 |
|
 | ||
|
Meanwhile I got a lot comments and questions about SBI and making money online. Apparently there are a lot of people interested in working from home and making money without being stuck in somebody else’s office for 40 hours a week.
Sorry for this long page – just jump over to those questions that interest you most!
How Much Do You Make From Your Site?
A few people weren’t shy and asked directly about the bottom line. While I can certainly understand why you ask, I’m sorry - Dutch people don’t post their income on the internet. Let’s say that at this moment (a year after I bought SBI) it’s nice additional income, and it’s increasing fast enough for me to see a bright future.
On the whole, I’ve been working about 2 days a week on this site.What you can make with an SBI website, depends heavily on several factors: your site topic, the ways in which you make money (ads, commissions, referrals, your own products or services, membership sites, etc.), the amount of time you can invest, etc.
But if you pick a good theme and spend enough time on it, making thousands of dollars a month from one site is by all means realistic. Some make more, some less, based on all the factors involved. Most SBI owners start second and third sites later as well. Here are stories of SBI owners telling how they make money online. SBI owners have even created video’s telling about their experiences with SBI.
Exactly How Do You Make Money?
Do you see the small ads on my site that say “Ads by Goooogle”? Those are Google Adsense ads. Every time somebody clicks on them, I make money. This is all entirely automatic (though I am able to refuse specific ads).
I’ve also signed up with affiliate programs, like the beautiful pictures from Allposters.com at this site. If people click from my site to Allposters.com and buy something there, I get a good percentage of the earnings. It's all automatic - I don't talk to the customer and I don't have to bring packages to the mail.
I will also be selling my own products in the near future. I already get offers from companies to work with them (I had 3 offers during the last 2 months, and refused them all, since I wasn’t convinced of their quality – visitor needs first!)It’s always a certain percentage of visitors that perform click on ads or buy things, so basically if you double your traffic, you also double your earnings. Do you begin to understand how important traffic is...?
Making money online actually isn’t terribly hard, if you have enough visitors. And most website owners never get to that point! The majority of all the sites on the internet get little to no traffic. They are often beautiful or brilliant sites, but what’s the use if they have no visitors?
SBI sites do much, much better. A traffic study shows that 62% of all SBI websites are in the top 3% of most visited sites on the internet and 35% of SBI sites make it in the top 1%. Here’s a page with many hundreds of examples of successfull SBI websites – most of them are one-man undertakings, made by people with no prior website experience. There’s also a special page for people who'd like to start travel websites.
How Does SBI Work? Do You Need To Have Web Building Experience?
No. I didn't know anything about HTML when I started this site!
SBI has a point-and-click system through which you can choose a design and build new pages with a few mouse clicks. No special skills necessary. You write new pages on your computer, and then copy-and-paste them into your website – it's easy.
However, there are many systems to get a site up ‘quick and easy’ – it’s nothing special. What they don’t have is something similar to SBI’s step-by-step process and tools, all explained in the Action Guide (both written and in video form). Here’s how it works.
With SBI, you list (possibly several) topics that you consider making a site about. It can be anything – a hobby, a passion, or skills you learned at work, a travel destination, etc. Then you type each of these topics (“keywords”) into the SBI brainstorm tool, which will tell you exactly how many people are searching online for information about that topic, and how many sites already exist about that (your competition). Then SBI helps you to find ways to make money for each of your potential site topics. Only then do you decide on your topic and domain name, and register it (SBI takes care of all of this).
This early planning stage is crucial for any website to succeed – if you do this wrong (and most new sites do) you’re building a house on quicksand. Watch this movie that explains everything in detail. It takes 30 minutes of your time, but I guarantee that after watching
The SBI system was built with the complete beginner in mind. Next to the Action Guide there’s a whole library of short how-to guides that explain all the basics about making money online. SBI has good support staff. If you have more far-reaching questions, you can go to the busy user forums with thousands of people just like you online. I’ve had most of my questions (and I had a lot!) answered there, usually on the same day.
It Sounds Good – But I Have No Idea What To Make A Site About!
Many SBI owners thought so in the beginning – but wait until you really start thinking! Get a piece of paper and write down every hobby or passion you have, any skill, anything you know something about. Also go back in time – what was your passion or knowledge 3 years ago? And 6 and 10 years ago? "Everybody knows something about something."
It’s best to pick a topic you’re passionate about – then working on your site becomes fun. But you also have to check whether it’s potentially profitable. So first you make a list of things you are knowledgeable about: a hobby, a passion or skills from your job.
Using SBI’s brainstorm tool, you then check how many people are looking for this information on the internet, and how many sites exist already about that topic - your competition, so to say. You’re actually doing market research – expensive to do offline, but cheap and quick online!
Without such research – and most people don’t do it! – a small business website is doomed to fail. You’re then launching something without “customer demand”, or something that has a crazy amount of competition. You have little chance of success then. There are dozens such tools in SBI – here’s an overview.
It Says SBI Costs 299 Dollars For The First Year. What Are The Costs After That?
The yearly subscription fee is 299 dollars. This includes everything: all the tools, domain name registration, hosting (no matter how big or much-visited your site becomes), how-to libraries, the user forums, etc. No hidden costs, no catches :-).
SBI, by the way, has a rock-hard money back guarantee. If you don’t like it for whatever reason, you can get a refund.
I Like The Idea Of Having My Own Website, But I Can’t Write!
Well, you can talk, can you! SBI advises that you write as if you would be talking to a friend who comes to you with a question. Just picture your friend, imagine what you would be telling him or her, and write this down.
Actually, SBI has made an e-book freely available on how to write to really connect to your visitors. I've been a journalist for over 10 years, but it really opened my eyes in several ways. Download it here:
The Netwriting Masters Course,
by Ken Evoy
Is It That Easy? Just Build A Website And The Money Comes Rolling In?
It depends on what you mean by “easy”. First, you need to invest time to build up your pages, to develop traffic. Also, search engines like websites that are older. They have more credibility, and get higher listings in the search engines. As a result, most SBI owners make little to no money in the first months.
The harvesting begins later, when your site has taken off and you can spend less time on it since all the basics are in place. So you have to be persistent and think of yourself as an entrepreneur, not an employee.
Second, your site needs to be good and really meet needs of your visitors. But if you’re passionate about your topic, that’s not hard. If you’re like most people who know a lot about something, you probably underestimate how much you know.
So if you think you can make fast money with a lousy website, the answer is no.
But, if by “easy” you mean it’s doable for everyone who brings enough “BAM” (brain and motivation), then the answer is YES.
Are There Downsides To SBI?
Perhaps one downside to SBI is the sheer amount of information (how-to guides, the forums etc.) inside the system… It’s great information, but it’s just so much! The solution is to first focus on the few things that really matter: the Action Guide and (if you have specific questions) the forums. Ignore the rest, until the moment you want to move to the next thing.
If you have any other questions, you can ask them to an actual SBI owner here. They will be honest to you and also tell you if SBI does NOT meet your particular needs.
The important thing is, ordering SBI is totally risk-free. Their money-back guarantee is rock solid. You can take SBI for a test ride and then decide if it's right for you - and remember, I can make a profitable website, anyone can!
I'll now leave you with this dude, the inventor of SBI... Click below and a new window will open - you can watch a video there that may be life-changing!
