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Solo Build It! Review: How I Built an Author Platform
This is a review of how I built a large author platform with Solo Build It!. My subject area is Christian history, not exactly the most popular niche on the internet. Nonetheless, my Christian history site drew 35,000 unique visitors in April of 2017. I credit my success to SBI!.
*There has been a company using fake reviews to siphon traffic from SBI!. Therefore I have included a warning against Wealthy Affiliates in the last section below. You will see in this review why I would be upset about the loss of traffic to a company that his given me so much success for so little cost.
Why Traffic Matters to Me
I have been writing web sites for 20 years. As an absolute novice to the world-wide web, I created a web site for my church in 1998. I don't remember how or where I hosted it, but I do remember slowly learning how to code html, then playing around with various colors and formats on my site. For our goals, it was successful enough. We got about 10 visitors a day, probably more because of word of mouth than search, and we gained 3 or 4 church members over the couple years I was webmaster.
As I began to teach about church history in our own church, I developed my own web sites trying to reach others.
I had the same kind of success I had with the church web site, 10 to 20 visitors a day. It is likely that most of those were produced from internet forums that I participated in. In other words, all my visitors were gained by personal interaction on the web, none at all from search engines.
This was fine until I began to write my first book in 2007. I found out that book publishers want an author to have a platform. A platform is a following, people who are listening to the author already. This is so authors can help sell their own books. While a platform is not essential to being published, it can be a major factor.
The most obvious way to create a strong platform was to draw more traffic to my web site.
Spending Useless Money
I began searching the internet for ways to build traffic on my website. After six months and several hundred dollars, I learned that the best way to make money on the internet is to promise people you have a secret for making money on the internet.
As far as I could tell, the only personal web sites making money on the internet were sites leading others on a futile search to make money on the internet. They held up a carrot, then led me from one page of promises to another until they offered a book that revealed the secret.
The secret never worked.
In the search for the elusive secret to internet traffic, I picked up a few pieces of good advice. I used them to expand my web site traffic from 10 to 20 visitors per day to around 50. That was mild success, but certainly not enough to impress publishers.
The StoresOnline Scam
Then one day, I received a card inviting me to a StoresOnline seminar. This is a Solo Build It! review, not a StoresOnline review, so I will keep this part short.
At the StoresOnline seminar, I finally was presented with a clear, step-by-step plan for building a high-traffic, money-making web site. Unfortunately, their own plan for success was to present a get-rich-quick scheme, skillfully selling real internet tools as part of a faulty plan.
Fortunately, I knew many of their tools were available for free online, and I could see some of the flaws in their system. As you will see in this review of Solo Build It!, success means finding your own unique corner of the internet (your "niche") and then pointing people there using techniques publicized and approved by the major search engines. StoresOnline neglected the search for a niche and all the other hard work. Get rich quick schemes don't sell with hard work attached.
I talked the person next to me out of signing up for their expensive scam, and one person on the other side of the room also declined their scam. Unfortunately, the rest of the desperate people in the room signed up, taking loans to pay StoresOnline's outrageous costs.
Still, the half-truths they presented honed my search for real advice from someone who actually wanted to help me rather than just take my money. In fact, their advice led me to Solo Build It! and thus to a company that actually wanted to help me. Even better, the price for SBI!'s support, which did not have flaws, was less than 10% of what StoresOnline was charging. Yes, that's right, less than 10%!
Finding a Home at Solo Built It!
When I found SBI! it was still called Site Build It!. Over the years, the company began to realize that they were not just helping people build web sites, they were helping people, like me, build online businesses. They were helping and creating "solopreneurs." Thus, they changed the name of the company to Solo Build It!.
I don't remember what I was searching for when I first encountered Solo Build It! I do remember that I wound up on a page written by an Israeli named Elad. He was explaining how he was able to quit his job and pursue his dream of playing professional soccer because of his web site.
Elad attributed his success to Solo Build It!. It was not his success that drew me, though it was phenomenal. It was the process he followed. In his report I read all the things I was learning about finding a niche and using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, but he wasn't doing it alone. He was being guided, step by step, with careful instruction and explanation for every step, by SBI!.
When I was done reading Elad's review, I knew I had found what I was looking for. My only concern was cost. Could I afford his mentors?
A Review of Solo Build It! Costs
Here's my simple review: I was blown away by how inexpensive Solo Build It! was. I could not believe it.
I was already considering moving my site to a Microsoft Hosting Plan. It had a lot of bells and whistles that I thought might improve my visitor experience, so I was willing to pay the $25/month they were going to charge.
Solo Build It! was almost the same price. If I paid yearly, it was the same price.
You have to understand my experience to understand how shocked I was with this price. StoresOnline had offered me web hosting for $40/month plus $4,000 up front for their flawed system! Solo Build It! was offering a flawless web hosting system that worked with their tools for $30/month, plus nothing! The tools, the training, the guidance, all of it: free!
Does that kind of cost even need a review?
It does. SBI! doesn't lie to you. They tell you up front that it's going to take Brains, Attitude, and Motivation, their BAM system. It's not get-rich-quick; it is "work the system" the right way. Google calls it "White Hat SEO."
My Review of the Power of Solo Build It!
What do I mean by "the power of Solo Build It!"? I mean 30,000 unique visitors a month. And that is only at this site. I have another, Revolutionary-War.net, which gets double the traffic.
As I said, SBI! requires work. They would not allow me to choose a domain name until I saw their videos on the purpose of a domain name and how to choose the best one for my niche. They trained me step-by-step to pick a niche and match my domain name to it.
Even after I chose my domain name, Solo Build It! did not let my site go live on the internet until I understood how to build "Content-Focused Keyword Pages," which is the real secret to SBI! success. I did the work, writing the pages, and they made sure Google knew about those pages.
For me, success means a strong platform for my books. By the time I actually wrote my books, I didn't need a publisher. I had a warmed up audience of a quarter million people a year (more now), who knew me and loved my writing already.
That is my story. You can create your own.
Before you leave, though, there is one more thing I need to tell you about.
Vaccination Against Wealthy Affiliates
Wealthy Affiliates is the company that I told you about in the first paragraph. They have been using fake reviews about Solo Build It! to try to direct traffic to their own useless system.
Since Ken Evoy, the president of SBI!, has always pursued the benefit of solopreneurs like myself, he did a study on Wealthy Affiliates vs. Solo Build It!. If the purpose of the company is for us to succeed and Wealthy Affiliates can do it better, then Ken was going to let them have the traffic!
The problem is, Wealthy Affiliates (WA) is perhaps worse of a scam than StoresOnline. StoresOnline was just an expensive product that did not work. WA uses fake reviews to hijack people pursuing the amazing success of Solo Build It!, then transfer them to a place that teaches them to use the same fake review technique.
As it turns out, their method doesn't even work. The study I just linked shows that Solo Build It! sites are 33 times more likely to achieve "outstanding to excellent" levels of traffic than Wealthy Affiliate sites. Using a Wealthy Affiliate site will cut your chance of success by more than 90%. Every site was included in the study. Again, you canread the results at the link I just gave you.
Concluding my Solo Build It! Review
As a Christian, I know that results matter. Jesus said that a tree that produces good fruit is a good tree and a tree that produces bad fruit is a bad tree, no exceptions (Matt. 6:16-18). Thus, if I claim to be a Christian, I had better have some proof of it in the form of good character and good deeds.
In the same way, SBI! claims to produce successful web sites with lots of traffic to be turned into lots of income. By that standard, my review is that Solo Build It! has good fruit and is a good tree.
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