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First of all, keep in mind that SBI is not about being a site builder. It is a self-paced course on how to create a successful online business.
Yes, agreed. Ken Evoy is a pioneer because he was one of the first hosts to have this vision.
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The materials are voluminous and the resources, extensive.
Which can be seen as an asset, or a liability, depending on one's teaching philosophy.
Personally, I feel information overload is much more of a problem for webmasters than a lack of information, and that Ken's writing style (like my own) suffers from a problem with conciseness.
A six page manual in the hands of someone who actually reads it and acts on it is much more valuable than a 600 page manual that overwhelms the student, and leads them to leave the manual on the shelf, which is where I'd guess most SBI manuals reside.
Please recall, this is the web. Not academia. Web users are impatient click happy skim readers, and a quality teaching system has to face this reality and deal with it.
The problem is usually not what we know, but what we do with what we know.
Thus, for example, the SBI forum is an under appreciated resource, because the group interaction encourages members to actually use what they've learned.
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It is designed to assist any person at any skill level to create a site that gets free, ever-growing traffic which leads to an ever-growing business.
Agreed again. Ken Evoy is smart, in that he actually sees the benefit to him in his users succeeding, an insight which seems to totally escape most web hosts.
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The fee for SBI is $299 per year, but there is now an option to pay monthly. Sometimes people balk at the fee because, not comparing apples to apples, they think it's expensive.
Because it is expensive. A good value for certain people, but expensive.
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For example: besides the new Brainstormer which goes way beyond Wordtracker (and Wordtracker alone is more than the entire SBI fee),
Google Keyword Tool is easier to use, and free.
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(auto responder software costs around $18 a month, if purchased elsewhere).
Autoresponder software is free elsewhere.
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You get an ezine or newsletter maker with mail-out software (which is around $19 a month at Aweber, for example.)
Also free elsewhere.
Sorry, apologies, I know competing with free services can suck, but I didn't invent the dominant business model of the net, and can't do anything about it.
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Besides this, there are many more tools included, but I'll stop there because this is not an ad.
At least my blatant ad was honestly disclaimed. :)
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I'm only trying to illustrate that Site Build It is much more than a site builder and web hosting
Agreed.
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and to illustrate that it is in fact, cheap.
Don't agree.
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Because you also get training materials that have been described as getting a degree in online business.
Or, users could simply remember these two words.
Content. Links.
And then focus on DOING those two things.
Knowing is not the problem for the vast majority of webmasters, doing is the problem.
Tools and tutorials are no longer the need in the webmaster world, because both are widely available for free all over the Net. There are too much of both already.
This can be annoying for people (like me) that want to make a living providing tools and tutorials, but it's also true. Those of us who provide these things are living in the past, still stuck in the 90's.
We are providing these services not because they are still needed, but because it's all we know how to do.
The future is that the game is won or lost inside our own minds.
The future pioneers on the level of Ken Evoy will be those that break through the usual cliche group consensus drivel, and find new ways to liberate the full human energies hiding within all of us.
It's not what we know, who we know, or what we have.
It's who we are.