Sitesell $50,000 Challenge – week two

October 18, 2011 by JD · 1 Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Events, Site Build It

It’s been over a week since Sitesell, Inc. issued their $50,000 challenge.

Briefly stated, this is the challenge (but see the full challenge and first comment for all the details):

If you can find documented proof that another product, or collection of information and tools (see tools.sitesell.com), delivers everything that SBI! does (or more), at the price of SBI! (or less) AND that product documents success to the depth that SBI! does (see proof.sitesell.com), we will pay you $50,000. See the announcement post here for entry details…

As of a few minutes ago, no challenger has come forth with a better system than SBI.

Click the following link to read the full details of the Sitesell $50,000 challenge.

SBI is not just a webhosting company, although they do that as well as any other hosting service I’ve ever used, and better than most.

SBI is a process that includes all the tools necessary to build a niche-oriented information-rich content site that earns money through a variety of monetization methods.

SBI sites are not cookie-cutter or fill-in-the-blanks sites.

Far from it. We work hard to identify a niche for which we have a passion and then write as much original, quality information as we can about that topic.

People write about things they love, such as cat art, front porches, gardening, cosmetics and skin care, and many thousands of other topics. Some people promote their own offline business and sell products or services, and these include renting villas, vacation sites, dentists, real estate agents, book editors, and more.

SBI sites are owned and developed by individuals who bring their own BAM (brains, attitude, and motivation) and who are willing to spend months and years to build a real business of their own.

SBI is not a scam, a get rich quick scheme, nor a multilevel marketing business. Sitesell is in the business of helping as many people as possible to build their own online businesses and to find the success we want. Perhaps you have heard some of these charges or other urban myths about Sitesell and SBI. They are not true.

Some of us would enjoy getting rich and others are happy with earning a few hundred dollars extra every month, and there are people with other goals in between.

Not everyone succeeds.

There is nothing, anywhere that I know of that guarantees that everyone succeeds. Some people work harder than others. Some have more time than others due to jobs or raising families, or caring for parents. Some have more motivation than others. Some have more skill at identifying a good niche and writing great pages about the topic.

However, I believe that SBI offers the best system for learning how to build an online business and prosper from it than anything else that is available. So does Ken Evoy. That’s why he’s offering $50,000 to anyone who can find a better system that meets the challenge. So far, nobody has taken him up on the challenge.

One of the outstanding benefits of subscribing to SBI is getting access to their proprietary Action Guide, which consists of step-by-step instructions on how to choose your niche, use the tools included with SBI, and build a website that attracts lots of readers. The Action Guide is constantly being re-written and updated to keep up with all the improvements to SBI (at no additional cost) and the changing Internet environment.

And, the folks at Sitesell know that different people learn better with different presentations, so the Action Guide is available in written form and as videos.

All of the SBI tools are integrated into a large database so that they work together. This saves time and money, because everything is bundled for only $299 per year, and some of those tools are worth more than that, individually.

Couple that with unlimited pages, unlimited bandwidth, free support, and a members-only forum where you can help and be helped by thousands of others who are using the same tools and systems you are — at no additional cost!

Unlike managing a website or a blog of your own, all the updates and maintenance releases are done by the highly-trained and very skilled technical staff at Sitesell. They are the technogeeks and propeller-heads who keep things running smoothly so you don’t have to waste your time and energy learning to manage all the technical details that keep you distracted from your work.

SBI costs only a dollar a day (not quite) if you pay monthly at just under $30 per month. If you choose to pay annually, however, the cost is only $299 and that’s like buying 10 months and getting two for free.

You may have heard people disparage SBI or call it a scam. Those people are wrong. I’ve been using SBI since shortly after it was introduced and I’m closing my other sites — which never performed as well nor earned as well — so that I can concentrate on my SBI sites in the future.

I tried, sincerely, for over 5 years to find a better system than SBI for building my sites. I used open-source PHP scripts like PHP-Nuke, Mambo, and a couple of others content management systems for building communities. I wasted a lot of time and effort with them. I built several forums using a variety of methods and tools — they failed. I’ve blogged on most blogging platforms and have several WordPress-powered blogs on my own domains (like this one) — and they never provided much revenue. I’d close them, but I like blogging. I’ve used databases to build websites, including one programmable database that I used for over 10 years before moving away from it last year — even though I spent years customizing and tweaking the code so that it would work exactly as I wanted.

