My SBI Website Design Portfolio...
I Can Work Inside & Outside the SBI Design Structure
One of the best ways to evaluate a webmaster is to explore his or her web designs.
When you partner with me to develop your next SBI website, you'll be teaming with an SBI expert. I've used SBI to produce a number of different websites, so I know all of the ins and outs of how the program works. I also know how to tweak and enhance SBI so that you get the most out of it.
But what most people want in their new website is an attractive website design. As you learn more about how to succeed on the Internet, you find out that having a fancy design is secondary to having great content that calls your visitor to take a desired action, whether it's to buy something, click on a link, or sign up for your mailing list.
Still... first impressions are powerful and often based on visual cues, so you DO want to be sure that you make a great first impression with your web design. My philosophy is K.I.S.S.—Keep It Simple & Speedy. What do I mean by that? Well, I'll let my design porfolio speak for itself, but in a nutshell, I'm talking about sticking with designs that are elegant but fairly simple and uncluttered, with enough white space not to overwhelm. Ideally, the design will also match and complement your niche concept.
My SBI Design Portfolio
I've been using SBI for nearly 5 years. When I made my first SBI site, you had only 10 templates—each in 2 choices of color themes—to choose from. I have a strong visual eye, so I was never too pleased with the limited choices. Over the years, though, SBI has built more and more flexibility into their design choices, which is great!
These days, you can take their standard templates and customize them with color, effects, fonts, and images. Or you can design your own header, left side image and background. Of course, you can even start with your own scratch HTML design too. To me, the easiest way to make use of all of the powerful features in SBI, yet still have a great design, is to use their custom template. That's what I did in most (but not all) of the designs shown below. Let's look at each design as a case study.
HomeSweetBiz.com
HomeSweetBiz.com was my first SBI website, built originally back in 2000, in the very first days of existence for SBI... before there was a Brainstormer... before there was even an Action Guide. Never liking the designs offered by SBI, I elected to go the HTML route when it was introduced a couple of years ago, and totally updated my original design. It has a similar, but slightly more sophisticated layout than the usual SBI template. This is a content-rich site that employs all the foundation principles of SBI except one... choosing an underserved niche.
Unfortunately, when SBI was first introduced, I was new to the Web and hadn't yet grasped that "ordinary" people like me could not really compete in the Internet marketing or home business opportunities marketplace against the so-called Internet gurus. It's a nicely-designed site with lots of valuable content, but very little traffic, even after 5 years.
So, why haven't I dumped it? Sentimental value, I guess. But I am planning to totally repurpose the domain name and come up with a new and less crowded niche site concept. And believe me, I will not allow you to choose a niche like this where you are unlikely to succeed!
Update 1/2007: Look for a whole new design and content later this year. I've finally decided where I'm taking this site and it's going to be exciting (and financially-lucrative, I hope). And it may even benefit my many former and current SBI clients!
SuperSeniorsOnline.com (No longer live)
SuperSeniorsOnline.com was my second stab at building an SBI website. This time, I decided to follow the new Action Guide that comes with SBI, step-by-step. I also decided to work within the parameters of SBI's block by block page builder, but designed a custom look and feel template.
Another content-building strategy I tried was to build my site by primarily using other people's content. This enabled me to get a lot of pages up rather quickly, so that I could start using Google AdSense ads (you must have 20 pages minimum to do so) and get my site listed in the search engines.
This site is an example of another mistake I made by not following the SBI instructions to nail down your niche site concept before selecting a domain name. This includes doing the necessary research and brainstorming to make sure there is a market for your site concept before you make your final decision. I developed the idea of a site dedicated to helping senior citizens succeed online. I chose a snappy domain name, and then I did the research. Unfortunately, the research did not support the need for or profitability for such a site.
So, having already purchased the site and registered the domain name, I had to figure out what to do with them. I decided to focus on aging concerns, but this was not very successful either. I did get some traffic and made the occasional penny on AdSense, but I couldn't call this site a success either. One of the reasons is I didn't do a very good job preselling. The other is, I lost interest in the theme and stopped improving it. So, eventually, I let it go...
My "failures" in using the SBI system illustrate these undeniable facts:
- To succeed at SBI, you must follow the directions in the SBI Action Guide. If you don't, success is elusive.
- It's essential to understand the CTPM methodology that is the foundation of the SBI approach:
- First, build robust content.
- Second, focus on bringing traffic to the site.
- Third, tweak your content so that you are preselling the affiliate products and services you want your site visitors to buy.
- Finally, monetize your site—turn it into a money-maker!
