How did I build my site? Good Question.... read on to find out.

Those of you that have read my story on My site Why and How will know that after many failures at producing a home based income I was determined to find the right means to earn a living via the internet. However I had one BIG problem. I needed to build a website but had NO IDEA HOW. A fairly significant spanner in the works I'm sure you'll agree.

I had the idea cooking and ready to go... As we'd recently moved back to Cyprus (an island I called home prior to getting married) I decided I wanted to share my insider knowledge with others by building an island travel guide website. Great idea but how to implement it?

My husband suggested surfing the web for other sites with similar themes to see how they went about things. Coming from a sales background I was used to checking out the competition so considered this sensible advice.

On one of my surfing sessions I struck gold. A great looking and informative site about luxury holiday villas in Tuscany introduced me to the means by which it had been created. The owner/authors Fiona McCardle and Jim Andrew had discovered Site Build It (SBI) when they decided to up sticks and move to Tuscany for a better life.

They were looking for the means to make a reasonable income via the internet and after discovering SBI and using it to build their highly successful site are now living the dream so to speak. Laptops around the swimming pool is their usual work environment. I don't think even they realised how successful they would become!

Meet Fiona and Jim and other SBI successes.

As I investigated the SBI material that Fiona and Jim introduced I began to realise building a website wasn't just a case of throwing up a few pages of text and images that could eventually host income streams such as Google Ads (at the time Google Ads was really the only thing I knew about net marketing)

SBI! points out and takes the time to prepare you to build a profitable business , before you jump into building your site.

Beginners take a step by step route, using the SBI Action Guide, learning all the fundamentals of building a profitable business; bypassing any show-stopping errors.

Those more experienced in site-building, develop a deeper understanding of the whole process with SBI!

No matter who you are, you are guided all the way until you succeed.

The SBI Action Guide is where it all clicked together for me! Each element of the business and site building process is presented in a step-by-step manner via both written and video formats. I use the video format mostly. You even get to decide whether to be guided by a male or female voice. All you have to do is follow it. Really! The most successful SBI! owners say "all they did was follow the Guide." They don't get sidetracked, or have to guess at what to do next. SBI!'s guided approach helps you reach your goals.

This worked brilliantly for me. After previously failed attempts on the internet I knew I needed a blue-print with clear step-by-step guidelines to build my site. I follow the action guide religiously and delve back into it whenever I have a blank moment and need to know where to go next. The 50+ pages of Under the Cyprus sun are testament to the success of this method.

Over the time I've been using SBI I've found that invariably every question I have is covered in the Action Guide or the treasure trove of supplementary material included in the SBI package. However it's great to know that additional support and guidance is available in the form of customer support and fellow SBI'ers.

The SBI! package comes with unlimited Customer Support. Fellow owners tell me it's the best they've ever experienced. And the SBI! Forums complete the picture. They're the most friendly, help-and-be-helped set of e-business forums in the world.

Whenever I've been on the SBI! Private forums I've received friendly, helpful support from other Site Build It! users. Often help comes from folks who are at the same stage as I am and by talking things through the penny drops and all becomes clear. This peer-to-peer support gets you over the humps along the way in a stress-free environment.

Help is available even for advanced questions. A few months ago I wanted to build a graphics gallery that was beyond my HTML comprehension. When I posted my dilemma on the appropriate forum a wonderful SBI! colleague came forward and talked me through the whole process (Thanks Peter!). It was like having a one to one private tutor, fantastic!!! I now have the marvelous nine column graphics gallery I wanted and a much broader understanding of the HTML techniques used to build it.

Our SBI! Forums are a business-building support community ready to help you succeed.

So many NON SBI sites pop up and disappear from the web on a daily basis and I think generally the root of their demise is the lack of forwarding planning. Throwing up a site about a particular topic/product/service is all very well but if adequate research isn't done into demand and potential profitability failure looms on the horizon fairly soon.

With SBI the profit potential is considered and built into the plan from Day 1!

