow the action guide. If S/he had, they’d be pulling down major figures right now.

$300 translates to a mere $25 a month. This is much cheaper than gathering up all of the can’t-do-without software tools on your own, let alone trying to make all of the different types of software compatible with each other. Ugh! If you follow the proper methods, you will make this $300 back and THEN SOME. This $25/month includes SO MUCH per month, I’d gladly pay $25 per DAY for it – you know you will make it back and much more.

Ken also has a team that subscribe to every single newsletter, hype, newest income-promiser of the month, etc. They read everything they can get theirhands on. If the product or method IS legimate, we know about this too, without falling for trap after trap. Honestly, Lis, Ken cares for his customers. If you could even see ONE of his posts at the forums, it would amaze you – the size of his heart.

He actually asked the members NOT to respond to your drivel, but yes your untrue comments that you carelessly pumped out would
have hurt me also – because its not true.

There is truly a difference between opinion and lies. What you’ve posted is simply not true. That’s the bottom line.

Teej

P.S., I’m sure Anna knows how to gain backlinks, she just doesn’t want them from here as her site is unrelated to internet marketing. Google doesn’t approve, and that’s not what she was taught by the Great One.

PSS The SBI! Response Team isn’t to stop negative opinions, its to simply clear the misconceptions others may have, say, when they read blogs like yours and end up utterly confused.

And you should know that other SBI!ers will take to offense being compared to a cult. That’s a pretty serious statement. Also totally unnecessary as it is untrue.

As Erwin says, I challenge you to post this, and allow us the same free speech you pride yourself on. My post speaks the truth.

She “ruined” their reputation? Holy cats, Lis!! Did you know you had that kind of power at your command??! One lady posts her opinion and “ruins” a mega-corp?! Geez, Teej … Put down the glue and step away from the keyboard before you hurt yourself. And if you don’t want to be compared to a cult, don’t act like one.

Thanks for the heads up Lis,

I don’t post comments to that many blogs, this is the first time I’ve ever had any problems with a spam filter or not having my comments posted.

But I will keep that in mind! Appreciate the heads up!

You think this page has a lot of comments? I’ve seen SBI sites have page after page after page with far more C2.0 comments than this. In fact, some SBI’ers complain that there are too many comments to keep up with moderating that they actually have to take measures to slow it down…

I will admit, I was skeptical at first. With all the get rich quick schemes, and reviews like YOURS, it was a very difficult decision to fork out $300 of hard earned money.

If I would have stumble upon your review at the time, It probably would have been enough to pursuade me not to try it. I am so glad that didn’t happen.

I am confident that I will get to the point where I can quit my job. My wife has recently started her own SBI site. Mine continues to grow and very nice speed! Now it’s just a matter of time and persistence. SBI has literally changed my life for the good, and many others.

Your review could have easily altered the course of events that would have lead to me no pursuing SBI and being a slave to working a 9-5 job until I’m an old man. I honest thank God that I didn’t read a review like this when I was on the bubble about trying SBI.

Your review is not fair to Ken Evoy, and it is not fair to all of the prospective SBI’ers that were on the verge of changing their lives, but didn’t because false reviews like this one…

Your review has real life consequences beyond what you imagine. I honestly think you should consider removing this review, or at least try SBI before writing such a review.

@Matt – you are welcome. I never called SBI a get rich quick scheme – in fact the advertising is clear on that point. I am curious that you found other real reviews – all I found when I searched was a favourable but intelligent review which was referenced in the comments by someone else and the rest where just affiliate sales landing pages.
Re comment numbers – oh I am a beginner compared to some of my friends on the net! Honestly though outside of a flagship blog comments are the last thing you want on a site designed to make money – you want the visitors clicking yours ads!

In all due respect, you call this a “real review”?

Here’s how I found out about SBI.

I did a search about a year and half ago about how to make money on the internet. I skimmed through tons of BS get rich quick schemes that were obviously a bunch of bologna. Then I stumbled upon a free publication by Ken Evoy on how to make money with a webpage. I can’t even remember what the name of this publication was…

Anyway, Ken explained step by step exactly how to do it on your own, without SBI. The entire CTPM, how to monitize, the whole 9 yards. He explained in such detail that I made up my mind that I was going to try it myself, without spending the $300.

But then Ken explained how the SBI tools would make all of this work a zillion times easier, I seriously wanted to try it! But I didn’t want to risk the $300.

Then I read through all the success stories on the SBI results page, and got really excited. But was still very skeptical, $300 is a lot of money, you are right about that. But when Ken offered the 100% money back guarantee, I knew I had to try it

My wife thought I as nuts. But I used mostly the Christmas money I received at the time, and only really had to pay about half of the $300 out of the family bank account… but she still thought it was a waste…

Now she is singing a different tune as she works on her own site!

I guess my point is, it is hard to make a leap of faith like this when there are so many scams out there trying their best to get your money. You are right that the only real reviews on SBI are the success stories. And that alone lead me to be a bit paranoid.

So you see, false reviews such as yours carries a lot of weight when most people (rightfully so) are already paranoid that everyone on the net is trying to scam you. SBI is NOT a scam and your review is not a “real review”.

@Lorecee

You asked:
“Hey SBI trolls: tell us about the forum advice you gave the poor lady with the ghost stories site who followed the program to the letter and had written over 300 pages of content, had 5,000 unique visitors a month, and was making less than $50 a month.”

That would be Brenda. She got heaps of good advice, she took it, she did the work and experimented until she found what worked.

@Lis
“my heart goes out to the ghost stories lady.”

Lol, she doesn’t need your sympathy. In fact, she’d likely spit at you if she saw you after reading all the defamatory lies you are spreading.

Brenda is doing exceptionally well these days, has several sites and is one of SBI’s biggest fans.

I don’t think I’ve ever read that much rubbish on one single page in my life…

That’ll bite you on the ass for sure. Man, I do hope it does.

I think some may find this link useful defamation law

Amen to that 😉

I don’t think you can really call SBI a scam. At the very worst, it’s just web hosting for $24.92 a month. My old web host was $20 a month and it had a lot of features (leech protection, mime types, manage open PGP key?) that I never used. I don’t even know what that stuff is. I use a lot more of the features at SBI–kinda like that old axiom, a man will pay $2 for a $1 dollar item that he’ll use, while a woman will pay $1 for a $2 item she’ll never use. SBI made it easy for me to setup RSS feeds, manage newsletters, add subdomains and even silly little stuff like add a favicon to name just a few. The real main point is that I just write for my website without having to worry about technical stuff, not to say that I couldn’t learn it but I don’t want to.

And about the hand holding, I like that. Before I watched the Action Guide I really had no clue how the internet worked. Even worse I had no clue that I didn’t have a clue.

I guess SBI might not work for some people but the truth is it’s not a scam. To be a scam, it would have to be deceitful to such a degree that no one could deny that it’s a ripoff, you know like; I sale you this 1ct diamond ring for $300 but the it’s actually cubic zirconium. And if you find that you don’t like SBI you can get a refund.

I’m writing this not because you might think that SBI is a cult of some kind but because I like writing for my website, SBI minimizes the technical stuff that is otherwise needed to run a website and I find true value for what I pay.

Lis, you just don’t know, nor taking this seriously, you have LIED publicly. Pointing out paraphrased definitions of defamation doesn’t keep you safe and from litigation and its ‘heafty’ (sic) fees.

“The law of defamation is supposed to protect people’s reputations from unfair attack.” Yes, exactly. Your attack was unfair and has repercussions.

You have done NO diligent research. All Ken would need to do is have a lawyer write to your webhost, and it starts rolling from there. Sitesell may not be a large corp like Trump’s, but I’ll bet Sitesell has way more money for top lawyers than you do.

1. Why are you now suddenly asking Ken and other SBI!ers questions about Sitesell’s processes? You should have done that research first. There are ways to contact Sitesell, and you didn’t even try to get answers first, you just slung out miserable crap.

2. What did Ken’s post say at the forums? Not that it’s your business, as it’s a private forum, but the post was EXACTLY what he posted HERE to your ‘review’ comments. Note how he says “she” and not “you”. He was talking to SBIers, and posted that same-identical post here to you, so you’ve not missed out on anything.

You’ve only missed out on telling the truth on a wonderful person(s) that you don’t even know, and an amazing product you’ve never even tried. The Instructional Action Guide is free to all. You could have even read that first before spreading internet lies.

Yes the “ghost story lady” website and income is doing AMAZING. Had Lorecee actually followed the guide and diligently worked on her site, she’d also know what she could have accomplished herself. Disgruntled ‘insider’ posts don’t make anything true. It just means that the forums were weeded of someone miserable who didn’t deserve to be there in the first place.

Your threats of litigation on behalf of SBI continue to have me ROTFLMAO. You obviously have no clue whatsoever as to how the legal system actually operates. For starters, the public loves an underdog and is very anti-conglomerate right now, so while they might succeed in making themselves look ridiculous and open up all kinds of speculation into their business practices (and those of their affiliates), the first amendment would likely prevail or they would be stuck with a judgement they could not collect.

pS Unless you can PROVE Lis lied, you just defamed her …

It would really suck for you and your hosting company if Sitesell did go ahead and sue you like he noted in the post is being considered. Those like you need to made examples of.

Me – I’d not sue you for money (even if you had it), I’d sue you for one HUGE INTERNET PUBLIC APOLOGY AND RETRACTION.

A note to X-SBIer

Your comment ‘waaah, who will pay for my anguilla home…”

You do know that Dr Ken IS a doctor, and a rich, successful toy inventor. They have more money than they will ever need.

Sitesell is to help small businesses with care and concern, Ken doesn’t need the profits from Sitesell to have a comfortable life.

Imagine if all of the Bill Gates’ of this world shared some of their wealth and expertise with us commoners, the world would be a much better place.

H Lis,

SBI is surely not a scam and delivers everything they say. It’s is promoted by some of the most reliable marketing talents online as well. To say it’s a scam implies that someone is being deceitful, and nobody is.

With regard to making a viable income telling Ghost Stories… Boo… what can I say. It’s a stretch.

SBI is not for everyone, but if you have never built a website and are clueless about SEO, it’s one of the best places to learn online. I don’t know about you, but $300.00 per year is not a lot for a sound education about site building and if you pick a decent niche, one that you are passionate about – the way SBI teaches, and yes, that includes the correct monetization, you’ll have a great money making flagship site.

People that fail within SBI generally miss something along the way such as the Ghost Story: ie – monetization. You have to select a niche with good monetization potential.

There are things I don’t like about SBI but they are small compared to the good things they offer.

Nice Controversial Topic though!
Jim

Lis, you’re not coming across too well here IMHO.

You don’t seem to have responded to any of the counterclaims above, which suggest that the information you gave at the start is largely incorrect.

Then after your own ‘scam’ defamations, you offer another poster a defamation law link.

I don’t think I’ll be returning; too much normal blog & flaming fare.

Matt.

wow!, checked my notices and saw all the posts.

no red-blooded blogger could hope for more!

i especially enjoy the several, “I’ve never read so much “hogwash” in my life”… who continue on with their 4 page posts.

how would you rate ken’s Rapid Response Team?

…as for ken’s post- “methinks, the lady doth protest too much.”

it’s great to wake up to a good laugh.

keep those cards and letters coming.
.

@Chris – you were being ripped off my your former webhosting company, or it was a while ago because today’s rate is around $5/month (paid 12 months in advance)

@Pieter – its not $300/year – its $300/PER A SITE

@Teej – you need to take chill mate. I wrote an opinion piece, you cannot be sued for a opinion – not in most of the Western world anyway. You sound hysterical and are not adding to the debate, therefore I will not publish any more comments from you!

@Jim thanks for the non-hysterical comment. BTW I see you are showing Public Service Adsense ads: you might want to check out http://makemoneywithadsense.today.com from someone who knows a LOT about Adsense.
My point is mainly made in the comments here – SBI is a business why am getting comments in the tone I’d expect on a post titled “Global warming is a con” or “Atheists are better than Christians” – ie subjects of faith and belief rather than business! And for all the many,many words no one, include Dr Kevin have answered the basic concern:

* HOW MUCH DOES IT COST AND HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR SOMEONE LEAVING SBI TO GAIN CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN DOMAIN AND WEBSITE

* AND WHY DO I HAVE PEOPLE I DON’T EVEN KNOW, LEAVING COMMENTS HERE SAYING THEY ARE GLAD THEY “ESCAPED” SPI – well actually that’s obvious from the one of the comments …

Pieter has it one – I am far more intrigued by the reactions I am getting here rather than my initial post LOL

@X-SBIer – I rate them as pretty bloody weird really! But I thoroughly appreciate the long comments.

To be perfectly frank I have a distinct feeling of where there’s smoke …

To all SBIer’s, why would you indulge someone that’s obviously wrong? This post is getting exactly what she was looking for, TRAFFIC.

Don’t post anymore comments, she is getting just what she wants from you.

Hi Lis

The smoke here seems to point to the fact that sbi is for real- that’s what the majority of posters are saying, isn’t it?

Absolutely everything people are saying here in support of sbi is the truth. I’m not going to refute those points again- what I would like to point out is how disingenuous some of your comments are. You chided a poster for not leaving a link to her site. Forget the fact that this is not her niche- you’ve nofollowed the links back to people’s sites. I did not even have to check your page source to know this- I know this instantly for any page on the web, thanks to a free tool I picked up in the sbi forums.

And that is what sbiers do- they are so grateful for the fact that sbi is not a scam, that they pay it forward by helping any way they can. If someone finds something useful on the net, we all know about it right away. Bet you could have used some of that knowledge when you were starting out. (and probably still could) How much is that worth?

It’s not that we are a bunch of zombies, marching in step- it’s exactly what that other poster said- its hard enough to know what’s really good and what’s not on the internet without someone casting doubt on something that really works. When you find something good, you remember what it was like when you were struggling and you want to help others succeed too.

I first heard about sbi 5 years ago, but only bought it last year, because with all the noise about making money on the internet, I couldn’t tell what was and what wasn’t a scam. I finally bought Rosalind Gardner’s book (Is she a scam, too?) and because what she said made so much sense (without hype) that I eventually bought sbi through her.

Yes, you can spend years learning what you need and what you don’t; you can spend a lot more than $300 for comparable tools; (or make do with less tools, which will make it harder to succeed) or you can save yourself a lot of grief and spend the $300 and get a life-changing result.

And don’t lose sight of the fact that selling sbi is not what the posters here are doing to make their money- yes some of them get the occasional affiliate check, but these posters have niches that have nothing to do with internet marketing. You haven’t heard from the sbiers that are actively promoting (very successfully) sbi.

I hope I didn’t sound too much like a religious zealot.

Vicki. Yes the comments are no-followed, but yahoo and MSN don’t recognise no-follow, did SBI not teach that? I use a free firefox plugin http://www.seoquake.com/ Getting a link from a relevant site is better than a non-relevant but no pointing to yoursite can hurt – think about it for 2secs – otherwise any site could be taken down in short order by a grumpy competitor.

Thank you for your concern but I have excellent support at a couple of private forums that I am a member of, 1 is free on costs $10/month. The thing with the internet is that you don’t stop learning – the beast is always evolving and you need to keep up with it. I haven’t come across Rosalind Gardner but I notice she is promoting Bluehost – one of the most notoriously bad hosting available and Google Cash Detective which is a classic – “promote the sh*t out of it and they will come” product, and a very expensive one at that. Both products have excellent affiliate programs.

I actually think one of the pluses for SBI is that most people do NOT start “make money online”sites but actually find a niche which someone might actually buy something in.

However I am yet to see answer to my questions as in my earlier comment. I couldn’t care less if someone comes here -reads all the debate and then buys the product – they saw a discussion of different points of view and came to their own decision.

What I don’t like is this attitude that we must crush anyone who dares question Site Build It! because it might confuse a Newbie – the whole point is that there is no simple, one stop, one size fits all answer to the business of making money online. Every individual is different and has to make their own choices.

What is scary to me is that dissent is apparently not allowed in SBI forums – how the hell can you learn when you are told just to do what the “system” tells you to do – that’s not learning – that’s parroting, rote learning went out of fashion in schools years ago for a very good reason

“Site Build It has been around for a while and even has some good parts to it. But that doesn’t make it any less a scam.”

This is not an opinion, you are stating this as a fact.

If you would have wrote:

“Site Build It has been around for a while and even has some good parts to it. But that doesn’t make ME THINK it is any less a scam.”

That would be your opinion.

You had better be careful. You may be biting off more than you can chew here… Don’t say we didn’t warn you…

Lis,

I’ve read all of the comments thus far and would encourage you to review your spelling before posting your blog comments.

Your credibility is very poor when Steve Pavlina’s name has been misspelled and you have referred to SBI as “SPI”.

Hope that helps.

Lis, you are big fool!

It got worse from there on in and I am not publishing it – I have however forwarded it to my hosting company for them to track the address.

OK short lesson on law for those who clearly know nothing about it.
* you cant be sued for an opinion
* you cant sue unless you can prove that the libel has cost you or your company money.
* you cant sue a US-based hosting company under the Communications Decency Act of 1996 Section 230 of the Act has been interpreted to say that operators of Internet services are not to be construed as publishers (and thus not legally liable for the words of third parties who use their services)
* I don’t live in the US or Canada

If someone is sued, that person has the right of discovery against the person/entity suing; in the case of libel/slander whatever this means that they can discover everything from the other party, including business dealings, tax records, academic records, what they had for breakfast etc

@Matt you are bullying and threatening on my own blog – I approved your comment so the world could see it – I won’t approve the next one.

@Erin – my English teacher would be appalled no doubt LMAO

Amen to that!!

Lis, you may be wrong about SBI, I really don’t know. I am appreciating the debate and trying to weigh both sides. The jury is still out so far, but you certainly got the legal bit right. And there’s more …

Did you know if the litigants are male, you can subpoena their every MySpace / Facebook / Twitter / eMail posts or web browsing history and ask their spouses, employers, etc. if they knew about the contents? If they’re female, you can do the same and even subpoena their gynecological histories. If it goes to trial, it all becomes part of the public record where just about anyone can get their hands on it.

