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Get a Web Site that Sells! |
Site Build-It! The best value in web site design, domain name registration, and web hosting gets even better! Click here for details. Also see: Why free web sites will cost you way too much. |
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Get a Web Site that Sells! |
Site Build-It! The best value in web site design, domain name registration, and web hosting gets even better! Click here for details. Also see: Why free web sites will cost you way too much. |
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With a web site that "sells"
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People don't go looking for sales pamphlets and "sales pitches" - they go looking for solutions to their problems or answers to their questions. They want information before they want your product or service. You need to offer "content" on your web site to attract visitors and build their trust in you, so that they will feel comfortable buying from you or using the services you provide for a fee. Sometimes they don't buy from you at first, but when they are ready to buy they will prefer to buy from the person they have come to trust, the one who freely gave them some useful information when they were still "shopping around" or just looking to learn something. And you need to make sure they can find that "content" by being listed on the first few pages when they use a search engine to find what you offer, and/or by having other sites providing links to your site - sites whose visitors may also be interested in what you have to offer. If you can't attract potential customers this way, you will have to spend a lot of money to buy advertising or do other promotions - which will increase your expenses and reduce your profits, even if the advertising "works" well enough (which may not be the case). And if you haven't built the trust that "pre-sells" your potential customers, you will find fewer of your site's visitors actually become paying customers. To bring in the people who will buy without that trust being built, you will have to spend even more money on advertising and promotion because you will need to bring even more people to your web site to profit from that smaller percentage of visitors who will actually buy from you. |
Getting potential customers to find your site is of prime importance, but note that we are talking about potential customers, not visitors. Getting lots of visitors to your site is not the same as making lots of money from your site!
You need to attract the visitors who want to buy something from you. That is why search engine listings and links from other sites are so important to your success.
The people who find your site that way are already looking for what you are offering! They want it, and they want it now. What could be better?
These are the best prospects to become your paying customers - and make you profits. Actually, there is something better - you don't even have to spend any money to find them! Now, can it get any better than this?
One site, whose "content" is basically a convenient way of listing other sites that offer daily and weekly horoscopes for free, sends more than 700 visitors per day to my site. And I see from the results of a "where did you find my site?" question I ask on my order form that I get quite a few paying customers who came from a link on that other site.
I don't have to pay to be listed on that site. I am listed because my site offers content which is considered valuable to the visitors of that site.
By offering free "content" I don't have to pay money to get visitors who could become customers. What "content" can you offer to the visitors you want to attract?
When I first started out in 1996, I intuitively knew that this was the way to attract customers when I didn't have any money to spend on advertising, so I kept adding more and more articles about astrology to my site. Each of those pages which got listed in the search engines or linked to from other sites became a kind of "sales letter" for my business, and most of my paying customers found me after finding one of those informative articles in the search engines, or mentioned on another web site.
Site Build-It! is based on this same philosophy of: "Give, then get". It is based on the theory that "content is King". It helps you build your site's "content", but first it helps you find what content to offer to get the kind of visitors you think will become your customers. Then it helps you get those "content" pages listed high in the search engines, so that the people who want what you offer will find you - and all without having to pay for advertising.
Most hosting services do nothing to help you build your business this way - the smart way. And of those which do help you create web pages, few if any seem to believe that it is the "content" that brings in the visitors and helps convert them to satisfied customers. The people who designed Site Build-It! know this is the way to build a successful web business, because that is how they built their hugely successful SiteSell company on the Web.
Create great content pages, then get them listed high in the search engines. Then people who are interested in your content will come to read those pages - and learn to trust you as someone who is willing and able to help them find what they need.
Now you know what works. How are you going to go about doing it?
I decided that getting a Site Build-It! site will help me do that in less time and for less money - even though I have done the same thing on my own before and been fairly successful using the old methods. They just do it better, and they provide all the tools and techniques I need - and all in one convenient place.
