Why I Built This Site…and Why You May Want to Build One Too

Even though I still have a full time day job (in which I'm still a Hiring Manager!), I've always dreamed of starting my own business and perhaps eventually being able to do it full time. That's one of the reasons I created this website.

It all started when I read a blog comment several years ago, written by someone who had built a web site based on nothing but her knowledge of a particular subject. This person was making a couple of thousand dollars per month from her website. She claimed to have known nothing about creating a website, Internet marketing, or anything else about building an online business. Instead, she said she used a company called Site Build It, which gave her a complete set of tools to create a website business and make it a success.

Frankly, I didn't believe it. I know a bit about HTML and have built a couple of very simple websites, so I knew how hard it was to build a professional-looking website, especially one that could produce some income. I chalked this one up to the typical Internet Marketing hype that is seen all over the Internet.

And yet…I couldn't get thought out of my mind that it would be great to be able to put up website, based only on my personal knowledge, and be able to make some extra money. So I finally went and took a look at the SiteBuildIt service.

What I was looking for was proof that their service could deliver on professional-looking websites that actually were ranked well in the search engines. Just like the advice I give about preparing a resume, I was looking for achievements, not just descriptions of their services. Well, I found that hundreds of their customer's web sites were ranked in the top one percent of all sites on the Internet. After reviewing them, and looking at the pretty impressive set of features you get with this service, I decided to seriously consider it.

I researched further and found almost zero negative comments about them on the Web, which is pretty impressive for a company of this sort.

But I was still hesitant because to be perfectly blunt, SiteBuildIt does cost a bit more than other website hosts. However, after more research I found out why: it includes literally everything you need to research, build and market your website. It's an all-in-one service. I was particularly sold on their website builder, which requires no technical knowledge about building a website. Well, almost no knowledge – it does help to know a few basic HTML commands, which can be learned in about ten minutes.

For those of you who may know a bit about websites and Internet marketing, here's some of the modules included in the price: domain name registration, website hosting (unlimited space and bandwidth), keyword research tool, electronic newsletter publishing, automatic submission of your web pages to the major search engines, search engine optimization, an email auto responder system, and other functionality too detailed to bore you with here but you can read all about it yourself on their site.

Okay, let's cut to the chase. I signed up for SiteBuildIt and started working my way through their ten-day course, which explains from scratch how to research your topic, choose a domain name, build your site, and get it ranked in the search engines. Truth in advertising statement: it actually took me longer than ten days to complete the course, but as you know…Hiring Managers tend to be a bit slow!

I used their keyword research tool to find the right keywords to optimize for on my site (this is all explained in their training manuals, which comprise over 600 pages of everything you'll ever need to know about developing a profitable website).

I built my website slowly over many weeks and watched the traffic grow, using all the SEO (search engine optimization) tools and instructions that are included in the package. The website builder is so ridiculously easy that you cannot make a mistake.

I had lots of questions as I made my way through the material and began building my site. Fortunately, they have an excellent forum that is filled with helpful experts who can answer almost any question. Or, their help desk system is excellent. I know – I used it several times.

The end result is what you see on this web site. It's a clean, no-nonsense format that, in my humble opinion, conveys a great deal of information in an authoritative manner.

My Alexa rating, as of Feb. 1 2010, is 339,146 (you can verify this yourself if you have the Alexa toolbar installed on your PC). Alexa is the most popular website ranking service. They rank over 100 million websites based on popularity, with the lower the number, the greater the popularity. As you may suspect, Google is number 1. My rating of 339,146 puts my website in the top one half of one percent of all websites. Now THAT is what I mean by results!

I'm not making a fortune with my website…yet. My only "monetization" so far is displaying Google ads, which brings me in a tidy sum every month, but the SiteBuildIt course covers many other ways of monetizing your website. My problem is time. I still have a more-than-fulltime day job and have limited hours to fully develop the income producing potential of my site.