Apart from that, there is the expense: every photo copy costs a bloody fortune and God forbid the opposition should start filing demurrers b’coz you could be talking $20,000 or more a month just arguing those.

Oh, but the discovery process is SO much fun— and so very educational for the hopelessly vapid and tragically uninitiated. If you think this debate is interesting now, let the threats like “you had better be careful” continue to fly and see who winds up with the short end of the stick.

Matt, you said you were going to stay away because of the flame war, yet here you are again. Please keep your promises. Go away. But before you do, here’s something for you, Teej and the other legally clueless zombie trolls out there to consider:

While you seem to like slinging around big words like “litigation”, it’s clear you have never encountered the real thing in real life and don’t understand what that $3 term really means. If you did, you would realize Lis has the right to counter sue, and the depositions on all of ya goosestepping little John/Jane Does 1 through 1,000 could get gruelingly ugly beyond your worst nightmare. And for what? Free speech would prevail at the end of the day anyway.

Harassment is considered a crime. Bad spelling? Not so much so. Murder, rape, assault, arson, kidnapping, burgulay, identity theft and bank robbery have our courts full for the next three to five years. You think anyone give a rat’s bum about some blog comment? Puh-leaze.

Another note: you are not doing your hero any favours by leaving litigious commentary in a public forum, so please shut the f**k up with your veiled threats and juvenile wannabe poser pseudo-legal jargon already. Those overgrown schoolyard bullies attempting to use them as an intimidation tactic obviously have no clue what they’re talking about outside of a chatroom. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Goose eggs. You got nothing.

Please go shill for the almighty whoever somewhere else and leave this poor lady (who *gasp* dared disagree) alone so the rest of us web newbies trying to figure this out don’t have to sift through your BS. It’s annoying. Take your legal threats and libel/slander nonsense to the sandbox where they belong. Otherwise, you run the risk of leaving those of us grounded in reality torn between laughing so hard our faces hurt and wanting to throw a shoe at the monitor.

Thank you!!

@ Matt and every other noob here trying to defend this shit service. Look at the video in the link and maybe learn something and I can also do the same with every site that people put here in the url box so please noobs go learn something and come back with real sites.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/bloggerunleashe/videos/46/

Vic

Vic’s last blog post..Is This Blog Dead?

I think it’s a matter of perception. $300/year per domain seems like a lot if you’ve learned the do-it-yourself way and use a different online business model based on multiple, niche targeted, sites.

But, if someone is starting from scratch so far as technical knowledge goes and has no desire to learn these details then it might be a good deal them. Based on what I saw on the SBI site and looking at some of the testimonial sites, it isn’t a model I’d recommend or use myself but if it works for them and they feel like they’re getting a decent value for their money, that’s fine.

I’ve seen local businesses and professionals pay $300+ a month to a local ‘webmaster’ for much less than what SBI offers. Now that really seems like a rip off to me but the business owners are happy with the service they’re getting.

Frank Carr’s last blog post..How To Earn Cash Online with Duplicate Content

Wow, all these SBI zombie trolls are one big bucket o’ugly.

Think for a minute, you guys–does this kind of negative, nasty, condescending, threatening response to criticism of your business model reflect well on it? Or does it make people go, “I was going to pay my $300 bucks to SBI [of which $75 goes into the affiliate bucket, which I’m sure most of you have set out], but these people are awfully testy and thin-skinned. Kinda brainwashed, too. Reminds me a little of the Scientology folks, right on down to the threat of bogus lawsuits. If you were new to internet business, would you buy a product from people with these traits, even if they’re right?

I’m starting to understand why there was almost NO criticism of SBI online when I was doing research on it before joining. The shock troops bullied them into submission. First threats of lawsuits. Then a call to the hosting service. Then the C&D nastygram from the lawyer. That usually does it.

The ghost stories lady might be doing well now, but she wasn’t back in January ’09 when I cashed out my SBI subscription–at least not with her ghost stories site. In fact, she had effectively declared it DOA as far as making money went. She was developing other sites last I checked. I hope she’s done well with them. And the thread where she was complaining about only making $50 off the stories site with its insane traffic levels was over a year old. But you know, things can turn around overnight online–LOL.

What really makes me livid about all this BS is that her site WAS monetizable. And how. People will pay anything for ghost stories–I was editor of a small press for some years and the ghost story books kept us in business. But poor Brenda kept following the SBI creed: build more and more content. When you’re ready to monetize, slap some AdSense and affiliate links up and wait and see. If that doesn’t work, build more content. After you have 300 pages or so, try something else (how about some MLM, LOL).

There was nothing in the tutorials about holding your best content back to sell as an e-book or self-published paperwback, instead of giving it away. There was nothing in the tutorials about optimizing a site for AdSense (if you’re running AdSense, you need to take all other forms of exit off the site). A guy named Paul, who actually knows what he’s talking about, tried to help her with this, and they came to the shocking conclusion that there is no way to make money with AdSense or affiliate products on a ghost stories site–because there are no ghost story ads or products. But by then it was too late. She had been giving her product away for so long and it was in the hands of so many scrapers that there was no way to even copyright it.

Hey trolls, has Paul has been booted from SBI yet? He knows a lot more about this than Ken–especially the monetization part, which is where SBI really falls apart, so he’s a threat. I know the forum moderators were shadowing him, because they always commented right after he did.

You guys say you’re promoting a serious business model, yet your tutorials don’t even address the fact that you have to think very carefully about how you’ll monetize your site before you commit to it. There’s a bit of general mumbo-jumbo in Day 3 about “making sure you can monetize your site” before you register a domain, but nothing specific. One paragraph, if I remember correctly.

I got news for you guys. In the non-SBI world, it doesn’t cost $300 to put up a site and then find out you can’t monetize it. You test, test again, and then move on. In SBI-land, it costs you $50 every time you change your domain name, and Ken bitches at you because you’re not sticking with the program and aren’t a true business person, and it’s such a headache for tech support to transfer a domain. In reality he’s probably laughing all the way to the bank. Domain name changes are the norm in online business, and I’m sure they’re a significant source of income for him.

That same $50 is what I suspect it will cost me to get EACH of my domains currently parked at SBI out of hock. How about it, Ken?

Or you can just cash out another $300 and put up a new site when the one you have is getting insane amounts of traffic but you’re not making any money. That makes Ken happy.

The threats of lawsuits are just hilarious. “You attacked the BIG GUYS.” Oh, pul-eeze. When I read that, I got this picture in my mind of Ken Evoy as the Pope in a big white pointed hat, and Steve Pavlina as Jesus Christ in long robes. Blew my mind. Lissie is correct about defamation law. Oh, and I would love to see all of SBI’s financial records come out in discovery. ALL of them.

X-SBI-er, this rant is your fault too, LOL. You egged me on, so I had to dish. But the main thing is, I don’t like cults, I don’t like bullies, and I absolutely hate BS. I was charitable in my comments about SBI on the other forum, but not anymore. There’s so much lying going on from these people that I just want to hose down with cootie spray.

Lissie, you might consider alerting the bear. He’d have a ball with this.

lol Lis, you really got people going =P

I have no experience with SBI, but I think buying into some controlled deal for your website is a bad idea.

I saw the video Vic made on his blog about this, lol =P
(what’s funny, is all the people are just giving you a ton of free content =P)

Justin’s last blog post..On-Site vs Off-Site SEO

Lis, I think you’re missing the main point. Your “review” was full of statements about SBI! that were presented as facts that were simply wrong. You did no research, no hard work to really dig to the bottom of SBI!, the way that Steve Pavlina did. You would not believe how much serious due diligence Steve Pavlina does before he recommends a product.

I love chatting with Steve, ever since we first met on the phone and had an animated 3-hour conversation, finishing each other’s sentences. If you knew this man, if you had asked in his forum how he came to decide to recommend SBI!, you simply would not/could not, at least not in good conscience, throw out such a hurtful statement about him…

“…he has sold out to the other side and is pushing the old Site Build It scam!”

This is the man who dropped Google ads because he didn’t like some of the companies that Google would deliver. They were not aligned with the values he believes in.

—

Lis, I see that you are defending an indefensible position by ignoring my rebuttal of your “review”…

https://lissowerbutts.com/site-build-it-scam-review/comment-page-1/#comment-648

Instead, you call me a bully (for a point-by-point dismantling of your review), call SBI! a “cult,” and allow an “x-SBIer” to compare me to Hitler (?!).

“Cult,” by the way, is a bad word in religion, but great companies like Google (when young) and Apple (still to this day) have what is referred to as a “cult-like” following. I think everyone understands that the word, when used in a business context, is now used in a metaphorical way to connote a company of excellence. Apple-lovers all say the same thing when they talk about Apple, too. The reason is they love the product and what they can do with it.

I had hoped you might reconsider and retract at least your factual inaccuracies based upon my reply to you…

https://lissowerbutts.com/site-build-it-scam-review/comment-page-1/#comment-648

But it’s clear that you’ll hide behind the defense of a loud and false offence of more inaccurate statements.

—

By the way, in response to your hope that SBIers are being paid to post here (?!), I specifically asked SBIers NOT to reply here since I wanted to see how you would reply to my detailed rebuttal. It has become, of course, too easy for you to inflame and attack instead of addressing my points in my previous post in an intellectually honest way…

https://lissowerbutts.com/site-build-it-scam-review/comment-page-1/#comment-648

—

You did NOT address any of your inaccuracies, instead replying upon the same low-level thinking, inaccuracies, innuendo (we redirect name servers, do you really think that?), that SBIers lose their content if they take their sites elsewhere (just ask X-SBIer, of course you don’t), etc., etc., etc.

You clearly didn’t read my detailed reply, instead you repeat much of the same and add a whole bunch more, such as “Dr Evoy is a doctor of medicine and obviously has some contacts” when explaining how 40 schools, including Penn State, University of Arizona, etc use SBI!.

Wrong re my “contacts.” I don’t run the Education division and didn’t make a single presentation. SBIers did this themselves. Again, serious research would have revealed that.

It amazes me that you spew these truly ridiculous statements out, like a popcorn machine that is out of order. Stop and consider what you say. It would help your credibility so much.

—

Just to answer your question to me…

“Ken thank you for your very long reply. I have two other questions:
1) IF someone decides to leave SBI how quickly can they transfer their domain name to a 3rd party register e.g. godaddy.com and what does it cost if anything?
2) Do they own the webpages on their site and cant they take these with them?”

Lis, how about replying to my points, point by point instead of merely thanking me? And to answer your two questions…

1) You transfer a domain out of SBI! as quickly as you can transfer one in. Faster probably, as we find many domains that folks want to transfer into us have various problems. In any event, this is just standard Web hosting/domain management stuff. No cost. Standard ICAAN regulations, etc.

2) Of course SBIers own their own content. Basic copyright law. I’m not sure if you think we’re like the large social sites where they have rights to your content? Instead…

Each SBI! site becomes its own business (NOT a “franchise”). Each SBI! owner owns every part of his/her site/content/business.

At a Web hosting level, we operate just like any other Web host. But Web hosting is not our business.

We are NOT about “Web hosting” (although we do that as a necessary part of SBI!) — there are tons of those companies. We ARE all about helping them use the Internet in a rigorous and organized fashioned to build successful e-businesses.

—

OK, it’s clear that you are not going to rise to debate in an intellectual honest and rigorous way. I think this thread should clearly show future serious readers what SBI! TRULY is. I hope they do their own due diligence better than you did.

It’s time now to say good-bye. I’ve never seen a blogger post false info about SBI just to get attention. It’s unfortunate that some people feel they must resort to such tactics in order to boost their readership. In the long run, however, it’s self-defeating to try to get attention in a way that isn’t aligned with integrity, truth and respect.

Hoping that one day you realize how to build a real business,
Ken Evoy

P.S. So, how about it? Care to reply point by point to…

https://lissowerbutts.com/site-build-it-scam-review/comment-page-1/#comment-648

The comments here are digital point material! 🙂

At least thank the bastards for giving you free content! Nice site build it scam review, I really found it useful. Thank god people will see this when they search for site build it scam review.

When I have free time, I’m going to send you some links for “Site build it scam” and “site build it review”. And maybe even some for “Ken evoy”. (He gets 1,300 on google keyword tool, may as well lmao)

Wow, you guys are all nuts– both the pro- and the anti-SBI people. SBI is just a product/service like any other– it works well for some people, and doesn’t work well for others. For somebody like me, who knew diddly about building a website, it’s been great. I’ve learned a lot, I like my site, and I’m making money. For advanced web builders, however, it might be easier and most cost effective to do it on your own. You probably don’t need the to be lead through it– which is, for me, what SBI has done.

I think SBI works well for beginners and those who like to keep things simple. But it’s not for everybody, I’m sure. Nothing is!

I admit that the SBI people get a little cultish sometimes… I’m not sure what that’s about (it’s just a product, people, not a religion). And in fact it drives me a little nuts– you can’t voice a doubt on the forums without having your head bitten off. But it’s a good service and I like it. I doubt I would have done a quarter as well if I had had to put all these elements together on my own.

My reasonable, non-cultish opinion of SBI. It’s not my God, but I like it.

Very nice and level-headed comment, Karen. Thank you for posting. This was fair and offered some good food for thought. I am still weighing the “cultish” aspect with the simplicity … Decisions!!

.
…and the hits just keep on coming i see.

this could be one of the hottest blogs on the net. you should send ken a thank-you note.

ok lis, the low down on transferring a sbi site:

i had no trouble at all transferring the domain. get auth code from Tucows (sbi registrar) and start the process. sbi contacts you to check if you want to transfer, and that’s it.

now the problem:

ken doesn’t allow FTP, and there is no way to export your files (as far as i know). so, you have to use a website copier program to retrieve your files, after which you will probably spend months cleaning up the copier program’s and sbi’s html. and, if you have uploaded files to sbi that are not included in your pages; then you need to be an idiot savant with “rainman’s” talent to remember those files, or preview and copy and paste each one manually from your sbi sites control panels. you can see the problem if you have hundreds or thousands of image files. chances are you won’t retrieve all your files when you transfer.

so, all in all; sbi doesn’t make it easy to transfer your site.

i’m not sure what you’re asking about a “charge” when you transfer. i don’t know of any charge.

yee ha! feels like we’re riding a tornado. exciting!

aren’t sbi’ers lovely? typical cult frenzy.

oh yeah, and clean up your spelling. 😉
ken, apologizes often that.
.

Sorry Lis, I forgot to put up one link in order to explain the becoming of such posts as yours:

Unskilled and Unaware of it

Apologises.

Hey you guys! Ghost Lady here.

==============

Lorecee Said:

“Hey SBI trolls: tell us about the forum advice you gave the poor lady with the ghost stories site who followed the program to the letter and had written over 300 pages of content, had 5,000 unique visitors a month, and was making less than $50 a month. You didn’t tell her that “Site Build It is in reality all about building a successful online business,” like Colin said. You said, “Well, some niches just don’t monetize well.” Hm, that wasn’t mentioned in any of the 10 videos in the tutorial.”

==============

I’ve also been mentioned a couple other times here. Since people are talking behind my back, I have the right to tell the real story. Yeah, I know, call me a cult member. Ouch! That really hurts.

Whatever.

I prefer to call it fair.

And since it will take some words to convey the story, I’ll thank you to let me tell it.

What is referenced above is a forum post of me whining. It was probably my darkest hour, and obviously I will never live that post down. Lol! That’s okay. I can take it.

Lorecee must have left SBI! before reading what happened to me later. Those 300 pages she refers to was hard work. I really wanted to succeed, so worked my tail off. I’m rather ambitious sometimes. Drives my husband crazy, especially when it comes to the honey-do list. Lol! But I digress.

Anyway, in that darkest hour, I was tired and frustrated that I was not doing something right. I had never done this before and didn’t know what to expect. I thought surely I had done something terribly wrong, but didn’t know what it was.

Four months after that post, my site sky-rocketed on the search engines and the flood gates opened. In fact today, I enjoy 73,000 visits and 45,000 uniques a month. (My Alexa ranking is roughly 180,000 – so there is some validity to Alexa. I highly doubt those people frequenting my site are Internet marketers, either.) What’s amazing is those numbers climb and climb all on their own, month after month. I could probably not write another single word on that site and it will just keep climbing.

By the way, I want to point out that while I did some link building in the beginning, I really did very little to get traffic. I never used PPC and I certainly never used SEO techniques aside from using the SBI! tools that I understood at the time. (The basics.) I’ve made a ton of mistakes. A ton, I’m telling you. I’m sure they’re obvious to those who are knowledgeable. In addition, that site’s actually not even that pretty. It’s not sophisticated by any means. Soon I want to give it a facelift – when I have time and I’m in the mood.

That’s the power of SBI!

It teaches you what’s important and then some, and because of this, you can’t help but to succeed. Even an internet newbie, with a “silly” site concept can have power on the Net. Once you get to a certain point (you do have to work, which might be unattractive to some), your site takes on a life of its own and one can walk away, do other things and it just rolls along.

Okay, now as far as monetizing – well, I knew going into it that it probably wouldn’t monetize well — not like say, SEO techniques or Internet Marketing ebooks. I knew it wasn’t very commercial. At the time, I didn’t think I had profitable knowledge. I picked that concept because I needed something to get started with. Ghostsandstories.com is my learning site.

I don’t blame Ken or anybody else for my income. I have no regrets.

The $50 a month Lorecee is referring to is because I had just begun to monetize. I was a newbie, remember? Who makes money on Google ads in their first month? Some people get lucky, but most don’t.

Today, my income from that site is well over $50 a month — way beyond that. I now have a passive income just below four figures a month. Am I satisfied? No. I want more. I’m an American, after all. But think about it. Since I only pay $300 a year and my site continues to grow on its own, that income is literally money in the bank now. It’s my retirement fund.

