About Site Build It...

Or How I Built This Site With Something Called SBI

This page is about Site Build It, also known as SBI!, a phenomenal platform that taught me how to build a website that works.

At this writing, this is my newest website... but it's not my only one. In fact, I've been building websites since the year 2000, and what a journey it's been.

My Slow Path to a Web Business

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to own my own business. But, you know... life got in the way. I was married for 13 years and had 2 little girls and so in the 70s and 80s, I was pretty busy just raising my family.

But kids grow up, marriages end and I started to focus more on a great career I really loved for more than a decade... home health care program planning, management and operations. I was good at it too. But here's the thing...

I thrive on challenges, and after a while, even that job I loved began to pale. I started to think more about having a business. But my kids were now ready to go off to college and I needed money, as I guess you can imagine.

So, I parlayed my nursing background and a love of & talent for writing into a new career, first as a technical writer (manuals for home health care record keeping) and then as a consumer health education writer.

Eventually, though, I realized I HATED the corporate culture. I longed to be in control of my own destiny, and so, with the company I worked for on the brink of disaster due to some poor executive management decisions, I took a flying leap into the unknown and became a full-time freelance writer and Web entrepreneur.

For a few years, I'd been dabbling on the Internet trying to make money, but it wasn't till I found SBI (and actually followed their process) that I finally began to succeed as an entrepreneur. (Luckily, my freelance writing WAS successful in supporting me while I learned, for the most part.)

If you want to see some of my health care writing, I'm the Asthma Guide at About.com and also blog on asthma and allergies at HealthCentral.com. Fun stuff!

Site Build It Got Me Started...

When I started out with an interest in building websites, I didn't know what else to do other than teach myself how to code in HTML (I don't have a technical background). Luckily, I love to learn and I do have a pretty good visual eye, so I learned the basics pretty quickly. And my brother, a graphic artist and web programmer, helped me find resources that made it a bit easier too.

So, before long, I'd built a couple of basic websites, using cheap templates and my new found HTML skills.

But just building a great looking website isn't enough, as I found out soon enough.

Right? Right?

Wrong!

It doesn't matter how great your site looks and reads; if you don't know how to drive traffic to it, no one but you (and maybe your family) is ever going to see it.

That's where SBI comes in...

A few months after I started fumbling around making websites, a product named Site Build It came out. Actually, I'd known about its founder, a doctor named Ken Evoy, for some time, because I'd been reading a series of digital manuals he produced on how to build a web business. The flagship ebook was Make Your Site Sell, but there were a number of other books on subtopics too.

The manuals were great, so when Ken — one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet — came out with SBI, I snapped it up right away. SBI was meant to enable the user to put into practice all the principles explained in Make Your Site Sell and the other books.

The package has changed a lot over the years (always for the better), but even from the very beginning, I could see this was the way to build a web-based business that would succeed. You didn't really need to know how to use HTML or anything. The SBI package took you through a process from start to finish that would produce a passable website that also would get traffic.

I Was a Slow Learner...

But I didn't do everything right in the beginning. In fact, my first SBI website, HomeSweetBiz.com, basically did just about everything wrong. I didn't do a good job researching the viability of my niche (home internet business, which is way too competitive and saturated, and certainly nothing I was an expert in at the time). I also didn't have all of the advantages and cutting edge tools that come with SBI now. They didn't exist yet.

I haven't let go of my HomeSweetBiz.com site for sentimental reasons though, and I'm currently in the process of totally rewriting the entire site from scratch. Hopefully, this time it'll be successful, knowing what I know now.

I was the classic example of building a site and then getting no traffic, which was frustrating. But I believed in SBI and I kept searching for a way to make it work.

Eventually, I landed in a mentoring program where I really learned how to harness the power of SBI once and for all. The program broke the SBI Action Guide into more manageable chunks. It helped me focus and truly understand the CTPM process, maybe for the first time.

The website I produced in that project, Powerful-Sample-Resume-Formats.com has enjoyed slow (at first), but steady growth over the past 4 years and now makes me between $1500 and $2000 a month, even though I'm not really spending that much time on it these days.

That's called "passive income." And I love it!

Since that time, I've had websites come and go (for many reasons, none of them SBI's fault), but at this writing, I now have 5 – count 'em – 5 SBI websites! The two I mentioned above, this one, and these two:

• Discover-Acadia.com, a joint project with my grown daughters, which still needs a ton of work


• Your-Healthcare-Career.com, kind of an outgrowth of my resume site, also still under construction

AND... no, I'm not a millionaire... yet, but I DO have a plan to totally support myself through the income of my SBI websites. And I'm coaching my significant other, Jim, too, in building his first website using SBI. Together, we're going to be magnificent...

And that's going to give me MORE TIME for scootin'!

What Site Build It Can Do For You...

Have you ever dreamed, as I did, of having the freedom of your own business? Of not being beholden to the capricious whims of an employer? Of making your own decisions about things that affect your life and your happiness? Of making a living and reaping the profits, both financial and otherwise just for yourself?

Well, Site Build It can do all that for you. It's done it for me and it's done it for tons of other people too. Keep reading to learn more about that...

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