1. Why did you decide for SBI?
Well, let’s go back to 2007. This is when it all started. In summer 2007 I decided  to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to experience the ultimate feeling of freedom and being one with nature.

When I finally made it to the summit in January 2008 I knew this feeling of freedom in all its aspects was something I wanted to strive for in my life. The journey started…

At that time I was already working in the online marketing field and by today I still work as a consultant. I thought about building an international online business myself, but was not sure how and what.

I knew I wanted to go international, although I am living in The Netherlands. The English spoken target market is way bigger than the Dutch!

After researching dozens of topics online I knew SBI could be a fit! Great testimonials and a logical model (Content -> Traffic -> Presell -> Monetize) made me sign up back in April 2008.

I will come back to this later, but I actually started my website Marathon-training-tips.com in November 2010 and paid around $ 750 subscription fees for nothing. But, no regrets!

Why I waited so long? I changed my job, moved to another place, met a great woman… Let’s say a lot of excuses not to start.

2. Did you know what you wanted to write about or did you have to find a niche? How did you decide?
Yes, I had a couple of ideas but which one was the best? I was not sure so I decided to search the internet for an experienced SBI’er.

In summer 2010 I came in contact with a Site Build It Certified Webmaster and decided to work together in the first phase of my website.

I decided my topic after a thorough niche finding interview. The first selection contained:
-    Peanut allergy (As you might guess I am allergic to that )
-    Social Media (A topic that I thought was really booming)
-    Running (Started running in 2004 after a bet with one of my friends in college)

Running and more specific Marathon Training was a logical choice. Social Media was too broad and competitive for a first website. Peanut Allergy didn’t have enough potential and Marathon Training is my passion and has lots of (monetization) potential.

Over the last 10 years I read dozens of books and information from other resources so I consider my knowledge of running (related aspects) to be quite good! And of course I have a lot of running experience myself!

3. How did you progress?
The first step to take was making a blueprint of all the possible keywords that were not too competitive, had good value and thereby lots of potential. We used the brainstormer in SBI and laid the foundation for my website. A blueprint of 150 keywords was the result.

My website and the first 10 pages of content were a fact in December 2010. I learned to work with SBI by clearly following the Action Guide and just DOING it! Besides that I read many, many articles online.

Major things that I remember:
-    November 2010: I registered my domain
-    December 2010: I wrote my first pages
-    July 2011: I reached 100 unique visitors per day
-    November 2011: I reached 300 unique visitors per day
-    End of 2011: I reached the 100 pages mark and my trust in building freedom was getting higher
-    January 2012: I reached  500 unique visitors per day and I received my first check $$$ (I have a lot of monetization ideas, but this was not my first priority, I know the money will come)

4. Can you share a few tips of what really worked well for getting more traffic?
Great question Tomaz, let me post 5 tips:

Tip #1: quality over quantity
It is better to build one very well researched page than two pages you wrote in less than an hour. The relevancy of your content and how appealing it is to your visitors will determine your success.

For example, if you write a great article that interests your visitors there is a huge chance that they will share it with their friends / on the internet. Automatic link building -> KA-CHING!

Bad pages will get a high bounce and lower ranking in the search engines.

Tip #2: keep building over time
In my experience it is better to build 1 or 2 pages a week instead of one week 2 or 4 and the other week no pages at all.

You will gradually feed the engines and visitors with more fresh, great content and establish a steady presence online. Of course it is no problem if you don’t publish new content every week but you got my idea. Keep feeding the engines, especially in your way to the first 100 – 200 pages.

Tip #3: establish relationships online
Over the last year I built a network of people who can help me succeed with my website/business.

For example, I am a regular contributor to other blogs. In return for interesting content I receive a few free links back to my website. In need of guest blogs? Try one of these 10 searches in Google:

“looking for guest bloggers”
“Write for Us”
“Submit a Guest Post”
“Submit Guest Post”
“Become a Guest Blogger”
“This guest post was written”
“About the Author”
inurl:contribute
inurl:guest-posts
inurl:guest-post-guidelines

Combine the search query above with your niche and I am sure you will find many opportunities for getting good links.

Tip #4: leverage the power of social media
Define a stategy for social media. The potential of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ … is enormous but don’t start without a clear strategy.

Research the internet to get a great idea for these places or simply visit the SBI Forums and read other success stories and try it yourself!

Tip #5: there are no competitors, only friends
It may sound weird, but think about the advantages instead of disadvantages of having other websites in your niche.

If they sell great products you can probably become a reseller (through affiliate programs). If both websites supplement each other’s content, you can make a link exchange. The opportunities are endless. In every niche there is enough space for another great website!

Bonus tip #6: do what you are the best and outsource the rest
Think big, act big. On almost every aspect of internet marketing I found a partner online.

I know I can write content, build links, publish messages in social media land and I can go on for a while. The problem is time. I am combining this online adventure with a fulltime job, so I decided to outsource some activities to speed things up.

Among others I have good experience with Site Build It Certified Webmasters, Fiverr.com and NeedAnArticle.com.

What you can do is first build an online presence yourself. At the time you earn some dollars you can decide to reinvest this in outsourcing activities. This way you can grow your business faster.

5. Your plans for the future?
I’d like to grow my marathon training blog towards a successful business and probably build one or two more in the coming years to secure a steady income.

