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

I am living my dream!

September 28, 2011 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: A Year From Now, Act On Your Dream, Dilbeck Marketing, Health, Murphy NC 28906, Musings, Site Build It

Good morning, Earthlings (and visitors to this quaint little planet)! It’s another gorgeous day in my little slice of paradise. This is why I moved to Murphy. It’s beautiful here.

Happy WoooooHooooo Wednesday! It’s just about an hour until you’re over the hump for the work week.

Lots to do today. To-do lists waiting to be decimated! Websites begging me to write new pages! And some people have the temerity to call this work!

If I were wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, I would still do what I plan to do today. That’s how I know it’s the right thing for me.

Those of you who know me, know I’m not rich — in finances — but I’m wealthy beyond my dreams in terms of freedom, doing what I love, living where I love, having lots of great friends all around the world, and being part of a loving family.

After staring Death in the face just over a year ago, I have a new appreciation for life and living and enjoying the adventure — including the uncertainty, the high points, the low points, and the unexpected joys over the next hill and around the next curve in my path. I will never — ever — take another day for granted and just go through the motions.

I am grateful beyond my ability to express it that I am steadily recovering, that the neuropathy is fading in my fingers and I can once again type rapidly and accurately, that my thinking is getting clearer and faster, that my memory is working better, and that I have new plans I’m working to rebuild my business, earn my own way, and get off of disability. A year from now, if not sooner, I’ll be standing on my own two feet and making my own way in this beautiful world, once again.

And, when it happens and I’m earning a good living, again, I will never again gripe about writing the check to pay my taxes. (I will fuss and fume about the difficulty of filling out all those dang forms, but I won’t gripe about paying my fair share.)

Without Medicaid, I would be dead now. I’d love to earn enough to be able to pay back to the government all that I received in medical care, medicine, and food stamps. I’m not sure, but it’s about a half-million dollars. Paying that back is one of my top goals. I intend to do all I can to make it happen.

Make no mistake about it. Cancer and chemotherapy are difficult to endure, but it was worth everything I went through to make it out the other side and enjoy watching the sun rise through the trees on a morning like this. The ordeal was made much easier by the support and love I received from so many people.

If you’re going through a difficult time, hang in there. Don’t give up. Life is worth the struggle. Smile through the pain and laugh for the sheer joy of being alive. Fight with everything you can to overcome.

And, knowing that all of us eventually lose to the Grim Reaper, make your last day memorable by looking him right in the eye socket and laughing so loud that it’ll push the hood right off his skull as he drags you away from us!

In a couple of minutes, I’m going to get another cup of coffee and go to work. I can’t pay that money back if I don’t work to earn it, first.

I have a marketing business to rebuild and expand. There is so much to do and I intend to enjoy every single step of the process. This is going to be a fantabulous journey.

I am very happy that I ran across Dr. Ken Evoy back at the end of the 20th Century and learned how to build websites that sell. It changed my life — for the better. And not just mine, thousands of us are happy we found him. You can see that nearly 40,000 of us like Sitesell’s Facebook page, and I’ll be spending the rest of the day using the tools in SBI to work on my online marketing business.

(I still can’t believe that Sitesell provides all the tools I need and all the training and support to help me build my online business for only $30 a month, or just $300 per year. I spend more than that on coffee. And you know that $30? It’s not an expense, it’s an investment. I earn a profit every month, and now that I’m recovering from the last two years, I intend to earn a much larger profit from my work. Some days I have to pinch myself to believe I’m not dreaming. I’m acting on my dream — I’m living my dream.)

(But, don’t mind me. I’m just a geezer working at home and being grateful for my good fortune. After the last couple of years, I take time to think about all the people and things for which I’m grateful — every single morning and evening. Today, it just spilled out from my mind, through my fingers, and onto this page.)

All my friends who use SBI to build their online businesses know what I’m talking about. Don’t you? I’m grateful that Ken believes in helping as many people as he can and that he works so hard leading the team that continues to add new tools we can use to improve the quality of our businesses — without raising the price. Some days, I really do feel like I’m dreaming. It’s a wonderful thing to know you’re awake, loving life, and acting on your dream — all at the same time!

Here’s a link to Sitesell’s Facebook page so you can see for yourself, if you’re interested.