And from using their tools and teaching techniques I have learned a few things I did not know before - things which will make my next web site even more successful. From my point of view, it's a good deal. And for someone just starting out with a new web business, it's got to be the best deal anywhere!
Just in case you are thinking about using Site Build-It! to build a new web business, remember that the fee includes commercial-grade web hosting. You don't need to find a hosting service for your site and pay another $100-$240 per year for hosting. You don't even have to register the domain name, for domain name registration and renewal is included too! That's another $10-$30 per year you don't have to spend. And it's automatic, once you use the brainstorming tools to choose the best domain name for your web site.
Being quite aware of what I have been paying for hosting and domain registration, I was ready to "discount" the cost of a Site Build-It! site by the same amount. Since I got stuck with NetworkSolutions as my domain registrar for another year, I had to pay $30 each for three of my domain names, and I am now paying a minimum of $20 per month (=$240 per year) for web hosting (not even counting the extra monthly fees for extra bandwidth).
That's US $270 per year I won't have to pay for my next site if I use Site Build-It!, so their fee looks a lot lower to me by comparison. When I looked at all the extra features I got for the extra money, it really looked like a bargain to me. And it is.
In your case, something similar may apply when you add up what you would pay for hosting and your domain name - so keep that in mind when you see what your total yearly fee for Site Build-It! would be. There are no hidden costs or extra costs, as there are with some other kinds of web hosting, so be aware of that too.
You get all the goodies for one annual fee that's way less than you would pay for similar services from separate sources. I paid US $150 for a great search engine submitter and optimizer tool called Web Position Gold. If I already had a Site Build-It! system, I would not have needed to buy that software. Neither will you.
If only there had been something like Site Build-It! available when I started out, I think I would be much more successful and be making much more money today. And it would probably have cost me less than I spent on books and software tools and domain registration and hosting services (and lost by all the mistakes I made) if I had just started out using this all-in-one system in the first place.
Also be aware that many paid commercial hosting services offer some kind of simple web page creation tools or templates, but they don't help you design web pages which will actually rank high in the search engines and send you many visitors who are looking for what you offer - all without paying anything for listings or advertising.
These page building tools can make you pretty pages, but few people will see them if they don't get ranked high enough in the search engines. How often did you ever go past page two or three of the results listings when you were searching for something?
You can make pretty pages yourself by using some of the easy web authoring tools available today, even the free ones. Dreamweaver is an expensive but very popular tool with web site builders, and I may get it someday - but for now I still hand-code my pages in HTML using NoteTab Pro from Fookes Software (costs US $20 and is better than most other word processors, yet also has time-saving tools for HTML coding and a way to search-and-replace text throughout your entire hard drive - so I use it for everything).
But few people will see your site if you don't optimize your pages to get listed on the first few pages of a search engine's search results for certain key words or phrases related to your products or services.
Do you even know HOW to optimize a page to get it ranked high in the search engines? Or will you make some innocent mistake that always keeps it from getting a high ranking, no matter how great your page's "content" is?
Be aware that there are some mistakes you can innocently make, but which the search engines could consider as "spamming" them. And they will likely delete your entire site from their database and ban it from ever appearing there again. Or for lesser infractions, they will assign a "penalty" which will lower your ranking so far that no one will ever see your page show up in a search for your key words or phrases.
Site Build-It! is designed to help you create pages that conform to search engine guidelines and DO get ranked high in their listings - even on the first page in a search for your chosen key words and phrases! Many users of Site Build-It! have gleefully reported how their site's pages are showing up in top positions on Google and other search engines - and within a fairly short period of time.
Others are reporting positions on Alexa in the top 100,000 out of more than 2 million web pages which Alexa tracks and ranks by volume of traffic. That means their site is in the top 5% for number of visitors, which means "lots of potential customers".
