One of the wild claims made by the interlinked bloggers who started the firestorm was that the only people who are positive about SBI are those who are affiliates, meaning they’re paid to say nice things about SBI through their affiliate commissions. They went on to say that most of the SBI review pages on the net were written by people wanting to make a buck through their SBI affiliate links.

This SBI myth — or false claim — is a bit harder to disprove, because you can never really know for sure what is in the mind of someone whose writing you read on the Web. People can say anything they want and without body language or facial expression, it’s much harder to judge the tone of their written words.

But I read what the slammers I mentioned above said, especially the original blogger, and she clearly had no idea what she was talking about. She had many errors in her so-called review of SBI that made it clear she’d never even used SBI. So it was hard for me to see that what she and her ilk were accusing SBI affiliates of was much different. But I digress..The myth that only SBI affiliates have good things to say about Site Build It is partly right. I mean, people who use SBI and decide to become affiliates ARE usually positive and there’s a reason for that. It’s simple. Because Site Build It is a quality product. And because they have built successful, money-making websites using the SBI system and tools. So why wouldn’t they want to share it with others?

I am one of those affiliates and I’m very up front with you about that. There’s no need to not be honest about it. I have nothing to hide. I am a proud user of SBI with 7 successful websites that support me and I’m happy to help others do the same.

So the next time, you hear that only affiliates recommend Site Build It, ask yourself why?

Well, duh…

No program, system or strategy works for everyone, no matter how great a product or service it is. That’s just common sense. We’re each of us different, with different tastes, skills, interests and preferences than the other.

SBI is one way of building a successful online home business. In my opinion, it’s one of the best, if not the best. But I know it’s not the only way. And no, it isn’t the right online home business system for everyone. For instance, if you’re looking for a get rich quick method, that’s not SBI.

Or, if you are not interested in creating a content site about a topic you know or love, then Site Build It is probably not for you either. Because that is their basic model for online home business. If you can’t conceive of writing at least 30 to 50 pages of content, then you’re not going to succeed with a content-based website.

Another reason why SBI doesn’t work for some people is that they don’t follow the program. There’s a saying… “Work the program and the program works for you.” But for various reasons, people don’t work the program and then they complain that SBI doesn’t work. Site Build It offers an extremely detailed, step-by-step Action Guide to teach you how to build a web-based business. It’s divided into 10 major stages, each of which has to be completed in sequence in order to achieve success.

My seven SBI websites attest to the power of this approach. As do all of the sites listed on this page:

http://results.sitesell.com

But people who have failed at SBI will tell you we are all just flukes, or plain lucky. But that’s not right. The truth is, we each of us followed the SBI Action Guide, at least well enough to actually achieve the success we were looking for when we started out. Many of us have even exceeded that level of success… many times over.

But some people think the Action Guide is too slow, or too detailed, or not current enough, or … who knows. So, they go off on their own, doing something else, perhaps following every new “guru” trend that comes along… and then when their SBI site sits their in the black hole of cyberspace with no traffic, no sales and no success… they blame SBI.

Not fair…

So, when people say SBI just doesn’t work, I say, that’s right, it doesn’t… unless…

• You’re willing to put in lots of hard work
• You’re patient enough to give your site time to succeed
• You follow the Action Guide, every step along the way

Here are a couple of the things I’ve read:

• SBI owns your domain, not you. So, if you want to transfer it to a new web host, either you won’t be able to… or it’ll cost you, big time.
• You have no control over your website because you don’t have access to the backend.

So, are they true? Well…. NO.

Does SBI Control Your Domain?

SBI functions as both a web host and your domain registrar when you sign up with them. So, they DO register your domain name for you (through Tucows.com)… at no additional charge. But they don’t own the domain name; you do. I’ll prove it to you. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to this page: http://results.sitesell.com/scsweb.html
2. On that page you’ll see a list of many successful SBI websites. (Or you can also look at my SBI site URLs on the right sidebar here.)
3. Next, go to http://www.betterwhois.com & insert any of the SBI URLs from the Results page or mine here and look at the Administrative Contact listed. It doesn’t say SBI, SiteSell or anything like that, does it? (Unless of course you happen to choose anguilla-beaches.com, which IS owned by the daughter of SBI founder, Ken Evoy.)

So, you can easily prove to yourself that SBI does NOT own your domain; the SBI website owner does. And should an SBI owner decide to transfer their site away from SBI, all they have to do is initiate a domain transfer. It’s as easy to do at SBI as it is anywhere else. I know, because I’ve done it. Just be sure to save your pages before you do so, because you’ll have to upload them all over again to your new web host. And it doesn’t cost anything to leave SBI either; in fact, they’ll probably give you a prorated refund if you ask.

One other thing… if you DO leave SBI, any functionality you were using, such as forms, Content 2.0 or the ezine mailer, will obviously no longer work once you leave SBI.