Thanks, Ken!

Now let’s go play Build My Business.

I love my life. I sure hope that you love yours!

It’s a wonderful day — Let’s go enjoy it!

Act on your dream!

Tags: Business, gratitude, health, joy of living, Ken Evoy, life, SBI

SBI helps people build their own businesses without boundaries

August 13, 2011 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Act On Your Dream, Business, Promote Your Business, Site Build It

One of the things I love about owning an online marketing business is that I can work from the comfort of my home in the mountains of western North Carolina and can enjoy the beauty of nature that surrounds me. I’m located 100 miles from the nearest city and a dozen miles from the nearest town.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is about an hour’s drive away, and I’m surrounded by thousands of acres of the Nantahala National Forest. It’s a beautiful, peaceful place to live and I never want to move back to a big city.

I love my little slice of paradise.

I know someone who lives on an island in the pacific northwest who loves living in her small town, too. She is a professional writer and editor and she helps people from all around the world polish their books and other documents. She, too, works in the comfort of her own home. Her name is Audrey and here’s a little glimpse into her life:

We are just two of the tens of thousands of people around the world who are building our own businesses with the help of SBI and all the tools, training, and support that is included.

Want to read more? Here are some case studies of some of SBI’s customers and their stories.

Most of SBI’s customers are people with a dream of earning extra income or of replacing a full-time job, so they can live and work where it pleases them. Many are succeeding.

Congratulations, Audrey. Your hard work is paying off.

Act on your dream!

Tags: Business, case studies, editing, editor, SBI, Site Build It, Sitesell, writer

At Sitesell, all employees tweet to the corporate Twitter account

August 18, 2010 by JD · 4 Comments
Filed under: Dilbeck Marketing, Musings, Site Build It, Twitter

If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the last decade or so, you’ll most likely already know that I’m a huge fan of Ken Evoy, Sitesell, and their products and services — especially Site Build It.

By learning from, and following, the advice Ken wrote in his Make Your Site Sell! ebook, I was able to build an affiliate marketing business and earn 100% of my income working in the comfort of my home in the mountains of western North Carolina. I love living here. I love setting my own schedule. This is my dream job.

Apparently, being a Sitesell employee is also a dream job. There are about 300 of them and they’re located all around the world. The great majority work from home and have no daily commute to work, other than getting a refreshing beverage and turning on their computers.

This year, Sitesell became the first corporation to empower all their employees to tweet to the corporate Twitter account: Sitesell on Twitter.

They tweet about both business and personal topics. Each employee is identified with a hashtag that includes their name and department in which they work.

Ken Evoy is #KenFounder, and other employees work in departments such as Education, Training, Support, Mgmt, Content, Mod (forum moderator), QA, Mktg, Coach, Tech, AffMgr, and others.

Before they started tweeting regularly to this Twitter account, I knew only a handful of them by name and had rare contact with them, and I’ve been a happy customer for over 10 years and have bought quite a few products from them.

(I’ve also been a very happy affiliate for the company over the years. It has been a profitable relationship for me. I’ve earned commissions when people buy Sitesell’s products through my links, I’ve found quality businesses to associate with and earned commissions from them, and I’ve enjoyed all the tools that SBI offers to build my own sites — and there’s more to come in the future.)

Still, with all my experience as a customer and affiliate, I only knew a handful of Sitesell employees by name.

Now, I’m getting to know them better.

During the last year while I’m working mainly to get through this health crisis, I haven’t been doing much with Twitter, and I used to spend an hour or more per day there. There are a handful of Twitter accounts I read on a regular basis and Sitesell’s is one of them.

I think it’s a really cool deal that one of my favorite companies was the first to enable all their employees to tweet (or not to tweet) to the corporate account. Just one more example of all the innovation we’ve come to expect from them and their flagship product, Site Build It.

See their latest Twitter tweets. Click the image below.

If you’re looking for some good, free advice that can help you with building and promoting your business online, I’d like to recommend Sitesell’s Blog to you. I’ve always found the advice to be helpful, free of hype, and based on real experience.

Act on your dream!