My story goes way beyond money, too. Working on that site ignited so much passion and creativity for me that my life is no longer the same. Anybody who has lack of zeal or direction in their life would find building a business that they’re passionate about to be tremendously uplifting. I didn’t necessarily have lack of zeal in the beginning, but I REALLY don’t have it now. 😉 I won’t bore you with personal satisfaction part because it’ll probably get attacked as airy-fairy and silly anyway. Just like my site gets discounted as irrelevant. However, as with anything, the wise will see the opportunity for what it is, the not-so-wise will complain.

I can tell you this – SBI! is loaded with members who do have extensive Internet knowledge and who do have profitable concepts. Go to results.sitesell.com. You’ll see their sites riding high on the Net. If SBI! were crap, they wouldn’t be there. So even though I was a newbie, it attracts, and holds, seasoned site builders, too.

That fact, and the others I’ve state above, is why you have ruffled the feathers of many.

=========================

As far as libel, I think you need to back up and stop being so smug.

You have made blatantly and knowingly false statements. They are knowingly false because you have admitted you’ve never tried SBI!. A review is an appraisal of something, which is defined as “the act of estimating or judging the nature or value of something or someone.” You can’t have an opinion about something of which you are ignorant.

In this situation, I think a court of law would find a libel case arguable at least.

But what’s done is done. It’s too late for you to go back now.

Even if you’re above the law because of your location, you have just potentially reduced your credibility on the Internet.

Let the traffic roll on in so the world can watch.

How does it feel to shoot yourself in the foot?

Now that hurts!

Hey lissie, this is Jeremy from grizz’s site yesterday.

HAHAHAHAA…amazing post. I watched vic’s movie he made on his site and I nearly peed in my pants.

The bad thing about SBI! is it’s a huge fricken cult. I wonder if we could take a poll of all the SBI owners and how much they made last year. I’m sure 99.99% made less than $300. Easy. You can’t make more than that with ONE site. But for the steal of the century you can have TWO SBI! sites for $600 a year (this includes a FREE domain name and hosting)!!!

Jeremy’s last blog post..5 Tips to show whether or not you should initiate a 401k Rollover

Hi Lis,

I am only here because I was curious to read your “review” for myself. I see very little truth in your original post. But you already know that.

I have 2 SBI sites (one in the art niche & one in pharmaceuticals) and am earning fairly well, not setting the world on fire or anything like that. I earn enough to cover the $300 every 45 days. Not bad considering I work on it only when I am in the mood and have the energy for it.

Not everybody who has left SBI left because it didn’t work.I know of some who left because they were successful and wanted to implement advanced techniques that SBI did not support, at least at that time. That doesn’t sound too scammish to me.

Perhaps you should direct the questions you want answered to the eX-SBIer. Surely he did not just abandon all his hard work when he changed over to cheaper hosting. You may get a straight answer out of him. It sounded to me as if he had an ax to grind.

You have his email, why not ask him?

Dissent and disagreement are allowed in the forums, but disrespect, flaming, etc are not. The motto is help and be helped -no room for misplaced ego in that sentiment.

You really should form your opinion, especially if you are going to print it, on more than disgruntled former customers. EVERY company and product has them and not every company and product is a scam.

I had no idea how to build a website, much less a business, when I started. Now I know.

The bottom line is that SBI is a tool (actually a suite of tools.) It would be ridiculous to buy a hammer and then call it a scam just because the hammer didn’t build what you wanted. A tool can make the work easier and simpler, but it will not do the work all by itself.

I honestly have no opinion about the whole “SBI! is a scam” business. Seems rather curious, though, if you ask me. $300 per website seems steep considering that you could get your own hosting account and around 20 .com domain names for that price.

What I find particularly curious is how many of the people knew what the other people had posted and then complained about it not showing up. That just seems kind of creepy to me, like they are all working together in a planned sort of way to defend their product. It does seem like an organized attack squad – and an organized attack squad seem scary to me for any product, no matter how good. I guess I just don’t get it.

If BS! is really that great, why not just say to your self, “Self, BS! is great and I love drinking it. I don’t give a rats ass what this one girl has to say about it. Let her thoughts be her thoughts. I should write a post about how great BS! is to drink so that lots of other people can find out about how great BS! is. Then all I will have to do is leave a link to this great BS! loving post in a all the BS! haters blogs.”

That way you don’t have to rehash all your arguments for why BS! … er I mean SBI! … is really greater than great. That’s just my two cents.

Make Money Online Experiments’s last blog post..Make Money Online Experiment 2 Update 3/18/2009

Wow Lis, you’ve certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest! Have just read your bio (Who is Lis?) and you sound much like the rest of us, simply trying to find an alternative to a “job”.

As someone who’s wasted a lot of money chasing dozens of internet money-making schemes, I can empathise with you when you say: “I became quite disgusted by the amount of incorrect, self-serving and flat out wrong information being sold to the beginner”.

I also agree that “no one actually tells you that just as it takes many years of study and practice to become a plumber or a teacher, it also takes, about the same amount of time to develop a successful, legitimate on-line business”.

So I’m still learning – and getting suckered into buying IM advice and software (can’t help myself!).

Strangely though, the one expenditure about which I have no regrets is the annual cost of running my SBI site. When I think of all the other IM stuff I’ve bought, monthly subscriptions I’ve paid, upsells I’ve fallen for, and the return I’ve got for these, quite honestly there’s simply no comparison. My ROI for the annual SBI renewal beats everything else hands down.

Good luck with your passive income endeavours – I hope you and everyone else reading your blog gets there (if not already in that fortunate position).

Scotch

Very cool and forward thinking post. I appreciate it as I’m trying to sort my way through this love-hate bat’s guano cave of opinion, fact and innuendo … Lots of really smart people here!! Lots of stupid beyond belief ones, too 😛 Thanks for posting something intelligent 🙂

Lis:
You asked: * HOW MUCH DOES IT COST AND HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR SOMEONE LEAVING SBI TO GAIN CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN DOMAIN AND WEBSITE?, with the clear implication that we are afraid to answer those questions because the answers will bolster your lies.

Actually, Ken Evoy DID answer the question, in a comment you have apparently chosen not to post.

So here’s the answer again. It costs **NOTHING** to transfer your domain away from SBI. It takes as long as it takes to transfer any other domain from one registrar to another, i.e. from GoDaddy to Network Solutions, or usually a bit LESS time since SBI is more efficient with that sort of thing.

It takes **NO TIME** to “gain control of your website” because you have never lost it. It’s yours, you own it, you control it, you do what you want with it. If you choose to transfer it to another hosting company, the process is the same as with any other company–or faster, since, again, SBI is more efficient. If you are using SBI’s proprietary BlockBuilder webpage builder, you just copy your source code and dump it into your new web builder. You may have to make a few small adjustments to work around SBI’s very special proprietary functions–the ones that make it easy for us “newbies” to get a web business up and running and MAKING MONEY with a shorter learning curve. If you upload your own html to SBI, you already have your pages completely built on your computer. You then just transfer that into your new host’s system. SIMPLE, EASY, FAST AND *FREE*.

I sincerely hope that anyone considering SBI and looking for real information about it finds this “review” (a misnomer if ever there was one), AND that they read ALL the comments here. They will certainly be convinced that SBI is the real thing, and they will climb on board. Perhaps you should join SBI’s affiliate program and post the link here. You might finally start making some real money with your web efforts, like SBIers are.

Lis,
The lies in your original post have been addressed one by one by numerous posters here and proven to be FALSE. I find it interesting–almost to the point of being laughable–that you still refuse to retract them or even address the fact that YOU LIED. You were too lazy to check out the facts and you gave incorrect information, STATED AS FACT. That’s not opinion, that’s defamation. And now you’re too lazy to admit your own fault–or worse, you refuse to even acknowledge how much you don’t know and are unwilling to learn.

Everyone here already knows that you are spelling challenged (grammatically, too), but here’s one for you. Can you spell STUBBORN?

You’ve had your answers. You’ve had the TRUTH. You are WRONG. You can choose to acknowledge that or not. If you don’t it can do nothing but make you look even more ignorant than you have already shown yourself to be.

* HOW MUCH DOES IT COST AND HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR SOMEONE LEAVING SBI TO GAIN CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN DOMAIN AND WEBSITE

*********It doesn’t cost ANYTHING to move it from SBI

* AND WHY DO I HAVE PEOPLE I DON’T EVEN KNOW, LEAVING COMMENTS HERE SAYING THEY ARE GLAD THEY “ESCAPED” SPI – well actually that’s obvious from the one of the comments …

******Because they are the FEW losers who didn’t want to roll up their sleeves and work!!!

THERE ARE YOUR ANSWERS. Again, had you researched, you’d have known.

Now you can’t say you don’t have answers to your two questions. There they are.

It’s up to you to post this and admit that you now have the answers to your two un-researched questions.

KH

P.S.

I find it interesting that you won’t post -all- the comments that actually call you out on this. I know there are actually hundreds of posts that ‘should’ be up. Bullying is not when you stand up for yourself. Crazy and/or ‘weird’ isn’t when you stand up for the truth.

If you can’t take the heat – stay out of the kitchen.

Opinions do not equal fact. Do you understand this? I believe you do.

Why won’t you answer ANY of the valid questions that are directed to you? Why didn’t you answer all the point-by-points that the owner Ken made directly to you? It’s because you can’t, without admitting you are flat-out wrong.

Hope you’ve a good lawyer – no matter what country you are from. 😉

I’m sure this also won’t get posted, but to each his own. I’ll not be checking back to your blog, except to see when it’s removed. Heheee

Get some guts and post this, will ya?

Hope you’re making the necessary phone calls to save your SourButt!!

Lis,

I found this post due to Vic’s vlog post at BloggerUnleashed.com

I just knew that if Vic was ripping apart some newbie that I had to check out the post it was inspired by. Poor Matt got spanked by a pro. Hopefully he will listen and learn (but I won’t hold my breath).

You really did fire up the SBI minions. I find it amusing how much they are picking on your typos. That just shows how little they know about internet marketing, typos are one of the biggest money makers if you know how to work them properly.

Best of luck. Don’t let them get you down, they don’t know what they don’t know.

Rhonda

You SBI users are probably the most delusional bunch ive ever laid witness too. I love how much effort you’re fanatical people are putting into to defending your saviour. Got weird images of you all in grey robes chanting around an SBI software box.
I think anyone with any knowledge or experience at building an online business will recognise that this is a product that targets the pockets of innocent ‘noobs’. Thats my opinion. $300/year to host a site and have access to a few software tools that have freely available alternatives is rediculous…again in my opinion.
In fact you SBI people have probably learned more about making on money online from this one post than using the SBI program if you’ve paid close attention of course.
http://bloggerunleashed.com/marketing/sbi-noobs-are-funny/

Hi Lis,

I have followed this debate with interest. You have had some flames from devoted SBIers, as well as flames against SBI: Not surprising. But flames aren’t always pleasant to receive, and I fully understand it if you enter into a defence position.

Furthermore, flames can be written in anger, and therefore unaccurate/biased.

Yes, the SBI community is an exceptionally loyal crowd, indeed. They follow the rules and do what their told to do. But WHY are they so excited and “religious” about the system of SBI?

Simply because it works for those who understand the basics/Read and Follow SBI!’s Action guide.

However, I can only speak for myself, hoping to balance the discussion. I think I can do it with a simple statement:

For more than 30 years I have held an Engineering Degree in Computer Science, and I have used SBI for the last 5 1/2 years.

Mind you, my posting is not meant to be a religious praise or anything like; I am just stating a fact: I have searched and tried to track down what was best for my Internet business, and SBI! fit all my requirements (and quite a few I wasn’t aware off).

It is not a scam: It is an opportunity. But there will always be nosayers who know better. There is actually a scientific paper who describe them:

This is not meant as an insult: Read them. They are intersting.
From the “Journal article published in the December 1999 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.”;

Unskilled and Unaware of it

This article by Wikipediay has a short version of it:

The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

These are well-knowb phenomenos in real world…

Somehow, I believe you suffer even from not reading any of them. You should, because they are facts, and they could bring a more careful tone in your blog.

Your review of the SBI! building system is not inline with reality: I actually believe you have been lured/fooled by bitter, nonpersistant X-SBIers. I have studied your home page and your About Lis page that gives not at all any proof of you mastering these issues and earning money. That’s a fact. You don’t earn money with your system. I do. You don’t have traffic, except the 15 minute world-famous thing, which you are living right now.

But coming down on a company and it’s manager in the way you have done, It is called ignoranse, and that’s what it is: Not understanding your subjet, but pretending so, anyway. These are not good signals to send to honest people who really need guidence.

SBI! works, But YOU have to work IT.

SBI gives no guarantees: Only a toolset. But it is more or less complte: Some parts are yet ijnthe making, securing that SBI uesers have access to the latest, and are informed whit importand issues againg the SEs and other new upåcoming. It is up to you as an SBI user to what to do with it.

If you chose a niche and it’s lame (totally not profitable), the site will be lame and unsuccessful, no doubt, whatever tool you use.

But by using SBI to a tee, and follom SBI Forum advice, my site now has 3.000 visitors/day, +150.000 pageviews/month, even if I put my site on hold for + 3 years (wgich I did).

Even though, it has increased by close to 83% each year when I did nothind with it.

The method works, due to the full range of tools into one package, including a high trafficed forum where answers are given 24/7.

I hope that your next “review will be an accurate one, because in this case, someone behind you MUST HAVE had an agenda for pushing you over the edge, where you are now,

All the best to your future business, with or without SBI!. As said, as an Engineer in Computing Science. I use it with great pleasure every day, seeing how my popularity and traffic (and therefore income) increases day by day

But I needed to wade through a heap of scams and single-handed produts before I decided for SBI! It is not a religion or cult: It is common sense, easy tools, and focus on the business through numerous professional manuals, autoresponders, ecourse and what have you. Nothing like it. No Cult. No Hype. Very good (guided) business concept for tens of thousands of happy, dedicated webmasters.

All the best,

Thanks.

hi lorecee,

i’m ashamed of myself…but, i admit;

I LOVE IT!!!

this is REAL EMOTION. something, as you know, ken never permitted.

i remember one interesting, free-thinking, young sbi’er, with a beautiful site, who was banned and refunded BY KEN personally, because she had the gall, the temerity, the audacity, to suggest that the $299 fee was “fat”.

that’s when my opinion of ken and sbi changed.

coffee?

.

God… Liss… respect. This simply is amazing… how to make 1 post and get over 5000 words of unique content. Keep the comments running. Brilliant, brilliant strategy. Kudos

OK first off – for those who are worried that your comments are not published immediately – its fucking 7am in my land and I do NOT fucking approve comments at 3am or 4am! I comment moderation ON because I do not want comments approved which point to porn site or who wish that my family and I die of cancer – so yes I did delete that comment and the rest are now published 🙂

@Loreecee – exactly I too was worried that there were no adverse comments online – even ho-hum comments in forums seem to bring in the attack squad – though I have a better set here than most! I like Steve Pavlina – but he clearly knows little about internet marketing – why should he its not his business – I am sure he does really well as a motivational speaker and author.

@Ken – I totally believe that Steve Pavlina does a lot of due diligence – he has built a huge reputation based on his name so yes he is going to make a nice little income promoting SBI,he’s doesn’t want it to ruin his reputation! As I said above – he’s clueless about internet marketing. I may or may not answer your points one for one -but probably not – you see I don’t make any money promoting your product and I have better things to do with my time which do make me money. Most of the comments back and forth have answered the questions raised – and raised a whole lot more questions. Oh and don’t give me the “I don’t run the Education Divisiion” – you own the company!

@booboo – got it in one -why do you think I published them 🙂 Thanks

@Karen – thank you for your comment “you cant voice a doubt without getting your head bitten off” – wow – please check out Vic’s post there is an audio file as well as the video that Vic has linked to above.

@X-SBIer – no FTP- I never met a web host without ftp – anyone care to comment LMAO! Nope the spelling stays – reason below!

@Vic – thanks so much for the classic video – he won’t of course watch it which is a shame – in drives me insane most of us would kill to have you or Grizz analysis a site of ours and of course you guys only do it to the noobs – oh well! Hey at least they cant criticise your spelling!

@Brenda – I am delighted you dropped by – its hardly being talked about behind your back on an open blog LOL – you may want to set up a Google alert for your name and the name of your site – quite useful sometimes – its no doubt how Ken found this post originally. I am happy that you are pleased with your progress but you really should check out Vic’s answer to Matt as I think you probably are in the same boat re Adsense.

@Frank – actually interestingly one of the reasons I chose the topic was I suspected a lot of SBIers would have real-world businesses and using SBI to avoid the expensive “Internet Services” trap – from the no doubt biased sample here apparently not – more hobbiest /ethusiasts – and in that niche you may well be right – if you already know your topic regardless of whether it will make you money and you can afford it – why not?

@Keith – ex-SBIer has answered below your comment. I have formed my opinion based on SBI’s supporters not their detractors 🙂

@Scotch – thanks for your comments – please check Vic’s link above and then read/listen to his site (it will take a week or more)- it may well be an eye-opener.

@Justin 🙂 – sometimes I listen and learn.

@Donna – I sleep at 4am in the morning when his comment arrived – apparently no one in SBI land understands the concept of timezones – do you not think I would’ve posted the positive comments if I’d been awake – or do you think you guys keep me awake at night NOT!

@Kim 🙂

@Rhonda -“poor” Matt just got advice worth a shit-load more than $300/year – for free! Hopefull ALL SBI’ers who are running Adsense will watch that video!

@gypsey – when you wrote this you hadn’t seen the last dozen posts LOL

@XSBIer – I am sooo not running an internet dating site LOL

@Jeremy – Hi – you are living in Askimet – ask for reinclusion! Thanks for visiting – small world LOL You hadn’t seen a Vic movie before – they are great – check out his others!

