Instead I worked my fingers to the bone on my SBI site and wound up with bony fingers.

I currently have a SBI site Konafriends.com which just had it’s 4th birthday and makes about $100 per month after thousands of hours of work.

If your readers would like to read another fair SBI review, I started a blog about it at http://my-sbi-experience.blogspot.com/ because my site is listed in SBI’s top 1% directory of sites and I’m getting tired of answering emails from people who seen my site in SBI’s directory and want to know how much money I’m making.

Yes. SBI does have its good point, which is mostly the education. SBI is useful only to those who have not the slightest clue on how to setup, make, and host a website. There are some informative videos and guides which walk you through the basics like constructing your HTML site, search engine optimization tips, keyword research, search engine submission, monetizing etc.

However, if you know some basics of (or are diligent enough to learn) setting up a website, ie. simple HTML, finding a decent host (much, much cheaper than SBI), submitting pages to a search engine, and keyword research… all of which you can Google online for free, you can forget about SBI.

With SBI you can only upload simple HTML. Yes, just simple HTML and CSS if you know basics of CSS. There is no way you can upload scripts if your site needs to be dynamic. Also, if you want your own forum, you have to host it separately under a subdomain which is troublesome and adds extra cost.

In my opinion, $300 is a lot for a simple HTML site, considering that you can host a site for free (for fun/learning) or much less with any decent hosting company out there, which comes with more functions. Why pay $300 just to upload HTML and when you can Google for free for learning materials?

When I was still as user, I wrote my own HTML instead of using SBI’s limiting interface. Also, most of the time, it was just slow manipulating through the SBI server. This alone is annoying.

In short, there are alternatives out there which can do more, better than what SBI can do, with less limitations, at much less $$$ or even free. $300 is simply too much considering the alternatives out there.

Couple of points I’d like to make. I use Site Build It, and I’m 50/50 split on what you’re saying.

Appearance – yup. The 2-column templates are pretty poor. But there’s the option of ‘Uploading your own HTML’ so you can simply import anything from Dreamweaver.

The 2-column templates all go out in a few weeks though. They held an ‘iDesign’ contest to choose the next generation of templates. They’re not too shabby, but we’ll wait for the roll-out.

The key point about the education is it sets those up who are either new online (like I was) or ‘haven’t got there yet’ online. The Action Guide forms the staple of the SBI process, but there are literally dozens upon dozens of articles in the ‘Tips and Techniques HQ’ – you’d have discovered this if you bought the subscription – which honestly saves you buying hundreds of e-Books. There is also a very active forum which is frequently referred to in all the resources.

I notice SBI uses slightly different terminologies, and encourages you to “block out the outside noise”. The education does work; but argueably this infringes development later on. I’m toying with the idea of creating a video series ‘SBI Beyond the Action Guide’ for those looking to take their sites to the next level.

The keyword research tool is outstanding – don’t knock it. It spiders resources not just from Wordtracker, but other sources on the net. It brings up 3 values; ‘Value Demand’, ‘Real Supply’ and ‘Profitability’. The former is number representive of the search volume and how much money there is to be made (i.e. ‘buy gold’ would be high but not necessarily have the search volume). Real Supply is important because it puts a number of the competition and how strong the competition is – this is so important in choosing which battles to fight. Based on those numbers alone I’ve generated thousands of targeted visitors by building pages. Profitability is merely a crude ‘divide VD by RS x1000′ and is only a rough guide to how strong a particular keyword is. If you were smart, you’d have bought a subscription, maxed out your keyword credits and exported the data … but hey!

The blog platform is basic, as is the autoresponder and mailout services – but they’re included. Decent mailout services cost upwards of $100 per year (Xmailpro, aweber ..). They are supplementary, but I do agree they could be improved. One problem though is the SBI servers can’t handle PHP scripts so a comprehensive SBI blogging platform is out of the question for the time being.

The price is one of those ‘is it too expensive, or is it too cheap’ scenarios. You list wordpress, single domain and single-domain hosting at $68 per year; a common and fair arguement. But you skip the education, tools (especially keyword tools) and in a weird kinda way – the community. For someone who is new or struggling, you could perhaps see the appeal.

The problem with the SBI reviews is that they are either written by affiliates (who are in the end, biased) or written by bloggers and other people who have already established themselves online – in which case SBI will seem pointless because you’ve already ticked most or all of the boxes.

My philosophy is try it out – and then judge! That’s what moneyback guarentees are for; I’ve literally downloaded half a dozen software suites last night to ‘evaluate’.

But I just feel so bad for them! Pushing the program to make that $75 is probably the only way they can make some money now that they’re out $300 and probably hundreds of hours writing text for, let’s face it, really ugly pages which are just embarrassing. Anyway, I know people like to make fun of the SBI noobs (I’ve enjoyed some of the videos myself) but isn’t it almost like making fun of retarded people?

What I’m saying is, and maybe I’m not doing it very well, but I just feel really really bad for them, and I’m totally not being sarcastic (I promise).

I, too, tried Site Built It late in 2005 or 2006, when I was such a newbie to the web. I got my refund before 30 days were up and cannot say that I do not regret it. I would have enjoyed all the hand holding that was part of it instead of wading the vast ocean of the web by myself.

Their research tools were for me a bit hard to use and was still in the research phase after a couple of weeks (Steve Pavlina talks above progress in just days and I cannot believe that, unless you are a seasoned webmaster), and as you mentioned, a little limited in terms of design.

However, their business model seems sound but I just found the $300.00 PER SITE too prohibitive at that time. Ken Evoy was then not yet talking about “building a web business” the way he is nowadays, so $300 per year for a web site was steep.

I agreed with Lizzie’s point that a lot of affiliates promote SBI without owning a site but I also have to say that SBI does not stop encouraging their affiliates to own a site of their own.

I respect freedom of speech and I like your take on SBI, so that folks don’t go in with eyes wide shut. I would still recommend it for newbies, though, because SBI does strive to deliver all the tools that one would need to get a site up and running from scratch without having to extensive research and invest time and money on trial and error methods.

Thanks for allowing me to take up this much space on your blog. Keep great posts like these coming!