This emphasis on search engine optimization for YOUR key words is what really makes Site Build-It! worth far more than you pay for it - it helps you bring in more potential customers who are actually searching for exactly what you are offering! And that means more sales and more profits for your business!
This is your business and your source of income we are talking about. Your web site is your "store" so you need to make it look professional and you need to make it easy for your customers to find you!
Most web sites are just sales flyers floating around in cyberspace where no one will see them. But if you optimize your web site's pages so the search engines like them and rank them high, you will attract thousands of "targeted" visitors without even having to pay for advertising.
If you do this right, you'll be way ahead of the millions of web site owners who are doing it wrong!
I have never paid to advertise my www.AstrologyZine.com site, and it now draws over 50,000 "unique" visitors per month and is ranked in the top 25,000 sites on the Web by Alexa. I have seen people using Site Build-It! get ranked in the top 100,000 within a few months.
That is darn good, when you consider that Alexa rates over 2 million web sites! It means being in the top 100,000 is being in the top 5% - which means being ahead of 95% of the other web sites! Which one is more likely to succeed - a site in the top 5% of sites that get the most traffic, or one in the other 95% that don't?
Getting visitors to come to your site is just the first step.
It's still up to you to "sell" those visitors on buying your service or product once they get to your site, but you will find that the Site Build-It! web site also offers some really excellent books (and free introductory courses) on how to "Make Your Site Sell" (that inexpensive book is now considered the "bible" of web site design and promotion) and how to "Make Your Words Sell" (a guide to writing persuasive sales copy and ads).
Much of the knowledge provided in those books is incorporated into the Site BuildIt! system and extensive training materials, but you may still want to get your own copy of those books and learn all the useful tips and techniques on copywriting and sales which you can apply to your business.
If you only have $20 to invest in a web business... I would strongly suggest that you invest in Ken Evoy's e-book called Make Your Site Sell. It contains 1500 easy-to-read pages packed with information on everything you need to build a web business, and is worth far more than you pay for it. And it's a bargain when compared to all the other e-books which claim to help you start a web business or home business. Don't like reading e-books? You can get it in hardcover too, for a bit more money. Make this your FIRST book, and you may not need most of the other ones!
It really is that good. I got one, then told a friend about it. He got one too, and must have thanked me at least five times over the course of the next year! He went from being a complete computer novice to someone with a profitable web site listed in the Yahoo directory. And all he ever bought was that Make Your Site Sell book. We love Ken Evoy...
By the way, my friend paid $1000 to a web site designer for a 5-page site, and then the designer left the country! He had to ask my help to be able to make changes on his own pages, and add an order form. Later, with the $20 Make Your Site Sell book, he learned how to do all this himself, and got many ideas for promoting his business and getting listed in the search engines. Now he often quotes Ken Evoy to me!
Site Build-It! helps you design everything "from the ground up" and even helps you choose your domain name, doing this with high search engine rankings as the primary goal. It includes EVERYTHING you need to get your business on the Web easily and quickly (even if you are a complete novice), including training and tips, domain name research and registration (annual registration fee is included), logo design, web page design, automatic submission of your pages to the search engines the "right" way, monitoring and reporting your rankings over time, web site hosting for one year, and a newsletter mail-out service (now with automatic "open rate" tracking of how many of your letters were actually opened by the people you sent them to!).
It even includes a tool to help you place and automatically monitor your bids on pay-per-click search engines like Overture. You don't need to spend any more money on manuals and software tools and other services - it's all provided for with one low annual fee!
And there are more features being added at no extra cost! Useful features such as:
Full integration with popular HTML editor programs like DreamWeaver, so you can add and change your web pages using your own favorite tools.
A two-tier affiliate program manager like the one SiteSell uses, so you can set up your own affiliate program to attract affiliates who will market your service or product for you on a pay-per-sale basis. This would cost you a lot to implement and maintain. It comes included with Site Build-It!.