Tags: dream job, Ken Evoy, Site Build It, Sitesell, tweet, Twitter

Another reason for simple two-column websites

July 20, 2010 by JD · 1 Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Internet Marketing, Musings, Site Build It

I spent the night in the hospital following a procedure that is helping me kick this cancer’s butt and did not bring my MacBook Pro with me. I’ve been on Facebook and browsing the web using Safari on my iPod Touch.

I’m able to view most sites (except those that rely on Flash) on my iPod, and I assume that they are viewable on other mobile devices, too.

One thing I really noticed was that sites with three or more columns are significantly harder to read on my iPod than simpler two-column sites.

Most of my sites have been simple two-column sites with the navigation in the left column (and maybe some money-making links) and the main content in the wider right column.

Most of my income is generated by in-context text links in the content column.

A lot of people think those sites are old-fashioned and, as one critic said, “so 20th century.”

It’s true that sites like MurphyGold.com and AYearFromNow.com are plain and look like they are wasting real estate on large monitors. I have been encouraged, repeatedly, to make them wider and add another column.

I don’t intend to do either.

Why?

It’s true that I prefer three columns for my blogs, but that isn’t for your benefit, dear reader. It’s for the search engines and me. By visiting one of my blogs, I can scan the various RSS feeds in the left and right columns and see if I need to visit another site and do something there.

There is some evidence in my site stats that those links bring in more readers through the search engines.

However, my three column sites are not moneymakers. It doesn’t work for me, even though others have reported good results.

When I have tested moving Google Adsense ads from the content column into a third column on the right, income has always dropped dramatically. The same is true for both text- and graphic-links. Both perform better in the content column in a two-column format.

I don’t know if that’s because most people ignore the right-most column or if they have more ad blindness in a column that normally contains mostly ads.

My best sites for generating income have always been rather plain sites that are easy to navigate and have few, if any, distractions. They don’t have the eye candy that lots of people like, but those aren’t the people who click my links and help me pay the bills.

(Thank you to those of you who do!)

For many sites, perhaps the bells and whistles, multiple images and photos, and a plethora of ads do generate more income for them. I assume that some of them have tested the results they get from the changes they make.

For me and the products I recommend, simpler is demonstrably better. I have proof based on research into visitor numbers, bounce rates, conversion rates, and income to back this up.

So, returning to my initial idea, I think the simple sites will do better for me for people who visit my sites using cellphones and other mobile devices, and will continue to perform well for people browsing on their larger computers. I’ll be tracking this as well as I can in the next few months.

Anecdotally, I know that there are sites to which I won’t return when I’m using my iPod, because they are simply too hard to navigate.

Perhaps some of those sites have mobile feeds, but, unless they make it immediately obvious early in their navigation menu, I won’t go digging for it. I’ll just go to a different site that presents comparable information in a way I want to see it.

I’m perfectly willing for people who don’t like my old-fashioned, two-column, plain sites to do the same. Thanks for dropping in. Not for you? Okay, see ya.

I might change my mind if more eye candy ever starts generating more income. (Yes, I’ll probably test it again one of these days.)

For now, however, simpler performs better for me.

I run a business. Performance doesn’t mean more visitors, more comments, or longer conversations. It means more money in my bank account.

I greatly enjoy the social interactions on my blogs, online communities, and Facebook. Making money on those sites is not their primary purpose, but they have to at least break even and pay their own costs, excluding Facebook, which is free.

You may have different purposes, definitions, and priorities for your sites.

Act on your dream!

Tags: ad blindness, adsense, blogs, SBI, simple, Site Build It, websites, wordpress

Do you want to start an online business?

June 29, 2010 by JD · 6 Comments
Filed under: Business, Musings, Personal, Site Build It, Success and Failure

I haven’t been posting to this blog nearly as much as I would like, and you may already know the reason. If you don’t, the short story is that I’m battling cancer and lots of days I don’t feel like doing much of anything. However, the good news is that I’m stronger than I was for the last six months and I believe I’m making progress every day. Hopefully, in the near future, I’ll be able to resume blogging on a regular basis.

I was thinking about the topic of having an online business earlier this morning.

For the last year, I haven’t really been able to do much work, but I continue to get enough income through past efforts to keep my various websites and communities moving along while I concentrate mostly on kicking this cancer’s butt. It really is true that I earn money in my sleep and on days when all I feel like doing is sitting on the porch and listening to the birds and watching the wind rustle the leaves on all the trees that surround my home.