@TheComputerEngineer. Hmm psychology- I think you are on to something with that. You left an intelligent comment which added to the debate so and I will answer it properly – it will be in another post though – make sure you subscribe to the feed reader

@LOL – sorry I missed the comment – yup to all of you worried about my inability to spell- many people who type strings into search engines can’t spell either!

uh, sorry lis,

i’ll try and stay focused. but…i’m fantasizing.
ummm, red hair and green eyes.

computer engineer??? dang, is that you goofy Alf?

.

@Make Money Online Experiments – of very well spotted! And a real nice site BTW – though maybe a little plain LMAO! Yeah see this is an one sided fight. I have published all the comments here – but the comments in the secret secure SBI forum
http://forums.sitesell.com/viewtopic.php?t=111200&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
are unavailable unless you login. I am not,never have been, and will not be an SPI member or affiliate. So I thought I couldn’t access the forum.

BUT you can gain view only access. (Oh for the paranoid bitches I read this on the forum and I am NOT giving the link here because you will probably ban the poor bastard who gave it and they may like being part of the community)

google: “powered by site build it” – it will find a whole lot of SBI sites – pick one randomly – don’t just pick the top one we don’t want to inflate their stats unecessarily:
the username is the domainname.com so is the password – no leading www. Any sitebuilit domain name will do. You can view not post.

Now you could say isn’t this a huge security breach – how could a company have such a simple login. Obviously the people in the forum think they are contributing to a private forum. Well guys I never called Site Build It or Ken Evoy stupid.

The whole forum is a like a “second level” marketing ploy – here’s the unvarnished truth – look this is what our people say about us. THAT’s why negative discussion is banned!

And for those who contributed to that “secret” thread Yes this is my real name and no I haven’t had anyone make fun of it since I was around 10 or 12 – amazing, assuming you guys are adults. And if you didn’t know how to check that it was my real name you really know nothing.

And no its not a setup to start making the affiliate sales for SBI – I don’t get commissions on stuff I don’t use. Mind you it would have worked well as one if I didn’t have any ethics.

And no I am working with no-one, I posted, Ken found it, probably by having a google alert for something close to the title, he posted his comment in your forum and you took it from there! His initial comment was delayed because it was Askimeted (I have issues with Askimet but I found that rather funny) – the initial positive comments were mainly from regular readers and twitter followers. The rest as they say is history.

And thanks for all the fish – but I think I have enough content on this page now so I won’t be posting any more comments – unless they are really, really amusing that is…

Thanks for the mentioned of MyStarterBlog. 😀

After I had read the first part this morning, I wrote a post instead of leaving a feedback. My comment/post was getting very long lol

Is Site Build It A Scam?

I guest Ken don’t have a Google Alert since he did not see it(unless it’s once a day). I had a few questions too but some were answered here and some not. Let’s see how SBIer will answer them.

I came back to see if anything new was added since this morning and wow! You had double the number of comments.

Steve McGrath’s last blog post..Is Site Build It A Scam?

Hi Steve – yeah one or two comments! Good luck with the comment moderation on that one!

I think the Google bot just had a stroke from all the new content your site is getting.

Lissie,

Your wish is my desire.

Site Build It – Don’t Buy It

😉

Grizzly’s last blog post..1.5 Million Visitors in 8 Days – Niche Marketing

It’s amazing how Lis can write a Site Build It Scam review and all the Site Build It zombies come running. I’ve heard of Dr. Ken Evoy and I’ve also heard about SiteSell.com but I would never consider using any site building product that even hints of a scam.

The cost of Site Build It is pretty steep, and someone wanting to make money online from their site doesn’t need to spend that kind of money to learn how to make money with a blog or website.

By the way, where is dear oh Dr. Ken Evoy and why hasn’t Ken put in his two cents in the comments section about this Site Build It scam review, or did I miss it somehow with all the SBI trolls and their long comments?

Hearing that there are Fake Site Build It affiliate reviews all over the Site Built It website is dishonest and pathetic, but noobs don’t know what they don’t know.

Is Site Build It a scam? If Vic and Griz and other “make money online” experts say Site Build It is a scam then that’s all I care to know. Just don’t buy Site Build It and learn from the experts for FREE.

Lin’s last blog post..Graduation Gift Ideas: High School Graduation, College Graduation Gifts Ideas

Hi Lis,
Great post by the way.
I just got done visiting the rant by Vic.
LMAO He makes perfect sense and numbers don’t lie.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I had to come and see the madness myself.
Its like a train wreck I have to watch.

Suckers Buy In.

And why aren’t the SBI people showing off their sites anymore, is it because Vic just ripped the matt guy? 🙂

Hi again Lis *sips coffee*

Site Build It Sucks! LOL

OOOOh!…please don’t sue me! …lmao

Wow, this post has become a huge party. If simple and automated websites were so easy to help people earn money, everyone would have been successful and paying themselves huge bonuses.

Rendell @ BrandlessBlog’s last blog post..The Short & Simple Story of the Credit Crisis

Talk about link bait! Way to go!

Wayne’s last blog post..Site Build it Scam

>>And why aren’t the SBI people showing off their sites anymore, is it because Vic just ripped the matt guy? <<

Because the oh mighty one asked us NOT to succumb to your drivel, nor to continue giving you all the time of day. And Lis just said that she’s not posting many more, unless they amuse her little mind.

Enjoy your 15minutes of fame. It’s the most attention your blog will ever ever get.

However, what is cool is that you’re giving Sitesell a lot of publicity. The ones that truly care about succeeding online will keep researching SBI! after this blog of crap.

Sitesell only want the ones who really want to learn and succeed anyway.

Really, it’s a WIN-WIN $$$ for Sitesell, so keep drawing the attention. $$$

It’s not a cult, I’d bet if GoDaddy’s founder had a forum and actually participated and personally ASKED their customers what they’d like to see more of – you’d see a ton of people defending “GoDaddy”, too.

This probably isn’t amusing or weird enough for you, so if you don’t post, it we will know why. But unlike your posts – it’s the truth.

P.S. I don’t think they made fun of your name at the forums. It’s just that your last name really fits your personality. 🙂

Lis I have to chime in having read Evoy’s messages. His comments are a bit disingenuous, based on what he leaves out. I am an ex-SBIer, left because I was too sophisticated a web user, and their product just doesn’t accommodate.

Yes, you own your domain name, and no, it isn’t “faster” to transfer, it took me 3-4 steps and logins to get it done, unlike every other hosting co I’ve ever used. The part about owning your content however is the disingenuous part. Of course you own your “content” – the words you write. But if you use their page creator (I forget the jargon they use for the feature), it is not standard HTML – they use flat file coding to create pages, so you can’t walk away with an HTML website that you spent a year or more writing. The graphics (unless you created your own), the formatting, the coding, is theirs. You have the text basically. Now, you can upload HTML pages into SBI within certain annoying rules, which is what I wound up doing, so those pages I was able to keep, but then it hit me – why am I using SBI if I have my own HTML duh.

They don’t mention that because of this flat file, database structure, you can’t have a real blog as we know it, you have to purchase an add on; same for shopping cart; and you can’t have a forum period. ALL of which is free with my host, installed, etc. (Dreamhost.com BTW, no affiliation). I host ALL my sites,unlimited there, for under $10 a month. Blog (with REAL RSS), phpBB (yay! so easy!), shopping carts, Joomla, whatever, isn’t every host offering all this now – for free, with hosting under $10 a month??

The last straw was that on SBI, I was trying to add a forum on my site, but they couldn’t accommodate phpBB, except it was clear that Evoy was using it for HIS forums – yet they couldn’t explain why I couldn’t get it??? That and the goofy “blog” – what they call a “blog” is not what you’d recognize in the real world. BlogIt! or whatever, it just feeds your latest posts to a new page where you get an xml feed. If you want to accept comments, you pay an extra $100 for “user generated content feature” or something. I decided: WordPress here I come… BTW – all the ranting about how great it is that they have RSS that updates every time they post an article? Page2RSS.com for Free people, yo! (One other quick example: a friend who still uses SBI uses the autoresponder, but can’t do a URL redirect to her signup page so she has to have a link on one page to a form on another. She can’t embed javascript code for her signup box on any page she wants. An example of the non-standard nature of the beast. Yuk.)

SBI has to create goofy workarounds and add ons due to the way it was originally structured. You can now upload your own HTML, but it’s really clunky. Don’t even bother if you want a CMS. This is stuff a newbie will never know about, until they invest years of learning, that it won’t translate into the “real” web world. My business IS my website design – and all that entails. So, it’s just a line of crap about “you’re building a business not a website”.

Repeat after me: “But plants love Brando, it’s got what plants crave! It’s got Electrolytes!”

SueC’s last blog post..Survive A Depression, Part Two

I always thought SBI was just another tool for helping non tech-savvy people build a website. Now I can see it’s more than that. It’s like the Amway products are not simple cleaning products, but a system worshiped by its members. There’s no doubt that many people made money promoting Amway. However, one single meeting is enough to make you run and never look back. The comments I’ve read here remind me of the Amway way and of cults in general. Quite scary.

Simonne’s last blog post..Is AdSense Smart Pricing Stopping You From Making Money Online?

That’s IT, Lis.

I don’t do 7-year olds. This has just gone overboard. Your questions have already been answered!

You’re stretching it. The only reason we sound cultish is because you’re driving us mad your false accusations about SBI.

My God Lis, wouldn’t you have defended something you truly believed in yourself? What if someone made false accusations about a person or something you really cared about?

But whatever Lis. What matters here is that SBI works for me and others.

Now SBI guys, STOP posting here. No matter how much we try to prove her and the others wrong, we just sound crazier. And angrier. Keep your blinders on no matter how ugly it is out there 😉

Good luck Lis! Hope you’ll achieve your goal!

Cheers,
a 21-year old fashionista

Hi Lissie,

Nice way to attract a TON of free content in your comments LMAO!!! It just shows how busy they are if they have time to sit down and write so much – must’ve taken ’em hours!

Amazing how they all crawl out from under the dunny seat like a nest of skulking redbacks waiting the bite the backside of anyone they think they can bully.

Terry Didcott’s last blog post..Words of Wisdom

Lis, I stumbled across Site Build It in 2008 when I was trying to figure out how to make money online. I think I happened upon Steve Pavlina’s site and read all his hype about SBI there. I even joined the SBI forum, called SBI to ask questions, became an affiliate to get access to more information, and then did a Google search for Site Build It Scam. Know what came up in the list? Site after site of affiliate reviews and not a negative word about Site Build It. That made me skeptical. Fortunately I did not ever purchase and I did finally figure out how to keep Ken Evoy out of my Inbox. I had to abandon the email account – that was the only cure. He writes the most disgusting sales copy of anyone, in my not so humble opinion, and that was another good reason I passed up his spring special in 2008. His sales letters just sound so desperate. He just tries too hard. If Site Build It is really a method to building a business, then perhaps the good doctor should have named it business-build-it.

Fortunately since then I stumbled across some honest IM teachers and am learning the business. It is an interesting process. Now that I have some knowledge of how the search engines do their rankings, I can look at the SBI info and feel sorry for the folks who are paying all that money for just one site. I think SBI is a major rip-off.

Article Marketing
“God… Liss… respect. This simply is amazing… how to make 1 post and get over 5000 words of unique content. Keep the comments running. Brilliant, brilliant strategy. Kudos”

I’m such a noob I would have been upset about the fiasco. LOL
Duh- I learned a good lesson today

Thanks

One thing that is easy to see from the pro SBI comments here…they know almost nothing about the internet.

Anyone that actually believes for a second that Steve P was making 100k from Google ads and dropped them because he didn’t like the ads is a complete fool. He’s a con and cons love money and don’t care how they get it…you know, like pushing SBI junk.

There’s a sucker born every minute and they all gravitate to SBI because they know nothing and SBI takes advantage of that…or they know they can push the scam to newbs and make money from it.

Amazing … all this constantly updated content … keep it going but you’re breaking my email server … LOL

Very interesting Lis!

Jim Hickey’s last blog post..Social Bookmarking Evolution? Is the Folding of Furl into Diigo a Sign of Social Bookmarking Evolution

Lis,

I guess you are getting your 2 minutes of fame with Site Build It! 🙂
This is one of the many programs I was involved with for a short time. I never gave them another thought until I read your post and seen how they responded to you in your comments.

They assumed they could come into your house and make threats. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

This is what has inflamed so many people.

I hope the support you are getting sends them the message. You are definitely not one lowly blogger making a statement. You have a whole team of people behind you too. And we don’t even pay you! 🙂

Denise’s last blog post..Make Money Online Free – Not With Site Build It

Hi Lis,

I don’t know if you are giving a tough time here or getting some, but this is as hot as it gets!

My take is a little different, and I am writing this especially for any beginners that might have stumbled in.

Regardless of the claims, or whatever is actually being delivered by SBI or any related service, it appears absolutely unwise to pay $300 for the package that is under discussion here. If the intention is to make money online either from monetizing your content with advertisement, or to sell affiliate products or products of your own, the last thing that you need to do is to sign up for this or any similar service. Does not make financial sense!

All it takes to start off for an appreciable online income is a small collection of free Blogspot blogs carved around well researched niches with the help of free Google Keyword Tool, free article submission on a few sites, and some free Hubpages and Squidoo Lenses. So far, all free! Throw in a $7/month hosting for unlimited domains, and register around 5 top level domains for $10/year each, with the world’s finest content management system like WordPress, and you have an impressive self-publishing gig in place. Own it, grow it, enjoy the pleasure of learning and make way for as much as you wish to expand!

If you are a beginner, or someone who is disillusioned from past experience, let me suggest a place to get all this elaborated nicely. Please allow yourself to really make money online by reading Grizz’s blog.

To the SBI crowd: I noted something interesting. Most of you who came in to defend SBI made your case in long drawn yet articulate posts. Regardless of point of view, when someone writes tediously and makes a case, it speaks of reasonable intelligence (…you are welcome!) Yet, it was said more than once that the technical part of starting a website was perhaps daunting for you, hence this route. Forgive me, but it appears that for some odd reason, there was quite an underestimation of your faculties. I write this in sincerity. Take a deep breath, calm down and look around. There are people out there who are ready to help out free of cost and give us a chance to learn the game. I know all this exchange must have been unpleasant for all concerned, but if this is one good that can come out of this, let it be. Peace and good luck.

Lis, take it easy girl. Its morning at your end. Smell the coffee…a new day!
EssEtch

Go Lissie!
It’s the weekend go out for lunch, you deserve it after this onslaught.

I like Steve Pavlina – but he clearly knows little about internet marketing – why should he its not his business

You underestimate Steve. From my own observations he is actually very savvy in internet marketing. Look at his site. Only two posts on a page (Grizzly recommends one), Keyword targeted (and dull, bland) post titles. Keyword in the home page title tags (Personal Development Blog). He writes long, rambling posts (Don’t we know someone that advocates that?) Some of his on site seo could be improved a bit, but do you really know what he has done in terms of things like article marketing, buying links, etc. He sure knows how to write linkbait. My estimation is that he not only knows what he is doing, he is very calculated about it as well. Furthermore, he has never shared so much as one tidbit of useful internet marketing advice, although he has certainly advocated blogging for dollars.

@Ken – I totally believe that Steve Pavlina does a lot of due diligence – he has built a huge reputation based on his name so yes he is going to make a nice little income promoting SBI,he’s doesn’t want it to ruin his reputation!

Reputation? Please tell me you are joking? To whatever degree the man has a good reputation, it is only among his Flavor Aid swilling cult followers. Why would he care about a “reputation?” If publicly announcing that you plan to cheat on your wife, hawking your wife’s ridiculous scam business, and lending credibility to the dangerous practice of breatharianism I think he called it “solar healing”), doesn’t kill a reputation, I don’t know what will. Clearly, he knows this just as well as I do.

Steve Pavlina is a con artist. “Con” refers to “confidence.” You don’t get to be a con artist without being very skilled in the art of gaining people’s confidence. Steve certainly has that going for him as well.

To his followers, he can obviously do no wrong, so I’m not the least bit surprised that he would be advocating a business that is less than on the up and up.

Personal Development for Dummies™’s last blog post..Getting Things Done Until You’re Dead

What I find interesting is how X-SBIer claims s/he hates SBI yet has the nerve to post her fake support on the thread at the forum you are speaking of. So, Lis, if you want to listen to the naysayers, that’s up to you. How you could trust miserable X-SBIer’s words over Ken’s is utterly amazing.

Especially as you don’t know either one of them. Enjoy your bit of traffic – J. Moenst

As I have read this post and all the comments above, I noticed that it can be a classic sample of viral marketing although it can also attract link baiting.

While this post also seem to be subjective, as Liz here says that the content is only her opinion. However, I suppose she should be more resourceful to avoid negative reactions.

But incidentally, it also gave Site Build It users to share their experience and how the site help them. It is also amazing that Ken (the site owner) had his freedom to defend his site.

Anyway, here is another post by Steve McGrath – http://mcgrath.ca/2009/03/19/is-site-build-it-a-scam/ that I suppose both Site Build It users and non-users should read. I believe he had made an analysis on this issue, on a different perspective.

Rich’s last blog post..Resell Ebooks: Marketing Strategies That You Should Avoid

Lis in my datacenter your post shows up in position #8 on a Google search for Site Build It Scam

I have no connections to SBI (I found this through Grizzly’s blog), but how the fuck can you review something that you’ve never even used? You’re just as bad as all of the affiliate marketers promoting this thing that you’re claiming is a scam, if not worse for being a total hypocrite…

#
Rhys Mar 21st, 2009 at 10:52 am Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Hi Lis!

Nice irony??

Here (from above) is the first actually honest ‘troll’ response from an SBI’er – even if they didn’t intend to disclose it, it actually admits that SBI does fail its users!!

“People that fail within SBI generally miss something along the way such as the Ghost Story: ie – monetization. You have to select a niche with good monetization potential.”

Sadly you can’t reason with cultists because they are only emoting, but please take a ‘10′ for lifting the lid on this can of worms.