My ultimate goal: It sounds great, but isn’t simple: becoming free!

Why? I don’t mind working for a boss to a certain extent, but I want to get more control over my life in terms of when and from where to work, when to go on Holidays and for how long, when to visit friends and family and I can continue for hours.

You know, current economy isn’t stable and the future is insecure for many people. I am very determined to succeed and in the future I hope to help others achieve the same!

I wish you all the best and you can always contact me if you have any questions.

Cheers,
Paul

It’s an unexpected and wonderful feeling, but building my second SBI! site is what has led me to fully believe in myself as an online businesswoman. Let me share why.

Commonly received wisdom amongst seasoned SBI!ers is that the first year of your first site is a learning year. Even with SBI!’s help it takes time to figure out all the pieces of the site-building puzzle.

SBI! never advertises itself as a get-rich-quick scheme; rather it’s a work hard, pay attention and you will succeed beyond your dreams kind of system! However without SBI! I estimate it would take at least 3-4 times as long to accumulate the necessary skills and knowledge to be successful online.

Depending on how much time you have to dedicate towards building your first website, it can also take weeks or months (or even years) of elapsed time to find your content-writing rhythm. It’s generally true that once you get the flow of ideas started, writing pages that will interest human visitors and impress the search engines becomes easier.

Many people, including myself, admit to making silly mistakes with their first site. My blunders with my first site, a healthy eating guide called Growing Raw, include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Choosing a domain name that expressed my ideas completely and accurately at the time – but only to myself!
• Not clearly identifying my target visitors, their needs and what they would be looking for – instead thinking only of what I wanted to tell them.
• Biting off more than I could chew – there are at least half a dozen sub-niches within my site that would have worked beautifully as their own focused, clearly identifiable, keyword targeted sites. Alas, my initial site concept is as broad as the Río de la Plata!
• Confusing the search engines with my diverse range of keywords – even with Tomaz’s cherry-picking method in mind it’s hard to justify the spread of keywords and subtopics I’ve used.
• Writing the pages I wanted to write rather than heeding the advice of BrainstormIt!, which very clearly indicated the kinds of pages my visitors were actually searching for.
• Not getting stuck into link-building until Tomaz’s shake-up of everyone in middle of last year – that was at least a year down the track for me and I still have a lot of catching up to do in this area.
• Last but not least, not feeling confident or experienced enough to really find my own voice and write pages full of character as well as information

Phew! So where’s the good news? Well, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Building a second site can give you the distance and perspective to drastically improve your first site.

You won’t even realize just how much you’ve learned until you start building your next site. Studying the Action Guide, osmosis from the brilliant and friendly SBI forums, guidance and enlightenment from grounding blogs like Freedom Ideas and simply hanging around more online gives you a valuable education.

When you are building your own site, you consciously pick up hundreds of clues about what makes you like or dislike other sites you visit. Being more tuned in to web business strategies also helps you identify and pick the best marketing techniques used by successful sites.

All of the research you’ve done feeds into your second site in the most natural and exhilarating way. As you reach each decision point you have so much more experience and understanding to draw on. With ability and confidence, you can successfully apply what you’ve learned.

It’s also an opportunity to revise the parallel choices you made for your first site. For example, building my second site has prompted me to look back at Growing Raw and:

• Update tier 2 and the most popular content pages to better reflect my personality and voice – now that I’ve finally found my online charisma
• Find ways of reaching out to visitors for my most wanted response, seeking harder for e-zine sign-ups, e-book sales and affiliate clicks. Previously I would have to say that I was barely requesting any action at all from my visitors.
• Shuffle the tier structure to better reflect the power of my keywords.
• Regain the passion for my first site as I realise its worth and potential.

Some would argue that this is a case of ‘tweaking’, and they may be right. However, because my interest in my first site was deeply personal as well as professional and financial it is completely worth it for me.

As my passion for the topic becomes more deeply embedded in my lifestyle, the more I wish to successfully reach out to others. You do have to apply the 80/20 rule so you don’t waste time tweaking elements that won’t make much difference though.

Of course, it’s also worth it for me because I can finally see how the site I spent two years of elapsed time building whilst juggling toddlers and part-time work can finally pay a dividend to my family. Traffic for my first site has nearly tripled in the six months since I began my second site. At last this hobby is becoming lucrative!

Bottom line is this. If you’ve spent a year or so building your first site up to 100 pages or more, when you start again from the ground up you can reap exponential benefits. You may find yourself with a fabulous new site to love and a refreshed, reinvigorated and increasingly profitable first site.

Today I woke up to the crowing of a rooster in paradise. An hour later I was running alongside the rice fields of Bali, enjoying the unbelievable views and the friendly farmers who called out good morning, “selamat pagi!”

When I got back home I took a quick dip in the pool and then feasted on Papayas and Mangoes, getting ready to start another day of the work I love, writing about raw foods and health at my website, raw-food-health.net

But being able to do what I love, in the midst of one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, is not something I was born to.

Up until May of 2010 I was a newspaper reporter working sometimes-strange hours for not much money in Connecticut. I loved the job most of the time, but it was stressful and, frankly, I hate being told what to do, no matter how good the boss is.

