Site Build It
Writing Online Made Easy!

How you build a site using Site Build It!

The web is dominated by non-writers.

You've seen it. You've been to sites that look like they were written by six year olds. Or non-English speakers trying to write for an English-speaking market.

Do you know why it's like that?

It's because people who can write are intimidated by all the learning they think they'll have to do to write for the web.

The purpose of this page

I want to demystify writing for the web. I intend to show you how I and thousands of others do it, using a service called Site Build It (SBI). SBI keeps tech from coming between you and your writing!

Writing on the web will only get better when people who know how to write start joining in! Think about it...

More people are reading new media than old. (In other words, more people are reading on the computer than from books, magazines or newspapers.) Does it really make sense for you to keep trying to write for a shrinking market???

Warning: This is a long page. In order to completely demystify online writing for you, I need to show you in some detail the process you'll be going through. If you don't have time now, please.

However...

If at some point you want to be taken directly to Site Build It, either to learn more or to purchase, just page back up and click right here:

First things first

Before you write, you will read. (Or watch video. These links are to the Site Build It "Action Guide."

The Action Guide is your How To for writing not just a website, but a well-trafficked website.

Three things about the Action Guide:

1. It is not a tech read.
2. It is, however, not a very fun read.
3. It breaks your sitebuilding down into 10 "days."

Think of the Action Guide as a book about philosophy - the philosophy of building a website. Forget tech; have you ever thought about how a website is structured?

A book's Table of Contents, combined with its Index, reveals its structure. To build a decent website, you also have to think about structure. That's what the Action Guide is largely about.

2. Not a very fun read

I think you should know this upfront. There's a lot to slog through, and it's repetitive. But remember: it's not about tech! It's about an approach to building a website that, properly followed, will result in readership and maybe even revenue!

If writing for the web is new to you, don't kid yourself that you know what makes for a successful website! There are great looking websites that get zilch traffic, and ugly as heck websites that get tons. The Action Guide will help you understand why. It's a roadmap to building a successful website.

3. Don't take "10 Days" literally

One thing I don't love about the Action Guide is that it puts itself out there as a 10 day plan. I think it's only fair that you should know that each "Day," done properly, will take a number of real days.

Also, if you're like me (you enjoy writing and find out you like writing for an online audience), you'll find that you're never "done" with your site. There will always be more you can do to it to make it more functional and attract more traffic! It won't be incomplete, but it can always be more complete!

Moving on...

Okay, imagine you're a Site Builder. You've completed "Day 1" of the Action Guide, meaning you understand the basic concepts of successful site structure.

You're ready to get started, but you're not ready to start writing. It's time to start developing your Site Concept.

This is very exciting. If you're proceeding correctly, you've thrown out any preconceptions about your site. If you had pre-picked a domain name (your web address, i.e. http://www.my-domain-name.com), you've tossed that notion too.

Those decisions should be the results of real research. On "Day 2," you start that research. And Site Build It gives you the tools you need. (Non-techie tools with simple point and click interfaces.)

See, a successful website should cover a topic that is neither too narrow, nor too broad.

• Books: too broad
• Children's books about bad behavior: too narrow
• Children's books...period: just right

Until I did the research, I didn't know what was too broad and what was too narrow.

So you'll start with topics you know something about, then the process will help you broaden or narrow your scope until your site concept is just right. You'll be using this tool:

Then this tool:

Then finally this tool:

What is all this stuff?

These are Site Build It tools that tell you how frequently people search for different information on the web. You're finding out how much interest there is in the site concept you'll be developing! What if you built a website on a subject that very few people search for information on?

You would have a very poorly trafficked website. Site Build It is designed to keep that from happening.

So you're selecting a well-researched site concept. A website, of course, is built of webpages. Part of what you're doing now is researching subject matter for specific pages.

In the example above, American Girl Magazine has the right kind of numbers to justify a webpage. Audiobooks could justify an entire site.

At this stage, you're actually beginning to diagram a three tier site structure (the kind the search engines like to see).

• Tier 1: Your home page
• Tier 2: Sections of your site. See the buttons on the left margin at the top of this page. Each represents a page that leads to numerous...
• Tier 3's: The page you're on is a tier 3, because it's linked to from a tier 2. Your tier 3's are just two clicks from the home page.

One thing you'll have learned by this stage

Each of your pages is going to be built with a specific keyword in mind.

Don't get confused by the word "keyword." Keyword means Search Term, so a keyword may have more than one word in it. The keyword for this page is Site Build It.

