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Hi there...
I guess if you are reading this article then you are probably a webmaster, aspiring webmaster, graphic designer etc. If you're not, that's OK! This article is my story on how using Dr Ken Evoy's Site Build It system is changing my life as a webmaster and husband! Who am I? Well let me explain... My name is Marc Liron (35) and I live and work in the UK. I am married to a wonderful woman called Sarah. We first started to "hook up" together when she was at university studying Physics and Maths, and I was a medic in the Royal Navy. And that is where I shall start my story... SAILORS AND COMPUTERS! 
It was late 1994 and by day I was sewing sailors and marines back together,
but by night I was repairing PC's and building databases for local
companies.
I just loved working with computers and started to think about doing
this as a full time job!
That's when I came across an advert for a company looking for "agents" that would approach local companies to sell them websites. I would just collect the order and their programmers would create the HTML code. Mmm... That got me thinking. What is a website and if they are using this thing called HTML, why can't I learn it too! The seed was sown... I contacted the company and was sent an information pack. I read it cover to cover, then again and again! I had one of those "moments" in life where I thought I can do that! So I went to the local bookstore that had a very good computer section. I grabbed ALL the books they had on this thing called the Internet and HTML - all THREE of them! I then read those cover to cover! I had no access to the Internet all I could do was read books and magazine articles. Then came another life changing moment... It was August 15, 1995 The day Microsoft released Windows 95 As soon as my local store had a PC with Windows 95 available I got one. A brand new shiny black box with a staggering (well it was back then..) Pentium 90 processor! But even more importantly it had a modem and Internet Explorer!!! Now my evenings were spent experimenting with HTML. But I still had no permanent connection to the Internet, so I moved off the Navy base, and rented a local house. BINGO, I was online! BACK INJURY WITH PERL? It was now January 1996 and I suffered a back injury which left me at home for 6 months! I used this time to learn about how the Internet worked, how to create simple graphics and master the "black art" of CGI programming using PERL. I left the Royal Navy after my 6 months sick leave. This had been my webmaster apprenticeship... now I felt I was ready to start building websites commercially. And I had a lot of fun! My skills improved and so did the technology... But I never seemed to get the one thing I wanted. Lots of Traffic! I used to blame the fact that it was still early days and when more folks "got online" things would change... Well more folks did get online, but things did not change! I used to scratch my head quite a lot back then, after all I could build sites that clients loved. Lots of cool graphics and some fancy "back end" stuff using CGI and MySQL. Of course I was not alone, as the whole webmaster arena started to mushroom into a major online industry, many folks were creating very good (and some not so good) websites. BUT they did not seem to be getting the "traffic" they wanted either! Well I just carried on... I worked as a part-time webmaster whilst doing other jobs. 1999 AND PENNY MINING STOCKS? Then in 1999 I came across a website called Sitesell.com. This guy called Dr. Ken Evoy was selling a book on Internet Marketing called Make Your Site Sell!. I still have my original hard back copy sitting on my bookshelf. Now in 1999 there were MANY websites and "Gurus" popping up all over the place. But Ken was different.... He had ACTUALLY done what he talked about! In fact his previous website selling his software had been a great success. But, and I am sure he will not mind me saying this, it was UGLY! And if that were bad enough it plays some real "cheesy" music as the page loads. Here is the URL, although Ken does not sell the software anymore (he sold out his 1,000 units and stopped, as promised -- the site only exists today because, as ugly as it is, it still serves to illustrate certain examples in Make Your Site SELL): http://www.goodbytes.com/pennygold So how could this Medical Physician, trained at a prestigious university, create an ugly looking website that sold software that frankly looked too expensive?! Simple: Niche Market & Target Market My jaw dropped! I had never heard of this before... What Ken did was aim solely at Penny Stock investors, and then narrow that niche down to Penny Mining Stocks. This was, and is, hardly a huge market. BUT Ken was able to sell his software to this niche VERY successfully! This taught me a very important point! Whilst I could create a great looking and functional website for clients. I was NOT focusing on what ACTUALLY mattered. Reaching the target market online. And the sad reality is that MANY webmasters are STILL in this trap! TAKE A TEST WITH ME...? Let's do a simple test! (I love playing this with my webmaster friends...) Gather some of your URLs. Now head over to (will open new browser window): http://www.alexa.com (If you are not familiar with Alexa it is a widely used tool for checking the popularity of a site, based on traffic. The LOWER your number, the higher is your traffic ranking vs. over 56 million ACTIVE sites on the net, which means the more traffic you are getting.) Give it a go! Now are YOUR sites within the top 500,000??? A NEW WAY OF WORKING Make Your Site Sell! is