I wish I had learned these lessons earlier, but eventually they did sink in. In the spring of 2004, I embarked on my third SBI site (with the help of a mentoring program). This time, I did everything right and now I have a rousing SBI success to my name!
Powerful-Sample-Resume-Formats.com
Powerful-Sample-Resume-Formats.com has achieved typical SBI success. I spent signficant time researching possible niches and profitable high-demand, low-supply keywords. I knew I wanted to do something around careers, and eventually settled on the fairly narrow niche of "how to write an effective resume."
All this was done before even thinking about a domain name. Finally, when I'd narrowed my niche significantly enough and assured myself there were more than 25 strong keywords I could build pages around, I chose a domain name that captured my site concept and also communicated a benefit to my site visitors. The next step was to build my content, each page focused on a well-researched keyword that had strong demand and profitability numbers.
This site has now grown to close to 200 pages. I get steady traffic each day, topping 1000 visitors a day and last month more than 12,000 unique visitors! and I'm making several hundred dollars a month from affiliate links and Google AdSense. All this just by following the SBI Action Guide step by step and by employing a few other cutting edge traffic building techniques.
If you select me as your certified SBI webmaster, I'll do the same for you.
Alternative-Allergy-Relief.com (No longer live)
Alternative-Allergy-Relief.com was another SBI site built for the Nitro Incubator program. It was built by one of my students originally, but when he left to pursue other interests, I took over the site. I updated the design and built more content (and edited what he wrote to be more search-engine friendly). Unfortunately, I just didn't have enough time to put into it with my many other sites and busy consulting practice and a couple of months ago, let it go.
Your-Healthcare-Career.com
Your-Healthcare-Career.com is one of my newest SBI sites, just launched in 2006. It's a good example of a sub-niche, similar to my resume website, but more narrowly focused... on the healthcare careers sub-niche. It's early yet, and I'm still building the pages because I have limited time to work on it, but my search engine rankings and traffic are creeping up.
Discover-Acadia.com
Discover-Acadia.com is one of my newer SBI sites and I'm still adding to the content as I have time to work on my own projects. I have always wanted to do a "fun" SBI site, and since Acadia is my passion, a travel site about it seemed perfect. It's actually a labor of love and a family project with my two grown daughters. We've taken 6 vacations in Acadia and it's one of our most favorite places in the world. So, it's still very much in development, but I expect good things from it over the next year.
Motor-Scooters-Guide.com
Motor-Scooters-Guide.com is my latest SBI project, born out of both my passion for riding motor scooters and the emergence of this as a hot new trend. The numbers look pretty exciting for this niche and I'm building pages as quickly as I can. But it's brand new as of the end of September 2007, so it's too early to be getting much traffic yet.
Online-Background-Check-Services.com
This client wanted a mirror SBI site for a non-SBI site that had never been able to capture the search engine traffic sufficiently. I designed his look and feel and brainstormed high-performing keywords for the various sections of his site. He wrote a few pages of content, while I optimized it for the search engines. Then, suddenly, he decided he no longer wanted to pursue this site and allowed me to take it over. It's a great niche, so I'm going to see how I do as an affiliate for him and others in the background check business. Watch it grow...
Some of My Clients' SBI Sites
Your-Panama.com
One of my first SBI clients hired me to improve his search engine rankings at his SBI site, YourPanama.com. He already had built a beautiful, content-rich website, but it was not all optimized for the search engines. My tasks included editing his pages (and filenames and meta tags) to improve his search engine rankings, as well as assisting with a monetization strategy, which included setting up the infrastructure for teleseminars.
Results: Sydney now has top 30 listings for many of the pages on his site, and even some #1 listings! His traffic has tripled and he has a loyal newsletter readership. He's had to take a break from active promotion of his site the last few months, but when he returns, it'll be full steam ahead for his monetization strategies!
Update 01/07: YourPanama.com is no longer owned by Sydney, because he moved on to new projects closer to his passion of financial investing and management. But improving the value of his website with my help enabled him to sell it... and you can see that it is still going strong under the new owner, who's made even more improvements.
DisabilityInsuranceDirect.com
This client hired me simply to update his SBI Look and Feel template for his site at DisabilityInsuranceDirect.com. He had very specific requests in terms of header components, fonts, and colors, not to mention layout on the page. I worked within the limitations imposed by the SBI design parameters and managed to give him pretty much what he wanted.
