Online business training is becoming quite popular these days. If you are new to the scene, you might have heard of a program called SiteSell. What is SiteSell all about? Is this the right course to help you start an online business? I took it for a test run and discovered some pros – and cons. Here’s the gist.
What Is SiteSell?
SiteSell is a Canadian-based company founded in 1997 by Ken Evoy. They offer two types of training courses – the “SBI”(Site Build It) which is a comprehensive business-building system and the “SBI for WordPress” which comes with tools to integrate into a WordPress website. They claimed to provide innovative marketing tools and educational resources to support their customer base of more than 130, 000 customers.
What Is Inside The Course
I’ve chosen to review the “SBI for WordPress” program here because I believe that this platform offers more advantages for business growth over simple website builders that are being offered through the “SBI” program.
The WordPress version is a 10 steps/days course that will walk you through the basics – from niche research, keyword generation and eventually, building traffic to your site. Here’s a quick preview of the topics that you can expect.
- Day 1 – Master important basics
- Day 2 – Research, Evaluate and Select Your Niche
- Day 3 – Add structural content
- Day 4 – Monetization options
- Day 5 – Purchase domain and hosting
- Day 6 – Set up a WordPress site (using WordPress.org)
- Day 7 – Build free traffic
- Day 8 – Develop business relationship
- Day 9 – Analyze your traffic
- Day 10 – Monetize your site
Along the course, you’ll be using their in-house research tool called “Brainstorm It” to find your niche and targeted keywords. Once you have everything in place, you can import the list over to your WordPress site using their customized plugin called “SBI for WP”, which is a software that you need to download onto your computer.
How Much Does It Cost
“SBI for WordPress” offers a free 30-day trial (no credit card required) that gives you access to all the 10 lessons mentioned above. After that, it will cost $17/month or $149/year for a subscription. This fee DOES NOT include domain and hosting services.
If you prefer the “SBI” program which is less technical, it would cost $29.90/month or $299/year for subscription. No free trial is offered at this point of writing.
They also offer a niche and keyword research tool called the “Brainstorm It” that works based on credit acquisition. For trial users, you get 10 free searches (niche and keywords combined) in the beginning. After you have used up those credits, you need to purchase in order to conduct more research. The fee; $20 for 100 credits and $50 for 500 credits.
The Pros
I’ve been involved in the online marketing business for some time now and rarely, I would come across anything that is legitimate or resourceful. So I applaud SiteSell for joining the league in setting a higher benchmark for the industry.
- The course delivers very extensive information on what business owners should be practicing (content creation, building good quality traffic, etc.) and doesn’t advocate any blackhat techniques.
- The course layout is structured and organized in such a way that it helps the flow of learning.
- I like that they walk-through WordPress customization using themes/plugins since this step can be very intimidating for beginners.
- Their support system is surprisingly quick to respond to my technical problem – in less than 5 minutes!
- If you are looking to add a monetization stream, it’s interesting to know that SiteSell also offers an affiliate program, which starts from 60% in sales commission.
The Cons
Now, not all systems are perfect and the SiteSell training site has a few things that bug me.
- There are broken links in the course layout which lead me to nowhere. That’s a bit disappointing as I thought they should be up-to-date. Also, all the teachings are in text form which can be a bit overwhelming to learn.
- The “Brainstorm It” tool is not the easiest to work with and I find that the user interface is a little bit outdated. Instead of producing you with instant results, you need to add filters in order to organize keywords into groups and their competition level. Despite setting my filters for long tail keywords, their results aren’t as satisfactory as compared to Jaaxy.
- This will cost you a lot of time spent in keyword research when you could be writing content instead. Plus, it takes almost 1 minute for the tool to load the keyword list. And oh, do you remember the part that you need to buy search credits to use this tool? That sounds like a bit of an up-sell to me.
- I like training sites that come with forums, but the SiteSell discussion area is quite outdated from my point of view. Everything is stuffed into one page, I can’t tell which is the latest discussion thread and I don’t know who I should connect with. Wouldn’t you be confused if you end up on a page like this?
