richADZ's Site Build It! - Profitable Web Business or Bust

A little update on my Site Build It! adventure...

It seems that I may have lost a bit of focus with building my SBI! site in the past several months, especially with my recent Greed and Laziness Disaster and this week, my little experiment with building an Adsense site on Credit Card.

Yes, I might still have that GnL feeling BUT...

Rest assure that my SBI! journey is still going strong. I might stray away once in awhile, but only to "take a break" away from SBI! so that I can feel more recharged and refreshed.

The past week, I have been re-reading the SBI! Action Guide on using the "Upload Your Own HTML" tool instead of "SiteBuilder" to build my own web pages.

That's the beauty of SBI!

You can build your webpages "from scratch," using your own HTML editor - as long as you follow the SBI! Integration Guidelines (if you are already an SBIer, then you need to read their help section on this very carefully if you intend to drop SiteBuilder).

Or like me, if you already have started a good-size SBI! site, using SiteBuilder, and now you're ready to graduate to using an HTML editor (e.g., FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc.), that's also fine.

But I take seriously a note from SBI! "Help and Strategy" section which stated:

All successful SBI! sites are built upon the solid foundation of research and preparation outlined in the SBI! Action Guide. Most critically, the use of your own HTML editor pages does not diminish the importance of the preparatory work required for a successful site.

In other words, please don't rush into building your site without a thorough understanding of the process that makes SBI! the foundation of so many successful Web sites.

Provided you are familiar with the SBI! process, have read the Action Guide, and are confident that your site has all the makings for profit, you're ready to continue...

Couldn't agree more with the above statement.

Even though building your own web pages using your own HTML editor provides much more flexibility and creativity, as well as increase productivity (i.e., you can certainly create more web pages faster in comparison to SiteBuilder), my advise for new SBIers is to ALWAYS use SiteBuilder first to create at least the first 20 or so web pages even if you think your HTML skill is pretty good.

Why?

Because it will help you to understand better the SBI! block-by-block process of building a proper and quality web page. It will help you understand more than just SEO, but more on how to create a web site that SELLS!

I certainly recommend using SiteBuilder. In fact, I've yet to decide whether to shift away from SiteBuilder.

Will keep you posted...

In the meantime, do have a great weekend.

Check out an excellent and brand new article from Jill Whelan of the highly regarded6 highrankings.com, called Say Bye-bye to Rankings and Hello to SEO Success!

Jill Whelan, one of the best Search Engine Optimization consultants out there today,6 wrote about why optimizing for high rankings is dead and why SEO success is the only meaningful and useful indicator of SE6O today.

I found the article one of the best articles on SEO I'd read this year. It's highly entertaining too. Check it out for yourself and see whether you agree with Jill.

I certainly did given my own personal expereince in the last few years...

Sometimes I wonder whether a site build completely to monetize from Google Adsense affiliate program makes any sense as far as the amount made from the program is concerned.

I know there are many books out there talking about how to make $500 per day from Adsense.

But these books are basically talking about focusing your web business strategy almost entirely on Adsense as "the" source of income (which is not very smart - what if Google stops their Adsense program or ban you?).

If you have an online business selling your own products or offering your own services, then, Adsense does not make much sense. This is because an Adsense ad offers your visitors a chance to click away from your site (for some cents to a dollar) that will devoid you from earning much more if that visitor turns out to be your customer.

That is why I don't put up many Adsense ads at my quite established my non-SBI! site.

I have even yet to add Adsense ads at my SBI! site as I want visitors to my site to stay focus (but I'll add some soon on certain pages).

In any case, since I have some free time on my hand, I somehow "whipped out" an Adsense site on Credit Card in 2 days (several hours a day) and just upload all of the pages yesterday.

Today, when I checked on my Adsense stats, I was amazed to find that there had been over 600 hits and 4 clicks at my Adsense site totalling almost $3.00. Nothing to shout about I know but this is without any advertisement or submission to the Search Engines yet, and it's only been a day since the site went live on the Net.

