hi all,

i have just read hoolys ebook and like a lot of us feel excited but also overwhelmed with all the information.
i am in a full time job (actually as a web designer in germany, but only doing pretty pictures no programming). working full time leaves me with only 2-3 hours in the evening plus the weekend. i know many of you might even have less spare time, but i want to also still socialise and while trying to put an ebook together already experienced to not have a life anymore.
so i am considering using a shortcut like SiteBuildIt/SBI.
Does anyone have experience with this?

Sorry if this has beend discussed before, but i havent found any profund information searching the forum.

any reply would be really appreciated.
thank you so much

I am using SBI to create a website. I've been working on it for about 2 months but have not started to monetize it yet (soon! )I also have a free wordpress website that I got for free from Holly for signing up through her for Bluehost.

The two sites are totally different.

I must admit that the SBI! site has been much easier to put together and my ALEXA rank is already up to 1,864,974 after only 2 months. I'm getting about 40 unique visitors a day and am almost ready to monetize it (They recommend waiting until you have a least 50 uniques a day).

What I like about SBI! is that it provides you with everything you need. Wordtracker, a domain name, webhosting, autoresponders, and it even walks you through the process.

If you want, you can upload your own pages or you can use the blockbuilder without any html knowledge and it will check your pages for onpage optimization and tell you where to improve if needed.

It has all kinds of tools like BrainStormIt! to help you you find your niche and SearchIt! that will help you with an abundance of different things from checking your competitors backlinks to legal issues. It has numerous uses.

I plan to learn with SBI! and then come back and revamp my Pipelinebooks site.

All in all, I have been very impressed with it.

There is a link in my signature to it if you would like to find out more.

Good luck,
Kathy

Thanks for posting this question. I am considering SBI as well.

From my limited understanding, it seems SBI is a great way to get started. Especially for someone without web design, or any other technical experience.

Does anyone know of any significant disadvantages of SBI?

Is it more important to have all content and branding ideas in place before joining such a service? Or is it a good idea to join such a service to help define and have clarity of those things?

I just don't want to jump the gun and join a service that I may not even be ready for.

I have used SBI My current site is in my signature below. I already have two more site ideas and hope to use SBI again for both of them. It really is a great way to start if it fits your budget. The videos walk you through step by step on building a website from scratch. I knew nothing about building a site. I found it very easy once I started working with my SBI account! I have not had a chance to work with wordpress.

Good luck!

I have created a SBI review here http://www.squidoo.com/is-site-build-it-for-you

I've been working on my SBI! site for about 2 months now and I haven't found any disadvantages. They offer a 30 day money back guarantee if you want to give it a spin and see for yourself.

If you think about it, SBI! costs $299 a year. If you buy webhosting for a year, it's roughly $100 and then you add on an autoresponder, that's about $20 a month ($240 yearly), if you have to buy the domain name, that's another $10, wordtracker for a week is roughly $20, together just that totals $370! You get all of that with SBI! plus they walk you through the whole process. I think it's well worth it!

Just my thoughts,
Kathy

great to see so many helpful replies.

i have a couple more questions:

are you able to change the template they give you? i mean can you actually change the html to make it prettier?
i assume all the tools and plugins are already set up for you to a degree - how long did it take you to get your site together?

has anyone got experienxe with wordpress in comparison?

also, if you want to plugin ebay or so, ist that relatively easy to do?

thanks again!