An effective link exchange system so you can get links to your site from other web sites who can refer customers to you. I almost bought some software to do this, which would cost me US $100. The same functionality is included with Site Build-It!
What really impresses me about Site Build-It! is that everything is INCLUDED, everything is INTEGRATED, and EVERYTHING WORKS!
What impresses me even more is that the single annual fee for the entire package is less than the separate fees you would have to pay for some of its functions if you tried to buy similar services elsewhere on the Web. For example, any ONE of these single services like web hosting, newsletter management, or autoresponders could cost you about $20 per month, which is $240 per year - just for that ONE useful function. And if you're not a savvy shopper you might pay double that amount per year for one or two services. But with Site Build-It! you get ALL the functions you need for about $42 per month! And some of them, you can't even get anywhere else.
Also being added soon (at a reasonable extra cost) is a full e-commerce package so you can set up a shopping cart on your site and automatically take credit card payments online. You can already integrate your site with a PayPal account or your own merchant account if you want. (But it's not easy to convince your bank to let you have your own merchant account for a web business where there are no signed transaction forms. PayPal is a new and much less expensive solution available to many web business owners.)
If you are selling products like e-books or software which can be downloaded, there will soon be a way to integrate automatic delivery into your Site BuildIt! web site. With the exception of the e-commerce package, all these extra features will be included for your original annual fee. Other e-commerce packages cost a lot, but I suspect this one will cost far less than what other companies are charging - the one I use costs me US $35 per month just to maintain my account for taking Visa, MasterCard and Discover cards - PLUS $1 per credit card transaction processed, PLUS nearly 4% of the sale. And I had to pay another $400 just to get it set up!
I just mentioned "automatic delivery". Let's stop for a moment and consider the implications of AUTOMATING your web business. If you can set up a shopping cart and online credit card transaction processing, you can make sales while you sleep!
Better yet, if you can sell products or information which can be downloaded after the customer has paid by credit card, you can even deliver the products while you sleep! When your shopping cart and transaction processing service are integrated with your "delivery" process, your customer can download your product right after he pays for it by credit card or by PayPal - because the system automatically assigns him a username and password, then sends him to a private "download" page where he can use that password to access the file. If you ever bought an ebook or software online, you have probably seen such a system in operation.
In others words, you can have a business that runs itself when you are not even there! It's like having a money machine in your basement which just keeps creating money for you all day and all night - even while you go on vacation!
All you have to do is (1) keep the customers coming to your web site (via search engines and links from other sites, and maybe from your own newsletter mailing list), (2) keep the information on your site up to date or constantly improving and expanding, and (3) keep the automated system operating.
You probably won't want to sleep all the time, so you could spend time with your family, indulge yourself in a pastime or hobby or entertainment, or go on a vacation - and your automated web business could go on working while you were away and keep bringing in more sales and profits for you. They say "time is money" - but I say "money buys time". The more money I can make in less time, the more time I have to do the other things that make life worth living!
If you get sick, your site keeps working and making money for you. If the weather is bad, you don't have to drive to work that day. In fact, you can run your web business from home and never commute again! I have even run mine from an Internet cafe in Florida while I was on vacation. From the start, my goal was to set up my Web business so that I could run it from anywhere in the world. All I need is my notebook computer and a connection to the Internet.
Working at home is great, but sometimes I need to "get out" more, and I often take my notebook computer and work in a restaurant or the local pub. In the warm summer months, I work outside on the patio. When and where I work is my own choice, not the dictate of some "employer" who assumes he can tell me when to get up and where to go. I retired my alarm clock years ago, and I like that!
And the really nice thing about a web business is that it tends to grow all by itself as more people find it and more people get on the Internet. Your income tends to keep going up, even if you aren't actually doing more work or spending more time at work. Once you set up your system, you can make what is called "passive income" - meaning you make money without actually showing up for work.
