Few programs on the net can be as eagerly hyped as the Site Build It product and so when it came time for me to build another affiliate site I decided to put Site Build It through it's paces to see what it could do.

Does it live up to the hype? How much can it actually do without you having to possess any coding skills? Can you make money using this? Is it something that the average net surfer could use to build an internet business?

First of all, before we start, let me make one thing absolutely clear from the outset.

In order to build any successful site then you need to be prepared to do some groundwork and put in four, five or six hours a week work over the next six months to make it work.

If you are not prepared to do that then you are not going to get very far no matter how you go about building a site..

The example site that I built for this review will probably have a couple of hours each and every week spent on promoting it. That's a quality two hours of promotion, so if you have some learning to do that's where I factor in the extra time.

It is becoming harder and harder to build a successful, lasting presence here on the Internet. I know of people who are spending 15k 50k each and every month on Google Adwords. Don't let that be you. Google Adwords should be a supplement to your overall website promotion campaign. Not a continual drain on your promotion resource.

By building a useful site, continually adding content and increasing your visibility on the search engines you CAN gain lots of free traffic. And that is specifically what Site Build It is intended to do to help you gain that free traffic.

Even more importantly where people are spending on Adwords to GAIN traffic to their site then wouldn't it be nice to be in the reverse of that position where YOU gain the free traffic and then sell the contextual advertising (Adsense) back to the surfer. That's the premise of Site Build It and it's money making capability.

What Site Build It does is enable you to build a website quickly and easily with no prior programming skills. It then takes care of all the search engine submitting and reporting whilst leaving you free to concentrate on adding content and promoting the site in other areas.

Ok on the basis that you understand that you are going to have to do some work and with any negatives out of the way on with the review!

The site that I chose to build for this review is http://www.commercialpropertyguy.co.uk which is going to be an affiliate site for the commercial property mentor course run by the Reality Expansion Company.

A few months ago I built http://www.propertyguy.co.uk which is an affiliate site for http://www.propertymentor.co.uk that site was built in plain HTML and already ranks well on several search engines for property investment. So that's my benchmark for this review.

Site Build It is split into two different applications the desktop application which does all of the research prior to building the site and the online application which enables you to build the site when you know which direction you are headed in.

First of all the desktop application:

Now, if you already have a product in mind that you wish to promote (like I did) then you may want to take a step backwards and reappraise what you actually want to build a site FOR.

That's what happened to me when I discovered something under the hood that I hadn't bargained for the brainstorm and research tool.

This part of SBI is what actually makes the whole thing tick and is why you should try and discard any preconceived ideas you may have about what you want to build for the following reason:

The brainstorm and research tool takes your broad keyword phrase in my case commercial property and then starts to find the most profitable areas for you to exploit.

So it follows that if you have already made your mind up about what you are going to build then you are likely not to get the most out of this because SBI could be finding something much more profitable for you!

This part of site build it is worth the value of the package on it's own merit. Many people begin building websites based on an idea that they already had when in fact, if they opened their mind to more possibilities, they could find much more profitable niche markets to spend their time on.

This part of the site building process is very intensive and takes around forty minutes so it's best to set it going and then do something else whilst you wait for the results.

Once you have those results and you have defined your keywords and niche market then you can get on with the juicy bit of building your site!

You can build your site using the built in editor which means that even complete novices can begin to build a site no HTML or coding expertise is necessary. However you will need to be familiar with windows menus and I would think for a complete novice the menu choices and options could be slightly overwhelming to start with.

Speaking as someone who has built more than my fair of sites I did struggle with the options in the beginning but after I had made several pages everything started to click into place. I'm guessing that for people without any hand coding skills or HTML knowledge this could quite possibly be a considerable advantage as you wouldn't have any pre conceived ideas about how it should work.

For those who already have coding skills then there is an option to upload your own HTML (although I left this alone for the review).

Next you get to choose the look and feel of your site which can be changed later if you are not satisfied with your original choice so don't worry about making a decision and having to stick to it.

Once you choose your style or theme then you can preview it and see what it is going to look like:

Next we start adding our content and defining the menu system. All of this is done without having to know any coding and so you can add a page and tweak it until you feel entirely happy with it. As you add pages so they get added to the menu bar and the concept of first tier pages and second tier pages begins to hit home and the penny begins to drop.

Here is a screenshot which shows how you add a tier two or three page and the reasoning behind it is all explained to you as you build the site.

Site Build It

Defining the navigation system that you are going to use for the site is straightforward and simple and does away with having to learn any fancy techniques for producing roll over menu bars as it's all built in!

Once I had got the hang of building the pages I started to look at some of the additional features that came with this package and I was impressed with the amount of thought that has gone into the design and functionality. Absolutely everything is here for the novice and expert alike to quickly build a site and start marketing it.

And the last bit is where SBI comes up smelling of roses, tulips and every thing else that smells nice!

On the http://www.sitesell.com site a lot of mention is made of what the separate components of the complete package would cost if you bought them all separately and it totaled up to around Ј1,000. However what they failed to add in to the equation was the amount of TIME that it would take to learn all of the required skills to build a site like this using contemporary tools like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Photoshop et al. Never mind having to learn FTP and setting up hosting space.

For anyone who wants to quickly start building a site and then have the time to promote it properly this is the tool to use. Absolutely no doubt.

It's a shame that no trial version is available but that would just be asking TOO much!

More info:

Make your content presell

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