At the beginning of 2008 I saw an endorsement for Site Build It and decided to give it a try. I’d healed my colitis and reclaimed my life with raw foods, and I decided that spreading that message to others was valuable contribution that I could make.

And so in my spare time I started working, and, bit by bit, like a building taking shape against the skyline, I turned my knowledge into a huge resource for anyone looking to improve their health.

Although I hadn’t started it with profit in mind, by 2009 it was bringing me in a few hundreds bucks a month. I continued to work and my traffic continued to grow, and before long I’d put out an Ebook that began to sell well. Eventually I started offering raw food coaching consultations, paid advertising, and other services.

By May of 2010 I could see that I was already making a modest, mostly automated income that came in whether or not I continued to work on my site. I knew then that I had created a golden parachute for myself, and that I could leave my job.

I turned in my letter of resignation that month, and after wrapping up my affairs in the US, I touched down in Bali on December 1 of 2010.

I’m throughly enjoying living in paradise, but also realize that I’ve just skimmed the surface of my potential. My site is currently getting about 1,000 visitors a day, a sum that grows every month, and I realize that as long as I keep doing what I’m doing, things will only get better for me. I’ve got new ebooks and other services in the work, and eventually plan to make a second site.

I couldn’t have done all this without Site Build It, which provided me with the tools and step-by-step directions for making my golden parachute possible. Today I’m a free man, and I’ll never have to work for a boss again, unless I want to, of course.

It’s a glorious feeling, and if you’re interesting in carving out your own future, I suggest you give SBI a chance.

Now, he is focused on becoming free. He will undoubtedly succeed since I’ve gotten to know his work ethic and optimism through the project on which we work together…

The allure of the internet. For me, it’s all about trying to earn my freedom.

Two years ago, I started up my first site running tips at tips4running.com.  In early November, I started on my second site reviewing radiant floor heat at radiantheatreviewer.com.  Below is my journey over the past two years on the internet.

I have to warn you.  This story is very convoluted.  As Tomaz can probably attest to, I get a bit long winded.  I’ll condense it into my top tips, and then give you the details.

1.  Your first site should be about something you like!
2.  Don’t be afraid of trying to contact big fish.
3.  If you aren’t an expert in your niche, get information from people who are.
4.  When you find someone who can help you, do every thing you can to learn from them.
5.  Don’t miss out on great opportunities.
6.  Chase the money.  Make a site about something expensive!
7.  Being smart about work is better than working hard.
8.  Have an ultimate goal.

Want all the details?  Then keep on reading.

Here’s a little background.  My day job is a Middle School Language Arts Teacher. Basically, my job is to teach and entertain 11-12 year old students for eight hours every day.

When my work day is over, I go home to my wife, my five year old son, my three year old daughter, and my one year old son.  There is no safe haven for me!  No matter where I go, there is an onslaught of work to be done.  How will I ever escape?

I decided to turn to the internet.  Why?  Well, more and more people use it everyday.  I figured, the internet is still like a child.  It grows and grows everyday.

If I can create some good sites now, they will grow with the internet world and eventually, the pioneers of the web will rule the world.  Too dramatic?  Probably, but there is a hint of truth in this.

After I have taken care of all my school work, and after I have wrestled with my children and get them to bed, I get to work on my website projects.  My wife asks me how I have the energy to manage my websites, work, and still be a great father.

My answer to her is simple.  I won’t have this energy forever, so I am working hard now so I can relax later.  As Tomaz has stated, you have to be uncomfortable for a little while.

November 2008 – Something I Like. I started up my first SBI site.  I chose a niche that I was familiar with, running.

My site is based upon training information for beginner runners.  Because, it really wasn’t constructed around a product, this site doesn’t earn big money.  In the first year, I earned just over $300 total.

During the year one, I learned a lot about how the web really works.  I read plenty of information from SBI.  I followed the Action Guide.  I built a lot of content, and felt pretty good about what I had accomplished.

Some of you probably think that making virtually no money the first year is a bad thing. Not necessarily.  The first year is where you find out if you are willing to put in the consistent effort to learn and enhance your skills.  I made plenty of mistakes, but that is how I learn.

One nice thing about working on a niche that I liked is I wasn’t discouraged with the learning process or the fact that my site wasn’t making money.  I always had ideas for new content.  I wasn’t worried about giving up on my website.  I like running, so writing about running will always be fun to me.

June 2009 – Big Fish! I started interviewing people and posting these interviews on my website.

Some of the runners that I was lucky enough to interview are well known.  These interviews naturally were linked up all over the web.  Instantly, my site became relevant to people in the running world.

One particular interview lead me to way more money than I was earning.  The interview was with a runner named Marius Bakken, who also has an SBI site about marathons.

November 2009 – Experts. Because of the professional relationship I established with Marius Bakken, he let me preview his eBook about marathon running.

When he released it, I became an affiliate.  BAM!  I started making a whole lot more money.  Now when I say a whole lot, I mean compared to what I previously earned.  He also encouraged me to write my own book on beginner running.  Now I have my own product for sale through Clickbank.

June 2010 – Learn From the Best. I continued to exchange emails with Marius, and he mentions I should follow a blog named Freedom Ideas.

He said he has learned a lot from this blog.  I quickly realize that this Tomaz guy from Freedom Ideas has put it all together.  The best part is he is sharing this information for free.  Every now and then, I post on his blog.