I’m a technogeek and I’m fluent in a number of programming languages, including PHP and Perl. I have a working knowledge of javascript.

I know how to use all these things and I’ve tested them and they don’t work for me, even though I’ve done better than most people who use them.

My SBI sites take the least work and earn the most of all the systems I’ve tried.

So, since I can’t find anything better, it makes perfect sense to me to concentrate all my effort in the future on the best system I have found, and that’s SBI.

If I had a better system or knew of one, I’d enter the Sitesell $50,000 Challenge, myself. Not only would I enter the challenge, I’d be using and testing that system, myself.

Believe me, or not. Your choice.

I’m putting my money, effort, and time where my mouth is. I’m fully embracing SBI.

If you come back here a year from now, this blog may be gone and the domain name redirected to one of my SBI sites. There is about a 90% chance that I will do that, even though it is an established blog that quite a few people visit.

Why?

One simple reason: I earn more from my SBI sites.

Other supporting reasons: It’s easier, and takes less time and effort.

If you know another system that can beat SBI, there are less than 3 weeks before the Sitesell $50,000 Challenge expires.

Act on your dream!

PS. I am very proud to have been chosen as the Sitesell Featured Fan this week. I’ve been a very happy customer and affiliate with Sitesell for over a decade and intend to work closely with them for many years more.

This is a real honor for me and I am touched deeply by it. I’m just one of over 42,000 people who have liked Sitesell’s Facebook page and more are joining us every day. You can go there and read what they say about Sitesell and SBI. You can’t fake the reactions and enthusiasm of thousands of people who subscribe to, and use, SBI.

Tags: challenge, Ken Evoy, SBI, Sitesell

Mitch Mitchell is asking good questions on his blog

July 30, 2009 by JD · 1 Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Internet Marketing

My friend, Mitch Mitchell, has been posting some excellent questions on his I’m Just Sharing blog over the last couple of days.

Now, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t regularly write good posts, it just indicates that I’ve been thinking a lot about the questions he’s been asking recently, and still haven’t come up with complete answers for some deceptively deep questions.

It started with his Truth In Marketing? post.

He followed that up with Who Is Your Blog For? and Who Are The Affiliate Programs On Your Blog For?

I commend him for addressing these issues and asking these questions.

Do you have anything to add to the discussions on his blog?

Act on your dream!

Tags: Mitch Mitchell

Working like crazy behind the scenes

July 13, 2009 by JD · 8 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Dilbeck Marketing, Internet Marketing, Murphy NC 28906, Murphy North Carolina, Products at Amazon, Site Build It

If you look at the home page of this blog or read the RSS feed, it looks like I’ve been a lazy boy for the last month or so.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

I’ve been working behind the scenes to fix a major problem, update a large site, and bring a new site online.

My goal of bringing the new site online by July 1 was delayed about a week, but I’m making progress with it, again.

Dumped by Amazon

In the last week of June 2009, I received a notice from Amazon.com that they were terminating my affiliation with their associates program.

To say that I was surprised would be a huge understatement.

To top it off, it had nothing to do with me. I was dumped because I live in North Carolina and Amazon.com dumped all their associates in the entire state in one fell swoop.

This was done in anticipation of changes in the NC tax laws that had not been passed nor gone into effect!

I’ve been a proud associate of Amazon.com for about 13 years, but, after this, I’ll never recommend them to anyone and I won’t buy from them. I’m done with Amazon.com.

Rebuilding a large site

As a result of being dumped by Amazon.com, I have started to remove all links to their site. This is going to take me months to accomplish. I have links to their products on just about every page of most of my sites, and some of them have over 1,000 pages.

It’s a second-level priority, right behind building a new site, because I don’t want to send them any customers with no possibility of receiving a commission for my work.

I’ve removed links from most of my blogs, but modifying my static sites will take much longer.

