(This is a supplemental post to the main Site Build It Scam post.)
Site Sell (also called Site Build It or SBI!) makes loads of promises regarding the quality of their product intended to help people build thriving, money-generating online websites, and they make many claims regarding the success of their customers. But are they really as successful as they claim?
Once a month, SiteSell has what they call “Shameless Self-Promotion” day on their Facebook page. So I found the most recent Shameless Self-Promotion post, which was the April 21, 2012 post, and I visited every single site that was promoted, checked each Alexa rank, and took a screen shot of those Alexa ranks. You can see each one individually below, but if you just want the boiled-down info, keep reading.
As a side note: An Alexa rank is a number given to a website by Alexa.com that ranks websites in order according to amount of traffic the website receives. The lower the number, the better. For example, Google usually holds the #1 spot. Facebook is #2. YouTube is #3. You get the picture. The higher the number, the less traffic a website receives. The lower the number, the more traffic a website receives.
You can click here to understand the correlation between Alexa and website income.
So after digging through the comments, I found a total of 109 links. (There were several WordPress sites, and a couple of other non-SBI! HTML sites that I obviously didn’t count.) Of those 109 websites, 4 of them had no Alexa rank at all, meaning that their traffic is so low that it doesn’t even register a blip on Alexa.
Since this Shameless Self-Promotion was an “open call” for Site Sell customers to link their sites (on their Facebook page with 123,320 Facebook fans at the time of this writing), this Shameless Self-Promotion is as close to a random sampling as one could get without actually being a paying SiteSell customer with access to the forums.
Here’s the breakdown of these 109 random Site Sell websites.
(Just a note: I figured the average two ways. Since four of the sites didn’t even have enough traffic to show up on Alexa, I used the number 50 million as their rank for the first average, which gives a number closer to the real average. For the second average, I removed those four sites completely. Of course, this gives a much lower (better) result, since those sites SHOULD have numbers associated with them, but they just have far too little traffic for Alexa to track.):
Average Alexa rank:
- 5,676,501 (with the four sites included as explained above)
- 3,987,987 (with the four sites excluded completely, resulting in a much lower number than the real average)
Median Alexa rank:
- 2,284,192
So what do these numbers mean?
Well, I have a personal blog that I don’t really promote at all. It’s not intended to be a money-making blog. It’s just a place for my husband and I to share our journey to health and his struggle with multiple sclerosis.
That blog of mine was started in March 2012, and has a total of 11 blog posts on it. We post very sporadically. The blog is built on WordPress. Today, that blog has an Alexa rank of 3,430,845. Translated into actual traffic, we get an average of 33 visitors per day, with 64 page views.
Let me point out that the Alexa rank on my little fledgling WordPress blog that uses absolutely no key word targeting or search engine optimization at all, beats the high average SiteSell website by over 2 million, and beats the generous low average by over 500,000.
So what do you think? Are these thriving online businesses? Would you call a website that receives fewer than 33 visitors per day a thriving online business?
Sure…I know all of the SiteSell groupies will have some reasonable explanation. “Well, these are just the new websites!” That’s a ridiculous claim, of course, one that could be easily dispelled by plugging the domain names into Better Who Is to find the date they were registered, but frankly, that would be a wasted exercise.
But in order to get past that argument, I’ve also evaluated the “success story” websites that are promoted and paraded on the Site Sell marketing pages.
Alexa screen shots from the random sampling of Site Build It websites posted on the most recent Shameless Self-Promotion post on the Site Sell Facebook page:
Click on the links below to read more about the claims made by Site Build It on their Site Sell marketing pages:
- WordPress vs. Site Build It (SBI!) — Their ridiculous claims that lit a fire under me to begin with. The argument started here.
- WordPress.COM vs. Site Build It (SBI!) — A fair and reasonable comparison? Not even close. I reveal in depth one of Ken Evoy’s most devious marketing schemes.
- Making sense (and cents) of Alexa ranks, and is “being in the top 1% of all websites” really as impressive as it seems? I spill some juicy details of how much I make on my Addicted 2 Decorating.
- A realistic look at those “100’s of successful Site Build It websites”. An in-depth look at the “success stories” from their marketing information. The results? It’s not pretty.
- The Great Negative Review Debacle of 2009 — The review, SBI!’s response, and my funniest and most telling discovery yet.
I’ve been with SBI for 3 years. I built my traffic up to 30K/month by following the SBI Action Guide and the tools SBI provides, nothing else. Most of your arguments against them here could easily be refuted, if I had any reason to try. People succeed and fail with both SBI and WordPress. To insist that SBI is a scam makes you look bad to people who know better. I can’t believe you invested so much of your time doing this.