On a well-designed site, you'll know a page's keyword because it'll appear in the page's web address. This page's web address is

http://www.best-childrens-books.com/site-build-it.html

Building a page with a specific keyword/search term in mind means you're trying to attract traffic from people searching for that term. You'll have two goals:

1. Ranking highly with the search engines for that term
2. Providing information that people are looking for regarding that term

So you're writing for two audiences: readers and search engines! Does that seem alien to you? It shouldn't. If you're trying to sell a book, you're writing it for agents and publishers, as well as readers.

By the end of "Day 3"...

...you'll have a diagram that looks something like this:

Except where it says KFCP, you'll have a different keyword for every page you mean to build.

Day 4

This is an exciting "day." It's when you get to think about how your site is going to make money! (You don't mind if your site makes money, do you?)

Maybe I'm making an assumption here. I write because I enjoy it, AND to make money.

Don't think that for your site to make money you'll have to ask people to buy something from you. It's not necessary! For instance, your well-trafficked site can feature advertising placed there by others. Nobody clicks on it unless they want to.

And when they click on it, you make money. (More on this later.)

You'll be using Site Build It tools, like the one below, to investigate which of your keywords have real earnings potential. As any businessperson will tell you, you want to be able to develop multiple income streams.

If your goal is to make money on the web, don't plan a site (or go forward with a site concept) that only has one way of making money. Want to know how this site makes money? I shouldn't tell you, but here it is:

• Google "AdSense" advertising (pays per click)
• Selling the following products on commission:*
1. children's books
2. personalized children's books
3. books about writing children's books
4. children's magazines
• Referrals to self-publishing companies
• Commissions for getting people to try SBI

*These are products sold by others on other sites. When my site sends visitors to those sites, and those visitors buy a product, I make a commision. I don't have to do anything besides provide a link from my site. I don't carry inventory! I don't handle shipping and handling!

I have other monetization plans as well, including selling my own children's books as ebooks. All in good time.

Yes, even though this site is free to use, I make money off of it. And yes, I encourage people to use Site Build it to write their own websites. But I want you to know this...

I only recommend what I believe in. And there is no other web "host" I would or will ever recommend other than Site Build It. I honestly believe there is no other way for a single human being to affordably and effectively build a successful site.

I've tried other ways. This is the only one that has resulted in traffic and profitability. Want evidence? It's January 9th, 2008, as I write this. I'm going to type a popular search term into a popular search engine. (You're free to try this yourself.) Here are the results...

Can you see it if you squint? Out of 473,000 web pages pulled up by the search term discount children's books, one of my pages comes up #1. (Do you see Amazon? I don't.)

#1 out of 473,000. Those are tougher odds than the lottery. How'd I do it?

SBI.

My wife uses Site Build It as well.

Like I said, Day 4 is an exciting day. Here's another tool you'll be using to investigate money-making potential:

At the end of this day, you'll decide whether yours is a site concept with enough money-making potential to justify going forward. (Having determined, on day 3, whether it would draw enough traffic.) If you're still full speed ahead, it's on to the most exciting day so far.

Day 5

There's a fair amount to this day, but at the heart of it is committing to your actual domain name.

Your domain name is huge. Internet novices think short domain names are important. They're not. What's important is this:

Naming a children's book site http://www.steve-barancik.com would be dumb.

Naming it http://www.best-childrens-books.com, however, has worked out pretty well! After all, you ended up here!

Let's take a moment

Have I described anything so far that seems beyond you? Just a lot of easy concepts and point and click interfaces, right? That's the Site Build It way. You type in some words, and SBI runs the numbers. Pretty soon you have a site concept that reflects the intersection of...

1. your interests
2. search terms that are popular
3. search subjects that can make you money

Day 6

This was the most exciting day for me - the day I got to start writing! But maybe it's the day that has you most fearful. After all, you don't know how to write computer code, do you? How the heck are you going to get all your wonderful words onto the web???

After all, doesn't computer code look like this?

There are three ways to do Site Build It:

1. Upload your own computer code (scariest)
2. Write your own text and sprinkle in a little formatting (a little scary)
3. Just write, and let SBI do all the computer code (not scary at all, and at no extra cost!)

Here's Site Build It's blockbuilder. It's the interface you'll use to do either #2 or #3. (I do #2, but in the example I'm doing #3.)

Here's the result:

Here's some sample text. Aren't I a great writer!

You just fill in the blocks, never writing an iota of code! When it comes time to create a link, you just copy in the url (web address) of the page you want to link to!

Are you done being scared yet??? How about I tell you a secret?

Remember that sample computer code I showed you just a second ago? It's from my home page! I don't understand a single keystroke of it, and I didn't have to write a single keystroke of it. SBI did it all!

Two other things Site Build It does for you

1. The blockbuilder analyzes your pages before you post them to the web. In other words

It makes sure you've written something that's likely to satisfy the search engines.