Over the last couple of weeks, I completely rebuilt JohnDilbeck.com. This is one of my oldest and largest sites. In the process, I deleted several hundred pages that were out of date or no longer relevant.

Rebuilding the site was something that I’ve planned to do for a while, but being dumped by Amazon.com was the catalyst that motivated me to take action as quickly as I could.

My affiliate marketing business has taken a hit

After the world economic downturn last September, my marketing business has been hit hard by a big reduction in income.

This was not entirely unexpected, but the suddenness came as a surprise.

Since December, I’ve been making new plans to shift a part of my marketing efforts from affiliate marketing to helping locally-owned small businesses in Murphy, NC attract new customers and enticing existing customers to come back, again.

Murphy Gold is live

To do this, I worked for six months to plan how to accomplish these goals and started planning a new site.

Although there is still construction debris all around and parts of it still need a fresh coat of paint, Murphy Gold is now live.

I still have a lot to do on that site, but I’ve been working at it diligently. I’ve researched over 2,000 keyword phrase combinations and have been doing the initial traffic building work.

I’m not ready for a grand opening announcement, but I’m hoping that one will be forthcoming in a couple of weeks.

Back to my cave…

In the meantime, I’m going back to my cave in the mountains of western North Carolina and I’ll be working all hours of the day and night to get everything on my to-do list done as soon as possible.

One of these days, I’ll be able to write on this blog more frequently than I’ve been doing over the last several months.

Act on your dream!

Tags: Murphy Gold

Get a Free Marketing Site at Squidoo

June 26, 2007 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Marketing, RSS Feeds, Squidoo

The more I participate at Squidoo.com by building lenses and adding those lenses to groups, the more I see pages on Squidoo referenced in my traffic stats on various sites I have.

What?

I mean that Squidoo is sending an ever-increasing stream of traffic to my sites, blogs, and forums.

Thinking about that, I took a little time this morning to create a new Get A Free Marketing Site lens on Squidoo.

Then, I found several related groups and submitted my new lens to them.

This morning, my lens is ranked at over 180,000. I’m guessing it will jump to about 30,000 or less in the next 24 hours. Then, who knows where it will end up.

To make it a bit more interesting, I added a Plexo module where you can vote for your favorite marketing book on the lens, and I added an RSS feed for marketing articles from 21st Century Articles, my article directory specializing in business, communications, technology, and self-improvement articles.

If you don’t see your favorite marketing book on the list, please feel free to add it.

I have been getting tens of thousands of page views to my Get A Free Marketing Site suite of marketing tools at LinkScout, and I know it has been worth the time and effort – and money – I’ve invested in it.

Therefore, I feel confident in recommending it to you, too.

Act on your dream!

PS. I also recommend that you start building as many Squidoo lenses as you need to promote your business, talk about your hobby, or write about anything in which you are interested. It’s free, and you may well get paid by Squidoo. I earn a small check from them every month, and that’s a lot better than buying advertising, in my opinion.

If you have a blog on just about any topic, you should create a related lens at Squidoo, and don’t forget to use the RSS module to syndicate your blog feed.

It brings me more visitors, and I’m sure it will work for you, too.

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Ray White introduces Soaring For Traffic

June 21, 2007 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing

(This article is part of my Marketing Tools and Techniques: Traffic Exchanges series.)

Normally, I won’t be promoting the latest and (supposedly) greatest thing, so don’t be afraid that I’ll bombard you with untested programs that may be here today and gone tomorrow.

I prefaced this recommendation because Soaring For Traffic is a new traffic exchange, but I believe it will be around for a long time and I think it will rise to be one of the best.

I’ve known Ray for a few months and I have seen for myself that he knows quite a bit about Internet marketing and is always working to learn more and to share what he learns with others.

I first met him on the Affiliate Funnel forum, where he answered some of my questions about ad tracking on traffic exchanges. I did some searching and found that he is the owner of Private Success Team, where he is busily helping others learn how to market on the Internet more successfully.

I recently learned that he has been working for about a year to introduce Soaring For Traffic, his free traffic exchange and downline builder.