Over the last ten years, I’ve earned a living through my marketing business, even though there have been lots of ups and downs.

It allowed me to work from home and care for my elderly mother for about seven years, and it has kept me afloat for the last couple of years as my health problems took over the majority of my attention.

On Thursday, July 1, I’ll turn 58 years old and I always contemplate what I want to do differently during the next year of my life as my birthday approaches.

Interestingly enough, I find that there isn’t much I want to change other than getting healthy, again. As soon as I’m strong enough and able to think straight, again, I want to resume my marketing business, doing pretty much what I’ve done for the last decade.

That’s pretty remarkable for me. I rarely go that long without becoming disinterested in what I’ve been doing and wanting to try something new.

I love living here in the mountains and working from home. I love it that hundreds of people view my websites every day and enough of them purchase from my recommendations that I still generate some income, even when I’m unable to work.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not generating a lot of income and the last few months I’ve been mostly breaking even, but that still keeps all my websites alive and prevents the loss of all the hard work I put in the last few years.

If I were able to really work on the sites as I did a few years ago, my income would be rising every month and I look forward to doing that again within the next year or so.

If I had been working on a job the last few years and got this sick, I think I would be quite a bit worse off than I am now.

I love being self-employed and I love earning revenue for work I did months or years ago.

What about you?

If something unexpected happened in your life, would you have anything helping you economically? Even if things are going great (and I hope they continue that way!), do you ever wonder what it would be like to work from home and do something you love every day?

I know hundreds of people who are doing just that. Most of them are doing a few similar things in terms of promoting their businesses, but almost all of them are doing something that is interesting to each of them. In other words, they’re not a bunch of lemmings trying to follow the herd and eek out a few dollars here and there. They’ve identified something about which they’re very interested, even passionate, and they’re working to build an online business around that topic (or those topics).

Some are approaching their online business from one direction and others are coming from a different direction, but they all share some common traits: intelligence, a vision of where they want to go, a plan on how to get there, motivation to accomplish what is important to them, the willingness to study and learn what they need to know, and an unflagging belief that they will succeed in reaching their goal, eventually.

That belief is very important.

Life almost never goes in straight lines. We have a series of highs and lows and often have to retrace our steps to find a new path to take us where we want to go when we encounter the detours that life throws at us.

Many years ago, Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich said, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

That has been my motto for almost 40 years, since I first read that book in my late teens.

I’ve proven to myself over and over that I can achieve what I want as long as I can clearly see it in my imagination, can develop a plan to achieve it, and then take action to accomplish each step in that plan.

In fact, I’m dealing with my cancer in the same way. I intend to kick this cancer’s butt and regain my health within the next year. I intend to resume working in my marketing business and doing the things I love.

What do you want to accomplish during the next year of your life?

Another of my mottoes is, “A year from now, I will be better than I am today.”

Sometimes I don’t achieve that goal, but, so far, I’ve always bounced back when life knocks me down a peg or two.

You can do the same thing.

I hear many of my friends and people with whom I come into contact say that they want their own business so they don’t have to commute to work and be subject to someone else’s dictates.

Yet, over and over, year in and year out, relatively few of them ever take the steps to achieve that goal. They don’t analyze what they want to do or make a plan on how to get there. They don’t identify the milestones and take the steps every day to reach those goals.

The next year, they are no closer to their goal than they were the last.

Does that describe you?

What steps have you taken in the last year to get you closer to what you want out of life?

Have you done all that you could to get there?

Why not?

What is stopping you from making your dream a reality?

Is it lack of money? That’s just an excuse. Lots of people with no money have worked hard and made their dreams real.

Is it lack of knowledge? That’s also an excuse. The entire world’s knowledge is available to you through your computer.

The same is true for just about any excuse you can throw up to explain why you are no closer to your goal than you were a year ago.

Do you really want to do what you think you do?

It’s a hard question to face. Perhaps you’re more interested in the fantasy than the reality.

Maybe you think that owning your own business and working from home is like living in paradise.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.

