Blog Resources

SBI day 3 took more than one calendar day for me. On SBI! day 2, I brainstormed - used the awesome Brainstorm It! tool and chose my topic.

Day 3 is all about creating a site blueprint. On this day I did what is referred to as lateral brainstorming. I used the Brainstorm It! tool again but this time set it to lateral brainstorm. On day 2 I did a vertical brainstorm that returned keyword results that contained my main keyword term. A lateral brainstorm examines the top 20 Google sites for your site concept and returns keyword results that are related to your site concept but do not contain your keyword term.

At the end of all this brainstorming I had a lot of material. Again I had to weed out the unrelated stuff. But it was harder this time because Site Build It does not provide a concrete outline of how many keywords should remain. At the end of Day 2 I had 300 keywords in my database. There can be a maximum of 1000. At the end of Day 3 I am close that number which seems like too many. Is my site concept too broad? That is a question that I am still grappling with.

I completed a site blueprint. This is a flow chart of your main keyword broken down into seven to 15 sections which will constitute my Tier 2 pages or what is better known as the table of contents for my site. Each of these tier 2 pages are then broken down into 7 to 15 tier 3 pages which is the meat of the site. Taking the time to outline the site in such detail before even starting to build the site is eye opening. The best part - I will never have a day where I won’t know what to write about (a common problem for bloggers). At least for a long time.

Again, my site concept is rather broad - so I have a lot of material. While SBI! does a good job of giving you guidelines to make sure that your idea is not too narrow (not enough material to build a site) there is not much guidance to help you decide if your idea is too wide.

At this point I am at Day 5 and am still revisiting Day 3, which SBI encourages you to do if you are unsure. I plan to plow forward and not wallow in “analysis paralysis” but I will take the rest of the day and into tomorrow to think about the site logically. How would a visitor to this site perceive it?

SBI does put monetization last - and it is examined in more depth on Day 4. But at this point I think it is useful to think a bit like the adsense bot - which I do plan to use on my new site eventually. I want to make sure that the adsense bot will deliver highly targeted ads to my readers. So, if my concept is too wide and covers too many topics then the bot will be confused and adsense won’t do well for me. This line of thinking may help me narrow down my topic.

If you would like to follow along with me as I make my way through the SBI Action Guide here are some links to the SBI! Video Action Guide and the SBI! Action Guide in pdf format. These resources are free.

I will be back tomorrow with SBI! Day 4. Read about SBI! Days 1 and 2 here:
Site Build It Review Day 1
Site Build It Review Day 2

I recently took my first foray into the world of email lists. I signed up for AWeber with the intention of creating and sending out a periodic email newsletter.

I didn’t get very far.

Apparently a requirement of the CANN Spam Act is that you must display a mailing address on each email that goes out to those that sign up on your list.

To me this was a deal breaker. No - I am not a spammer. Just an honest person who works from home and  values privacy. I spoke with an AWeber rep about this rule and he said that many people get a P.O. box - something that my fledgling business cannot support and does not need at this point. And no, my honest Abe side cannot enter a bogus address with a clear conscience.

The end result - I pulled the plug on an awesome blog resource because of a ridiculous rule that is designed to protect… I really am not sure what. Obviously, if you are a spammer, you will not put a real address in this field anyway. So, those of us who are not spammers must complete this section honestly and give up our privacy. Thousands of strangers could potentially have our home address. Do you see my point.

By now you must have seen the Entrecard widget on many sites around the net.

I won’t get into the details of how this blog resource works but basically you create a 125×125 card (think of it as a business card or calling card) and drop it onto the entrecard widgets on other people’s sites. You get entrecard points for every card you drop and I think for cards that are dropped onto your widget (?). You can use these points to buy the ability to display your card on someone else’s widget for a 24 hour period. The amount of points this advertising costs depends on how many cards are queued up waiting to be displayed.

Some people think the whole process is a waste of time. After all, many people just go a-card-dropping without staying to read your content. I do it. This drives up your page impressions and if you are using adsense it will decrease your click through rate.

On the other hand I like Entrecard because I have discovered some new sites who are (surprise, surprise!) interested in networking and are very open to blogroll link exchanges. The increased traffic has not hurt my overall click through rate yet.