Lately, I’ve become more discerning when it comes to traffic exchanges and I’m reaching the point where I probably won’t join too many more.

Over the last year, I’ve joined and used about 75 traffic exchanges with varying amounts of success. Now, I’m a member in about 60 and actively use about 20 of them.

I am an upgraded member in about a dozen exchanges, and I just upgraded my account with Soaring For Traffic.

Although Soaring For Traffic is free, you will get more traffic with less time and effort by upgrading to one of the two upgrade levels. I chose the highest upgrade and I’m looking forward to using this exchange a lot in the coming months.

I added about 170 sites to this exchange in one fell swoop by using my Page Swirl rotator and spent another hour or two advertising it on some of my marketing pages, including my LinkScout marketing site.

After I’d finished setting everything up, it was time to surf the new exchange and see how I liked it.

I found a couple of small errors when setting up to use the exchange, but surfing the sites of other members was easy and the site responded quickly, even on my very slow dial-up connection.

The downline builder part of the site contains five money making affiliate programs and I’m a member of three of them. I didn’t count the number of traffic exchanges in the downline builder, but almost all of my favorites were there and I saw only a handful of sites I’d never tried before.

I know that Ray will be a helpful and responsive owner, and that is a big part of being an upgraded member of an exchange.

Even though Soaring For Traffic is new, it already has nearly 1,500 members and is growing quickly.

Regarding the problems I encountered, one was just an incorrect height and width attribute in the HTML code for a 100×300 sidebar button link. That was easily corrected, and I’ll let Ray know about it as soon as I publish this.

The other was a bit more of a problem, but probably has an easy solution. The site offers a way to personalize one of the splash pages that can be used on other traffic exchanges. It features your name, photo, a banner, and a testimonial.

I filled in the form and submitted it, only to be told that the banner URL was incorrect. No problem; the exchange is new. However, the real problem, for me, was that the error page did not preserve the entries on the form that were correct. As a result, a very complimentary testimonial was lost.

Ray, if you read this, I said some nice things about you that nobody will read because the form lost my heartfelt compliments.

With only a couple of minor negatives (which I’m sure Ray will fix quickly) and lots of positives, I heartily recommend Soaring For Traffic to you.

If you want to be a free member, this exchange is better than most.

If you plan to upgrade, the prices are right and the One-Time-Offer page offers good discount pricing for an annual or lifetime membership.

If that doesn’t fit your budget, the second One-Time-Offer (OTO) page offers a 33% discount on the highest upgrade level, making it a good buy. Normally, the highest level, Soaring Eagle, costs $14.95 per month, and I think that is over-priced for a 1:1 surf ratio and anything less than 1,000 credits per month. However, the second OTO page offers the Soaring Eagle level for $9.99, and I think that is the proper price for what is offered.

I don’t know if either of these discount pages will be available should you join, nor what they may offer at that time. These things are always subject to change.

If you don’t take advantage of either OTO page, you’ll pay more, perhaps a lot more, in the long run.

Soaring For Traffic will be one of the dozen or so traffic exchanges I’ll use on a regular basis.

You can join Soaring For Traffic for free and see for yourself how well it works for you.

Act on your dream!

Tags:

Ken Evoy releases an updated edition of the Affiliate Masters Course

November 25, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Musings

Several years ago, I needed a way to earn a living while staying home and being a full-time caretaker for my Mom.

I tried several things before I decided that affiliate marketing was for me.

There were many reasons for this decision. There was a low cost to entry since I didn’t have to buy merchandise, pay for inventory or interest, hire staff, set up an online order entry system, manage customer service, deal with shipping and returns, and do many of the other things that are necessary when you are selling products or services to the general public.

As an affiliate marketer, basically I work in advertising and marketing, and someone else handles all the rest of the necessary activities.

The downside to affiliate marketing is that there is a lot to learn, there is cut-throat competition, what works for me may not work for you and vice versa, and the Internet and online marketing is changing all the time.

At first, I knew a lot about the technical aspects of building websites, but I did not know nearly enough to be effective as an affiliate.