When you own your own business, you, alone, are responsible for everything that gets done and everything that doesn’t. The hours can be longer than working a job, especially in the first few years of starting it. The pay can be less than working a job, but sometimes the lack of commuting, buying business clothing, eating lunch in a restaurant, and all the other expenses related to working for someone else can be reduced when you work at home so the resulting net loss may not be as much as you might think.

I’ve worked many long hours planning and building my online business and I’ve had successes and failures along the way.

Most of my income came through affiliate marketing and that was drastically reduced when North Carolina’s legislature passed new tax laws and some of the major businesses with which I was affiliated canceled my relationship to them. For example, for years I received income from Amazon.com for recommending products that I knew to be useful and a good value. When people would click on the link to the product and purchase it, I would earn a small commission.

When the tax law was passed, Amazon and others canceled these affiliate relations with me (and all their other affiliates in NC) and *poof* there went one of my major sources of income.

Did I quit?

No.

Did I wallow in self-pity?

Yes, I did, but only for a few days.

Then I turned my attention to developing a new plan for earning an income and it was working well until I became too sick to continue with it. But, I haven’t thrown out this plan, it’s still in place and I’ll pick it back up as soon as I can.

That’s one of the major reasons that I need to keep my existing websites online until the day I can resume marketing them.

I know people who are blind or deaf or handicapped in other ways who are still able to build a business and work at home. Some are making ends meet, others are supplementing their other incomes, and a few are doing very well and earning more than they ever earned working for someone else.

On the other hand, some people I know learned that being self-employed really wasn’t what they wanted to do. They found that they liked working at a job, despite some of the things they didn’t like about it. This helped them to understand what they really wanted from their lives and now they don’t waste as much time daydreaming about the “grass is greener” aspects of being self-employed.

Before I ramble on much longer, I want to come to the point of all this.

Having your own online business may be a very good thing for you, or it may be a disaster in the making. It all depends upon you. Can you identify what you want to do? Can you develop a plan to achieve it? Can you learn all the technical things you need to know to make it work? Can you avoid the distractions that abound when you look for ways to make money online? Are you self-directed and motivated to achieve something, even if the rewards may follow only after two or three years of hard work?

Can you work to build something for the future, or do you want your rewards right now?

It all depends upon you, and I can’t offer you any advice if you really don’t want to do what’s necessary to build your business. I don’t know any shortcuts that work, and the whole idea that it’s easy to make a fortune on the Internet is just a big lie some people tell you to get your money.

Ten years ago, I didn’t know who to listen to and who to avoid. I didn’t know what advice was sound and what was just thrown out there to separate me from my hard-earned money. I didn’t know who genuinely cared whether I did well and how to tell them apart from the sharks that are always circling the online marketing newbie.

So, I tested the teachings of lots of people. I spent money and time learning their techniques and following their advice. Most of those experiments were big fat flops. Only a few really proved to be worthwhile and one stood out head and shoulders above all the rest.

You’ve heard me say this many times before, but I’m going to say it again, Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell, is the real deal. He cares for his customers and works very hard to help each of us build our individual businesses online.

He wrote best selling ebooks to help us build our online businesses and now he gives them away for free. For example, here’s where you can get a free copy of his best-selling ebook, Make Your Site Sell!

(If you collect ebooks and never read them or put into practice what you learn, then don’t bother downloading Make Your Site Sell!, because having it on your harddrive and not doing anything with it is a waste of your time.)

For the last few years, he’s concentrated on making Site Build It! the best system for building online businesses and tens of thousands of real people are following his guidelines and most of them are building successful businesses in niches they love.

Does everyone succeed with SBI? No. I don’t believe everyone succeeds using any set of tools, but more people do well when they follow his advice than they do following anyone else I know and I’ve been researching this topic for over ten years.

Of course, I don’t know everything, so there may be others out there, too, but I don’t know who they are.

So, as my next birthday quickly approaches, I’m happy to see that I don’t intend to do much differently in my business other than dropping a number of experiments that did not succeed (and which were not recommended by Ken Evoy, by the way).

I’m going to concentrate more on my SBI sites and much less on the others, including my blogs, like this one.

What am I going to do for my birthday?

I’m going to stay home and celebrate it in peace and quiet, and then the next day, I’m going 100 miles to have a liver biopsy and radio frequency ablation performed on the spot in my liver that may be a result of my colon cancer, and may not be.

