My experience with Site Build It

My name's Jim Nelson. And... the internet isn't my first "business." I've worked as a professional actor, director, and designer in theatres across the country. For the past 20+ years, I've also been teaching full time as a professor in the Theatre Department at Thomas More College in Northern Kentucky.

I began my first successful web site in November 2001. I say "successful" since I had "played around" a little before that, building some rather unfocused sites that never got traffic. I had some affiliate links on them, but never had a sale.

I did teach myself a little HTML coding, so it wasn't a complete waste. But I wanted to build a site that, first of all, people would find helpful, and secondly (and maybe more importantly) one that people could FIND. Honestly, building a business wasn't my driving force in the beginning - I just wanted to "do it right."

I spent some time and money on various ebooks, but nothing seemed to have the whole answer.

Then...

(I don't remember where) I stumbled onto Site Build It! It sounded almost too good to be true. Create a site filled with good content, build traffic to a theme based site, THEN, "pre-sell" by giving personal recommendations about related products, and finally.... Monetize. It sounded so simple, and exactly what I was looking for.

I got SBI! without even knowing what my site would be about! And SBI! even helped me with that. I started working through the steps in the Action Guide. It hit me! Something I knew and loved.... Juggling! I used the Brainstorming tool to research juggling. It gave me a lot of related keywords, giving me even more ideas for the site.

My first goal was NOT to make money here, but to provide good information that people were looking for. The Brainstorming tool told me that there indeed WAS demand. But even more, it told me some "profitable" related keywords (based on demand and supply for each keyword.)

So I certainly began thinking of ways to "monetize" this, to bring in some income. But I started by focusing on providing good content - Juggling instructions - types of equipment to use.

Since it was something I knew, the writing was easy. I just put it down in my own words. SBI! had all the tools to make it easy to build into web pages. I used the Analyze-It tool to optimize for the search engines. And... I had the site basically "finished" in 2-3 weeks.

Since I teach full time, I had a couple hours a day at most, to work on the site. But I kept adding to it. And watched the traffic build!

About three months into it, people were finding my site, so I wanted to look for ways to possibly generate some income.

There weren't any good affiliate programs, related to juggling. But I remembered some juggling balls my mom had crocheted about 25 years ago. I was still using them, so knew they were a good quality product. I talked with my mom, and even though she didn't have any idea what the internet was (She's 91 years old now) she said she would make some more.

I began offering them for sale on the site! I was getting some sales, so began looking for more juggling items to buy at wholesale. The income went to purchasing more inventory, and we now carry over 100 items from 4 different countries. We have sent orders all over the world, including South America, Europe, Canada, Russia, China, Japan.

And of course, I keep adding to the site. When the Newsletter function was added to SBI, I began building a subscriber list - now over 1500 subscribers.

And with SBI!, they really are. A year ago, I thought I would build another site about another of my loves - parrots. (We have 4 parrots now.) That's providing another source of income already. ParrotsNow.com.

And the ideas keep coming. When I can find time, while running my other businesses, I know that SBI! is there for me to build yet another site.

But! One step at a time! It's all based on the same thing. Start with the right approach -

I simply followed what SBI! gave me... and it's turned into a great second income. I had joked when I started JuggleNow.com that I could soon retire. Well, it's no longer a joke. Although I won't retire for a while - because I don't want to stop teaching. But... now it's MY choice!

And, if I can help answer any questions about Site Build It! just email me at
jim [at] sitesell [dot] com.