To clarify, your website is a month-and-a-half away from being FOUR years old. It was registered on 2-6-2009. And after four years of work, you have an Alexa rank of 263,160, and average just under 1,000 visitors per day (per your own claim)(Note: I’m assuming that you’re talking about 30,000 visitors per month, because if you’re actually talking about page views, that’s just sad after four years of work trying to build a thriving, “life-changing” online business).
Are you really trying to tell me that your SBI! website, after four years of work, has been “life-changing”, as Sitesell claims? And before you answer, keep in mind that I HAVE a monetized website that has an Alexa rank of 82,433, and which last month received 344,172 visitors and 722,857 page views. In other words, I KNOW what it takes to make good money online.
Claiming that my arguments can be easily refuted without actually refuting them is a cop out.
And coming to the conclusion that SBI is a scam isn’t an emotional, reactionary claim. It’s really as simple and logical as 1+2=3.
1. A scam is defined by Consumer Fraud Reporting as a business scheme that uses “misleading, misdirected or exaggerated claims in advertising”.
2. Sitesell does, in fact, use misleading and exaggerated claims, in addition to outright lies (e.g., on the SBI! vs. WordPress page) all throughout their marketing pages.
THEREFORE
3. Sitesell is a scam.
1+2=3
It’s really quite simple.
I think the hoards of customers who have left SBI! this year would agree. If you were smart, you would join them. (FYI, the number of domains hosted by Sitesell has decreased by 6% just in the last six months. That a reduction of 2,145 domains hosted by Sitesell. SBI! is a sinking ship with an archaic, outdated product that no longer works in today’s post-Panda, post-Penguin internet environment. If the product actually lived up to their hype, they wouldn’t be losing customers so fast.)
I as well can not believe that one would spend so much time of one’s life. People succeed and fail based on their own motivation and work. I bought the sitesill program and did nothing with it. Whose fault is that? Mine of course. I did how learn a lot.. The wealth of information the provide can not be found any where else, all in one place and with such ease of use. And the alexa rating is not everything. Such as if you have a customer following and they are repeat customers. You make money. If they are happy with you and refer their friends and family.. You make money. Sitesell does offer a money back guarantee. You can not asked for anything more, check it out.. if its not for you, then fine. Be open minded people.
Right. They’re such an awesome and helpful company. That’s why they’re hemorrhaging customers so fast, and their CEO quit because he couldn’t do anything to help the sinking ship, right?
I forgot to mention that this site is just a hobby… A few hours a week is all I put into it, and I haven’t added to it for almost a year. (too busy) By the definition you use of a scam, almost ALL businesses are scams. I’ve been in the ad business all my life… EVERYBODY promotes their business this way, to some extent, (using misleading and exaggerated claims). That’s a fundamental truth to how advertising works. Drinking Coke won’t make you happy, but this is the message they convey. They don’t brag about the taste or superiority of the product. Just one example. Like I said, everybody does this.
In your last comment, you were touting your “success”. Now you’re backpeddling and claiming it’s just a “hobby” site?
And if you’ve been in the ad business all your life, and think that false claims and outright lies in advertising are perfectly fine, let me do you the favor of introducing you to the Federal Trade Commission: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus35-advertising-faqs-guide-small-business
There’s hardly any comparison between Coke’s “Open Happiness” campaign, and Evoy’s outright deception and lies that he uses in his advertising pages.
ha ha… I’d say 1000 unique visitors a day is pretty successful, especially for a hobby, better than 99% of the websites out there. I’m not comparing myself to you… I clearly don’t put in the hours you do, and I’m in a completely different niche.
I also don’t approve of deceptive advertising, but it’s pretty much all that way, trust me. How often does the FTC bust anyone, even tho everyone uses deception in their advertising? Assuming the FTC is even honest, which is another laugher.
Stan, if you want to support a company owned by a man who uses outright lies and deception to gain customers, and then continues to lie to them (as in his forum post on 12-12-12 entitled “2013 Marketing Plan For Growth”) in order to scare them into staying, then that’s completely your choice. But many people have way more integrity than to willfully support a company that lies to them and makes promises they can’t keep. My posts are for those people. Clearly, they’re not for you.
My comment never showed. I don’t have a website that works when entered in the Website box.
If you can retrieve my previous comment, please do. I entered a ficticious website, since I thought it was required.
Thank you,
Rocky