I even emailed him cold, and get this, he emailed me back!!!  This guy must be for real, because he is willing to share with total internet strangers. I start to do a better job linking my site to the rest of the internet by reading his posts.  My site doubles it’s traffic by simply finding stronger link sharing opportunities.

October 2010 – A Great Opportunity. Tomaz puts a post on Freedom Ideas about a vacuum project.  He says he needs help.

I’ve got nothing to lose so I write up a review for my vacuum.  I consistently pester him about the project over the next couple of weeks.

To my surprise, he actually picks me to help him create complete vacuum reviews for his vacuum site. I get the vacuums and run them through a series of tests.  Then together we produce a video and written article.

I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from this experience.  First of all, I start to understand the value of longer keyword driven articles.  The last review I wrote was over 2,900 words.  Why?  Well, because I’m long winded, can’t you tell.

Tomaz asked for 2,000, but he was more than happy with the longer article.  This means the search engines will see so many different word combinations for my review.  More keyword combos means more traffic!

November 2010 – Chase the Money. With my running site, I earn over $300 per month.  This is a huge change from the first year.

It does dawn on me that one site isn’t going to lead to financial independence.  Now that I am working with Tomaz, I share some of my ideas for a second site.  He also has a few suggestions, and I settle on radiantheatreviewer.com.  I decided to investigate a topic I have no background knowledge on.  In essence, I am chasing the money.

I do have a huge advantage this time.  I know how to build a site.  The content is easy to produce once I start reading and learning about radiant floor heat.  I employ some of my previous tactics to help build my site.

Now it’s loaded with interviews, and keyword driven reviews.  I am even attempting some new tactics such as outsourcing article writing.  If I never try it, I’ll never learn if it would be an effective strategy for me.

December 2010 – Work Smart. Over the past two years, I have had to work very hard to get to this point.

My running site has over 175 pages of content, all created by me. I thought it really shouldn’t be this hard to earn some money. I wasn’t smart about creating keyword driven content.

Now, times have changed.  I’ve learned through my mistakes.  I value my time and efforts.  When I sit down to work, I have a clear goal in mind.

Now my goals are tied into what I want to accomplish.  For instance, in October of 2010, I set the goal of making $500 per month using the internet by January 2011.

Now I am much more specific about how I will accomplish the goal.  Instead of saying, “I want $500,” I set a more concise goals such as, “I will add one new page of keyword driven content to my running site per week.  I will complete three vacuum reviews this month.

I will create ten keyword driven articles to my radiant heat site per month.  I will write five articles for different sites like ezinearticles per month.  I will get five successful link exchanges this week.”  The money follows after you accomplish goals like this.

The Future – I do have one ultimate goal.  That I’ll keep to myself.  I really believe I can achieve it though.  That’s why I started building websites in the first place.

Now I ask you.  What’s your ultimate goal?  How will you achieve what you once thought was unreachable?

I’m a dreamer, and everyday, I keep working to make my dreams come true.  Share your goals here.  Ask questions.  Maybe what you read and learn here will motivate you to achieve great things.

And Alex now knows how to do more of the sites like that. And that knowledge is in my experience priceless.

My SBI site is DehydratorBook.com, which reviews food dehydrators and offers recipes.

For the last six months, the site has averaged over $500 a month.  I
built it to learn about online marketing, so any money it generates is
a cool bonus.

1. Did you know what you wanted to write about or did you have to find a niche?

I didn’t know what I wanted to build a site around when I ordered SBI.
Since I wasn’t going to be relying on my SBI site to pay the bills, I
knew I could take my time.  The Action Guide recommended not getting
stuck on an idea too early, and I remembered that.

After reading the guide, which took a weekend because of all the links
and notes, I checked out the forums.  The brainstorming thread you
started was about 20 pages long at the time.

(Last time I checked, it was over 40.  That thread is a must-read for
anyone that can’t decide on a site concept.)

After the forums, I visited your vacuum site.  I think you can see
your influence, as I wound up building a site about food dehydrators.
(I took nearly two months to decide on that.)

You may remember I emailed you for your thoughts on the idea, and you
predicted an average of $500 per month for the site.  That would’ve
been good enough for me, so I moved forward with it.

It also helped that I’ve wanted a dehydrator for a long time and the site (it’s a
business!) was a reasonable excuse to splurge on an Excalibur dehydrator.

2. How did you progress?

It took three months before I had my first 100 unique visitors in a
day.  I didn’t start putting ads up until then.  I started with Amazon
because they carried all the items I was going to write about.  Also,
because they sells so many things, I knew there was a chance I could
get commissions on items that had nothing to do with my site.

I use a little Adsense on a few pages and tested Chitika for a short
time too.  It didn’t make sense to me to be sending traffic to those
advertisers, since I already knew what they’re selling.

I could get cents for the click, but maybe that click to Amazon would’ve earned several dollars.  So on product review pages, I don’t use Adsense, but
I have some pages (like recipes) where I don’t have anything to sell,
so I use it on a few of those.

By December (the site launched in late May), the site was averaging
only 275 uniques/day, but still earned about $650.  January traffic
and commissions dropped (probably a natural thing), and then I slowed
down work on the site because I got bored.