All I did was allocate some of my credits from two or three Traffic Exchange programs (yes, Traffic Exchange is still one of the most effective ways to generate fast and free hits to your site, if used properly - use a splash page to promote your Adsense site; generating direct hits from the TEs is against Adsense program's terms - refer to Google AdSense Program Policies).

Anyway, I'm not going to conclude anything going by just a day of stats. But I will keep you inform of my little experiment to see whether Adsense makes sense in some ways.

And don't ask me why I did not spent my free time on building or promoting my SBI! site.

I just don't know. Maybe, I just want to take a break away from SBI! for awhile?

But if you are interested in Google Adsense, then you should take some time to visit and read thoroughly the Art of Adsense. No, I'm not talking about making $500 a day from Adsense, but more on a detailed introduction to Adsense and how to use it effectively (and in the right manner) as another complementary source of income for your online business.

One of the biggest mistakes that is still currently being made on the Net today...

Webmasters are more obsessed with graphics, audios, videos, and other gizmos, instead of crafting effective content.

This has been mentioned many times, by many Internet experts, many years ago.

But many do not heed this advise because it is simply too time consuming and difficult to write compelling eye-ball-riveting copy.

Just record an audio or video and post it on your site is much more easier and less work.

I'm sure you can see the trend starting last year, and more visibly so this year.

A lot of "gurus" have also been touting about the so-called advent of online videos replacing content on web sites, and sell you some software to easily make videos for your web site.

I must admit that videos do have some advantages over words in some instances - your site is a video making or related, or you or your business is already well established and you can attract hundreds of surfers to a web conference call or download your talk/presentation.

But...

If your site is a sales-oriented one and you are just an average netrepreneur, I can't really see how videos can have more advantage or be more effective than words in selling.

Firstly, you'll definitely lose out in the SEO (i.e., Search Engine Optimization) war.

Secondly, although it is much faster to take a video of yourself talking about Internet Marketing than writing an ebook on the same subject, how many people do you think prefer to take the time to wait for your video presentation to be downloaded on the screen, even if it's free? It's already difficult enough to get people to download your ebook.

Thirdly, The Internet is after all an information medium. People search for information - the free and fast ones. And words are still very much faster than videos on the web (especially in most parts of the world). Simplicity rules!

If people want to watch TV, they just switch it on.

At best, videos are complementary tools to your web site (i.e., to complement your words/content, not even to sell/presell your product/service).

Still doubtful over what I'd said? Try this experiment - go to a prevous posting at my SiteSell eBusiness Philosophy blog.

Good luck.

Amazingly, my SBI! site is currently ranked no. 3 for my top keyword (i.e., my theme), "tropical vacation" (out of 4,233,802 results), and no.4 for my other targeted keyword "tropical island vacation" (out of 1,207,682 results).

Now, I just hope that it will stay put, as from past experience with my non-SBI! site, MSN picks up and ranks my site for certain keywords highly, and then over the months, it gets ranked lower and lower.

My April traffic summary for my SBI! site compared to the previous month (courtesy of Traffic Stats, which is part of Site Build It! TrafficCenter module) is as follow:


Monthly Totals ( Visits / Visitors / Pages )

Apr 2006 - 2122 / 1373 / 4233
Mar 2006 - 2039 / 1356 / 4240

Daily Avg ( Visits / Visitors / Pages )

Apr 2006 - 70 / 45 / 141
Mar 2006 - 65 / 43 / 136

Nothing spectacular. Although the number of monthly unique visitors had increased slightly to 1,373 in April 2006 from 1,356

in March 2006, the number of web pages visited had dropped slightly to 4,233 from 4,240 in the previous month.

Not much to shout about but I've to be realistic here - I virtually did nothing much in the first quarter of 2006.

I'm confident that starting in May 2006, my web statistics will look much better given the more "man-hours" I'd put in last

month - like submitting my site to second tier search engines and directories, as well as added several more pages.

Phewww...., there's no short cut I have to confer.