Can you earn cash online using the Site-Build-It system? Recently Lissie wrote this post, Site Build It Scam, on her blog and it created quite a response there and elsewhere. To quote Ron Burgundy from Anchorman, “Boy, that escalated quickly… I mean, that really got out of hand fast.” But, behind the flames and pit bull attacks the question remains, is the Site-Build-It system a good way to earn cash online?

I decided, to be fair, that I’ll consider it like I do a lot of online business opportunities by doing due diligence based on the sources that I can find.

Who is Site-Build-It Intended For?

Well, looking at their sales material and comments posted around on blogs and forums, it’s apparent that the primarily audience for their system are people who are new to marketing on the Internet and who lack tech savvy. They seem to offer a ’soup to nuts’ online business, including web site hosting and coaching, for the complete newbie, all for $300 a year. OK, some people may benefit from the hand holding and a cookie cutter system. After all, there are people who panic at the thought of FTP’ing a few files to a web server. It would seem that this system would be ideal for the small business owner who wanted to establish a web presence. After all, these guys sometimes hire a local web designer and pay them $300+ a month for much less. But, from what I can gather, this isn’t their true target.

It seems that their target are people who want to make money online with a website but lack the technical savvy to do so and want their hand held. So far, so good. Not everyone is up for learning tech stuff so why not provide a service that helps them with things like installing a web site, SEO and so forth? There are plenty of membership sites that have sprung up that do that to some degree.

So, What does Site Build It Bring to the Table?

Unfortunately, from what I’ve been able to determine, is that what they bring is rather outdated techniques and a proprietary system that seems lock in users. Also, it appears that, at least on the surface, that the sites are not monetized in the best way possible. Lastly, the per domain price for hosting seems way out of whack with today’s prices.

First of all, the price for their service is $300 per year per domain. This pricing, which may have been quite a deal in 1999, is terribly overpriced for hosting a single domain in 2009. These days, hosting companies like Host Gator allow you to host as many domains as you want with as many WordPress blogs, forums or whatever that you want. Being locked into a single domain is overly restrictive in today’s online marketplace.

Next, the websites that they offer use a proprietary “cookie cutter” content management system that they control. From what I understand it is impossible to fully export data from their system should you decide to leave their confines. Most modern day hosts allow you to easily export from them. Once again, this is something from circa 1999, not 2009. To make matters worse, adding on features like a blog that allows comments is an extra cost feature. Extra? For something as common place as blogging? That seems out of whack to me.

Lastly, we’ll look at monetization. They seem to encourage using Adsense a lot. Unfortunately, Adsense ads aren’t always appropriate for the subject matter of a site. For example, one site I looked at featured RC planes. That’s a great niche, but not for Adsense. Adsense payouts are quite low and a product niche like that is more appropriate for eBay EPN or other product based affiliate offers. I saw several other Site-Build-It sites where Adsense was being used inappropriately. This, in addition to the proprietary content management system, is what gave me serious doubts about the whole system.

There is one interesting bit to the monetization equation though. They pay their affiliates $75 for a new member sign-up. So, if you’re able to bring new members into the system, you’ll make nice money. When we dig down deep we find that this is the real way to earn cash online with Site-Build-It, recruiting new people to the opportunity. However, this does lead to another problem.

Site-Build-It Does the MLM Attitude

Perhaps the most distressing thing I noted about Site-Build-It was the MLM-ish cult-ish (multi-level marketing) attitude by some of the members, especially in their attacks on Lissie on her blog and from what I’ve heard from others who participated in their program. This is something that really bugs me because I strongly dislike the MLM approach to doing business. This, on top of the “selling the opportunity” and “fake it til’ you make it” thing really turned me off.

So, Can You Earn Cash Online with Site-Build-It?

My take is that yes, you probably can if you put a lot of work into it and make all the right moves, such as recruiting a lot of new members by hook or by crook. But, in doing so, it’s likely that you are overspending to purchase an outdated product and to get questionable advice so far as Adsense goes. On top of that, you have the whole ‘business cult’ thing that seems to be going on with it.

My opinion is that in today’s Internet marketing environment it’s better for you to find free and low cost resources that are more up-to-date and don’t have the baggage that Site-Build-It has developed over the years.LINK...