In late August, I was suckered into buying one of those great 2-for-1 deals at SiteBuildIt, and since then I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels a lot. Why? I will be absolutely frank: the course is tough because it asks you to do tough things, really tough. Blogging on this blog or on my other Blogs is easy by comparison – I know what I’m doing, I know what to write (most of the time).
I’m working on this post over the next few hours, but I’m publishing it now so you can stop in and see how the article’s going.
It’s tough: Tough Questions
For the first time since I started running my websites, I’ve actually been much more focused on finding and examining keywords with the BrainstormIt Tools that SBI provides: this helps tremendously in selecting a niche that has potential for you, eliminating some of the failures that are inherent by pursuing niches that are overly popular or seriously underperforming.
The tools also provide help with selecting ways to narrow down, and expand your niche by building out the keywords properly. So for my niche, I’ve now got a potentially good niche with several hundred related keywords.
The toughest questions were the ones that took the longest to solve, and ones which were awfully similar to those posed by a writing course I took years ago, that asked me to examine my experience, talents and interests to determine where I could start. That was the hardest part, and despite my blogging interests I decided not to follow that niche at this time due to overwhelming demand.
The BluePrint
SBI makes a huge fuss about choosing your site concept keywords and then building out what they call a blueprint, based on choosing essential keywords and using the higher demand keywords with lower existing values to drive traffic. So it took me nearly three attempts to come up with a set of blueprints that are halfway reasonable. Of course, I still wonder if I’m biting off more than I can reasonably chew.
Why do I like SBI?
1. It’s slow, it’s methodical and thorough.. There is also an overabundance of materials that make initial problems by overwhelming those who (like me) tend not to put enough time into the program. But, once you gain familiarity with the materials, you should just follow their simple Action Guide. Take a look at how SBI recommends putting the site together. The videos are pretty good, though many references are made to tools and results only available within the program.
2. It should make the daily grind of producing content less of a drain. In fact, that’s the one reason I hate blogging because of the pressure to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING, just words. There are a lot of other issues with blogging that I hadn’t realized until I read some of Ken Evoy’s words. He actually quotes Google: “Blogs usually have high Bounce Rates no matter what since normal visitor behavior is to read the newest post and then leave.”
Why do I not like SBI?
Because you can’t just start writing, it takes time to work through the program, and so quick results are almost impossible. In fact, quick results are positively discouraged in favour of the tortoise approach.
Overall, I think Steve summed it up best in saying: “So structured and methodical (looks like a lot of tough content writing – I guess you are going for a big authority site with this though).” And that’s an approach that will need me to focus much more on developing both a writing style and meaningful content … that’s going to mean ‘research’.
So, it’s a hard slog; but as a result, I’m not able to post as much on InvestorBlogger (my apologies) though I will drop back on a weekly basis to update you on my challenge, including statistics… and whatever else I have time for. So if you want to stay uptodate with posts on InvestorBlogger, the best way is to subscribe to our site however you like, and you’ll get fresh content as and when it becomes available (even by email!)
Disclaimer: I’ve been using SBI for about three months on and off, am an active affiliate for their program, and highly recommend it if you are interested in developing a self-sustainable business.
Update: I’ve used SBI for three years, and feel compelled to say: Sitesell is in trouble, their methods no longer work effectively, and Google fails to rank Sitesell sites well any more for whatever reason. Don’t waste your time, like I did.