Thanks – Rhys

Rhys’s last blog post..How To Find Long Tailed Keywords

I see all the SBI cheerleaders came out to try and get rid of your bad review. SBI IS A SCAM PEOPLE!!! All the comments about how good it is are from people who sell the program. That’s why they are mad that someone is giving it a bad review. Don’t listen to these people.

P.S.- I really just think you should take down there comments.

Nick’s last blog post..Moot: 2009’s Most Influential Person?

I take back my comment about removing these nay-sayers comments. Keep them. They will probably bring you more search engine traffic.

Nick’s last blog post..Moot: 2009’s Most Influential Person?

Hi Lissie,
I’m a bit late getting to this post (only found out about it on a certain blogger blog… – haven’t had time to watch Vic’s video yet).
I have spent the last hour reading these comments, to try to get a fair view on SBI and your post.

Ok, I have to say that any newbie reading that first reply by Ken Evoy may have been persuaded by his response that SBI deserved a further look (despite the fact that KE insisted on putting (sic) against your typos so many times it made me feel sick – but, hey, the guy was angry)

But then in came the cult (sorry, they are like Apple Execs?) and they really f****d things up for him, with their well-rehearsed arguments, their assumptions about you, and their threats.
Scary crowd!

Then there are the links to SBI on every SBI’ers site linked in the comments here.
Now, I know these are affiliate links, but are they mandatory?

To be honest, if I had built a great looking site which appeared professional, the last thing I would want to have in my site footer would be a link to show it was made with a ‘beginner’s build it’ tool.
Think I would pass on the vague hope of getting an extra 75 bucks now and again to be honest.
After all, these people have learned how to build a business, right?

Which brings me on to the next point about the comments made on your post, Site Build It Scam Review:

All these people go on and on about traffic, but hardly ever talk about converting that traffic (apart from Matt, lmao!).
WTF? These SBI’ers have learned how to market their products, so that they can convert their surfers (whoops, sorry! readers) to buyers, surely?
Or perhaps not…

Then there is the SBI Directory linked to here. It is so damn stingy.
Sure, it lists SBI sites, but with no backlinks given to that site – they only appear in a ‘domain popup’ and you have to enter the url in your browser to find the site.
Seems like it’s all take and no give there…

Overall, I do agree with Frank’s comment that it could be a useful tool for newbies, no more, no less.
But, to my mind, it is so different to most other website building tools, it is not really training them in how to build a real website at all.

And I know SBI is supposed to be about ‘business’, rather than site building (strange the name says something different…), but if you do not know how to build a website (or at least, how to tweak it after your designer has finished with it), then you really do need to learn.

Anyway, this comment has been a mix up of thoughts, rather than a post comment with a beginning, a middle and an end (and sorry, I can’t post it on one of my blogs right now, the link probably wouldn’t do you much good 😉 )
But those are my, very long two cents.

Nice post, lmao!

Hey Mate,

Great Thought provoking piece and the comments WOW.

One most certainly gets a balanced view here.

I came across you from Sploks’ article on this very subject matter.

In my humble opinion, going it alone is so much easier these days.

Especially with Cpanel hosting and a Fantastico setup script.

Don’s last blog post..Pyrmont Cafes to Visit: Yots Cafe & Bar

I love SBI. This article is clearly written by someone who simply failed by not following the guide and/or being too impatient. I am an sbier and I did the same thing at first. It was overwhelming with information overload but I wanted to keep moving and missed too many key points that were actually hurting my site. Once I backed off and started doing it the way other successful sbiers have done the tides turned. For one I put links to my monetization on tier 2 pages. Big big no no. Once I took them down my site went into overdrive. Why? Because it is all about content, value, and useful information. Building a business any business takes time and SBI is no exception. Get rich quick? Not with SBI. If you follow the guide you will build a solid foundation and no one beats the tools that are included. As mentioned earlier Colleges and universities such as Penn State and Arizona State would not offer SBI as a College course if it were not the real deal. These people are scholars. Real smart people who are not going to get involved with anything that isn’t top notch. Students pay big money to go to these schools and thanks to SBI they will graduate with not only a degree but a business that they can have for the rest of their lives. Some will even pay off their students loans through the businesses that they build via SBI.

Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it. Sam Ewing

gawd lis,

i just googled “site build it scam review” and “site build it scam” for the first time.

numbers 1 and 5!!!

it looks like the whole net marketing community is lining up behind you. i thought the radioactiveliberty.com post was hilarious.

i’ve learned more about net marketing in your blog, the last few days, then i learned in all those years at sbi.

number 5 at “site build it scam” (not counting ken’s 3 sponsored links or the video link), beats out lisa irby at number 7, who is or was sbi’s affiliate manager.

someone mentioned that “this is like a train wreck”. yep, i keep coming back, too.

anyway, congrats on your results placement. all, inspite of the best efforts of “fearless leader” and his cronies, the spooky ghost lady (natasha) and mini-me erwin (boris).

funny video by vic, btw.

.

OK I am kinda behind in the replying to comments field – and not mention my real life and doing some work! Just blown away and speechless at the support people
Grizz and Vic in the game – hell I could almost feel sorry for SBI Affiliates, but not quite really I’m still pissed about the name calling – and you think my spelling and language is bad check out Vic’s blog!

@Kim – this is so not about 15minutes or even 15 days of fame – you clearly do not get it – any of it – find a new line of work.

@Lin – Ken contributed so spell-checked and Looong comments earlier- your’re another Vic/Grizz follower zombie (been called that to) – welcome nice to meet you 🙂

@Anna I am confused about what you are upset about – the fact I didn’t roll over and die because my typos were pointed out – as we say in grown-up land ya-boo-sucks!

@Terry you speak Aussie very well – always a pleasure mate!

@Diane – you found in Google exactly what I found – but I think in the future it may be a little different …

@Sue – Evoy a bit disingenuous – well I’d call him something else but I keep very bad company – if you haven’t already check up on the links to Vic and Grizz – they won’t put you wrong!

You’re the first person to point out the extra costs – $100 for comments for fucks sake – how much do you think I pay to run this blog – well $7.50 for the domain and $25/month for a full reseller account which houses all my 60+ domains. What do I pay for all this sophistciated “user content” feature of WordPress -same I pay for WordPress, email, stats, etc etc ZERO!

@skitzarella – I know this would have freaked out many, and that’s the reason I stuck with it – the point is not SBI’s features or price anymore – its about its disrespect for free speech – check out my latest post 🙂

@Simonne agreed

@Paul – taking all of Sunday off too!

@Personal Development for Dummies – I hadn’t realised – I will check out more on Steve Pavlina – but maybe not this week LMAO!

@Jim – pretty extraordinary – and the party has just begun – maybe want to expand your inbox …

@Denise – I’m sorry these guys got some of your cash. Maybe we can all stop the next Denise going down that track! Well you know I have a funny name and forgot to run the spell check – and then my friends show up and they can’t spell either – obviously they thought they didn’t have much of a problem … 🙂

@EssEtch – thank you -well written comment – and one with good content to. I agree there is obviously some intelligence lurking with most of the SBI commentators – but its pretty sad when they don’t even know who they are dealing with – and we are talking me here – the really sad thing is that the links on this post’s comments and in the next post: https://lissowerbutts.com/update-on-site-build-it-scam-post/ there’s more than you can possible need there to make money online complete with forums, information and friends- but its all free so I guess its not worth anything – shame really…

@Nick – the comments are the point – read the next post

@Zania – hi nice to see you! I am perturbed about your lack of proper opening and closing paragraphs – but let the comment thru this one time LMAO! You are so right – I agree – what’s with the business/website thing differentiation – most of the SBIers are making money on Adsense – WTF has that got to with building a business its building a website which converts! Lets face even the illiterate seem to be able to make money doing this -think what these folks could do who don’t dangle their participles do if they shut up long enough to hear (metaphorically speaking!)

@James – its late and I am tired – you are fucking deluded – you are clueless – you don’t know what you don’t know – check out the fancy link to the Danzig whatsit psych paper above – that’s what it says – and you have just conclusively proved it your Adsense placement is utterly and totally fucked – in fact its even worse than Matt of the model airplane fame! At least keyword is worth around $1-$2 but you are not triggering it because you have the wrong content and your site layout is a disaster – for more details check out Vic’s video for Matt re triggering the correct words and b) check out Grizz’s blog – link above re site layout.

@Don – hi Aussie mate! Its turned into a real interactive writing – I find user comments so helpful sometimes LOL

X-SBIer welcome to the dark side – cue spooky music LMAO!

Wow, so much stuff ! I’ve never read so much in one go since I was at University ! I often wondered about SBI and fortunately have never owned $300 so never signed up. Yippee well done me. Lucky for me I stumbled on Griz’s free stuff instead and now he invites us to write a post or something about SBI and link to your blog and as I am a member of Griz’s ugly cult I do as I am invited – all hail to the Griz. I shall write a post with some links !

A lot of fun – a storm in a teacup really but the SBIers may see it differently – so I shall an end with one of my favourite quotes.
“There is no such thing as life” VicW

Make Money Online Blogging (Yes We Can !)’s last blog post..Make Money Online from Anti-Social Blogging

Yep we are now laughing at you because you are actually selling SBI! sites.

The only thing I’d like to say is that I’ve never pushed SBI on any of my websites. Yes I own -both- SBI sites and regular cheap-hosted domains. My earnings come from my niche(s), which are not related to internet marketing at all.

Thought you’d want to take a look at this:

http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/782/1/How-to-achieve-10000-visitors-a-day-with-Site-Build-It

A very lively discussion.

Dr. Ken Evoy posted in the SBI forums that no one defend his position or come to his aid (or SBI’s aid) because the truth is he already made his case and I don’t believe I could ever out do that.

With that being said, since my name was brought up here, I feel a need to respond to those who read this who really are interested in building a business and can look past the name calling, insults, flames and curse words.

Let’s step back for a moment of sanity.

I’ve been building websites since 1999. Before that I sold over 50,000 products on eBay.

To date I have 1 SBI site and 10 non SBI sites. I don’t tell you this to impress you (there are many others with greater talent than I and who earn more income than I) but to impress upon you that I need to point out some inaccurate information here.

I don’t always agree 100% with Ken Evoy. I happen to believe that SBI does have some work to do in the area of Marketing and have said so in the forums. I was not banned. I’m not an employee. Dr. Ken has not spoken to me or asked me to come here today.

Over 16 weeks ago, I began a thread in the forums called “The Challenge Series”. It’s a 52 week course on marketing which covers article marketing, blogs, forums, list building strategies.. etc..etc..

Even though the above is not supported or endorsed by SBI, my postings nor the replies have been banned or edited. Some of my postings have even pointed out to newbies and pros alike that this stuff is new to them and just writing great content doesn’t cut it.

I might have banned Paul Ellis (a.k.a. “The Madwebmaster” for that post)

I did not come here call anyone names, or create videos about someone’s site or blog or to tout my great marketing skills. (I still have alot to learn).

But my momma told me along time ago that when people criticize to not go off the deep end and get defensive and look for some grain of truth and maybe fix it.

I see some talented people in here with great skills. As far as I can see Lis pretty much has posted everyone’s response without prejudice. So let me address what I know and I’ll even admit what I don’t know.

1.) SBI does not own your site or domain. You do. It’s easy to transfer if you don’t want to remain with them. I’ve done 2 sites that way because some of my sites require .php support or other stuff SBI does not have at this time.

2.) I follow great marketers like John Reece, Mike Filsaime, Jimmy Brown, Dave Guindon, Perry Marshal, and the list goes on and on. Each of these so called “gurus” have their own successful niche in the internet world. None of them agree entirely with Dr. Ken Evoy’s site building philosophy but all of them have a great deal of respect for Ken’s integrity and honesty he’s brought to the internet world.

3.) I’ve been slapped many times by the moderators for some of my postings in the forum but never once for expressing my views. It was only when I lost my cool and didn’t act very respectful to some one else. I will fight for freedom of speech if it is civil and respectful of another person.

4.) The site build it package does not have everything but for the investment I can not find more value for the money spent. But that’s not why I stay with SBI. I really don’t need them anymore. I know how to program my own autoresponders, upload my own files, design my own sites and have finally learned how to use list marketing and other strategies to produce income.

In closing let me tell you why I continue to invest $299 per year. It has nothing to do with SBI nor the people who run it. It has everything to do with the spirit of leadership, learning and sharing in the free exchange of ideas in the forums.

Do SBI webmasters know it all? Nope.
Do we all sit around chanting the SBI song? Come by as a visitor to the forums and read my post. I ain’t exactly a very nice person.
Have I ever been banned for speaking my mind? Never. Ever.

Now I come here to see what all the fun is about and I only shake my head in dis-belief of the waste of talent of good people here (SBI and non-SBI) who choose to waste valuable time and effort to trash each other.

I happen to still believe that credibility, honesty, integrity will always overcome. Maybe I’m just being naive and “pollyanna”.

Thank you Lis for allowing me to post but please don’t confuse “Freedom of Speech” with “the right to be inaccurate” when alot of new people may be very confused when all they are looking for is some help in building their lives. I think you are better than that.

Paul
“The Mad Webmaster”

Paul who the fuck brought up your name here???? LMAO!!!!! Dude you have a shit MMO site with no traffic and no site building skills and you are here trying to place yourself as an authority?? LMAO!!!!

Paul
“The Mad Webmaster” LMAO!!!! This is laughable son go to my site see what a real MMO site is and go back to selling ebooks on eBay LMAO!!

@Paul: I was the one who called you out, so I feel obligated to respond. Although I get righteously angry when people come over to my friends’ place and bully them, I also know how to be civil when people are civil with me.

Talk about the law of unintended consequences: it was mainly your postings in the SBI forums that made me cancel my subscription. I compared what you were saying and what the 10-day program tutorials were saying and decided that the tutorials had so many things wrong with them that my money would be better spent elsewhere.

Ken Evoy is lucky to have you on his forums. I’m glad he realizes that. And I have your postings to thank for helping me grow beyond what SBI was offering.

But I do want to ask a question. I read your entire website, For Your Information long before I left SBI. It’s very well written and you have a great work ethic and know what you’re doing. Do you sell your products and services to SBI members privately? I bring this up because this is one of the ways SBIers monetize their sites–by selling services to other members. Nothing wrong with that–in this business, any help is good–but to evaluate your opinion properly, full disclosure would seem to be in order.

Thanks for setting me on the right road 🙂

Lorecee

I remember seeing SBI a few years ago online and didnt even know its still available. While its not a Scam, it is Grossly over-priced. You can do every thing it does with Free wordpress and free plugins and $5 a month hosting(unlimited websites also).

It just seems Ken has not got up to date with the rest of the internet and the fact that it costs $300 per website is a HUGE
NO NO.

And so the debate goes on.
Methinks some people do protest too much about your review.

After reading some of those threatening comments again, I decided to write a review myself on my old MMO blog (hardly touched for months, but what the hell).
Hopefully the post will be in my signature.
And it should be there quite a while wherever I make a comment, as that blog is hardly ever updated 🙂

Zania’s last blog post..Is Site Build It A Scam? | SBI Review

Liz, great post that has accomplished what many folks already suspected and that is the SBI is a SCAM. With a little reading from knowledgeable people a beginner can do better with WordPress and an $8 domain than they can spending hundreds of dollars on SBI.

Keep up the goods work Lis!

How to Blog for Beginners’s last blog post..How to Build a Blog

Man, this stuff is so funny I just about threw up from laughter. And this is only one so called MMO Guru…imagine if Vic wanted to call them all out. That would be a frakken laugh riot.

I love Justin’s blog, it made me almost jump out of my seat…I was reading his take on the whole site builder crap and I decided to click on his homepage at seozombie to see what was new and all of a sudden a big pissed off bear jumped at my face…frakken scared the shite out of me…ha ha.

Andrew’s last blog post..SEO

The earlier poster was right – this has got to the point where it doesn’t matter what was in the review. It’s obvious from the responses that the SBI community is full of scary, fanatical, bullying zealots. I don’t care how fantastic the product might be, I’m not going anywhere near people who behave like that!

Marisa Wright’s last blog post..Choosing Castanets

Paul,

You call yourself a webmaster? I wouldn’t use webmaster and link to the website you linked to. Looks like something that was designed with Front Page in the year 2000.

Paul – SBI is a website platform. That’s it. Outdated and overpriced and every one of the SBI sites you folks have listed here show an extreme lack of understanding when it comes to SEO and you all use url’s that point back to your affiliate link.

Scam or not – why all the hype about a website platform? The only thing that makes sense is that you all make money selling the program and not using it. I could care less if people bash Blogger or WordPress – doesn’t effect my income in the least. I get the feeling that if people quit signing up to SBI a lot of you would have no income what so ever. (Paul your link leads to a sales page for SBI) That’s MLM tactics – why did you use a link that immediately paints you as just another noob spamming his sales link? Your site has all the typical beginner sales jargon that infests the web from one end to the other. A completely worthless page of regurgitated copy used a million times before by noobs trying to convince other noobs to pay for a grossly overpriced product. Shame on you.

Do any of you have a real site? A successful site that doesn’t lead back to a sales pitch for SBI?

Does this program teach any of you about the basics of SEO?

Your Keyword is “For Your Information” – is that what you want to be ranked in Google for?

Why are all the SBI sites either smart priced or use horrid ad placement and blocks? Does anyone in your program know anything about Adsense optimization?

When I want my 3 year old to eat her veggies I tell her “Not” to eat her veggies. When your mentor wants you all to swarm Lissie he tells you “not” to swarm Lissie. If he really didn’t want that to happen he might not have mentioned her post at all. Defending himself to the choir – why would he have to make a post about Lis in the first place – defending himself to his own people?

By the time we are done there will be dozens of real reviews dotting the Google landscape for people to read regarding SBI. It only took us a day to get Lis on page 1. The pathetic fake reviews that you affiliates have spammed Google with will be useless and SBI will see a dramatic drop in recruitment. I’m not sure the owner gave this much thought when he sent his dogs out to attack but he is surely having second thoughts now. He could have ignored this post and the world would have continued merrily along.