I’m taking the next step in the process to regain my health, and that’s at the top of my to-do list this year. I intend to get healthier and stronger so I can continue to work from home.

What am I going to do for YOU for my birthday?

I’m going to tell you how you can download Ken’s ebooks for free (you don’t even have to give your email address). Yes, those books are a few years old, but the information and advice in them is still valuable.

Even better, I’m going to give you access to the SBI Action Guide.

This is the same guide we follow when we subscribe to SBI 2.0, and you can learn the same things we do. However, unless you subscribe to SBI 2.0, you don’t get all the tools, support, articles, tips, and help from the members-only forum.

You do get a step-by-step guide in what to do to identify your niche, compare it to others, choose the one that’s right for you, and information on how to research and build your business.

You don’t get access to the keyword brainstorming tool, the keyword database functions, nor the sitebuilding tools.

For one or two percent of the people reading this, the information you’ll get from reading the Action Guide and watching the video version of it will be enough for you to use any tools you want to build a successful business.

For a few more percent, you’ll be able to adapt what you learn and use something like WordPress to build a site. Before you invest the time and effort in doing this, have you read Sitesell’s page comparing blogging versus building a hierarchically-organized website?

The rest of you would be better off, deciding if this is something you really want to do, and if it is, then purchase an annual subscription to SBI and give yourself one year to start building the online business you dream of owning. Work on it some every day and you may be amazed at what you can accomplish in as little as a year from now.

Is it free?

Of course not.

Is it affordable?

Absolutely. An annual subscription to SBI costs $300 and that’s less than a dollar a day. Most of you waste more than that and don’t get any nearer your dream.

Is it the only way to succeed.

Of course, it is not.

Is it the way for you?

I don’t know. You’ll have to decide that for yourself.

I know that I’m a satisfied customer and host two sites using SBI. In a few minutes, after I publish this post, I’m going to renew my annual subscription to Murphy Gold so it will be ready for me to continue promoting select small businesses in Murphy, NC, a place I love living, as soon as I’m strong enough to do it.

I started Murphy Gold last year on my birthday after identifying a new direction I wanted to take following being canceled as an affiliate for Amazon and others.

If this cancer hadn’t interfered, I be much further along with the site, but I’ll get back to it as soon as we finish kicking this cancer’s butt to the curb.

It was my birthday gift to myself last year and will be my birthday gift to myself, again, this year.

As I said before, my birthday gift to you is access to the SBI Action Guide.

If you really want to do it yourself, and not make use of the tools that SBI offers, at least give yourself the advantage of the free Sitesell ebook downloads. Learn what you need to do, before you go searching for the tools to do it yourself.

I know I’d like to have back all those months I wasted trying other ways to build successful websites. My SBI sites may not be the prettiest, nor the flashiest, nor have the latest three-column designs, but they work. They attract thousands of visitors and they are easy to navigate. The only thing they lack is all the extra pages I have in my head and don’t have the energy to create right now, but that will be coming in the next few months as I continue to get stronger.

Now, it’s up to you.

Do you want to start an online business?

Tags: action guide, Business, online, SBI, Site Build It, Sitesell, website

The entire Sitesell company is now tweeting

June 6, 2010 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Promote Your Business, Site Build It, Social Networking, Twitter

Sitesell, the company behind Site Build It!, took an interesting step forward in social networking this weekend. The entire company will be tweeting using the Sitesell account and individuals will be identified by a hashtag at the end of their tweet.

Here’s a link to the Sitesell Twitter feed.

This is a really cool idea, and I like how they’ve implemented it.

For example, Ken Evoy, the founder of Sitesell, is identified by #Kenfounder, the unidentified technogeek known as Help Elf is known as #Helpelf, and so on.

There are 130 people working for Sitesell and they are located all over the world, each working from home. Now, we’ll get a chance to learn more about the different people and what they’re doing, both personally and as employees of Sitesell.

Individuals in support, coaching, education, management, programming, and other departments will now offer their tidbits, insights, and updates about what they’re doing to make SBI continue to be the best way to build a small business online. We’re used to Ken having an RSS feed of his forum posts, and Erin, the affiliate program manager, also has an RSS feed.

Now, everyone in the company effectively has an RSS feed of their tweets by searching on their hashtag.

