There are many Site Build It myths. One of the most persistent is that SBI costs too much at $299/year per site. If you just look at the overall price, I agree. $299 seems like a heckuva lot of money, when compared to $5/month, unlimited domain hosting. But here’s the thing… SBI shouldn’t just be looked at as a webhost. They are so much more.
Let’s deconstruct each of the SBI costs too much arguments…
$299 a Year Is Awfully Expensive Web Hosting
When SBI was first launched, $25/month was pretty typical pricing for webhosts. In those days, you didn’t have a lot of choices. You’d easily pay $25 to $50 a month just to host one website! I know; I was doing it myself for my very first website, hosted with one of the premier web hosts of the early 2000s.
How our web world has changed since then, though. Cheap web hosts like HostGator, GoDaddy and many, many more prolifertated in the past 5 years. Now, it’s exceedingly common to find webhosting accounts with huge bandwidths and unlimited domains for around $5 to $10/month. I have a couple of those accounts myself, and they’re great… if you know how to use them.
In the end, though, those accounts are mostly just basic webhosting. Sure, they may offer one-click installations of forums, blogs, and related tools. And maybe a one-off autoresponder and email account management. But that’s about it. They don’t tell you how to create a site, especially not a successful traffic-producing site. They definitely don’t teach you how to build a business. So, yeah, you can have any number of sites with those kinds of webhosts, but that doesn’t mean anyone will ever find them. That takes other tools, usually ones the webhost doesn’t offer, at least not for no additional charge.
If you’re going to compare pricing, then you have to be sure you’re comparing apples to apples, not apples to oranges, as the saying goes. Site Build It isn’t just a webhost. They’re so much more: Compare SBI to a typical webhost
For instance, one of the best features of SBI is their keyword/niche brainstorming tool. It’s extremely robust, showing demand, true supply, potential profitability and detailed competition info for every keyword you input. They use Wordtracker as their backend, and if you’ve ever priced Wordtracker, you know how valuable an inclusion their data is in the SBI package.
I Can Just Get Free Tools That Are as Good as SBI’s Tools
Even assuming that were completely true (which it isn’t), how much time would you need to spend to find all the equivalent tools that SBI offers from free vendors? More than I’d care to count up, I’ll tell you. Here’s just a glimpse into SBI’s tools:
- A step by step course in eBusiness, with video tutorials and a written Action Guide. Sure, there is tons of free information on online business available on the Web. But there’s also truckloads of crappola, information that at best is too vague and meaningless to be implementable, and at worst is downright wrong or misleading. There are also a number of inexpensive ecourses and ebooks you can download. Some of these are good (Jimmy Brown’s and Jim Daniel’s offerings come to mind), but again many of them are just affiliate-link stuffed crap or incomplete “blueprints” for success. The better offerings may be the elite packages offered on CD and printed manuscripts, but who can afford to pay a couple of thousand dollars for these, especially when you’re just getting started? Download a free eBook by Ken Evoy to get a feel for the quality of the education offered by the SBI team. (Yes, some of the info in this book is a bit dated, as it was last updated in 2002, but much of it is timeless advice about how to connect with web visitors and establish trust, so as to get the click or the sale.)
- Robust keyword research tool & niche finder. Keyword research tools are a dime a dozen these days. There’s the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, a free trial of Wordtracker, Nichebot, and many more. Again, this is true, but each of those tools has its limitations, and to truly gather all the information you need to make a decision about profitable keywords and niche, you might have to use 2 or more of these free tools and then figure out how to combine the data and make sense of it. With Site Build It, that’s all done for you, all on one screen. And there’s plenty of context help to assist you in interpreting the data.