“I follow great marketers like John Reece, Mike Filsaime, Perry Marshal, and the list goes on and on.”

You admit to following useless affiliate product pimps like those mentioned? Could you be more noob? They haven’t made a dime for others – they suck in noobs and take their money just like SBI. Is that your idea of a great marketer? Not one of them have ever made a dime using the crap they peddle – they make money peddling crap to noobs who then try to peddle the same crap. Is that what you aspire to?

We don’t sell crap to beginners. We don’t like pimps who do and we sure as hell don’t like people who think that it is acceptable to do so.

What exactly are you doing here anyway? Do you think you said something new or did you just want to repeat what has already been said? Do you not get enough attention? Trying to recruit a few noobs? What is the point of your free speech? Would you like several thousand of us to come over to your sites (the whole works of you) and piss in your back yard. Please let me know and I’ll see if we can’t arrange it.

Here are some of those real SBI reviews – enjoy.

oh and…

oops – even more SBI real reviews

Pass on a message to your cult leader and his minions – in future don’t be such dicks. If any of you have a future.

Grizzly’s last blog post..Site Build it – Don’t Buy It

Excellent Information Lissie!

Thank you! You have my support…

Very nice work, Lis. Present a concept that offends part of your readership, get people to come here and feel welcome in participating in a lively discussion, and get more people seeing ads.

Masters at work. I’m learning a lot from these sites. :>

Hi Lissie,

What a controversy, huh?

I have a tendency to stay away from controversial topics, but I felt I owed both you and Griz some links, even if this isn’t the type of thing I ordinarily write about. I owe Griz (as we all do) for obvious reasons. And I owe you because I will never forget how kind you were to me when my blog was hacked. Your words of encouragement in the shed were so meaningful at a time when I was truly freaked out. You may have even forgotten what you said, but I never will. So thanks!

Here’s the hub I wrote on SiteBuildIt: http://hubpages.com/_networking/hub/fake-site-build-it-affiliate-reviews

🙂

Hey Liz,
Your review should have had a lot more research.
I agree with what Chris wrote earlier and i don’t think you should classify SBI as a scam. If you would have said that it’s overpriced I would have agreed right off the bat.I ran across SBI myself when first starting out and the motivational speech alone is worth something. I am a little surprised that Grizz is backing you on this as he has wrote articles himself as to what should be considered a scam. It’s something that just does not deliver what is promised and SBI does. I would go as far to say that for someone that doesn’t have a clue about how internet marketing works, it might even be a good starting point. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who knows the ropes, because everything can be done much cheaper. If Grizz was to charge $300.00 for all the information he has given us instead of it being free,, would you think it a scam..
At any rate you did have a few things just flat out wrong,, SBI sites do belong to their creaters and all of your content belongs to them ,, If you have uploaded your own pages then you can easily move them ,,for free,, if you used SBI software to build your site ,,you will have to create new templates to add all your content to. So IMO my conclusion is: overpriced yes ,, scam no
oh BTW We grizz followers are somewhat of a cult ourself darlin,,, so don’t be too hard on ’em..

I guess I’ll catch hell from grizz and vic for this,,

Vic, be sure to show all of your clients your amazingly mature comments here.

Lisa, a great review and lots of interesting points to read. Seems the world is divided into 2 parts; either you use SBI or you dont.
I have never used SBI by the way.

Bihar’s last blog post..anil left a comment for ‘Shweta’

@Yourmom LMAO!!! And you are such a fucking noob you actually beleive those sites make 10k LMAO!!! OMG are you people that clueless! DO you people have any idea what so ever to look at a site and know what traffic it as and how to calculate the traffic against the CPC are u people really that stupid? LMAO!!! Like I said I really would not want u people defending me if I was Ken Evoy!

Vic’s last blog post..Yup! People Do Not Appreciate FREE!

Hey – this is an automatic, self-supporting comment-fest now! Paul makes silly statements – people who know what they are talking about (Griz and Vic) answer them – all I do is hit approve! I’m not commenting on anyone’s sites money making ability cause I ain’t an expert but I’d suggest that if Vic or Grizz tells you what’s wrong – you should bloody well listen.

@Andrew for your laughing pleasure, if you like video – I really think Allyn has a talent in video blogging Site Build It Video Review and is easily found by googling “site build it bullshit” no quotes!

@Marisa – you got it in one – that was the point I started approving every comment (well there were a couple which were really, really offensive which I deleted)

@Carla – you are most welcome and thank you.

@Grizz – well at least your spelling is better than Vic’s! This is the bit that bemuses me to – why so passionate about a platform? And you got it one re Ken – I think he was genuinely angry – after all he’s fairly good at controlling the news up until a few days ago – that’s why he posted in the his forum- and the rest – as they say – is history

@Clint – you’ve missed most of the points here – I agree Site Build it not a scam – I said above in the comments and in my following post. Griz explained why he is supporting me here Make Money with friends

@Micha – Vic has real charisma because he’s legit – he’ll call you a fucking idiot to your face, if you are, but never behind your back and always in love – I’ve never been big into following anyone or anything but for Vic and Grizz I’d do practically anything – not because they asked me to – but because they didn’t. I doubt that you will understand that

@Yourmum – see Vic’s comment – don’t jump into what you don’t understand

@Vic – you really must work on your spelling, overuse of capitalisation is a bit of a problem to, it can make people think you are shouting at them LMAO

Please – feel FREE to visit my Site-Build-It site and see what I’ve done since November 22 2008. I have hit the 250+ unique visitors per day mark three times this month and I’ve made about $1000 since January 15, 2009. Not too bad considering I’ve never done anything remotely related to html prior to last November.

You guys can snicker all you want – I’m laughing all the way to the PayPal bank transfer. 😉

J. Anne Huss

I suppose Allan Gardyne of Associate Programs.com is part of “teh SBI-cult brute squad” too?

http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/135/1/Affiliate-marketing-case-study-using-SBI/

http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/138/5/Web-affiliate-programs-experiment-2/

If you want to see some SBI sites that make $10K+ month, check out:

http://www.vacuumwizard.com
http://www.updatexp.com
http://www.cornhole-game.org

For example, vacuumwizard ranks #3 on Google for the term “vacuum cleaners” (#1 and #2 are Dyson’s and Eureka’s homepages).

Could these guys have done it without SBI and saved $200/yr? Maybe.

When you’re making $100k/$200k per year with affiliate programs with a single domain, do you really care about saving $200/yr on hosting?

Yourmom I guess again you just do not get it cuz you just do not know. PR does not drive traffic anchors do but then again you would know that if you knew as for your analogy of traffic and income here once again your stupidity shows. Online traffic does not make you money targeted traffic makes you money!

Twitter estimated page views a month over 60 million page rank 8.

Twitter has lost up to today $79 million dollars and just secured another $35 million in funding to try to make it profitable.

Now what numbers are bigger you dumb fuck mine or yours LMAO!!!!

Real internet marketers make money from quality targeted traffic we do not give a fuck about the high numbers we look at the stats to determine what actual keywords that you can monetize makes it worth it.

Again noob, Twitter has more traffic than most sites online but yet they just can not make money from the traffic because it is unmonetizable traffic.

But I guess I am expecting to much from a noob to understand. LMAO!!!

Yourmom please tell me you have an original though and not the typical cookie cutter sales copy you have been fed at SBI?

I actually give conferences on this subject so please again tell me you have something real for me LMAO!!

BTW: I will probably be giving a conference on organic traffic and the needs and requirements to be able to make that into money in this years Blogging Expo (That is if me and the fimily do not go to Spain 😉 ). You are welcome to come and learn something LMAO!!!

Vic’s last blog post..Yup! People Do Not Appreciate FREE!

Backlinks huh – my site is not even 4 months live. I’m pretty sure I could not touch it ever again and still make money, get backlinks, and build traffic. I could care less about backlinks to be honest – I got this site to help me get traffic to sell books and that is exactly what it did… $1000 worth to be exact, in two months.

I can’t even count how many of my pages are ranked top 30 in google, LOTS! And I’ve secured top positions in several pretty good keywords based only on what SBI told me to do. I’ve written like 2 articles, started up a few blogs, post on twitter (almost 1500 followers now!), and I visit my chicken forum to blab about my birds and have a link in my signature. I dare anyone else on the internet to do less work and reap more benefits. This success was not dumb luck – it was SBI!

And for the record, I am an affiliate but I don’t hawk the wares on my site, that wasn’t why I joined. Feel free to click the teeny tiny link at the bottom of each page and buy SBI under my affiliate name though – I won’t complain…

J. Anne

To be fair to Anne she hadn’t seen Vic’s comment’s above re twitter when she wrote her comment above …

Hi Lorecee,

Thank you for your kind words.

No, I don’t do any private work for SBI owners. As I tried to say in my post above, I don’t claim to be a guru, I’ve just learned some other skills that I’ve added to my 14 years of sales experience before I even went on the web.

I don’t claim to know it all and still have a lot to learn. For example, different niches require different selling strategies. Just because Adsense may work for one niche does not make it great or bad for another. I believe that blogging is one vehicle to earn income and I also believe list marketing is another. I’m not interested in touting hits to my pages as much as I am interested in marketing to my list.

Am I looking to convince people to buy SBI, heck no. That’s a personal decision based on your level of skill or lack thereof. But I’m curious as to why no one has responded to my post in this respect.

1.) Someone is giving misleading or inaccurate information.
2.) Could I go to SBI forums as a visitor and see if Paul is lying.
3.) If he hasn’t been banned from the forums and hasn’t been singing the praises of SBI as a “noob or brainless follower”, then where lies the truth?

I don’t think that’s very complicated. I believe a noob could even do this without much thinking.

But I do not want to lower the bar here. I want to raise it. So please feel free to teach me. I’m open minded and want to learn from those of you who know what you are doing. Will it cost me time or money? I’m ready and willing. It doesn’t even have to be free.

Are any of you willing to teach me? We can do it right here in the open with no restrictions or bans. Right? I’m game. Ok with you, Lis?

Paul
“The Mad Webmaster”

@Paul – why don’t you read the comment’s above – to be honest you really appear to be doing the classic “fake it until you make it”- you want people to sign up to your autoresponder so you can bombard them with material for which you will get a healthy commission. But you don’t know what you are doing from an SEO point of view: you site’s title is “The Mad Webmaster – e-Courses” – how many Google searches does that get a month?

Its people like you that nearly made me drop Internet Marketing, its people like you who give IM a very bad name. No I am not saying that every product you are flogging is crap – I have no idea I’m not wasting my time looking them up. But I know the sort of shite your mentors flog so I can guessing that your “carefully selected affiliate products” are similar.

The bottom line is that people don’t need to buy this stuff. Its all free online thanks to Grizz and Vic -then buy some hosting, domains and maybe some services later on. You claim to have 6 other websites – thats a total of 7 sites right? 🙂

Hey, I think you guys should see who ranks for “I wonder if ants scratch there ass”
Now THAT guy is a real IM’er! LOL

And, for the record, the goal of internet marketing is NOT to “make money by doing nothing.”
If that is your goal, you should go and win the lottery.
If Site Build It goes belly up, then you guys who “don’t know any HTML” will be sh*t outta luck!

Learn, work, study, build sites, add content, get links, lather, rinse, repeat over and over.

@Allyn – but it should be their not there 🙂 And please don’t censor your language on my blog 🙂

@Lis “wink wink, nudge nudge” 😉

@yourmom sorry that I butted in here on YOUR blog and added nothing of value to the Site Build It scam discussion. I will back outta the Site Build Scam Review discussion now! 😉

Hey Vic

I almost forgot you big guy. You’re slipping a little (and I almost was willing to follow you) you sly devil you.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that internet marketers don’t care about traffic near as much as they do about… wait a minute let me be accurate, I don’t want to pull a Vic

Quote:
Real internet marketers make money from quality targeted traffic we do not give a fuck about the high numbers we look at the stats to determine what actual keywords that you can monetize makes it worth it.

and then call people idiot or stupid or insult their sites for low traffic or page rank.

Come on big guy you’re letting me down here. In fact, I would swear you were a noob by that last statement. As least keep your stories straight dude.

That’s 2 mistakes you’ve made… one more and you’re out.

Try again. The truth is that sales and marketing will always be and has always been about building relationships with people (human beings big guy)… I know this is new for you so listen up and you might be a little more successful. I’ll put it on a line all for you.

People do business with people the know, like and respect.

Knowing the noob your are, you might have to look those words up in the dictionary with a limited vocabulary of words like: fuck, suck, dick, shit… and real intelligent stuff like that.

Hey Vic. I want to have a beer with you man. I really am getting to like you and you are really pretty funny.

Please… (and I mean this), please do a video on my site. I need the link juice because you said my site sucked and I’m hoping to get lots of hits to my pages. In fact, when I went to the store to buy some groceries the other day the cashier said, “I don’t want money. I want the hits to your site to increase before I sell this stuff to you.”

Now can you imagine if I lowered myself to post a message like the one above? That would be just… well mad.

Paul
“The Mad Webmaster”

Your Mom

Vacuum cleaners… lol.

An oil filter keyword. A term searched by people who don’t know how to define what they are looking for. Once the serp page opens they realize that what is on the page isn’t what they are looking for and type a new query like “how to fix my hoover” and then “who fixes hoover vacuum cleaners in timbuctoo”.

People don’t buy vacuum cleaners online. They don’t click ads either. The site you mention is a splog, poorly optimized for Adsense and the CPC you quoted would net a content ad 5 – 10 cents a click.

People type “cars” into Google all the time and then stop and think about what they are really looking for and then narrow down the search.

How do I know Vacuum cleaners is useless keyword? Look at the competing pages. Only 8 million. Lol. I could outrank that site in a month. There is no competition because there is no money in it – if there were IMers would be all over it and the competition would be in the hundreds of millions.

The site you mentioned is ranked number 1 in my DC based on 130 backlinks with so-so anchors. Anybody with a hint of SEO skills could outrank it in short order.

The “make money online” keyword has 244 million competing pages and there is a reason for that. Which keyword do you think is easier to rank for? Vacuum Cleaners or Make Money online.

The MMO keyword also has hundreds of related terms that people search for including “Money” with 3,000,000 searches a month.

Vacuum cleaner only has 300,000 useful searches (targeted us visitors) and 4500 (targeted Canadian visitors) per month – the figure you used is worldwide and the advertisers will only be charged pennies for clicks from any other destination outside N. America.

Of the 300,000 searches 75% will never get past the Adsense ads on the serp page – they will click those or re-define their query.

The remaining 25% will click through to the top site – see it and back out. Less than 1% will ever click through to ebay (and not buy) just curious and 1% of that 1% may make it below the fold and maybe click a 5 cent adsense ad. That site would be lucky to make a few hundred bucks a month and I am being generous.

You have been spoon fed the notion that all traffic is equal. It isn’t and you haven’t been taught how to do real research regarding keywords.

The term “how to make” gets 20 million searches a month. Another useless term to rank for – the searcher quickly realizes that they haven’t defined the search and narrows it down on the next search.

The worst part of you trying to impress us is that it is obvious to those of us who dominate niches that have competition that SBI doesn’t teach any of you about real SEO or monetization principles. Those sites you use are cookie cutter, poorly optimized and show no understanding of how to funnel traffic to the money click. The content is thin and verge on splogs. You have yet to produce a site that ranks well in a competitive niche and based on what you think is research I don’t think you know what a real competitive niche is. Why is that?

Search numbers are estimates that are rarely accurate – I know as I hold the number 1 spot in dozens of competitive niches.

You think PR has any relevance? Huh? To what? Let the fact that my PR0 site ranks number 2 for a term that has 244 million other pages competing with me sink in. Do you know who I outrank for that term? All your high PR gurus like Steve Pavlina and Darren Rowse and John Chow and every other blogger that sells crap to noob readers. The kind of crap that you must have read in order to think that PR matters.

You show no knowledge of “targeted search traffic” or “anchored backlinks” – why is that?

You quoted CPC estimates and didn’t know that those are just estimates and that they only apply to “sponsored ads” on Google’s own serp’s. Content ads get 25% or less on your site and then only for targeted converting clicks coming from N.American visitors. (in most cases as the advertisers are targeting those visitors) All other visitors will produce pennies. The CPC you quoted will translate into pennies on the content ads on that site. Btw – I have several sites in that niche and know the real CPC and CTR for targeted visitors to specific related keywords (I didn’t bother with a generic term like Vacuum cleaners lol) and there is no money in it.

And you spend $300 a year for a canned splog, learn the basic SEO BS found in garbage ebooks and are trying to tell the rest of us that it is worth it. Maybe you should read my blog and find out how to take a free blogspot blog and make 6-7 k a month with it – or make 30k a month with several of them. Oh and for free.

Stop trying to impress us – you only show your lack of knowledge and give people like Vic and I fodder – and trust me on this – we are going easy on you.

Grizzly’s last blog post..Site Build it – Don’t Buy It

I just had to come see what all the fuss was about. Lissie, you hang tough and do not let them bully you into removing this blog post. They can’t sue you for slander or libel either one. If they do then they will have to reveal their records to prove you wrong. I just don’t think they can do that.

SirDent’s last blog post..Jesus in the House

“He also has other sites, including TennisMindGame.com, a blog at TennisThoughts.com and FreedomIdeas.com, where he shares his income and strategies he’s used to get there.”

Hahahaha… no please… hahahaha… stop please… hahahaha

Two sports sites using poorly anchored url’s that no one searches for (and there is no money in sports niches) and wait for it… A Home Based Business blog Oh My – just how many pages back in the serp’s is it behind me… hahahahaha

Chitika, Adsense below the fold and he makes 10K a month? hahahahaha… please stop… hahahaha

Grizzly’s last blog post..Site Build it – Don’t Buy It

Sorry for slow delivery and lack of focus I am on Codeine for the pain 😉

Below is a detailed explanation, my recommendation watch the video as it was made with the true intent to teach and not debate 😉

http://www.viddler.com/explore/bloggerunleashe/videos/47/

Vic’s last blog post..Yup! People Do Not Appreciate FREE!