Career-Coaching-Central.com
This client hired me to makeover his site at Career-Coach-Central.com. I basically built him a new site from scratch, with a whole new design, and about 90% new content. He was so pleased, he's hired me to maintain his site and implement a sales strategy, both for this site and his ebook sales site, HowtoGetYourDreamJob.com.
Best-Home-Gardening-Tips.com
This client also hired me to build him a site from scratch. It was left to me to investigate possible niches, based on public domain materials he owned. Gardening presented itself as a lucrative niche—Best-Home-Gardening-Tips.com. I designed the Look and Feel and built the first 60 pages of content. Next up... he's hiring me not only to keep maintaining this site, but also to mentor him in the development of a second site.
Distant-Spiritual-Healing.com
This client hired me to build a "brochure" type website of just a few pages, but in the hopes that with SBI search engine optimization, her site would still be found. At this writing, 2 of the pages have top 10 listings in MSN.
Honest-Gambling.com
This client asked me to convert an HTML template to an SBI Look & Feel template and to upload the first few pages of his site. The site is still under development by the client.
Benchmark University
This client hired me to build a website from content he wrote. Development included implementation of PDF downloads and future video streaming. The site is still being worked on by the client.
Mo Johnson's Suite of Sites
This client hired me specifically to do website design. His first project below was to extremely specific design specifications. He controlled every aspect of this design, but in the end, I satisfied him so much that he hired me to do 2 more designs!
Sewing-From-Home.com
This client hired me to help her improve her SBI website on many levels, including the design. She did a wonderful job of building a truly useful site with tons of great tips for aspiring handsewers. Unfortunately, her husband did not support her in her SBI project and she has since let the site expire.
Gain-Customer-Loyalty.com
This client wanted to use SBI to drive traffic to her network marketing business, for SendOutCards.com. I developed the design and wrote all of the content. I am continuing to act as an ongoing webmaster as her site grows and develops.
My Non-SBI Sites
As you can see by the case studies above, it took me a while to totally buy into the whole SBI process, even though I was one of the original SBI owners. Part of the problem is probably that I was doing way too much reading from a wide variety of Internet gurus, and that can be distracting. As Ken Evoy says, laser focus is essential. I've learned the value of that approach.
Nevertheless, I thought it might be of interest for you to see some of the other sites in my design portfolio that I've designed, so you can get a more complete feel for my approach to web site design and development.
Your-Cheap-Travel-Guide.com— This site has fairly robust content already, but is still under development. I've used a combination of my own articles with those written by others to build my pages. Traffic is beginning to build.
Plain-Talk-Health-Guides.com—This site is still new and being worked on bit by bit as I have time. It is both a content site and a sales site for eBooks I've bought private label rights to.
Boxer-Dogs-Secrets.com— This was a totally fun site I built to honor my departed boxer dog. It has a very simplistic design, but lots of content. It's currently building and gets a fair amount of traffic and is my biggest Google AdSense earner right now, outside of the resume site.
Quit-Smoking-Now-Tips.com— This site was built with another page builder called XSitePro. It has a lot of the same power and tools as SBI, though not all, and it's not quite as newbie-friendly. But it does let you build content super fast and is geared towards making money. So, we'll see what happens. Like SBI, it requires you to work your design within certain parameters.
Self-Defence-Technique.com— This site is a little different than most of the other sites shown in my design portfolio. It's basically just a sales site focused on selling my product, an eBook on self defense. What's important to note here, is that I took the time to research under-served keywords related to self defense, and found that "self defence" with a "c" (the UK spelling) was a high demand/low supply keyword. I've been very successful in attracting traffic to this site and have sold dozens of copies of this eBook. It's also a testament to the power of using Clickbank as your payment processor/affiliate manager. I have quite a few affiliates who also sell my eBook on a regular basis.
Instant-Recipe-Cards.com— This is another sales-oriented site that has been very successful. In this instance, I found a profitable keyword and not only designed a site around it, but also a product. I've sold several hundred people on this software!
My Blog Sites
I've been testing using blogs to make money over the past year. Here are some of the blogs I've designed and written... using Wordpress and sometimes Rapid Niche Websites.
I've got quite a few other sites, but this should be enough from my design portfolio to give you a sense of what I can do for you!
As you can see, I've tried a number of different website building methods: from scratch HTML coding, content management software, XSitePro, and blogging software. But I keep coming back to SBI. You really can't beat its ease of use and powerful set of tools.
Please... Select Me As Your SBI Webmaster!
Hopefully, by now, my design portfolio has convinced you of the value and benefit I can bring to your new website. But if not, feel free to contact me with any questions you may still have. I'll be happy to help in any way I can.
To your success,