still a best seller on Internet Marketing. But Ken and his company went way beyond that. They recognized that most people simply need more help to succeed online than even the best book on Net marketing can provide so, they created a product to help folks build websites that get traffic! I was intrigued, but professional pride got the better of me and I kind of dismissed it initially... Until that is I saw a 15 year old school girl build a website in a few hours she had spare each week. That website was getting more traffic than my "professional sites!" More traffic than her highly professional competitors, actually! Then there was the full time teacher who built two websites based on his hobbies of Juggling and Parrots! Agh! These two sites were also doing better than any of my sites! WHY? They stuck to a simple process that WORKS! Content > Traffic > PREsell > Monetize (I won't explain that process here, but let me tell you... when you "get" this simple concept, lights go on and whistles ring in your brain.) So I decided to swallow my pride and invest in Ken's product called Site Build It! I decided to build a website on what I know a lot about - Windows XP. Now, this site, has been built in my spare time! I have not dedicated a huge amount of my time to it as I am busy doing other things.... HOWEVER, on the 12 month anniversary of the site, I decided to do a small review on how things had gone. These are a few of the stats: ----------------------------------------------------------------- # TOTAL Visits to the site in the last 12 months: 901,997 # TOTAL on my Newsletter list as of the 11th Jan 2004: 9,004 # At Google on the 11th January 2004: Number 1 position for keyword = 37 pages Between Number 2-10 position for keyword = 25 pages # One page alone had 53,683 visits last month! # Alexa.com ranking = 30,902 ---------------------------------------------------------------I was really amazed! NONE of my sites had ever done so well... AND this is all down by just creating 3 or 4 pages a week! In fact I have been so "impressed" with the way things have worked out that I applied to join the Certified SBI Webmaster program and help other SBI owners with their websites! http://webmaster.sitesell.com/certified/ HANG UPS I had to get used to a few things though! For instance there is no CGI bin and FTP access... Initially I had to get my head around this. I thought that this would be a stumbling block, after all I like to create websites with interactive features and NEED a CGI bin... But since the programmers at SiteSell have actually included what most individuals and small businesses need I have found I don't need CGI!. (By the way, if you need something they don't provide, everything else can be plugged in via their researched "best of breed" third parties, and at a discount since they forego their affiliate commissions -- their Resources HQ alone is worth "the price of admission"). Since I have started using SiteBuild It with clients I have ONLY had one that needed more functionality than I could get out of Site Build It. So we have created a site on a "traditional" hosting plan and then ALSO created a website, using Site build It, to drive the traffic to it! My own site has great graphics, streaming MP3 audio embedded in Flash, downloadable PDF files, JavaScript drop-in boxs, opt-in newsletter, auto-responders, surveys etc. AND Site Build It does ALL of the Search Engine submission/spider-tracking/index-verification/rank-reporting for me - 24 hours a day! (It even re-submits if spiders don't come after a period of a time!). As a webmaster I rarely have to look at any other way of building and hosting websites... THE FUTURE 
Well this last year has REALLY made a difference to me...
I have been able to reach so MANY of my target market that on
January 27th 2004 Microsoft awarded me their converted:
Most Valued Professional (MVP) Award I had to provide the "time", "effort" and "knowledge" BUT Site Build It allowed my small site to reach my target market by the thousand's and THAT got my site NOTICED... (Something I am sure ALL webmasters want for their sites!) Now I am able to look to this year with excitement! I have website full of relevant content for my audience, a steadily growing stream of targeted traffic and a growing newsletter base. Now I am able to start selling to my target market... I have listened to what my site visitors have been asking for. So at the end of February 2004 I am releasing an e-book on the Windows XP Registry. I am now in the "Monetize" phase! How ironic that all those years, I was starting backward.... putting up a great site, all the bells and whistles, cash register ready. Only one problem... No traffic. As Ken would say... "You have to start where your pre-customers start... Content." It is indeed the only way for the small business to succeed online. Ken likes to quote Malcolm S. Forbes (1919-1990, publisher of Forbes magazine). On his site, he provides this one... "Venture nothing, and life is less than it should be." And I've spotted this one in his personal sig file in his e-mail... "The biggest mistake people make in life is not making a living at doing what they most enjoy." To that, I'll add this quotation from Mr. Forbes... "When you cease to dream, you cease to live." My dream for 2004 is that Sarah and I to start a family... That means buying a family size house and Sarah giving up full time work. With Site Build It!, that dream is about to become reality! Well that's MY story! I wish you the same success. Take care Marc Liron Microsoft MVP - Digital Media http://www.updatexp.com
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