The one problem I see is that on the Internet, people being what they are, others will attempt to confuse the issue and co-opt the goodwill that Sitesell has earned over the last decade by using the hashtags that individuals there use. The difference is that Sitesell employees will be tweeting from the @Sitesell account and identifying themselves with their hashtag. If you see those hashtags used on a different account, don’t let it fool you.

As far as I know, this is the only company that is approaching Twitter in this fashion.

How can you adapt this approach for your business? Set up a Twitter account for your business and let your employees post to it, identifying themselves with their own personal hashtag.

This is going to be an interesting experiment in company-wide tweeting and I’m looking forward to seeing how it evolves over the coming months.

Want to follow Sitesell: Sitesell Twitter feed.

All the best,

Tags: SBI, Site Build It, Sitesell, Social Networking, Twitter

Think and Grow Rich test: Who is the most inspiring person you know?

October 5, 2009 by JD · 1 Comment
Filed under: Books, Self-Improvement, Site Build It, Success and Failure

My answers to the Think and Grow Rich Self-Assessment Test

Recently, I was reminded of the self-assessment test in Napoleon Hill’s best-selling book, Think and Grow Rich.

There are fifty-four questions in that test, and I’m going to be giving my answers and thoughts on one or two of them as close to daily as I can manage. I may miss a day here or there, but I’m going to follow through until I reach the end of the test.

I’ve started the series of posts with:

Think and Grow Rich self-assessment test

Question Number 14. Who is the most inspiring person you know?

This is an interesting question, and I had to stop and think about it a few minutes before answering.

To answer this, I have to preface it by saying that I don’t personally know any of the people I’ve considered, but I do know them from their writings and some limited correspondence with a couple of them.

I thought hard about whether any of the people I know in “real life” would qualify for this, but, sadly, the answer is no.

So, I started thinking about authors who have influenced my life.

Certainly Napoleon Hill would count and he’d be in the top two or three.

I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration from Zig Ziglar and Og Mandino.

I’ve read a variety of other books by authors who are very inspiring, but the more I think about it, the more one name rises to the top of the list.

For the last few years, the most inspiring person I know has to be Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell.

(Full disclosure: The links to Sitesell are affiliate links and I can earn a commission if you purchase from them. That’s how I earn my living. However, that’s not enough reason to choose Ken Evoy over the others I’ve considered. He just naturally rose to the top of the list the more I thought about the question.)

Ken has inspired me on numerous occasions and I look forward to his newsletters and his postings on the members-only forum that Sitesell hosts.

Ken was largely responsible for teaching me about affiliate marketing and that made a huge difference in my life over the last decade.

I’ve also watched him inspire many others along the way.

Ken is no Pollyanna, however. He won’t tell you everything is going to be great if he disagrees with your approach.

One of the main things I’ve learned from him and which I try to keep at the top of my mind, especially when I’m looking at new strategies for getting visitors to my websites, is his mantra of “Keep it real.”

That is a very grounding influence and has helped me avoid some things that look good at first glance, but don’t have the required reality when you look beyond the surface.

I recently wrote about a couple of Ken’s ebooks on my affiliate marketing blog: Getting back to the basics of affiliate marketing

I’m not the only person Ken has inspired.

Many thousands of websites have been built and hosted using Ken’s Site Build It service. Most of them were built by individuals and owners of very small businesses. They are learning how to be successful on the web by following the advice and the system that Ken founded. This is having a real, direct influence on their lives – for the better.

Did everyone who used Site Build It! succeed? Obviously, the answer is no. However, I believe they had a better chance at building an online business by following the SBI approach.

A good number of them are active on the Sitesell forums and I’ve watched Ken, over the years, offer helpful advice and inspirational support to a great number of them.

I have thought about other business, political, and religious leaders and I just don’t find them as inspiring as Ken Evoy has been to me personally.

I would have to include President Obama in the short list of inspiring people, but he hasn’t had as direct an influence on my life as some of the others.

Even after thinking about this for awhile, I’m sure I’ll kick myself when I remember others who have been inspirational after I publish this answer.

I’m sure you’ll have other choices and I look forward to hearing who they are.

What about you?

Who is the most inspiring person you know?

