Is Site Build It! worth it?

Anyone looking for more information about AdSense will almost immediately come across the Site Build It! system. (Note: I am not an affiliate of SBI, unlike most people who talk about it, therefore the SBI link doesn't make me any money.) Like anything with a good affiliate system (especially those with high payouts), SBI is promoted far and wide on the Internet, so it's hard to avoid it.

I've always been curious about SBI, and I recently had a chance to play with it a little thanks to someone I know. If I had to describe it to someone else, I would describe it primarily as a content management system. Basically you go and build the content of the site using their Web-based tools and it then creates and updates a Web site for you based on that content. It takes care of all the gory details, including registering a domain name. Everything gets stored in their own database, they don't let you use FTP or other conventional methods of moving files to the website — basically it stays under their control. There are certainly limits as to what you can do, as you can imagine. I think I read somewhere (but I'm not 100% certain) that all the pages of your site could only sit in a single directory, for example, so you couldn't have subfolders.

Although it sounds like a product, SBI is really a subscription-based service. You pay a large upfront fee for your first year, but after that it's a monthly fee. For that, you get access to their system, technical support, and of course various motivational documents and tools.

So is SBI worth it? I think it really depends on how much work you want to put into things. One of the things I've always stressed in Make Easy Money with Google is that while the concepts are easy to understand and anybody can learn to create and manage their own websites using free tools like Nvu, it does take time and effort to do it. If time is something you're short of, then a system like SBI might be good for you. The only downsides I can see are that (a) it does limit you in certain ways (you have to do things their way) and (b) you have more monthly costs to cover with your AdSense earnings before you make a profit.

Still, for less than $20 I say my book's a great deal and even SBI'ers should get it and learn from it!

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