If your words aren't quite right, the analyzer will tell you what you still need to do before you post the page. (Most common: add or subtract a couple instances of your page's main keyword.)

Here's Analyze It warning me that one of my pages is about to be a total disaster:

2. SBI automates submission of your pages to the major search engines.

If you try to do this manually, it's a cumbersome, tech-heavy process. Site Build It, on the other hand, tells you precisely how to inform the engines that you have a new site, then each time you post a page, Site Build It automatically informs them.

Both of these services you probably won't even know to appreciate...until you make the mistake of trying to put up another site with a different web host.

Here's how wikipedia defines web hosting. What I want to point out is that a traditional web host provides a tiny fraction of the service and functionality that Site Build It provides.

Traditional web hosts simply provide a server - a computer on which the rest of the internet can find your website. As for building the website and writing the code, that's up to you.

Something I've failed to mention

Another reason you aren't going to be scared of writing online is you're going to have the web's greatest community by your side! These are the Site Build It forums:

They are huge. They are active. They are filled with people just like you - from beginners to long-time SBIers - asking and answering questions. Please look at the number of posts in each.

And know this. I'm only able to show the 8 forums at the top of the page. There are 76 forums.

And here are all the people in the forums, as I write this, at 9:59 EDT (US) on a Wednesday night.

Feeling a little less alone?

Other things you'll do on Day 6

• Build your first tier 2 page
• Build your first tier 3 page and link to it from your tier 2
• Create your site's appearance (Can be accomplished simply by choosing among Site Build It templates!)

What you won't be doing on Day 6...

Making money. First you need to build content and attract traffic. So I want to be clear...

Creating a website the Site Build It way may not require any real tech, but it does require hard work, and you'll be the one doing it.

So if you're scared of tech, no worries. If you're scared of work, well...

Go watch TV.

Day 7

This day is about building traffic.

Your goal is not to pay for traffic. (Even the worst sites can buy traffic by paying for advertising. Let's not have that be you.)

I've never paid for traffic. Here's how much of it I get for free:

You could spend your life on Day 7. Even after you complete Day 10, you'll keep coming back to Day 7, because it's about building free traffic.

Take a moment to think how important it is to rank near the top of the search engine rankings. Have you ever done a search that returned a million websites? Of course you have. How often have you clicked past the first 20 or 30? Not too often, I'll bet.

Most of the internet resides on those lower ranked pages. It goes without saying that you don't want to be one of those sites, doesn't it?

Here's how you build traffic:

• Build "content" (write more pages)
• Build inbound links

1. Building content

Here's something no one tells you. Bigger sites get bigger traffic. You've probably never done a search that sent you to Amazon's home page, but you've probably done a thousand that led to one of Amazon's other pages.

The search engines specialize in finding the specific information you're looking for. That information tends to be on a particular page, not a particular site.

So the more "content" (pages) your site has, the more traffic you'll get. Think of your website as a net. Bigger net, more fish!

2. Building inbound links

At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems the search engines have two main ways of determining how highly to rank a web page.

1. The words on the page
2. How many other sites link to your site!

Think of it this way: the more sites that link to yours, the more your site appears to the search engines to be interwoven with the web. Google considers that very important.

Site Build It gives you, oh, about a zillion ways to find other sites that might be willing to link to yours. Warning: While SBI makes this process easier than it would be otherwise, it still will involve a good deal of work on your part.

(That is, until your site gets so big and good and well-trafficked that other sites start linking to it without you having to do anything!)

Here's an SBI link-building service that's available - for free - even to non-SBIers. If you have any sort of site already, you should register. You'll find sites that will link to yours in return for you linking to them!

Here are some of the 1460 webpages Yahoo knows of that link to my site:

Q: Steve, when did you start building your site?

A: I started in March, 2006. I built approximately 90 pages in 4 months. Then I spent another month concentrating exclusively on building inbound links. For the year following that, I pretty much ignored the site, but for much of that time the traffic - and the income - continued to grow.

I've only returned to my site in the last two months. I'm using some new Site Build It tools to raise it to a new level, and I'm already seeing results.

By the time you get to Day 8 (remember: these aren't real days)...

You'll have already built a real site. Now you're doing things that you never would have thought you could do.

• You're "site blogging"
• You're publishing an "e-zine"
• You're using forms

These are all techniques to encourage repeat traffic. You're not just attracting search engine visitors; you're giving them a reason to come back on their own. (And Site Build It is giving you the tools.)

Here's my "site blog".

It's not really a blog, but it looks like one. Every time I add a page to the site, it posts automatically as a blog entry. Why?