If that sounds a lot like the rich people who can make money without actually working, simply by investing their large amount of "capital"... it is! But when you don't already have huge sums of money to invest, you can invest in your own business by using your time and talents instead of those large amounts of cash.
A profitable business actually makes a lot more money per year than money of equivalent value which sits in a bank account, which is why people will pay a lot of money for a business that is making money. When you want to retire, you can always sell your money-making business for cash, and you may be surprised how much it is worth to someone who wants it!
Note that you cannot sell your "job" when you retire, but you CAN sell your business. Your business IS your pension plan.
Just a little side note here... did you ever stop to think that a merchant who can buy a product at wholesale and then sell it for a 40% profit a month later is actually making a LOT better rate of return on his investment (the cost of the product) than he would ever make in the stock market? He just made 40% in one MONTH, not in one year! If he did that every month (and he could) then he would make more than 480% per YEAR on his recurring investment in his own business.
Wouldn't it be crazy for him to put that money into the stock market or bonds - or even a good, safe bank account? He could make way more on his money by investing in his own profitable business!
On the web, it IS possible to make that kind of "return" on your investment - especially when you are selling "intangible" products like computer software or ebooks, which actually cost little to produce or to license from the author, and cost nothing to store, and cost little to deliver by download.
In some cases, the greatest part of your "investment" is just the cost of setting up and maintaining your web site. No rent for a store, no insurance, no fees for heat and electricy and water, no property taxes, no employees' salaries - just a web site and the tools to run it successfully. If you do things right, that small investment in a web business can make you a lot of money!
Of course, you may not want to just take it easy when your web site is making money almost automatically. You may want to make even more money by working harder or smarter. You might enjoy the challenge of a new venture. So you could set up more web sites with automated systems to increase the total income you can make without showing up to do the work. You can invest some time to start a new web business with another web site, and then watch it grow into another source of income which multiplies your previous income by a factor of two or more.
The more times you do this, the more income you can make, and it keeps coming in from all those automated web businesses you have set up. You will not "have all your eggs in one basket", so if one type of business hits a slump, your other ones may still be making money for you. And, of course, no one can "fire" you from your own business!
If you keep your business expenses low, you won't even have to "downsize" when times are tough for business. With lower expenses (such as lower advertising costs) you can hang on longer in hard times, while others have to give up and go out of business. Many small businesses have prospered at the same time when many over-funded and over-extended dot-coms were downsizing or going into bankruptcy. I know that my little business has grown and generated more income every month in 2002 - and that keeps reinforcing my faith that having my own small business is the best way to live the lifestyle I want to live.
This has happened to me at times, and it might happen to you... you start out doing what you love and trying to make a living doing it, then you end up spending too much of your time on all the little "technical" tasks that go along with running your business on the Web.
You have to search for software or services that will do what needs to be done, then read the technical manuals so you know how to use them. You have to keep submitting your site's pages to the search engines, and keep checking to see where they are ranked in the search engines. The tasks seem to expand to fill the time you have available.
Eventually, you start spending more time on the "techie" stuff and less time on your business itself! And those nitty-gritty things may not be as much fun as what you expected to be doing when you dreamed up your great business idea.
Techies are wonderful people, and they probably love doing all that great technical stuff that helps build a web business and keep in running. But most of them have not built their own business - or they wouldn't be working for someone who has. If you want to be a successful business builder, don't let your business turn you into a techie.
Let the computers and the techies do the techie stuff, while you do the other important stuff it takes to build your business. Spend your time getting information that gives you new ideas to improve your business, or ideas you can use to start a new business.
When you are "CEO" of your own business, you will generate more money by investing your time on "ideas" and strategies. You will be more successful if you delegate the "implementation" to computers and to the people who can't do the things that you do best.
Site Build-It! is designed to provide the small business owner ALL the tools and services he needs to set up and operate a successful commercial web site, all in one place, and all for one affordable yearly fee. No need to keep buying new software or other services, and no need to worry about buying updated versions of software, because it is constantly being refined and updated at the SiteBuildIt! headquarters and made available to you online as you use the tools.