Fortunately for me, I found Ken Evoy and I have been successfully following his advice for several years. My affiliate marketing business is growing and I’m earning more as time goes by.

Ken provided a couple of things that made a huge difference in my affiliate marketing success. I appreciate his down-to-earth, practical advice and the products he has created to help me become a more-effective affiliate marketer.

The first was a free email course he called the Affiliate Masters Course. It was a five part course sent via email. Later, it was redone as an ebook in PDF format. Earlier this month, he released the November, 2006 updated edition of the Affiliate Masters course. I just finished reading it and the updated edition offers lots of information that was not included in the previous version. I recommend this book to you.

The cost? It’s free.

Download your copy of the Affiliate Masters course now. You’ll find about 160 pages of outstanding information. Others sell ebooks with much less information for $50 or $100 or more. Get this one and read it. Learn what you need to know and put it to work. I believe your affiliate marketing efforts will be more successful if you implement what Ken tells you.

Along the same lines, Ken wrote an ebook called “Make Your Site Sell!” a few years ago. The original version sold for under $20 and the updated 2002 version sold for about $30.

A couple of months ago, Ken decided to offer Make Your Site Sell! 2002 as a free download.

This multi-volume ebook contains over 1,500 pages of outstanding information and has been worth thousands of dollars to me in revenue I may not have earned if I hadn’t followed Ken’s advice.

While some of the information is a bit dated, the core information remains very valuable and you will find much information of use to you in this PDF format ebook. I regularly refer to it and continually discover useful tips and techniques to improve my marketing efforts.

If you want to build an online business, you need to read this ebook. Download it today.

These two ebooks made a great impact on the effectiveness of my online marketing and my affiliate marketing business continues to grow today based on what I learned from them.

Of course, reading and learning isn’t going to build a business. You have to take what you learn, plan how it will help your business grow, and then put it into action.

Act on your dreams!

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Make Your Content PREsell! is now free. Download it today.

October 16, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Musings, Site Build It

Only one week after deciding to stop charging $30 for Make Your Site Sell! and to give it away for free, Ken Evoy decided to give another of his products away as a free download.

Now, Make Your Content PREsell!, which sold for $10, is free and you can download it without even giving your email address.

This ebook, in .PDF format, can be read in a relatively short time span.

If you are attempting to earn all or part of your income through online marketing, you should read this book at least once. There is absolutely no risk. It’s free.

Dr. Evoy, through the information released in Make Your Site Sell! and all the integrated tools and webhosting incorporated into Site Build It! in the years since MYSS was released, has proven that his C-T-P-M model of online marketing works successfully.

What does “PREsell” mean?

It is the job of a merchant to do the selling.

It is the job of an affiliate to offer information of value that will help the reader get into a more receptive frame of mind and then link to the merchant.

This process of passing along valuable information and linking to a merchant is called PREselling.

It is not our job to sell, just to get the reader interested enough to click on the link and see what the merchant offers.

You can learn more by downloading Make Your Content PREsell!, reading it, and learning how to more effectively communicate with the people who visit your websites and blogs.

Don’t miss this free offer.

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New Site Build It! Webmasters Group on Squidoo

October 11, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Musings, Site Build It, Squidoo

I just created a new Site Build It Webmasters group on Squidoo.com.

If you are a Site Build It! webmaster, you are invited to create a new lens about your SBI site and how you use Site Build It to create your online business.

If you create a lens using the above link, you will be submitted for membership to the Site Build It Webmasters group on Squidoo.com.

As long as your new lens is about SBI and/or your SBI website, I’ll be happy to admit you to the group.

(Site Build It! websites, only, please.)

This is a great way to get one-way links to your site and the pages within it.

Squidoo lenses are powerful ways to build one page websites that link outward to other resources. You can even make money while you promote your site.

Do you have a CafePress store related to your SBI website? Add a CafePress module to your lens and sell your wares.

Do you sell products from Amazon.com on your SBI site? Add the top sellers to your Squidoo lens, too.

Feel free to put your 5 Pillar affiliate links on your lens(es).

Let’s all help each other succeed.

Act On Your Dream!

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