1. The search engines love blogs. It tells them a site is regularly updated, rather than just sitting their aging.
2. People who like my site can check back to read new pages, or subscribe to my "feed." (Do I even need to tell you that Site Build It automates this "feed" thing?)

Now, you should know: I'm a bad boy. I waited way too long to create the blog, because I misunderstood it. When I finally got around to doing it, it resulted in a lot of extra traffic.

And I've never created an ezine. No doubt I should. When some of you do, I hope you'll write back and tell me what a moron I am for not doing it and how incredibly simple it was.

Forms are a great way to create interaction with your site's visitors. SBI lets you create them with point and click, because you would not want to see the computer code involved if you tried to do it yourself! You'll find a form at the bottom of this page.

Site Build It also lets you easily add video to your site. I may in the future, but I'm so busy with other Site Build It stuff that I haven't gotten around to it yet. (I'm also not sure it would benefit my site concept. Does anyone really want to watch video of children reading?)

Day 9 is very fun for critical thinkers

It's all about using tools like traffic analysis to get a handle on how people come to your site, and how they use it. I love this stuff. For instance, if I find a heavily trafficked page that's pretty much unmonetized, well, it's time to get to work. Here's an example...

Traffic analysis told me that tons of people were visiting my Personalized Children's Books page, which consisted of me saying that personalized children's books strike me as stupid.

Think about that: the search engines are sending tons of eager parents to me to find out about personalized children's books, and I'm telling them they're stupid!

Tons of them. One of me. Now who's stupid?

I decided it was time to approach sellers of personalized children's books. I went to ones that had a commission structure, and I made them the following offer:

Tell my visitors what makes your service special - and reputable - and I'll provide a link to your site.

Now I make money off of those pages.

Here's something shocking

Most of the people I know who have non-SBI websites don't know their traffic numbers.

Can you imagine that? They are operating in the dark about whether people are actually visiting their site! If they're trying to sell something and no one's buying, they don't know whether it's because their product is no good...

Or whether it's because no one has even seen their product!

Do you know why most web hosts don't provide traffic figures?

Because they don't want you to know that you're not getting any. Site Build It, on the other hand, wants you to know. They want you to build traffic. Do you know why?

Because the way Site Build It sells their service is through people like me. If no one visits my site, no one buys Site Build It.

How's this for traffic information?

Day 10 - Monetizing

No point in monetizing until you have a certain amount of traffic, but once you do, go for it!

You can sell advertising. (Google AdWords will place appropriate ads on your site just by you pasting the code they give you into the Blockbuilder. Someone clicks, you make money.)

You can sell anything available on Amazon. (Earn 4-10% commission based on the product and your volume. Again, they provide the code. Someone buys, you make money.)

You can sell anyone else's product, so long as they'll commission you on it. (Please, though, keep your integrity. Don't recommend products you don't feel good about!)

You can sell your own product. (For a small add-on fee, Site Build It offers Store Build It. Build your own online store.)

You can sell your own services. (That's what my wife does. Her site provides lots of free information on nutrition and weight loss, but for those who want personal attention she offers her professional services as a Registered Dietitian. With the website, she can offer those services to anyone around the world!)

What you'll find with Site Build It...

You'll find a big basket of point and click tools that allow you to write, create, build and sell in ways that are only limited by your imagination. I have a three ring notebook full of ideas for ways in which I want to add to the site. I'll never get to all of them. (And new ones occur to me all the time.)

I find that exciting - never to be at a loss for what to do next.

And here's one other SBI extra...

There's a new add-on module that allows an amazing degree of interactivity between the webmaster (that's me) and my visitors. It has an added benefit: visitors actually create content on my site when they use it! That means more pages the search engines can find, and of course, more traffic. And again...

You can use it in ways that are limited only by your imagination. Site Build It calls it Content 2.0. It starts with the form below. If you have a question about SBI for me, use the form to ask it. I'll read it, approve it (and hopefully answer it) and then it'll become a page on my site.

• You'll get your answer
• Other visitors will learn more from our exchange, and
• I'll get more traffic!

Win! Win! That's what Site Build It is all about! (Visit their site.)

Don't be shy! I'll post your question, along with my answer, so everyone can learn from it!

Hear what others have said in response to this Q&A.

Writing content for the web  Not rated yet
Steve,
I read through your site and I absolutely love it! It’s very informative and you go into great detail about how to write for the web. My problem ...

site build it question (monetize)  Not rated yet
Hi, I read through your site build it information and it is really appealing. Sorry if this is too personal, but I was wondering what you have made Monthly ...

Didn't know writing a website was so much work  Not rated yet
Steve, thank you, because I learned a LOT from reading this. What I'm wondering though is whether I learned too much. I used to think I had a great idea ...

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