If search engines change the way they rank pages or the way they want pages to be submitted for inclusion in their database, then the techies at Site Build-It! headquarters adjust this so your page submission and rank reporting tools are always working efficiently. You don't even have to think about keeping up to date - it's all done for you automatically.
You don't have to think much about the technical stuff or the necessary but boring maintenance tasks. Instead, you can think about how to make more sales and more profits!
I built my first Web site back in 1996, and made a lot of mistakes which YOU won't have to make when you use Site Build-It! I spent a lot of money to buy books and software to help me design and promote my site. I did everything the hard way and wasted a lot of time and money before I got it right.
In spite of all that wasted time and effort, Alexa now ranks my site in the top 25,000 sites out of millions of sites on the Web (based on number of visitors). So you are hearing this from someone who has "been there, done that".
But still I bought a Site Build-It! system to create my NEXT site, and bought two more sites in January 2003 - mainly because it can do things better and in less time than I can do them myself.
And I love the brainstorming and market research tools they provide to help you decide which themes and keywords offer the best chance of attracting the kinds of customers you want - even the best words to include in your site's domain name so you can get high-placed listings in the search engines.
Site Build-It! is a great value at the regular price, and was an incredible bargain with the 2-for-1 offer at Christmas time! I can activate the second site at a later date, or sell it to a friend to split the cost, so we each get a site for half price.
So if you are thinking about getting your own Site Build-It! web site, DON'T register your domain name until AFTER you have used the brainstorming and market research tools. Domain name registration is included in the fee anyways, so don't waste money paying some outside registrar for the same thing.
You want your domain name to be the one most suited to your business, one that both lets people know what you do, and also one that will help your site get listed higher in the search engines. Having certain key words in your domain name is important to both "brand recognition" and search engine rankings. Wait until you do the research before you choose that domain name.
You cannot go wrong with Site Build-It! or with Dr. Ken Evoy and his SiteSell company. I can attest to his reputation for "over-delivering" - which means you will think you are buying a great product at a great price, and then when it's delivered you'll find you got even more than you expected!
Even some of the top web marketing gurus are now buying and recommending Site Build-It! sites as the most cost-effective way to sell products and services on the Web. Many of his customers are reporting that they have gotten top listings on Google and other search engines, and then many visitors who find their site in searches. It really IS that good!
Ken Evoy is so confident you will be pleased with his service, that he offers a money-back guarantee where you can even keep the domain name he registered for you.
What follows is a comparison of Site Build-It! to the commercial web design and hosting service offered by the well-known company, VeriSign. It was written by Ken Evoy because many people were asking him about "the competition".
What may look like a low base price at first can be a bad bargain when you add up the extra fees. With Site Build-It! you don't have to worry about being "nickel-and-dimed" for the features you will need but were not mentioned in the basic fee.
I think that after you see the difference between what you actually pay for Verisign versus Site Build-It! you will realize why Site Build-It! is the best solution at the best price for any small business owner - whether he does business world-wide or just locally in his home town.
Ken Evoy's SiteSell corporation seems to be the only company which really "gets it" in understanding the needs of the small business owner, and is always creating and improving services which can do the important but time-consuming "technical" tasks - and do them well at a low cost. This lets the small business owner concentrate on what he does best... doing business and making profits!
You could build and maintain a web site for a whole year using Site Build-It! for less than you would pay for a Yellow Pages ad in your home town phone directory! And it will probably bring you a lot more paying customers. This is the way to go when you want your own profitable web site that can make the most money from the minimum investment of time and effort and expense - or trouble. With the Site Build-It! system, building your business could be fun instead of frustrating!