At one point, I took down all Adsense code, because I thought I’d
rather have my traffic to go Amazon.  But I went to the Affiliate
Convention in LA, and keynote speaker Danny Sullivan joked that he
never heard of a site getting penalized for having too much Adsense.
I put it back on a few pages, and while I’m not saying that was the
cause, the effect was those pages’ rankings improved.

For two or three months, I stopped updating the site.  Traffic and
rankings were stable (stagnant), and I didn’t think it had potential
to earn much more.  I moved my site from SBI to another server when it
was time to renew.  The site was fine, but I forgot that it would
break all the C2 pages.

I left things broken for a little while, but when I came back to it, I saw traffic and revenue were improving.  So I felt it was time to fix it up, but it would’ve been too much trouble to rebuild all the forms and submissions.  I moved back to SiteSell.

Now the site gets 600 uniques/day and it looks like this month will
set a new high for income.

3. Can you share a few tips of what really worked well for getting more traffic?

I think getting a guest post on the site wisebread.com was the biggest
break.  That article was syndicated on msn.com, and that’s when I
learned the quality of a link was much more important than quantity.

When evaluating links, one of the best advice I read was to judge it
for its traffic instead of trying to guess its potential SEO benefits.
The idea is that traffic leads to exposure, which can lead to links
(or perhaps, sales).

For SEO, I emailed you for advice on the Yahoo Directory, and you said
it’s worth the fee.  I got that, and then submitted to a few more paid
directories.  They hardly send any traffic, but what I like is they’re
expensive for your competition to copy.

(Yes, I realize it was just the previous paragraph that I suggested
looking at traffic, but I don’t think anyone expects directories to
send much.  With directories, I look at the page my site would be
listed on and consider if I want to be associated with the others that
were accepted.)

4. Your plans for the future? (or anything else you’d like to share!)

I’m surprised the site is still growing, hitting 700 visitors for the
first time yesterday, so I think I’ll be adding more pages and working
on links.  According to Yahoo, I only have a couple hundred backlinks,
and that’s far from safe.  I see a lot of competing sites popping up
(everyone should be using Google Alerts), so that motivates me to keep
going.

I don’t have plans for another SBI site, but I’ve been able to apply a
lot of what I’ve learned in the AG to my other projects.

Thanks again for letting me share my SBI story here. And more thanks
for sharing your success and ideas, both here and on the boards.

1. Why did you decide for Site Build It?

I have a good friend who makes a full-time living from her online business, and when I told her I wanted to start a website she suggested I use SBI.  I knew absolutely nothing about the business or technical end of building a website, and I needed a program that would walk me through the process from start to finish.

At the price of $299, my husband thought my website would be an expensive hobby.  However, within a week of purchasing SBI, I chose a topic, registered my domain name and built my first few pages.

Several months later, I began earning a small monthly check from Google Adsense and recouped my initial investment.  I now earn far more than the annual price of an SBI subscription in monthly Adsense revenue alone!

2. Did you know what you wanted to write about or did you have to find a niche?

I teach my children at home and I knew I wanted to write about homeschooling, so I was relieved to find that the topic fit the criteria SBI recommends.

My topic was barely met the criteria for what SBI recommends in terms of supply/competitiveness so I have had to work hard to make sure I have a high-quality site that stands out from the competition.

However, the good thing about my niche is that demand is also high, and there are many individuals looking for the information I provide.  There are also many different ways to earn income in my niche.

3. How did you progress?

I built my site very rapidly, and after 2 years with SBI, I have over 300 content pages.  Because I am in a competitive niche, it has taken me much longer than I expected to reach my traffic goals.

I have taken several breaks from active work on my site – 3 months last summer while I was pregnant and 6 months this year after my 4th child was born.  Despite these breaks, my website continued to grow and even doubled in traffic and income.

This year, on a typical day, I have between 800 and 1,000 daily visitors.

4. Can you share a few tips of what really worked well for getting more traffic?

After building around 100 content pages, I submitted my site to directories, built Hub and Squidoo lenses, answered questions on Yahoo Answers, promoted my site on forums, and wrote 40 ezine articles.  However, because my niche is so competitive, I’ve found that I have to think outside of the box in order to distinguish myself from other websites and draw traffic to my website.

I host an annual contest that has generated over 1000 C2 pages for my website.  In addition to building keyword rich pages that draw search engine traffic, the contest also exposes my site to new visitors and potential advertisers.

Another project that has generated traffic and backlinks for my site is my free e-book about choosing a homeschool curriculum.

A large portion of this e-book consists of interviews with prominent homeschooling experts who linked to the e-book; thus creating high-quality links to my website.  I also e-mailed the book to several webmasters who made the book available to their visitors and newsletter subscribers.

My next phase of promotion will focus on social networking.  I have a blog with a page rank of 3 and a Facebook fan page with over 1,000 fans.  I recently began creating videos and my YouTube channel has over 60 subscribers.

5. Your plans for the future? (or anything else you’d like to share!)

Within the next year and a half, I’d like to convert my site to a three column, CSS format and explore monetization options beyond Google Adsense.  I plan to add additional affiliates, sell advertising space and create an e-product.  Once this website is mostly on autopilot, I plan to start a second site – also with SBI!