Thank you Vic – if someone actually listens to this might actually learn how to make money online. For the knockers Vic has an MBA and has run large real-world businesses. He’s one of the smartest people I know, this video also explains the bad language. Listen and learn. And this one isn’t R-rated either.
For those of you who can’t quite see the software he is using its called Market Samurai – I reviewed it here Market Samurai

You SBI people don’t get it. This is Google bombing, pure and simple.

The veracity of the content of the original post is/was irrelevant.
The whole idea was to promote page(s) in the SERPS and it worked pretty well.

There’s a nice little SEO lesson in amongst all this hot air.

@Vic and Lis–
Updatexp.com is a pagerank 6. What’s the pagerank of your sites, Vic? What’s the PR of this site?

Microsoft.com links to updatexp.com:

https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=6899DAEE-B1F0-48F3-AC27-62BD619C23A4

According to Microsoft (this is on Microsoft’s site, not Ken Evoy’s”:

“He runs a popular website at http://www.updatexp.com (which attracts over 400,000 UNIQUE visitors a month) and is currently building a website dedicated to explaining Windows Vista at http://www.instantvista.com.”

Do you attract 400,000 uniques per month for a technology site (e.g. very monetizable)? Is your traffic verified by Microsoft?

I guess Microsoft is a f**** noob too to believe that a site can’t make $10k/month with 400,000 uniques to a technology site….that’s less than 3 cents per visitor.

Correction on video forgot MS is not like KE so the search count is per day just do the math base it on CTR of about.20% or less just cuz the ad competition and understand that he will be getting 3 cent clicks because of pricing model.

BTW: MS Market Samurai KE: Keyword Elite

If you nee a keyword research tool get Market Samuray cheaper and getting better by the day 😉

Vic’s last blog post..Yup! People Do Not Appreciate FREE!

Grizz LMAO!!! I know man at this stage I actually feel bad for them it is really sad if you think about it.

Vic’s last blog post..Yup! People Do Not Appreciate FREE!

@yourmum -what’s PR got to do with anything – mine is 3 if you had the appropriate toolbar you could see that yourself. Type make money online into google: this site usually sits on position 2 http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/ its PR0.

Given the percentage of searchers that use Microsoft search engines compared to Google – yes I think they are noobs in search rankings! Software is the core strength not the internet.

@Paul – this is NOT google bombing – that’s an inappropriate practice which Google wised up to a long time ago. If you are interested in the technical side check out Justin who explains the technical side of SEO and the Site Build It controversy.

@Anne – You have what looks like a great niche, you’ve worked hard and you are making some money – do yourself a favour and read some of the links here – you’d do a whole lot better if you learnt how to build backlinks!

Lis,

I like what you have to say and your outlook on things make sense. I am a therapist and looking to build a website. What direction do you think a computer novice building a business should go in building a website.

Thanks a lot,

Tom
tfkearns3@aol.com

Your own domain i.e. tomtherapist.com with separate hosting and running WordPress – without a doubt the easiest way to get a website up and running with a minimum of knowledge – Check out my other site Legitimate Online Businesses which is all about this topic.

Taking away what income people make will not make anyone feel good about themselves. Challenging them to improve their knowledge and resources is another issue and a little bashing and flaming won’t hurt anyone in the long run.

Dr Ken crossed the line by knowingly sending out the wolves on Lis. He knows he made a mistake. His income will suffer but he may well learn from this and develop a better product. He isn’t a scammer – just a businessman that has not kept up with the times. He has the opportunity to do so now. I believe he has the right to make a living with his product and we have the right to question it’s value. That’s how a free marketplace works.

It is in none of our interests (both sides) of this debate to seek to impair anyone’s ability to make a living online. Reporting people to Google is vindictive and you won’t improve your self esteem by harming someone else. No one wants to see their efforts evaporate so don’t do it to others. Compete with them fairly – don’t resort to less honorable methods.

It’s been fun but as Vic said – this is about offering help to those who want it. We don’t need to harm those that don’t. Let’s leave it at that.

Grizzly’s last blog post..Site Build it – Don’t Buy It

@Lis – So when Microsoft states on their site that updatexp.com gets 400,000 monthlies, you’re saying Microsoft is lying?

Are you saying that PR is not important at all (strange, considering how obsessed SEOers are over pagerank), or that 6 vs. 3 isn’t a huge difference?

Do you dispute that a tech site can make at least 3 cents per visitor with affiliate programs, adsense and your own products?

@Vic – Microsoft claims updatexp.com gets 400,000 monthlies. They are *obviously* noobs, so please enlighten us on how you determined that updatexp.com gets only minor traffic, the approximate traffic it gets, and the CPC or value per visitor a site in that niche would make.

@Yourmom – I am saying that PR is not all important as far as ranking in the search engines and therefore making money from organic traffic. No I don’t think Microsoft is lying – the relevant question is how much money is the site making.
Vic can answer for himself but CPC is easily accessed by using the Google keywords tool – google it. BTW has it occurred to you yet that a site about updating an obsolete OS is probably dying – the past figures are fairly irrelevant to future performance in this particular I case

@Vic – Your stuff is actually pretty good (I checked out your site), but you’re dead wrong on updatexp.com and vacuumwizard.com.

Vacuumwizard.com ranks #2 for both “vacuum cleaners” and “vacuum cleaner”

According to Google’s keyword tool, “vacuum cleaners” gets 550,000 average searches per month at a CPC of $2.73.

vacuum cleaner $2.39 823,000

Those are better numbers than “make money online”, which Lis bragged about a site ranking #2 above as being ‘pro’.

@Vic and Lis:

Hopefully this isn’t a double post….

Vacuumwizard.com ranks #2 for “vacuum cleaner” and “vacuum cleaners”

Those terms, according to google’s keyword tool, get a combined average monthly search of more than 1.3 million, at an average CPC of $2.50 or so.

Vacuumwizard is on the first page of google for “dyson vacuum cleaner” which gets 110,000 average monthly searches with a CPC of $2.80.

Those are better numbers than “make money online”. Maybe his monetization is terrible and he makes no money….in that case, I suggest you buy his site from him quick and rebuild it to make it monetizable.

I’m not sure which particular keywords updatexp.com uses, so I can’t do a similar analysis there.

@Yourmum – congrats you are actually thinking and investigating. My response to the you re the site which is #2 for Make Money Online – was purely in relation to PR. You are completely on the right track regarding finding real products to build sites around, make money online certainly will not make most people any money online.

You are however a little confused on the monetization – the CPC you quote are what the advertiser pays – the publisher will get around 30% of that – if they are not smart priced. Vacuumwizard doesn’t use Adsense – they are using eBay affiliate – which is a good way to monetise a product niche. The trouble with the term “vacuum cleaner” is that its too broad – what is the person thinking who types in that phrase – do they want a new one, do they want to know the history of vacuum cleaners, do they want to know what type of vacuum cleaner to buy for their kid’s asthma? So although there is lots of traffic – very little of it is buyers. Getting paid is not about the traffic its about getting buyers to your site!

If I wanted the niche – I’d have no need to buy the site- I’d just outrank him with my site.

@Lis — I know what CPC is, and that publishers don’t get all of that money (though Google doesn’t reveal the exact amount, so your 30% figure is speculation).

I’m saying that if you’re in a real niche (not crappy MMO) where advertisers are spending $3 million a month on adsense (not to mention affiliate spend, ebay, chitika, etc.) , there is gold in them thar hills. The site ranks for other, more specific buying terms, like the example of “dyson vacuum cleaners”. I’m sure people aren’t typing in terms like that for the heck of it–they are thinking of buying a dyson vacuum.

He claims to make $15k /mth with vacuumwizard.com. Maybe he’s lying…but the numbers are what they are regarding the niche and his site’s rankings within the niche.

I have yet to see numbers from Vic or you on your sites that you claim are proof of your superior internet marketing skills that qualify you to say that each and every of the 100,000 site build it sites are complete crap that don’t make back their $300/yr.

@yourmom – Yes I am agreeing with you! ANY niche is better than MMO But being on position 10 won’t help the clicks are in position one and tail off to around zero on position 4. You can see my approximate numbers – elsewhere on this site. I never said each and every SBI site was crap, others have, and I must admit they seem poorly optimized. If someone is making $15k a year good luck to them – but think their success has little to do with what they learnt in the SBI method – Paul (The Mad Webmaster) pretty much said that above!

BTW you won’t see a specific site of mine mentioned here – I have no intention of revealing my niches – and go read Vic’s blog if you want to know why that is

RE: “BTW – if you had commented using your keywords as your name and pointed to your website url you would have gained an anchored backlink….”
LMAO, good one Lis, I guess Site Build It doesn’t teach how to get backlinks!!!

Well, you sure did touch some nerves, it’s too bad so many have spent a ridiculous and insane $300 bucks per year to do something they could have done for almost nothing, and yet, these types of overpriced gimmicks will always hook the desperate newbies, and of course they have to defend their investment, or else, they would feel like fools.

I think what these hyper commenters are missing is the entire point, (or maybe it is the point that is infuriating them so much), which is the simple fact they you can build a successful online biz without paying the insane $300 bucks a year, sorry if that hurts ;-(

By the way Lis, great link bait post, see SiteBuildIt’s what a real marketer can do, oh and my cousin is a lawyer, I will give him your number for that lawsuit issue 😉

JR @ Internet Marketing’s last blog post..Google Adsense Privacy Policy Update Deadline

@Allyn — Yeah, because your sarcastic and profane example is the same as a keyword where advertisers spend $3 million per month (not to mention the spend on the longtail keywords in that niche). Please, add something constructive, preferably with data, to the discussion.

Please guys like Grizz said the last thing we need is a fellow marketeer lose income because of this. The intention here was to give support to Lis from the onslaught of the pack from Kenny Boy not to have some one lose a site.

The video I made I only referred to technical aspects of the income or the serious lack off.

Now for future reference for the SBI group do not ever show your sites on an MMO blog let me repeat that do not ever show your niche sites in an MMO blog you should have a flagship blog that is what you use to post on MMO blogs. If you do not know what a flagship blog is please Google it 😉

Hey Lis, Looks like you started a war! BTW I took part in Grizzly’s call to action, wanted to help out!

By the looks of the SERPs, it seems that SEO is alive and well, despite Ken Evoy declaring it dead last fall. Ken is aware of the tsunami that just rolled up on his beach; the rest of them still have no clue.

Paul, you have to admit that the link to fyi-promo that appears in each and every one of your 16,000 forum postings over at SBI is some pretty effective advertising for members there to hop on over and buy your stuff. That’s what I meant by selling products and services to SBI members and getting them on your list. Are you saying you’ve never sold anything to an SBI customer in your life? I know you know; if you’re not running tracking metrics you shouldn’t be in this business.

Most people in our community take a pretty dim view of flogging affiliate MMO products to people on your list like the current business model in the Warrior Forum and on Digital Point (and even that is miles ahead of what SBI is teaching). I’m not as critical of IM products as some here, but that doesn’t matter. We support each other even when we disagree on things. It’s called being professional, and we’re a business community. We don’t give cyber hugs or indulge in a lot of feelgood. We help each other make money.

The trouble with business-in-a-box (tks Allyn) packages like SBI is that they don’t pass knowledge. They only teach you how to follow instructions. Then when the business model changes (which happens fast on the internet), you’re left high and dry like all the mom and pop stores that lost out to Walmart.

The information is out there for free on Griz and Vic’s sites, if you want to learn, but we don’t teach. We’re too busy making money to teach, and honestly, there’s a lot more money in what we do than there is in selling how-to crap to noobs, or building 300 pages of content and slapping some Adsense on it because you don’t know how else to monetize your site.

I’ll shut up now; I have sites to build. Lissie, you tired yet?!

@Lis

If you really believe what you stated about VacuumWizard.com, you must be blind…

“Vacuum Wizard doesn’t use Adsense”

– Then why, pray tell, is there a block of Adsense distinctly labeled “Ads by Google” on the homepage?

“They use eBay affiliate”

– He’s using mainly Chitika ads. And for the record, he’s one of their Premium Publishers, meaning he has a private account manager (Ryan Travis) to help him optimize placement, performance, and thereby, his income.

I’m sure you’ll brush that off, calling Chitika small potatoes and ignoring the fact that they use his site as one of their case studies.

eBay affilate sales are a small part of his income mix, but not one of the major models.

He also has other sites, including TennisMindGame.com, a blog at TennisThoughts.com and FreedomIdeas.com, where he shares his income and strategies he’s used to get there.

For the record, he’s making more than $10k a MONTH (not a year) from his sites combined, not $10k/month from VacuumWizard.com alone.

Looks like you might want to take a page from his book as per your own words on your “Who is Lis” page, you’re not making an income to speak of from your online efforts.

And how would you expect to develop a site that outranks his? That’s the best laugh I’ve had all day.

According to SpyFu, he ranks highly in Google for over 1659 keywords. If that’s not targeted traffic, what is?

@Grizz – hiya – nice short comment that one – I’ve learned something – I thought all the same things 🙂 Didn’t bother doing the research!

@Loreecee – not really – but I looking forward to North America going to bed so I can get some work done!

@SirDent – don’t worry this page is staying up! Yes I learnt the word “discovery” in the context of libel suits thanks to this discussion – very illuminating!

@YouMustbe – actually I was and you are right on both counts – it never occurred to me that a “successful” site would be idiot enough to chikta – but live and learn. The adsense block was below the fold on my small screen. Mixing monetization methods doesn’t work either – I don’t believe his income figures- see Grizz’s comment for a full explanation

@Mad Webmaster – read Grizz’s comment – it applies to you to.

Hey Lis,

For starters, you should go back and apologize for anyone incorrect information and fix it. Just because a product is bad doesn’t mean you should be sloppy in a review.

Great site! I disagree on Pavlina for starters. What is so great about his site? He was just lucky in his timing. A load of fluff about self improvement. Puh-leaze.

Maybe I should sign up for SBI, pay 300$ a site, hire some ghostwriters on the cheap and I will be RICH!

Boy in a few months I will be getting 1,000 targeted visitors a day and will be making the big money. All I have to do is rinse and repeat.

Of course if I had such great secrets, I would just hire teams of writers and become a billionaire, but I am sure the venerable Ken Envoy has such a kind heart that he just wants to share the wealth.

Most of these adsense success stories are lies, plain and simple. Anyone experienced in creating niche sites knows this. Listen to the real internet marketers like Griz and Vic, who actually make 15K+ a month.

Even if you know what you are doing, it still takes a long time to become successful at building sites. I would say 99% of people fail to make over $1000 a month.

I thought I knew a lot 6 months ago, but it seems like my knowledge has grown exponentially since then. I am sure it will grow even further a year down the road.

It is like giving someone a plumbing business in a box or an ebay business in a box. Both concepts are absurd to anyone who has actually owned multiple businesses.

Maybe there needs to be a coordinated effort to outrank anguilla beaches.

You know, coincidentally anguilla beaches would be a whooping 1 click a day if I was using PPC according to google.

Anguilla travel gets around 40 clicks a day PPC for a 1-3 placing, but Ken Envoy is nowhere on the top 10 for this term.

Anguilla hotel they can’t even rank above the fold, I think they are in fifth place, which should only be a trickle for that keyword, despite what is probably a very good page.

The “It” in Site Build It is Bulls#@t.

Even with a lot of long tails, it is clear that there are a bunch of people telling tall tales.

Here is the business model. Build a blog about product reviews. (could be about anything). Get the name of the item in the domain. Update it regularly by reviewing different items in your niche.

Register a bunch of domains and host them on different class C IP’s. Post to these blogs regularly (make them reviews on the same topic) and get backlinks to them. Link them back to your main site.

Profit.

You don’t need a clown like Envoy to tell you this. This info is on the internet for free.

@Anders – I did see the next post. I have no evidence that yourmom is actually the owner of the vacuum site.

@Grizz – don’t hurt yourself! 🙂

That’s alot of information generously given, Vic.

# Tonia S Mar 22nd, 2009 at 1:11 am

Thought you’d want to take a look at this:

http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/782/1/How-to-achieve-10000-visitors-a-day-with-Site-Build-It/

And yet, not one single solitary word about “how to achieve 10000 visotors a day.”

Hmm. Go figure.

Personal Development for Dummies™’s last blog post..Site Build It Vs. Steve Pavlina: Which Is the Scarier Cult?

Lissie,

I hope you’re enjoying this wall of comments as much as I am. 😛 Over 30k words in this post before this comment, for a second I thought your broke SeoQuake when I was checking!

I think SEO is pointless to pull out at this time because the naysayers will continue to ignore the facts. Ken Evoy claimed SEO was dead back in 2005, four years ago. If master says it is dead, then it is dead, lol.

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001244.shtml

Brian G’s last blog post..Site Build It Reviews: Power To The People

Thank you Vic.

I’m sure you’ll brush that off, calling Chitika small potatoes and ignoring the fact that they use his site as one of their case studies.

Uh. I only use Chitika on the sites that won’t make me any money anyway. Hmm. Is there a reason for that?

Personal Development for Dummies™’s last blog post..Site Build It Vs. Steve Pavlina: Which Is the Scarier Cult?

Thought I would come back for another laugh at what some comments are stating here.

what happened to vic !!!!!!!

I’m trying to read his blog and it won’t let me get into it.

Tim – Vic is having to move bloggerunleashed to new servers because the load is too much – it make take a day or 2 before the site settles down – you should be able to view the video though its a direct link to viddler

I use SBI…..you know the best thing about finding this post though the SBI forums – i found out who Grizz and Vic are (i was reading his yesterday before it went offline)

I have to say they have AWESOME BLOGS with very good advice.

thanks very much

Tim – that is just so awesome mate (that’s Australian BTW) – I am really, really pleased if we have introduced you to some good reading material. Vic’s blog – bloggerunleashed – is being redirected to a different server array – the huge number of visitors that the site gets has been overloading hostgator’s largest option so they had to build him something bigger! He should be back up in a few hours – just keep checking the link – the video of Vic’s is accessible direct via the viddler link – well worth 30minutes of your time.

