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Preschool Activity Site |
Three years ago, when another homeschooling mom and I started a homeschooling curriculum business, I started my first website. We knew nothing about site building so we got someone we know in the web-hosting business to create a site for us, using the information that we supplied him. The site consisted of just a few pages about our products and a bit of information about homeschooling.
In October 2005, prompted by an urge to build a website where I could share with other homeschooling moms the resources and tips I have gathered in 9 years of homeschooling, I started looking at website building options myself.
On a business forum that my husband belongs to, I was referred to Site Build It from Sitesell.com and after two weeks of comparison shopping, I decided that dollar-for-dollar, this was going to be my best option.
Well, this preschool activity site is (at the time of writing this page) now 9 months old, my previous one Footprints On Our Land is 3 years old. Now let's compare:
COSTS:
1. The Footprints site costs me the equivalent of about US$10 per month for hosting and earns me nothing.
All our business income is from products we sell, and only a few leads, if any, are generated from the site. Most enquiries come from elsewhere and we refer them to our site as a glorified sales brochure if necessary. Clients can't buy online, but have to manually order from us, by doing a bank transfer and emailing proof of payment.
At the same time as I started this preschool activity site last year, we got someone else to give the Footprints site a new look for us and paid over $200 for a site that is now filled with errors and broken links that we can't fix! The new-look site only went live in June 2006. It has been most frustrating.
2.This preschool activity site costs me $299 per year - that is about $25 per month for hosting, which includes a whole list of additional software and services, including an opt-in ezine form, mail-out manager, form-builder, autoresponder, link-exchange system, affiliate programme, help-forums, free ebooks, ongoing technical updates and more!
I've had Google Adsense for 3 months and this site already earns me about $170 per month from Google Adsense alone. (Get Google Adsense!)
I have recently also started to sell other products and affiliate products online that have earned me more than the year's hosting fees already. As I said before, I had no prior technical knowledge when I started this preschool activity site, but after 8 months of working single-handedly in my ‘spare’ time, it is ranked in the top 2% of sites by Alexa.
TRAFFIC
1. The Footprints site, after 3 years, gets a daily average of under 40 visits per day. (I can't get an Alexa ranking for it because it is a .co.za domain.)
2. This preschool activity site currently gets a daily average of 330 visits per day (increasing every month)
The day I wrote this, the Alexa ranking was 518,113 which means that out of about 54 million sites, mine is in the top 1 million and top 1% for traffic.
(Where are all those hosted-free sites ranked?)
SEARCH RESULTS KEYWORD RANKING
A Keyword Ranking Report shows you how each page ranks during a search for its specific keyword.
1. Footprints isn't even in the top 100 for its keywords, which is a small niche.
2. The preschool activity site’s home page has been ranked in the top 20 with Yahoo and with a bit more work, I hope to be in the top 10.
Various other pages are ranked in the top 10-30 with MSN and Yahoo for their keywords. Two pages are ranked #1 for their keywords.
What makes the difference in the performance of my two sites?
Site Build It. (SBI)
Ken Evoy, whose site, Sitesell.com, is ranked in the top 200 by Alexa has taught me a thing or two about building a WEBSITE THAT WORKS. Following his SBI Action Guide (take a look inside it), I have learnt how to build a content-rich preschool activity site that ranks well at the search engines and therefore gets free traffic that is warm and willing-to-buy, or at least click on my Adsense!
The Action Guide is everything a site-builder needs to know about online business, all the updates, all the news - it cuts through all the 'noise' out there, giving you just the essentials!
What use is a site if it is lost in the cyberforest and nobody finds it?
There are plenty of cheap or free webhosts out there, but many of them are cheap and nasty. Many get you hooked, but then you have to pay for the upgrades and added features you need as the needs of your site grow. Others promise that you will get-rich-quick, but their promises usually only apply to a small few. With Site Build It, over 60% of their clients' sites are ranked in the top 3% by Alexa. You can verify these results and here is more proof of SBI’s success.
So, yes, anyone can slap together a site, but not everyone can make it to the top 10.
So what do you do if you have a "lost" site like my Footprints site?
Well, my partner and I are now going to build a new one using SBI and redirect the tiny bit of traffic from the old one to the new one and eventually shut it down. (Yes, she also has another SBI site!)
You too can learn how to build a site that works, by giving SBI a try. The risk is all theirs as they have a timeless money back guarantee. AT ANY STAGE if you are not satisfied with their product you can ask for a refund. You have nothing to lose.
Go to Sitesell.com and you can get answers to technical or other questions too.
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