My advice to anyone pursuing financial freedom through online marketing is:
Use SBI.
Think long-term.
Be creative.
Don’t be afraid to experiment.
Have fun!

We eventually met in Penang as I described in my previous post and since Ricky was getting over 800 daily visitors already at that time, I suggested he shared his story here…

1. Why did you decide on SBI?
After graduated from University with an IT degree, I entered the workforce and my first job was in Intel Corporation. At that time, I was reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki – Rich Dad Poor Dad. His book inspired me to build passive income rather than stick to a dead-end J.O.B. (Just over Broke!).

I started to learn to invest in Bursa Malaysia Stock market and did a lot of reading on investment. I was also inspired by Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world. He started his career as a stock broker and I decided to follow his path. So, I quit my job and get a lower income job as a junior stock broker. How silly I was.

Fast forward 1 year, I learned a lot of things in the Bursa Malaysia stock market, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Forex trading and etc. I started a blog at blogspot.com to share my knowledge with people. But, my blog was not able to attract much traffic (did not know the importance of keywords at that time).

But I learned one very important thing – I can generate income from blog using Google Adsense. I put adsense up on my blog and as you may have expected, I didn’t get much income as well. I was de-motivated but I didn’t give up.

I kept looking for more ways to generate income online and also some information to keep myself motivated. That’s how I found Steve Pavlina – Personal development for smart people blog. I read his blog frequently and one day I found out one of his blog posts which showed that he was generating tens of thousands of dollar monthly from the his blog.

That was the time I started to think really serious about making passive income online and one of his posts recommended SBI. I was reluctant to sign up initially as I know that the Internet has a lot of Scam cases.

I did my research about SBI and I found out that there are many people who gained financial freedom through SBI and there are a lot of good reviews about it. That was the first time I used my credit card on the Internet.

2. Did you know what you wanted to write about, or did you have to find a niche? How did you decide?
Initially, I didn’t know what I wanted to write. But the Action Guide in Site Built it was amazing. I followed exactly the Action Guide from day 1 – 5.

I put “investment” as also “dog training” as my seed words in Brainstorm it. I was impressed with Brainstorm It as it helped me to generate keywords that are related to my chosen topics. I used Niche Choose It and it suggested me to build a website that was related to dog training.

I guess I wasn’t ready for investment website because I only have one year of experience in investment while I have more than 20 years of experience with dogs and I owned over 20 dogs throughout my life.

So, I registered a domain on the 6th day and the site concept was to provide Free Puppy Training Tips to other dog owners.

3. How did you progress?
The first few months were the learning stage for me. Because English is not my first language, I always worried about my spelling mistake, grammar mistakes and etc.

I started very slow and I was stuck in the Day 6 of the Action Guide which teaches us how to build contents that get clicks. I always felt that my content was not good enough, reedited each of the pages multiply times in a month.

My website traffic for the first 4 months was almost flat, partially because I chose the wrong keywords (very competitive keywords) and I didn’t start link building yet. That was the time I became de-motivated again.

On the fifth month, I did a lot of research on keywords and I started to target the right keywords (we always learn from the hard way, don’t we?). I think I found Tomaz’s blog at the same time and his blog gave me some good ideas on which keywords to target.

In the same month, I already have about 20+ pages of (Okay) content, I started link building and the traffic was rolling like a snow ball down a hill. I had 106 unique daily visitors in the 5th month, then 359 unique visitors in the 6th month and 778 unique daily visitors in the 7th month.

I kept on building good content and also build links at the same time from 8th month to 11th month, but my traffic stayed flat at about 800 unique daily visitors or 24 thousands unique monthly visitors. The reason my traffic stayed flat again was because I didn’t know the importance of internal linkings and also optimization of titles and headlines of each of the pages.

I met Tomaz in the 11th month and he shared with me a lot of ideas and tips on that. Shame on me as I knew about his blog for over 5 months but I didn’t really study each of the post carefully as most of the ideas he gave me were readily in his blog. After applied what he shared to me, my unique daily visitors on the 12th month jumped from 800 to 1200!

That was an extra of 400 unique daily visitors by just some simple optimization of each of the pages and also the internal linkings (I didn’t do any external link building nor did I update any extra content that month). Thanks to Tomaz for his insight!

4. Can you share a few tips of what really worked well for getting more traffic?
Well, after learning it the hard way, I suggest that you really have to study each of the Tomaz’s post carefully and you can’t be wrong.

Anyway, I will share a couple of ideas that I personally used.

First of all: Make sure that you have good content with really good internal linking and on page optimization. Many people focus too much on external link building and neglect the importance of internal linking and on page optimization (I was one of them).

Secondly: Write articles and submit to article submission directories like buzzle, ezinearticles, articlecity, articledashboard and more. These article submission directories allow you to have 1-3 inbound links to your pages.

Thirdly: Participate in answers.yahoo.com, forums, and blogs. Give good comments, setup signature with your website URL in it and learn to promote your website to people. If you are lucky, you might find “dofollow” forums or blog and they will pass link juice to your website.

Fourthly: I have tried some social bookmarking website like delicious, stumbleupon, yahoo buzz and more. It helps to bring some traffic but not much. May be I didn’t do it right. I found it very time consuming, so I have stopped for a while. I might try again next time when I have more time.