- No-HTML-Required website builder with over 200 free templates. Some people complain that free or inexpensive website design tools can easily produce attractive websites that are more flexible than SBI’s block builder interface. SBI has taken some hits on their design templates and their block builder. And this is an area I have to agree could be better. At this writing (spring 2009), they don’t have a WSIWYG interface, where clicking a button bolds your text or changes its color. And there’s only one layout, with a left-sided navigation bar and rather narrow content pane. But, if you’re a beginner, don’t know or don’t want to know HTML and have very few graphical skills, SBI will get the job done for you. Sure, WordPress might offer more modern designs and XSitePro might seem more flexible, but you really don’t need all those bells and whistles starting out. If you want to use them later, you still can… with SBI. It’ll integrate nicely!
- An RSS feed submitter, that effectively transforms your website into a blog. One of the reasons so many webmasters love WordPress and Blogger so much is the fact that they are blogging platforms and search engines (especially Google) love blogs. Site Build It detractors claim that content website model is no match for a blog. But let’s take a closer look at why SEs love blogs so much… It’s because blogs generally adhere to a standard of constantly updating content. The nature of a blog is frequent posts on new topics. SEs love constantly new content. People assume that a simple content model like SBI won’t produce that perception of updating content. But, with SBI’s RSS/Blog It module (included free), every change on your website, whether new page or updated page, becomes part of your RSS feed and is pinged out into the world accordingly. So your content website is going to look to the SEs pretty much like a blog. Here’s the RSS/BlogIt page on one of my sites, so you can see what I mean: http://www.discover-acadia.com/acadia-national-park-blog.html
There’s a lot more too, but I don’t want to make this post any longer than necessary. You can find more description on their tools on this page at Site Build It:
One other point I want to make clear is that SBI is adding new and improved tools… all the time. They roll out new features almost every month… at NO additional charge. In fact, the price hasn’t gone up as long as I’ve been using Site Build It (and that’s 9 years!) Oh, and that slightly lacking, non WSIWYG site builder? It’s about to change, big time. I don’t know yet all the details, but I do know it’s going to be CSS driven and offer the option of a 3-column layout. I’ll be sure to report here with my review of it when it happens, probably within the next 3 months, I think.
You Have to Keep Paying That $299 Every Year & For Every New Site
Well, yeah… of course, you don’t get to renew for free. No quality webhost offers free renewals. After all, they’re in business too. And all those great tools, features, etc. that Site Build It offers do cost them money to maintain, troubleshoot and update.
Here’s some good news, though, and something you might not have heard at all those other “Site Build It is scam!” sites… Once you’ve had SBI for a year, you can renew on a month to month basis, rather than having to dole out $299 all at once. So, if a year has gone by and your site is starting to make money, but you’re not 100% sure you want to stick with it, you can just re-up on the monthly plan. It’s a lot easier to stomach $29/month, especially when money is super tight.
And yes, every new website license/account is $299. You might ask why you have to pay that whole amount once you’ve been through the SBI training materials. You may not feel like you really need to review all that stuff again. Goog point, but here’s the thing… you’re not really paying that $299 for the eCourse, though that IS a standard feature of SBI. The $299 is for the webhosting and all of the powerful tools that come with SBI. The course is a wonderful free bonus. At least that’s how I look at it.
Also, Site Build It offers specials several times a year, around nearly every major US holiday (spring, our 3 summer holidays, Thanksgiving), where you can get a second SBI site for only $100. If you buy at Christmas time, you can get your second site free for the first year. This is a great deal, and the way I’ve gotten many of my sites.
And when you’ve built a successful, money-making website with SBI, then that $299 isn’t really that hard to swallow… because you’re probably making it back withink the first month or two after renewal anyway.
So, I hope by now you realize that the Site Build It myth that SBI costs too much is just that… a total myth. SBI is worth every penny you’ll spend on it!
“This affiliate marketing case study describes how a novice working part-time used Site Build It! to create an affiliate web site that achieved $49,000 in sales in just over a year. His second site has now achieved more than $308,000 in sales for one merchant. We earn a commission on that. He spends nothing on advertising.”
~ Allan Gardyne
Rupert’s SBI! Experiment
http://case-studies.sitesell.com/
