My SBI! Story

Webmaster of my own Domains

My SBI! story began in 2009. I had a beautiful website started in 2002 that was way too far above me technologically, and quite frankly, it was intimidating to even consider doing anything with it.

I had to pay webmasters to do any updating or additions, even though I consider myself to be fairly intelligent and creative. As a result, it rarely had anything done to it. Traffic was static at around ninety visitors daily, and occasionally people would contact me via the live email link to inquire about the plants I sell.

Pretty pathetic, all told. Eventually, I couldn’t afford the $30.00 an hour bills for simple updating of the home page, and told the webmaster she was fired.

Now what? Still completely intimidated by the thought of FTP, CSS and HTML and all the other letters of the alphabet, I was lost.

Then while browsing, I came across this site that had a very clean look, and easy navigation, and they had a page which asked if I had a story to tell on sustainable living.

I filled it in, and once I was done and submitted my little page, the next page declared that I had built my first web page and if I wanted to know more, go to this site, with a link to SBI! or Site Build It!

Skeptical at first, I took a deep breath and jumped in.

I was hooked, and haven’t looked back since. The fun I was missing out on! Learning how to build my own pages has been an exciting journey.

Learning a little bit of HTML (that was so scary) to add to the easy system of block building each page has been made simple, and I'm taking it in tiny little baby steps.

The great camaraderie with the people on the forums has made it so easy to solve any technical difficulties I might have, and I’ve even found I can help others, and pay it forward.

The amazing part? Even a complete Techno Peasant like me can do it, and build a website that looks clean and professional.

Now I’m just tortoising it as my traffic builds. The mascot of SBI!, appropriately enough, is the tortoise. I'm having so much fun and getting so much satisfaction, my only regret is that it took so long to find SBI!

Remember the beautiful website I told you about up above? I've now resurrected it using all the SBI! tools, completely rejuvenating it with a new topic - Rustic Crafts.

Have a look at Blue Fox Farm here.

Updated Jan 4 2012: Blue Fox Farm is now getting almost 300 unique visitors a day, and steadily climbing; this site in only 9 months is paying for itself with the ads on the few pages, and is obviously a crowd pleaser.

Newsflash: March 30 2012; Now I have another site to delight and amaze; Organic Garden Goddess built right from the start with the easy and intuitive new site builder, Block Builder 2.

Update May 6 2013; two more have joined the stable; No Frills Build, and Succulents Canada, which will go with the sale of the online plant business.

Here's a link about the most exciting new feature of Site Builder - we fondly call it BB2: Block Builder 2.

See how it works in this short video:

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