- They don’t provide an in-house domain registration and hosting, which means members need to search for external services and hook things up themselves. For those who aren’t technologically challenged, this process can be a very frustrating one.
So, as much as I want to give them a 5 star, I can’t because I personally know of a training site that offers about the same membership fee, BUT delivers way more robust learning tools and community support.
Introducing Wealthy Affiliate
At WAU, the technical part of creating an online business has been simplified for you. Hosting, domain and training are all provided through the same platform.
Whether you are doing local business or affiliate marketing, you can benefit from at least one (if not all) of the training tutorials AND live webinars. Courses and forums are integrated in such a way that you can learn with ease and reach out to other members when you are in need of help.
Here’s a quick comparison between the two training sites.
I hope this article has given you an in-depth review on what SiteSell is all about or if you should choose this program to kickstart your business online. I am more than happy to take your questions. Just leave them in the comment area below and I’ll respond the soonest.
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WordPress.org vs WordPress.com – Which Is Better
Hi Cathy,
I got started online as an SBI customer. I was clueless at the time. I knew nothing about content management systems, SEO, keywords or anything else. SBI is very well marketed. They make themselves sound like the greatest thing since the internet itself.
After one year I earned nothing but even worse, I had LEARNED nothing! At the time I was involved with SBI, WordPress was not even an option and they claimed to have a superior CMS anyways. That simply isn’t true and I have read from several sources that SBI site owners suffered from Google’s Panda update.
I’m sure you have experienced the same thing I have. When Google updates their algorithm, my site does even better!
Now, in all fairness, I’m sure SBI has done things to improve their product since I left them. However, they are still 10 steps behind the company I’m with now (and you know whom I speak of).
In case you haven’t heard, Ken Evoy of SBI is on a bit of warpath with anyone who publishes anything negative about them. He personally left a comment on my SBI review!
The interesting thing is, when you try to research SBI, the top search engine results are non-SBi sites. If their product is damn good, why can’t any of his customers get first page results with 80,000 affiliates?!
I have yet to read and respond to it because I want to do a little more research to be sure I have’t said anything that isn’t 100% true. Personally, I think he’s getting desperate.
Hi Steve, your comment couldn’t have been more timely. Recently, I found out that SBI has published a ‘comparative’ study to show that WA is ‘misleading’ people by using ‘unethical tactics’ in the make-money-online niche. The article was a long one yet more than half of the facts weren’t true. They even created a forum just for people to discuss about the topic which I find to be counter productive as an online training site.
I’ve been with WA for 3 years now and have seen quite a number of members achieved their milestones, including mine. The platform has gone through so many layers of improvement which can only be felt if you have been a long time member yourself. As an outsider or a competitor, I don’t think SBI can appreciate the benefits WA offers to their members.
There’s a saying – “Don’t make others look black by painting yourself white”. It seems like SBI is doing exactly that out of desperation.
As a SOON to be ex SBI user I’ve had enough with Sitesell and Ken Envoy’s bs marketing. I thought SBI would be the answer to my relationship advice website Ario1.Com but it turned out to be a mirage. After 3 years of pushing and advertising (Facebook ads, Outbrain, crowd search.me etc) and OVER $10,000 later (I know I was a fool), all I have to show for it is an average of 300 daily visitors and 1200 views. It seems the ongoing assessment about google hating SBI is 100% true.
Right, now I am transferring Ario1.Com to a new hosting site where not only will it look better (per Ken Envoy the look of the site doesn’t matter) but I will have a much easier chance of flowing REAL HIGH traffic daily. SBI’s templates and everything else they do is COMPLETELY out dated and it’s not like I didn’t give them a chance. I mean after almost 3 years and 100’s of pages with new content built (1/3 by them) you would think my site would be on top. Unfortunately even though Ario1.Com skyrocketed at first on Alexis, ranking me in the top 90,000 sites in the US and top 600k in the world, it all slowly began to crash as it went down to the millions in rankings.