All the best,

Tags: Napoleon Hill, self-assessment, test, Think and Grow Rich

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

Have you considered Site Build It?

December 16, 2006 by JD · Comments Off
Filed under: Site Build It

Have you been thinking about trying Site Build It?

If you have, Ken is offering his annual holiday special. Until midnight, December 25, 2006, you can buy one and get one free.

That is a real bargain.

You have several options.

You can buy one for yourself and get a second one free. If you choose to do this, you can start building one and wait up to nine months to start the second site.

Or…

Buy one for yourself and give the second one to your husband, wife, son, daughter, mom, dad, friend, business associate, or anyone else to whom you want to offer the gift of learning how to build a part-time (or full-time) online business using the proven tools and techniques that Ken will teach you and your friend.

Or, team up with someone else and buy two sites. Split the cost and Sitesell Support will help you transfer the second site to whomever it should belong.

You don’t have to take advantage of the special pricing, but now is the time to do it if you want to save money. You could even buy now, and find someone next week or next month to sell the second site to.

Just don’t miss this special if you have been on the fence about getting Site Build It for yourself.

I can tell you that finding Ken Evoy a few years ago has made a big difference in my life.

I have been Mom’s full-time caretaker for about five and a half years now. When I decided to bring her back home instead of putting her in a nursing home, I knew I would have to find a way to work inside the house near her and still earn a living. I closed my metalsmithing business and concentrated on helping her.

After I’d quickly blown through my savings, I had to get serious about earning an income while still working at home.

Luckily, amongst all the Internet marketing hype that was calculated to relieve me of my hard-earned money, I found Ken Evoy.

I learned how to start earning money from affiliate marketing by reading his Affiliate Masters Course, and started making sales and earning commission checks when I put what I learned to work on some of my web sites.

Later, I purchased his Make Your Site Sell! ebook. That was the best $30 I ever spent and now I earn it back many times over every month.

I took what I learned and re-built all my sites (and this took about six months). In a matter of weeks, my sites were being found and people started buying what I recommended. It was the real turning point in my home business.

This fall, Ken decided to give away Make Your Site Sell! as a free download. Even though I still believe it is worth much more than the previous price, it is now free. If you have a website and you want to earn more from it, download this book and read it. Then put to work what you learn from it.

Ken explains on the site why he decided to give away Make Your Site Sell! and concentrate on making Site Build It even better.

Eventually, I was able to scrape up enough to purchase my own Site Build It subscription.

For just $300 a year, I got not only a website, but an ever-growing collection of integrated tools (meaning I never have to install and manage scripts), a members-only community of thousands of helpful SBI site owners, regular newsletters with information to help me improve my sites and earn more, and the benefit of Ken Evoy‘s wisdom and experience.

In a sea of Internet marketing hype, Ken presents the voice of experience, calm, and making slow progress towards building our businesses.

Ken is not one of the “gurus” who cleverly craft a marketing business to drain us of the money that remains in our wallets and bank accounts. If you go to Ken’s Blog and read his article on “Mooch Marketing,” you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I have never lost money when I follow Ken’s advice. More often than not, I increase the size of my commission checks, and for that I remain grateful to Ken.

I don’t want to mislead you. I am not getting rich and I don’t think I will, but that’s not my goal.

Right now, my main goal is to do what I love doing, and earn enough from it so I can continue to care for Mom and let her live in the house she has lived in for over 30 years.

I have worked hard at this, but I have to share part of the credit with Ken Evoy for being able to make this work.

You will note, I hope, that I don’t mention anyone else when sharing the credit for building my home business. I have learned from others. I have lost hard-earned money to others. Ken helps me keep on course and continue to build my business.

I do maintain quite a few other sites that are not powered by Site Build It, but I’m re-evaluating that decision. I have had problems with hackers destroying several of my sites. I’ve had problems with updating and maintaining scripts on them.

I am seriously considering closing most of my non-SBI sites and putting my efforts into doing more with Site Build It rather than continually bashing my head against the wall with the other sites.

I have learned a lot, and if I had to drop all my sites but one, it would be powered by Site Build It.

I hope you enjoy your holiday season and have a happy, prosperous, and healthy new year!

John L. Dilbeck

AYearFromNow.com – Act On Your Dream!

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