Fifthly: I did try with Value Exchange HQ (feature in SBI) when I was on 5th month, I didn’t get much success. Tomaz gave me advice that I should get more links from related website, so I have just started to do value exchange again and hope that I will be better this time. I am also getting to know more people from SBI forum and hope can do exchange some good quality links from related websites.

5. Your plans for the future? Has your life changed with your success? How? (or anything else you’d like to share!)
My current plan is to connect with more dog related website owners and build more links together with them. I will also participate in some dog training related blogs and give good comments while promoting my site.

I am going to update the about 20 pages of contents on common dog health problems and symptoms within these 2 weeks. I am outsourcing some of the contents to NAA and Freelancer so that I will have more time to build good links.

After my dog website has over 100 pages of good content, I will start my 2nd SBI site on early May and hopefully 3rd SBI site by Oct 2010.

Hm… I don’t consider myself as a successful SBIer yet. The reason is I am earning only a moderate amount of income is because lots of my traffic comes from Image searches. But, I already got some advice from Tomaz on different setups of adsense, chitika and amazon that could improve my conversion.

In fact, it has showed good result within 1 month. I am looking forward to see my conversion to improve for the next few months after I do the right thing. Hope that my little story on my journey with SBI will inspire someone.

I probably will share more after I generate $3k in December 2010!

1. Why did you decide for Site Build It?

The story of my decision to use Site Build It (SBI) actually started 6 months before purchasing SBI. Like many people… my husband and I wanted to build an online business that provided an additional income.

Our search brought us to weekly business coaching that cost well over $6,000 for 4 months. We were taught how to build a website. Every week our coach showed us how to improve our website. We set up products, submitted our site to hundreds of directories, and wrote a few articles.

A year and a half later, I am lucky to have 10 unique visitors a day. I have only sold a few products since then from that site. Most of the customers were family and friends.

The biggest mistake our business coach missed was that he wanted us focused on pushing products and not on building relationships with my visitors.

Our coach also had us place products on Ebay. We did make some money. Unfortunately, we were paying a big part of our profits to Ebay for all of the traffic. I knew that we had to find something different.

This is when I found SBI. After paying thousands of dollars for coaching, I instantly knew that the Action Guide was a treasure chest of knowledge. I studied it and did my best to follow every step it suggested.

Analyze It! is also another extremely important feature of SBI. I knew that keywords and text links within the content were important. But I always forgot to add them while writing an article. Having my content analyzed before publishing it to my website was exactly what I needed.

2. Did you know what you wanted to write about or did you have to find a niche? How did you decide?

Yes… I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. My passion is for everyone to live vibrant and healthy lives. I teach health classes in my rural Minnesota area. Each class would hold between 8-20 people.

I love teaching… But I wanted to teach more people about health while staying home with my then infant and toddler sons.

I knew I wanted my niche to be about health, but that niche was too large to tackle. I needed a way to show people how to be healthier in a narrow niche.

I was a manager of a smoothie bar and personally had incredible health benefits from smoothies (weight loss, skin and hair improvement, increased energy).

I blend up a couple different healthy smoothie recipes a day, so I wanted to share those with others. I brainstormed on many different topics in health, but I decided to go with something my family loves, smoothies.

3. How did you progress?

There was quite a difference between my first website, made with my business coach, and my SBI site.

Smoothie-Handbook.com was started in April ’09. By the end of the month, I had more than 130 total unique visitors for the month. That is more people than I teach in my monthly health classes!

In May ’09 I had my first day with over 100 visitors. As I kept adding more smoothie recipes… my traffic kept rising. In the beginning of January ’10, I had over 500 unique visitors a day.

Now in March ’10, I have reached over 800 unique visitors in one day. My next goal is to reach 1000 visitors a day.

I also went from 1-2 newsletter subscribers a day to 30-60 subscribers a day.

4. Can you share a few tips of what really worked well for getting more traffic?

One of the most important tips for a successful website is to build a content rich site built around a topic you love. If I had chosen a niche that I had no interest in and had to do a lot of research before writing, I would not have the traffic that I have now. If the topic didn’t interest me, I would have given up a long time ago.

Two other tips that are essential for a successful website:

#1 Keywords
Make sure to choose keywords that are high in demand and low in supply for your informative content pages.

#2 Links
Build internal and external text links to those content pages. Weave a web of internal text links all over your site, using your keywords in the links.

5. Your plans for the future? (or anything else you’d like to share!)

While continuing to build more content and links… monetizing my site is next on the list.

I would like to post videos on how to make fruit smoothie recipes. Even perhaps make a video series to sell. Write an ebook. Sell more smoothie supplements.

It is really exciting… I actually have a way to create an income for myself, a stay at home mom, and have an avenue to guide people to vibrant health.

Can you have success with SBI?

Yes!!!

When you combine the Action Guide’s knowledge with your passion, the sky is the limit.

1. Why did you decide on SBI?

I have always been attracted to being my own boss. After becoming interested in websites, I began reading all of the material that I could find about starting a profitable website. While I enjoyed working at the computer, I was not interested in learning all of the programming that I needed to create my own website.

Because of that, I wanted to join a program that did all of the technical stuff for me. At that point, the only program that I could find was $4,000! Yikes! That was much more than I could afford, and I began to feel a bit defeated.