Also, Google NEVER ranked Ario1 even though I had plenty of pages indexed with them. A few of my pages are even on the first page of Google but thats as far as I got. The domain itself was NEVER ranked with Google and no matter what I did (advertising etc) nothing seemed to get it noticed by the biggest search engine in the world.
It is TIME SBI accepts the reality like I have, that eventually this company will fold and Ken Envoy will walk away with millions he stole from innocent website owners. Shame on him. Goodbye SBI!
Hi Cathy,
I was not familiar with SiteSell until I read your review. I have been putting together my online business for a few months now, and I am actually glad I didn’t start with SiteSell. I am very new in this arena and it sounds like the training system is very dated, and the discussion area looks to be more of a headache than a solution.
I am thankful I found Wealthy Affiliate first. I enjoy the website building and hosting features. Additionally, all the training and resources are unmatched. Thank you for the thorough review.
Cathy,
In reading your thorough review of this SiteSell business training course it was easy to spot the issues that are a part of this program.
The fact that were you to actually try and build a business through this company’s course, the fact that you would also have to go out and find your own domain name for that website, furthermore the company provides no hosting are two big turn-offs to me. Am I just paying them all of that money just for the training? And when was it last updated?
The problem that all of these competing training programs lack in comparison to what WA has to offer sticks out like a sore thumb. Again discussing the training, so they teach you everything that you need to know in 10 days? Really and just how successful would a person be able to create a business? What I see in this company’s “training” is probably are nothing but a series of text-based articles and something that not all individuals gain intellectual knowledge from as those people learn better through visual education.
You mentioned the other negative about SiteSell – lining it up against WA with the other items that simply are not offered – One on one coaching and any direct contact with the owners. And I do wonder how much “help” you can get from others in the community?
In knowing what I have learned being a member of Wealthy Affiliate I wouldn’t pay 17 cents for this inferior program that will NOT allow one to build a successful online business for him/herself. Just my two cents, anyway!
Excellent review, Cathy.
Hey Cathy,
I actually haven’t heard of SiteSell until now. At first, I thought it was something similar to Flippa, which I do love. Just because of the name!
I do think it great that they have their own plugin for WordPress. That is a really neat idea. I have seen GoDaddy do that sort of thing over the years. But, you don’t get any hosting with SiteSell? That seems like something that is seriously missing! I do wonder who they recommend you host with, though?
Broken links in the course? That is a big no-no. That really frustrates users a lot. I wonder if they are aware of the problem. Might want to send them an email to your review and see if they take notice of it.
Wealthy Affiliate is great, though. I have been using them for years. Have lots of great benefits.
Hi Garen, I believe they recommend hosting with NameCheap or something. Can’t remember. I know you are into hosting reviews. What do you think about NameCheap’s hosting?
GoDaddy has a WordPress plugin? What does it do? I am curious to know.
NameCheap is a great web hosting company. Have a very solid reputation as a registrar and their hosting is very solid too. The GoDaddy plugin basically just shows you around WordPress. Pretty basic stuff for any user that is new to WordPress.
Hi Cathy,
Thanks for sharing this review with us. I was actually interested in taking some WordPress and blogging training and was leaning towards SiteSell. Now, I am more towards Wealthy Affiliate simply because it looks more like an all in one package which is what I am looking for. No flying all over the internet for my domain, hosting and keyword research tool seems much more convenient to me.
Thanks for that comparison.
Thanks for sharing. I feel that the SiteSell platform is lacking. I’m not a tech-savvy person hence I do like how Wealthy Affiliate stacks up against SiteSell. I like how WA has a web hosting and domain platform, so I don’t have to do it myself. How much does Wealthy Affiliate cost a month and what training does it offer?
Hi Jason,
Wealthy Affiliate has two types of membership – the Starter program which is free forever and the Premium program that is $49/month or $359/year.
Inside the training, you’ll basically learn about finding a niche, how to do keyword research for your content and getting engagement going for your blog. All these are done in a step-by-step manner and you can learn at your own pace. You can read my personal review here to learn more about them.
Thank you.