- Michael Star, Publisher of www.AstrologyZine.com
P.S. Site Build-It! will soon add (at a reasonable extra cost) a complete e-commerce package with shopping cart, credit card processing, and delivery of downloadable products such as ebooks. (Just to process credit card transactions online through my present service, I am paying more per year than I now pay for the entire Site Build-It! package of services.)
Remember that age-old philosophical riddle?... If a tree falls in a far-away forest, with no one around... Does it make a sound? Well... If a Web site sits out there in "the blue nowhere of cyberspace" and no one visits... Does it make any business? And if not, why pay for it? We'll see how this applies in just a minute. ----- Site Build-It! isn't the only product available claiming to be the "ultimate" solution for small business owners on the Net. However, while some of our competitors' services appear sufficient AT FIRST GLANCE, it turns out that they're masters at mastering "the first glance." So take a CLOSER look at any offering that you THINK might compete with SBI!. A closer inspection will most certainly reveal them to be anything but true "competition." In fact, all these "small business solutions" make great case studies on how to "nickel and dime" your customers to death. It must be painful, getting hit with all those nickels and dimes all year long! So what brought on this favorite pet peeve rant? Someone sent us an e-mail the other day, asking us... "What's the difference between SBI! and Verisign?" It could have been any one of several other major providers of "small business solutions" but in this case, it was Verisign. So before I responded, I decided to check out Verisign myself... http://www.verisignwebsites.com/ -----SIDEBAR----- Thousands of SOHOs, small businesses (1-10 employees), e-merchants, service businesses, NOHOs, affiliates, local businesses with local (!) clients and reps/IBOs/distributors have used SBI! to establish successful businesses. More and more, SBI! is being recognized as playing with "the big boys," so it is kind of nice getting those questions. -----SIDEBAR----- Take a look yourself... http://www.verisignwebsites.com/ This is yet another sad (yet happy for us) example of the "state of the Net" when it comes to meeting the needs of the small business person. Verisign's product (called "SiteToGo10") reflects the quintessential difference between SBI! and every other "small business solution" on the Net. We call their approach... "Instant gratification followed by slow, steady frustration." By the way, try their process shown at... http://www.verisignwebsites.com/ I did. I followed the process illustrated on the Verisign site. And I really suggest you do the same in order to understand the approach. Yes, it really DOES only take 10 minutes to build a 5 page Web site. And it costs $99 (so, by extension, a 10-page Web site = $199). After you complete the "site-building" process, you end up with a "templatized tree in the blue nowhere"... o These aren't the sort of pages that draw targeted traffic from the Search Engines by focusing on the keywords unique to your clientele. o These pages don't build relationships or instill the trust necessary to inspire a potential client to pick up the phone and call you. This is, very simply, an unvisited "e-Yellow Pages" site. Just one more lonely "About Us" brochure that no one visits except a couple of current clients, who'll never return. ------ But wait, that's just the beginning... Try to protect your head! You're about to get pelted with nickels and dimes. Here's the actual copy on the site once you're about to sign up, after you've gone through their quickie process... """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" SiteToGo10 The ultimate in business Web sites for those with their own Web hosting. SiteToGo offers the flexibility of 10 professionally-designed Web pages for your business, plus live chat online support and 30 days access to the Web Site Manager FREE ($6.95 a month thereafter). If you decide not to keep Web Site Manager, you will need to make your own arrangements to edit your Web site. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Yes... $6.95 a month just to keep using the Web Site Manager. Disillusioned? Hold on, it gets worse still (I feel like an infomercial IN REVERSE!)... """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" A domain registration fee of $35.00 per year will be billed separately by VeriSign. After registering your web address, please allow up to three business days for it to become active. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" ... and believe it or not, the nickels and dimes continue to bang you all over your noggin. So far we have... o $199 for a 10 page Web site o $76.45 for the use of Site Manager for the remainder of the year o $35.00 for domain registration. And this does not yet include your site's hosting (no, I'm NOT making this up!), which ranges from $20 to $100 PER MONTH on top of everything else. So add a MINIMUM of another $240 (maximum of $1200!). All those nickels and dimes added up to... $450.45 for a 5-page site or... $550.45 for a 10-page site ... up to a MAXIMUM total of over $1500 ANNUALLY. ------ So how can Verisign get away with it? Most small business people are used to paying at least $50 per month for a Yellow Pages ad, and do so without blinking. My local pharmacist pays $14,000 per year for a variety of Yellow Pages ads that he buys in various categories. And they don't expect much from that investment -- it's simply something they must do. So for many on the Net, it's the same sort of thing. Someone told them they needed a Web site, so they got a Web site. And they pay the $50-$100-$200 per month... month after month, secure in the knowledge this is simply something to be added to the everyday cost of doing business... ... just like their Yellow Pages ad. Heck, it's cheap compared to the Yellow Pages! But NOW... People are discovering Site Build It!. Do you know what the most common question is, by phone AND by e-mail... "What's the catch?" I LOVE that question. No catch. Compare Site Build It! against its major competitors... See Site Build-It! No catch. Except for all the wonderful e-mail we CATCH... """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" We are just coming up to our second anniversary and will break 50,000 visitors for the first time this month. Since August, our traffic has tripled, probably because of the Google and Yahoo deal. Our first year we had 77,000 visitors and this year we will have 293,000. We have had visitors from over 90 different countries the past few months. Ken and Cheryl Bryski Nanaimo, British Columbia http://www.quick-easy-recipes.com/ gramma-cookie@quick-easy-recipes.com """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Sorry, I got a little sidetracked there. But heck, that's why I call them "SIDEBARS." :-) So, back to Verisign and the other major players in the small business hosting business... Site Build-It! Bottom line?... Verisign says it's possible to build a bona fide Web business in 10 minutes flat. While this will appeal to some, all except the "get-rich-quick" folk understand that NOTHING of value gets created in 10 minutes. Nothing. ----- Although I've been picking on Verisign here, it isn't the only company that fails to recognize the realities of the needs of the small business/netrepreneur in cyberspace. None of the "big name" providers are doing any better. And here's the worst news about all those nickels and dimes... they don't begin to deliver the functionality required to build a real, live, breathing, thriving business. SBI! includes a staggering array of functionality... http://buildit.sitesell.com/web-wizardry.html And we're not stopping there. Coming soon... 1) Value Exchange (REAL and effective link-exchanging) 2) Full SBI!-HTML Editor Compatibility (yes, FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc.!) 3) Open Rate for MailOut 4) Directory HQ reporting 5) Addition of MSN to Search Engines HQ (Live NOW!) 6) E-goods (from merchant account to fulfillment) 7) 2-tier Affiliate Program (same way we do it at SiteSell) .... all at no added cost (except for the upcoming e-commerce bundle which will also offer unparalleled value). Please do compare, head to head, and see how Site Build It! measures up against the major competitors... Site Build-It! In the end, RESULTS speak for themselves. As thousands have testified, Site Build It! just plain SUCCEEDS... ------------------------------------------- Today is my birthday and what a birthday present I got thanks to SBI!. I opened it up this morning to count 75 - that's Seventy Five! - #1 Search Engine ratings. Things have not gone this well for me in decades and I am flying high on myself and my site. I have this great site selling something I love, and money in the bank from selling it. A great Birthday Present. Thanks to you guys at SiteSell! Karen Copeland? Golf South Africa golf-travel-packagessouthafrica.com ------------------------------------------- Got a business to build? Just thinking about it? Take advantage of our last ever Buy-1-Get-1-Free sale. And take advantage, too, of our "Money-Back Satisfaction & Success Guarantee." It turns your purchase into a "no risk take-it-home-for-a-test-drive" trial. For full info about Site Build It!, please visit... Site Build-It! After all... Why build JUST a Web site, when you COULD build a BUSINESS? See Site Build-It!