Then, a friend of mine told me about SBI. I went to SBI’s site and did as much reading as I could. I discovered that SBI offered everything that I needed and wanted, and it was only $300 a year! It didn’t take long before I signed up.

2. Did you know what you wanted to write about, or did you have to find a niche? How did you decide?

I had a couple of ideas for what I wanted to write about, but I wasn’t sure which to pursue. After using SBI’s tools to research each market, I decided to pursue the topic of English grammar and sentence diagramming.

Between the tools that SBI has and the information that Tomaz gives, the research process was pretty clear-cut and easy. I have no idea how I would have found a viable topic without them.

3. How did you progress?

SBI is full of valuable, amazing information — all of which I have not mined yet. Between the Action Guide, the forums, and Tomaz’s information, I had everything I needed to know about making a successful website.

The best part was that the Action Guide took me step by step through the process. I would have been extremely overwhelmed without all of that instruction.

After having my site up for a few months, I started receiving messages and testimonials from people. That was quite delightful. At that moment, I really started to understand that through my website, I was connecting with and helping other people. That felt amazing.

I remember when I reached 100 visitors a day. I was so excited. Then, when my snowball started rolling, I went from 300 visitors a day to over 1,000 visitors a day within a few weeks!

4. Can you share a few tips of what really worked well for getting more traffic?

Building pages with good supply and demand numbers for the keywords and doing email interviews has worked really well for me. I got the idea to do email interviews from someone in the SBI forums. I use SBI’s Search It! function to find sites in similar niches, and then I find out their pagerank. I also spend a bit of time looking over the site and assessing the site’s quality.

If I like the site’s content, and it has a good pagerank, I’ll send an email to the site’s owner and ask them to do an email interview with me. So far, I haven’t had anyone turn me down!

Typically, the person will post a link to the interview on their site and maybe even a link to another of my pages. It’s a great way to build link popularity and interact with other people in my niche.

5. Your plans for the future? Has your life changed with your success? How? (or anything else you’d like to share!)

I plan on making a few more websites and making this type of work my main source of income.Going through this process has opened up a whole new lifestyle to me — one that I am very excited about. I LOVE being my own boss and planning my day around my goals.

Aside from just being my own boss, owning websites will allow my husband and me to travel. We both love exploring new places without the pressure of fitting our travels into a specific amount of time (like a two week vacation). With a website, we’ll be able to travel whenever we want.

And while my husband and I don’t have children yet, we are laying the foundation now so that when we do, we’ll be able to stay home with them.

“Freedom” is the perfect word to describe this way of life. Having a website and making money online without employees or an employer means that YOU have sole ownership of your time and your life. I can’t ask for anything more.

1. Why did you decide for Site Build It?

In 2006 I was on maternity leave with two young children at home and  desperately wanted to find a way to stay at home but still have an income.  In the past I have tried mlm opportunities, been a catalogue distributor,  and sold on ebay.

None of these were able to provide me with the income that  I needed so I looked to my previous experience as an Event Manager and set  up my own event business. 

I organised a Parent and Child Expo in my home town, sold the exhibition  stands, tickets and promoted the event on my own. It was successful but it  was really hard to do with children at home, I was running round the house  trying to find a quiet space when prospects called me back. Looking back it  was a crazy thing to do.

After the event I realised that I needed something that I could work at in  ‘not real time’ in otherwords work while my children are asleep and the  internet seemed the perfect opportunity.

Problem was I knew nothing about  how to make money online so I started to research opportunities and luckily  for me decided SBI was right for me. That was after reading loads of stories  on how others are successful with SBI.

Plus they offered a money back  guarantee, so what did I have to loose?

2. Did you know what you wanted to write about or did you have to find a niche?

I didn’t have a clue about what to write about, I thought it would have  something to do with event management but that was as far as it went.

How did you decide?

I used the brainstorm it tool to find a niche that was profitable and when I looked at weddings, at the time the term cheap wedding gown had a great demand and not a great supply. Fantastic! And I do love a good wedding!

3. How did you progress?

I followed the action guide fairly well, I have a terrible habit of getting excited and going off on my own merry way, so I have to keep referring back to see what I missed first time round.

The beauty of SBI is that it carrys on working for you even if you miss a few steps – thank goodness!

My cheap wedding site is now nearly 3 years old and has around 2000 visits a  day – not bad for a mum at home, working in the evenings.

The best bit is  that it provides me with an income to be at home with my children, I can  pick my son up from school and spend lots of time with my daughter. Today we  were at the park and picking blackberries – not many berries made it home!

4. Can you share a few tips of what really worked well for getting more traffic?

Writing keyword focused pages for my website has helped me with my search  engine rankings which brings a lot of traffic, writing articles and having  them on lots of wedding sites, and interviews with industry professionals  has been great as they add their expertise and often link back to my site.

Plus my free wedding stuff ezine and monthly wedding contests have brides  coming back for more.

5. Your plans for the future? (or anything else you’d like to share!)

Keep building cheap wedding solutions, help my husband with his anniversary gifts by year site (it didn’t take him long to want his own site) and add more SBI sites when I have more time.

My daughter starts school next year so I will have more time.  Our long term goal is to have both of us working from home on our websites  which would be a dream come true.