I started out with the intention of just having an Entrecard. I figured I would just drop it whenever I naturally came across a site that displayed the Entrecard widget. But what I discovered was the “you drop, I follow” movement. Sounds kind of creepy, doesn’t it? Actually, it is rather addicting. When someone drops a card on you, you drop one back as a sign of reciprocation and appreciation.

After doing this for a week or so, I am finding this to be a bit of a time commitment. I have it down to a science though. Once a day I go to my drops inbox for the previous day. I click “open in a new tab” on each drop from the previous day and return all my drops. Very tedious. I wish there was a way to just select all the previous days Entrecard drops and then click open in new tab and all of the sites would open up. Maybe there is and I just don’t know how to do it yet.

Any time saving insights when it comes to Entrecard would be helpful!

Update: for you eagle eyed visitors, I don’t have the Entrecard widget on this site but rather display it on my parenting advice site. You can now have more than one Entrecard but one is all that I can handle at this point in time.

I continue on with my journey as an SBI! owner. The day before yesterday was day 2 of the Action Guide for me.

Day 2 involves brainstorming. The ultimate result is a single Site Concept that will be the basis of your Site Build It! business. Nerve wracking stuff.

Days 2 and 3 of the Site Build It! process are probably the most important ones. The Action Guide states this out right and tells you that these two days could take days, weeks, or even longer.

Brainstorming for a site idea is nothing new to experienced internet marketers. But finding an idea that you are passionate about, that you can create a whole site about, and that has the potential for monetization is no easy chore. At this point the Site Build It! process is not that different from what you could do on your own.

You write down everything and anything that comes to mind that you are interested in. Then you evaluate your extensive list for demand using free keyword tools. After all, if no one is searching for it, then it is unlikely you will get any traffic.

The Action Guide recommends that you narrow it down to three ideas. And then things heat up. You see, Site Build It! has this awesome Brainstorm It! tool included in the package. This tool draws on data from the full price Wordtracker keyword tool, and other sources. You plug your site concept into this and you get numbers and data for demand, supply, and profitablilty. Wow!

You could probably do this type of analysis on your own, for free. In fact, the Affiliate Masters Course, tells you exactly how to do it. But the time saved is huge!

One caveat is that there are only 25 of this type of search included with the SBI! package. You can buy additional searches relatively inexpensively - the best deal is to buy a set of 500 searches for something like twenty bucks. But honestly, you probably won’t need more than the 25 that are included, at least initially.

Anyhow, you use Brainstorm It! with each potential site concept to come up with a list of related keywords. You spend a lot of time here pruning your list so only the highly related ones remain. And you evaluate your site concepts based on the data you get. Is your choice too broad, too narrow? It is here that you will have the data to help you make that decision.

Then SBI! has a Niche Choose It! tool that will help you decide amongst your three site concepts. At any time during this process on Day 2 you can scrap a potential site concept and start over. This is the time to explore, evaluate, analyze, over and over again. In actuality, you can go all the way to day 5 (when you register your domain) and still backtrack and change your mind. This is why days 2 and 3 will take a lot of time. You want to be sure of your site concept before you register your domain.

So, I finished day 2 in one day. But really, I spent a lot of hours on it. I already had some ideas going into the brainstorming session. And now I have a site concept. I am a bit nervous about my choice, because I know I have a lot of competition in this niche. But rather than tackle it on my own, I am happy to have SBI! to support me along the way.

So onward to day 3 of the SBI! Action Guide.

Good news! I just learned that the Site Build It sale has been extended.

You should look into Site Build It! if:

• You want to develop a web presence for business or personal reasons or

• You have tried your hand at making money online and have not yet succeeded.

The second point above is key. So many people get started online thinking that they can make a quick and easy buck. Only to find out later that it is not as easy as it seems.

The draw to starting a blog or website is low startup cost. And it’s true. You can absolutely start a free blog.

But turning that free blog into a profitable enterprise takes time and knowledge. And we all know that time is money. This is when most people give up. Finding the time to learn about internet marketing is impossible for many people that are lives that are already busy and overtaxed.

This is where Site Build It! can help.

The Summer Sale Independence Day Sale is going on now. It’s a good time to get in on the action.