Do You Control Your Website?

Some people equate not being able to do traditional FTP file uploads or being able to access your backend directly with not having control over your website. Again, this is NOT true. You can’t upload batches of files, and that is something most experienced webmasters like me find a little frustrating. SBI says it helps avoid problems when you can’t directly access your database of files. I’m not sure I buy it. But I also don’t buy that it means I’m not in charge of my own site.

The SBI staff never touch your site or anything in it. You own and control all your content. You add and subtract functionality in complete freedom… as you see fit. Over the past few years, they have given you more and more control, albeit somewhat indirectly to much more functionality than was originally true.

For example, you didn’t used to be able to install a true blog, a forum or a php-based shopping cart script on your SBI site, because you couldn’t upload PHP files or install PHP based scripts. But about a year ago, they rolled out a new module called InfinIt that now makes all that possible by putting those add-ons in a subdomain of your site (which is actually hosted elsewhere, but appears to be a seamless subsection of your site). Here’s an example on one of my sites:

http://mama.motor-scooters-guide.com/

So, my answer once again to the many SBI myths that have to do with your control over your own site is once again… WRONG! SBI is not the enemy; it is simply a tool to build a successful business on the Web.

I don’t really agree with this. Dr. Ken Evoy and his team are constantly scouring web trends and evaluating their long-term hardiness and usefulness. And then they tell SBI owners about it in the weekly newsletter and on the forums. They do know what’s going on and Site Build It reflects it. Does that mean they’ll jump on every emerging trend? No, definitely not. Because trends don’t always have lasting power. They also don’t recommend anything black hat or illegal.

That’s because Dr. Ken and his team are all about learning how to build a web business that works for today… and on into the future.

Here are some of the justifications you’ll read for SBI being out of date, as well as my responses…

• The website templates are old-fashioned and non-web 2.0 looking. True, if you’re only looking at their original 20 designs, the ones that were packaged with SBI when it was first rolled out, nearly a decade ago. But, SBI ran a design contest a few years ago that netted around 70 or 80 new designs that you could upload to their blockbuilder as your template. Then, again, they ran another design contest about 2.5 years ago that netted yet another 100 new designs. So we’re now up to almost 300 templates, all free to use. And, to make things better, you can completely customize any of those templates, by changing color schemes, header graphics, etc. Or, you can start from scratch and design your own graphics and colors. Take a look at my 7 SBI sites (in the right sidebar) and you’ll see the kind of variety you can get with SBI, even in the blockbuilder. If you’re comfortable with working with HTML code, you can even upload your completely customized website, bypassing the blockbuilder altogether. And that can be based on ANY template you desire, as long as it is coded in HTML (not PHP or ASP). Sure, you’ll still see a lot of SBI websites that use the old designs, but that’s only because their owners have been focusing more on building their content than on designing a glitzy look and feel. They have their priorities straight too. They can always go back later and upgrade the design, once their site has begun to work for them.
• SBI doesn’t use up to date SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it means doing certain things to your content that help search engines see what it is about and to assign it a high value so that your pages show up in the first 3 pages of search result listings if possible. Again, SBI DOES understand SEO and they help you understand it too. They have a really powerful tool that you can run on every single page you build, whether it’s in the block builder or uploading your own HTML pages, called Analyze It. Analyze It looks at all kinds of on-page factors to see if you have used your keywords in the right places, with the right frequency and many other issues. If you haven’t, they tell you why it’s important to change, even how important it is. Dr. Ken Evoy talks about how while SEO is important, it’s not the be-all and end-all to success on the Web, no matter what you’ve heard. These days, what Dr. Ken has been telling us for years is widely acknowledged… the best way to get ranked by the search engines is to build lots of well-written, niche-focused content. The rest will happen naturally. Want proof? Search on a keyword… I’m betting you’re going to find at least one SBI site in the first 30 sites (3 pages) of search results. Or look at the SBI Results Page, where you can check out hundreds of SBI-built websites that rank in the top 1% of all websites on the Internet.
• SBI hasn’t kept up with the times, though it may once have been good. Wrong again… SBI is constantly changing. In the last year or two, they’ve added a social bookmarking tool for your pages and a Web 2.0 style module that enables your visitors to contribute content to your site. SBI was also the first to develop an automated Google Sitemaps, within 48 hours of Google launching it. Ditto for Yahoo!’s version. And it’s still the most automated system for sitemaps. SBI has an unmatched database of sites, submissions, spider behavior, indexing and ranking and is constantly tweaking and improving site-management algorithms. This is cutting edge stuff and the best part is that the SBI owner does not have to spend a second worrying about it. Don’t believe me? Check out their Proof Page.

There may be other variations on this theme, but rest assured… Site Build IS with the times and so will your site be if you build it using Site Build It’s tools. You may even be cutting edge in your niche!