Lis,

Steve Pavlina sold out a long time ago check out The Dirty Little Secret Behind The Law of Attraction which I wrote about a year ago. I had no problem with his predilection for spouting nonsense, it was the relentless hypocrisy and blatant scamming of the naive and unwary that turned my stomach.

KuleKat

Prolly the first time I’ve seen griz rant, and take action. It’s very amusing lmao

@Lis — If Vic’s blog is using hostgator’s biggest option, then he’s spending FAR more than $300/yr on hosting. SBI charges $300/yr regarding of traffic levels. Even if you think updatexp.com can’t monetize 400,000 monthlies, the fact is the site gets that traffic level (as verified by Microsoft, which I guess is a noob), for $300/yr hosting. You would crash a $6/mth godaddy or hostgator shared account with that traffic.

Why don’t you and Vic post some pics of your adsense checks like shoemoney? Or is he a noob too?

@Yourmom listen to Vic’s video -read Grizz’s response to you and fucking learn.

You want proof! It’s not Adsense but here it goes with my auction sites:
http://mcgrath.ca/2008/06/03/bans-result-for-may/

If you took the time to watch Vic’s video, you will understand that Vic show ads to search engines to maintain a higher CTR. He and others are using a free script for that. You can us a WP plugin too. In MSB, I added a new feature to allow you to show ads or not on a post by post basis.

If you want to learn what a better CTR can do, read this post:
http://mcgrath.ca/2009/03/17/happy-st-patricks-day-to-internet-marketers-and-all/

Steve McGrath’s last blog post..Site Built It Review/Opinion followup

Class is in Session SBIers pay attention.

Do you actually have to pay $300 for each site? That makes it hard to have very many- That’s like putting all of your eggs in one basket.

@your mom …come on lets just learn from these guys. Everyone knows updatexp or whatever it is, makes a fortune. Of course everyone knows that!!!!!!! Just leave it and read vic and grizzlies blogs.

@Yourmum, How many sites can you host on SBI for $300 a year? Umm only 1. How many sites can you Host on Hostgator? an unlimited amount.

@Christy -each and every one $300 – though I think they do a promotion every now and then you get a deep discount. This is the bit that is really annoying- it doesn’t matter how many sites you have – you aren’t taking up any more bandwidth – as most don’t get traffic -the domain name costs $10 max a year. Oh and you pay extra for the comments feature too apparently LMAO

@thanks tim

@yourmom -listen to tim

@Diane – I don’t think we are talking logic here … but thanks for trying!

Hang on just a minute Vic and Grizz. You came to Lis defense and that’s noble of you but I just started to play and you want to end the game now?

No…I love freedom of speech too you noob.

See if I wanted to lower myself to the standards set here I might say something like this:

Hey Vic, you idiot, I’m trying to duplicate your videos or “vlogs” as you call them and tell me, do the annoying children noises in the background add some kind of “professional value” to the videos you create you putz. Have the decency to shut the kids up when your sharing your wisdom with us. You might think it makes you look more human but can’t you afford a babysitter with all the money you earn dummy.

Or what for example I said something like this to come down in the mud with you:

“The fact that you ran 3 corporations in the ground and declared bankruptcy back in 2004 makes you an expert in business… you stupid noob.”

That would be pretty irresponsible of me wouldn’t it. Or is it freedom of speech?

Well I’m not going to lower myself to make such comments if true. There comes a responsibility to your right to free speech.

But I’m still waiting for my video site review. I only got to sell 3 products from the last posting. I thought you had more traffic than that dumb ass.

Wow! Please come play with me. I like the smell of mud in the morning.

Paul
“The Mad Webmaster”

P.S. Vic.. if you increase your Zoloft medication to about another 100 mg per day and get a little more therapy sessions under your belt, you might get this nervous breakdown thing under control you noob. You know I’m kidding right?

I see, spread lies about well-known people and companies and ride on the back of the response. You must be so proud! (Ooh look at all the content people are creating with their comments about the drivel I sucked out of my thumb!)

Parasites live well this way.

Luckily most of your readers won’t check the “facts” you mention which are all wrong. (you don’t get your domain name(false), you don’t own your site (false) etc.)

And, then when the attacked person comes back with a logical response to each of your points you don’t even take the time to respond in like manner.

I feel sorry for all the poor souls who believe you. Luckily most won’t because they can check the “facts” you write for themselves.

I guess the web allows such nonsense opinions to exist.

Luckily it also allows people to respond.

I don’t believe a word this writer says because it’s clear that research and fact-checking aren’t strong points.

Opinions are fine though in this case even the opinion seems to be based on misunderstanding.

Tip: You can not ride off the back of other people’s success for your whole career. It’s sad to see.

FACT: $299 for SBI! is a bargain for what you get. If your main issue is the price then you obviously don’t make much money because $299 is nothing for what you get with SBI!.

You obviously don’t get it and then write about it to get attention. Sad.

So, as John Lennon asked Paul McCartney…

“How do you sleep at night?”

Keep milking it!

#
skitzarella Mar 23rd, 2009 at 10:02 pm

“Class is in Session SBIers pay attention.”

That was antagonistic and mean spirited. I take it back.. It would me more accurate to say that there is a lot to be learned from all of this.

@Lis et al : You can’t host “unlimited” sites on hostgator for $300/yr if you are getting 400,000 monthly uniques on a single domain (e.g. updatexp.com). You can host 100 BANS .info domains that get 3 visitors per day on $6/mth shared hosting–but get a site with 10,000 + dailies, and you’re going to spend at least $25/mth ($300/yr) on hosting alone per domain.

@Tim–my text-based sarcasm detector is broken, so I can’t tell if you’re serious or not….

I don’t know precisely how much updatexp.com makes (as I’m not the owner, and the owner hasn’t posted copies of his 1040 AFAIK), but I know that it’s owned by a Microsoft MVP, and Microsoft says his site get 400,000 monthly uniques (*Microsoft* says this about traffic levels, not the owner or Ken Evoy or sitesell). He sells his consulting services (in addition to more passive income methods like ebooks and videos), and I would think that a technical consultant with 400,000 monthlies and verifiable “approval” by Microsoft can make a few bucks. perhaps that’s totally wrong.

The link to Microsoft’s statement about updatexp’s traffic levels is found in one of my earlier posts. They also link to his new vista site.

I’m not asking people not to learn from Lis or whomever–they just should admit that not EVERY one of the 100,000 SBI hosted sites is crap that doesn’t earn it’s $300 back annually.

@Whomever: I watched Vic’s video. If I did the same analysis on my own site, I’d “conclude” that it makes maybe $5/mth – probably less. But then I look at my affiliate commissions, Adsense reports, and 1099s, and I see that I made $8,000 and change last year. So, there is some flaw in his analysis. Maybe he’s not taking into account non-search engine traffic, or longtail traffic or whatever. I’m no guru, I can’t tell. I just know that my little niche site will make about $700-800 this month without me having added any content–basically passive income. You can call BS on me all you want, but I (and the IRS, unfortunately) know what I made in 2008.

I’m not trying out “out-guru” you or Vic or anyone else. I don’t run a MMO blog and don’t claim to be the expert. I’m just saying that your statement that SBIers don’t make back their $300 is untrue. Maybe they can do it for less using shared hosting and a wordpress blog. Maybe you guys are trying to save the “noobs” from spending too much on SBI hosting when other hosting is cheaper. A great public service and all. Then I see affiliate links on all your sites. So, high-minded altruism or not, you’ve got a financial stake in one solution vs another.

I’m not pimping my site or affiliates in these comments–I’ve got no skin in this game. Just trying to clear up the facts.

@Marius – didn’t you read Ken’s post in the “private” forum on sitesell.com – he wanted you guys to stop providing me with free content – he’s caught on at least.
@skitzarella – don’t lose sleep over it 🙂
@yourmom – no I don’t think Tim was being sarcastic …

Grizz, Vic,

“When the student is ready the teacher will come.”

Fortunately that happened in my case, and I so appreciate my awesome mentors.

In this case, the teachers may have arrived a bit early to the party, before the students were ready.

At least you tried. And you’ve sent the good karma of your good didactic intentions vibrating out through the universe.

Wishing everyone the best and tons of SBI (Super Bedazzled Income).

Interesting, will follow this post.

“The Dunning-Kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”[1]. They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average.”

Some more free content for you.

Won’t help you much though I realize.

Huge Fail.

Your false reporting is the only scam in this case.

I think what many people are trying to say about SBI is that it seems really over priced.

Then there is a lot of speculation that the information provided in the SBI training materials is a little out-dated or useless in terms of their SEO relevancy (this is speculation because nobody is going to spend the $300 to check out this fact).

And then there are some who are just a little angry at people being jerks.

It is really important in these types of conversations to put your caps on to really listen to what others are saying and what the purpose behind their comments are. Nobody is deneying that some people make money using SBI!. What I think (and many other appear to think to) is that maybe the $300 could have been better spent elsewhere. That seems like a reasonable opinion to have.

For example, could a regular ol’ blogger blog that was built at the same time as the one vacuum cleaner blog rank well for the phrase “vacuum cleaner” ? Probably.

Steward’s last blog post..SBI! (Site Build It!) Is A Waste of Money!

Lissie – nicely played. Not only did you expose this cult of noobs for what they are, you got some serious traffic out of this and got to #1.

$300 for hosting one site??? Jesus Christ!!! You can get a Hostgator RESELLER ACCOUNT FOR $300 and host …

wait for it…

AS MANY SITES AS YOU FUCKING WANT YOU SBI NOOBS!!!

Thai’s last blog post..Site Build It? Forget It!!

@Thai and have enough bandwidth to comfortably handle a massive increase of traffic over a few days LMAO!

@yourmom ====You can’t host “unlimited” sites on hostgator for $300/yr if you are getting 400,000 monthly uniques on a single domain (e.g. updatexp.com). You can host 100 BANS .info domains that get 3 visitors per day on $6/mth shared hosting–but get a site with 10,000 + dailies, and you’re going to spend at least $25/mth ($300/yr) on hosting alone per domain.====

With than many uniques per day I know enough about converting targeted traffic to $$$$ that I could easily spring for another hosting account. Can the SBI’s like Matt say the same?

Thai’s last blog post..Site Build It? Forget It!!

I see it is still going on here. Harry does seem to have a good point made in his comment, but still the venomous attacks by some were uncalled for. The gang mentality is very disturbing. Why can’t they just refute what you wrote and let it go at that?

SirDent’s last blog post..Jesus in the House

EXACTLY SirDent – we were all agreed several pages of comments back that SBI is not a SCAM but does seem to have rather alarming tendencies towards the cultish side of things. If they had left it at that this would have died days ago, I would have floated down the SERPS and that would have been that.

Harry asked what initially motivated me: I wanted some ranking for my blog for some search terms that beginners search for, but when I searched SBI reviews all I got was the same stuff, same affiliate copy, over and over. That never looks good for any company. No company has a perfect record, and no unhappy ex-customers, certainly not in anything to do with make money online and certainly not a company that has been in business for over 10 years.

When I was descended upon I realised how scary that would have been for your average blogger, and that was why there were no negative reviews – no I can’t prove its happened before, just around 99.9% certain 🙂

People who are truely good at what they do certainly do not need to triumph their “children’s” success all over the web, and truly don’t understand that side of the whole Ken Evoy persona.

And isn’t just a little sad that the hundreds of people in that “private” forum still think its “private” – that’s really, really low, a real abuse of trust.

Harry I wish your niece every bit of luck in her endevours – hard work is definitely required but you can make money online, probably even with SBI, just remember always keep learning, stuff changes on the Internet real quick!

Lis,

I don’t know what motivated you to do this, but it is lively isn’t it?

I am not a user of SBI, but my niece is.

I have a business in London and my niece asked if she could use a desk in the office to start her ‘new business’. She’s 20 years old and had problems with drug abuse, so I was more than willing to try and help her out.

She has been using SBI for two years and her income at the moment is just a couple of hundred dollars a month; I have been ‘involed’ with her business from the start.

Each time I go past her desk, she shouts “Uncle Harry can you help me with this please?” and on more than one occasion I have been drawn into her problems for hours on end.

After reading your blog, which was brought to my attention by my niece, I thought I’d throw in my tuppence worth. So here goes!

Firstly SBI is not, in my opinion a scam. I think it is an excellent set of tools for building a business. However, I don’t think it guarantees (and no guarantees for success are made) success for anybody and those who are successful would probably successful with or without SBI, in my opinion

I think Ken Evoy is a good guy and he is extremely clever, intelligent and is a force to be reckoned with. I do however, question why he plasters his personal success trophies all over the internet. He obviously has his reasons, but it doesn’t make an a lot of sense to me.

Furthermore, I can see how it might antagonise some of his subscribers, after all, aren’t they all striving for that ‘perfect lifestyle’ in the Carribean?

The sad things is that while all of his followers aspire to have a more improved lifestyle, none of them, with the exception of just a few, could even dream of achieving what he has, such is his is titanic ability. So why does he wallow in all of his exhibits and flagrantly publish them on the internet? Only he knows, I guess!

As far as the Anguilla-Beaches.com site is concerned, it is his daughter’s site as far as I can make out. I think (and it is only my opinion) the only thing he is guilty of perhaps, is actually doing 90% of the work himself and then using the site as a pre-sell (he is the master after all) to all comers. What better testimony than that of a 14 year old and if she can do it, so can you. That’s what convinced my niece. It’s a little like the mom who asks her young daughter if she’d like to help make some cookies in the kitchen. The reality of course, is that mom does most of the work, but always announces to those sharing in the spoils “these were hand made by *****”. It’s what parents do to help their children develop.

The one thing I find a little ‘spooky’ is the way in which his ‘disciples’ behave in a similar sycophantic manner. Some of these obsequious individuals couldn’t resist the opportunity to demonstrate their undying support of the principal of their Klan, here in your blog…You know who you are!

I have witnessed SBIers being brought into line in the forums and it is true, that if you step out of line, or say anything that could offend the ‘Führer’ you are swiftly removed. Whilst Ken ‘lives in’ or ‘floats on’ the Carribean, his clique of moderators ‘take care of the business’. This happy band of trainees have had plenty of ‘hands on’ tuition from ‘the leader’.

In the short time I have had an arms-length involvement with this ‘programme’ I have to be fair and say that there are a number of people who seem quite lovely…these would include Marc Liron and Debs and both have contributed to my niece’s progress to date.

I hope this helps.

Harry

Thanks Harry for your thoughtful comment.

Dog gone it!

Just when it was getting to be some fun everyone wants to tone down. Even the guy with the lisp. (at least have someone do a video that we can understand you idiot)

I wanted to exercise more free speech.

I guess this will be my last post as I head back to my cult and drink some more kool-aid and die in peace with my nazi friends.

I do want to say something to Lis though and I say it with all sincerity. (I know words like sincerity and integrity are hard words for some in here)

Lis, you have posted all my comments and have honored your word to do so. That gives me hope. Not that you’ll join SBI… you’ve made your case and that’s probably a good choice. You don’t need SBI to be successful. It gives me hope that you’ll post accurate information and exercise all the free speech you want.

As for the rest of you noobs, you are absolutely right. SBI is not for you. You’ll continue to follow such great inspirational people like Vic and Griz who really have your best interest at heart. I can feel the love every time they open their mouths.

Coming Soon: My video site review of their work. You’ll love it I promise, and it will be a little more professional. (no kids in the background… so rubbing your nose like a cocaine addict) So stay tuned sports fans and drop by my piece of garbage site real soon.. ya hear.

God I love the smell of mud in the morning! It makes me feel like a man.. like Vic.

Paul
“The Mad Webmaster”

@Lis – ==People who are truely good at what they do certainly do not need to triumph their “children’s” success all over the web, and truly don’t understand that side of the whole Ken Evoy persona.==

That sounds like every MMO blogger in the world, with their adsense check and bank account scans and income claims.

Every paid service or product has a free alternative. Hell, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are “scammers” because you can get the same book at the library free.

BANS is a scam because you can get free WordPress plugins that (legally) scrape Ebay listings too.

Keyword Elite is a scam because there are free alternatives (though you have to mix and match a few to get most of the results).

Aweber is a scam because there are a tons of free autoresponder scripts.

All of the affiliate products you pimp in the upper right hand of your blog have free and/or lower cost alternatives. Does that make you an accomplice to a scam?

It seems like the main difference between a “great time-saving product” and a “scam” is whether the author of the article is getting a commission from said product.

Most MMO bloggers with their fake Adsense checks are bullshit too. You have met the handful that aren’t here and you don’t even realise it!

I don’t recommend BANS here, or provide an affiliate link. when I bought Keyword Elite it was the only product that had the functionality to automate days of manual work. I now think Market Samurai is better, but both still work well depending on your needs.

I don’t use Aweber or any autoresponder – I don’t build lists to spam people with my junk. I don’t sell any autoresponder on this blog

Well one of the products I “pimp” costs $12/month -pretty expensive I guess… The other products save me a lot of time, but if you don’t have the money don’t buy them.

But all of those products are either software or services which provides me with something useful for my business. None of them tell me HOW to run my business, because I am in business for myself that independence is a lot of WHY I am in business.

@Lis – ==I don’t use Aweber or any autoresponder – I don’t build lists to spam people with my junk. ==

That might be part of why you’re not making as much money as you could. The money is in the list if you have *good* stuff to sell. Every major e-tailer from Amazon.com to Tigerdirect.com (a major computer & electronics retailer) to Walmart and Costco uses email lists to their customers to generate business. Obama’s Presidential campaign used email marketing to solicit donations.

Email lists are not just for the MMO floggers and scammers.

An opt-in list is not “spamming” by definition, and most reputable autoresponders use opt-ins.

“Pimp” was probably too strong a term. You are promoting those products for a commission.

So Why is Site Build It a Scam?

What Does It Cost to Build Your Own Site:

578 replies on “Site Build It Scam Review”