It all begins with the right process. Content Traffic PREsell Monetize is the underlying, logical and powerful process that capitalizes upon the fundamental realities of how people use the Web. C T P M puts you on a solid, profitable business foundation

Choosing the right theme for a web business is paramount for success and it can often be the trickiest stage. Many fellow SBI'ers, like me come to the table with a pre-defined idea wanting to know if its the right direction to go in. Others have a whole host of site concept ideas and need to refine their plans. Many discover SBI without any fixed ideas but after reading the promotional material know they want to get involved with earning on the internet using SBI! so need to come up with a theme for their site.

Landing on the best site concept is not always as obvious as you might think but the SBI integrated tools Brainstorm It! and Niche Choose It! are there to show you the best path for your particular business. They reveal some surprises and help you make the right choice.

Logically the next step is to choose an appropriate name for a website. The SBI! package of tools includes domain name analysis, optimization, and registration. I used these to develop an appropriate name that would promote maximum profitability within my travel focused niche.

So once my site theme was confirmed as Good to go! by Brainstorm It! and Niche choose it! and the name was decided I came to the stage of building my first pages. I have to admit my previous experience of building websites had left me very nervous of this stage. I had nightmares about lines and lines of HTML, broken links and dysfunctional graphics.

Thankfully I have put all my worries behind me and occasionally even have the confidence to help a newcomer in our forums with a page building problem of their own!

The SBI! Block-by-block page builder is the reason for this new found confidence.

Page creation is as simple as riding a bike with its training wheels still on. I don't need to know any HTML (though amazingly I have picked some up along the way). The block-by-block builder has trained me to write a page that is both "Search Engine and human effective." It's simple, do-able and most importantly, effective site-building. The block-by-block builder is perfect for beginners, but even many "advanced" users start and often stick with this tool due to its speed and simplicity. It's also an excellent way to break bad habits!

As with any learning process the more you do something the more successful you become at it.

The more pages I've built using the Block builder the more confident I've become and now want to be a little more creative with what I build. And, that’s no problem as SBI! is compatible with popular HTML editors like front page or Dreamweaver and image tools such as Photoshop. So, I can easily use advanced page-building techniques when I want to. In a nutshell SBI! allows for maximum creative flexibility at all skill levels.

When it was time to create my site's Look & Feel, I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted it to look. The aesthetics of a website are quite important to me. If a sites cluttered and fussy using several different fonts and colours I don't stick around long. I hate sites that are full of flash and busy slide shows. So, I was determined to build something that looked clean, unfussy and was easy to navigate.

Thanks to the fully customizable, easy-to-use templates SBI! provides I think I've achieved this. You can choose and create a professional-looking presentation, even if you have no design skills. But if you're more skilled in the design department, you can create and upload your own. This page shows a range of inbuilt styles available to customize.

So at this stage I had my site concept, its name and the look and feel decided. I'd built my home page and was on the way with the first content pages. But what about hosting!

This was another area I'd recoiled from in the past due to the vast amount of advertising hype from companies claiming to be the best, cheapest, Free this that and the other included! Sound familiar?

But once again I didn't need to worry. Fast, reliable, state-of-the-Net Web site hosting is all included with SBI!. You don't have to worry about choosing the right "hosting" features (size, capacity, etc.). Web hosting is included, no nonsense, no hidden clauses.

Under the Cyprus Sun was now a reality and live on the web.

I knew 'vaguely’ from my previous experiences a little bit about announcing my site to Search Engines via a sitemap but really had no idea how to go about this. Again no worries! SBI automatically builds and submits a "Sitemap XML" file for all it's sites. This is a huge time saver, that enables you to quickly achieve wider distribution and attract more targeted free traffic.

As I added more and more pages to my site I started to use the Search Engine spider/listing/ranking reports that SBI! provide. These let me see how my pages were being handled by the Search Engines. When I check these reports I can see which pages rank best and drive traffic which helps me determine how to increase traffic and monetization. Apparently most web pros don't have easy and reliable access to this type of information without paying through the nose for it.

Most days I take a look at the Traffic Stats and Click Analysis reports for my site. These help me determine what my visitors like most. Using and Understanding the info these SBI tools deliver helps me know what to write about, which in turn leads to more and more business.

You can't get Cooler than that in my book!!

In Addition SBI! includes Value Exchange (VE) for finding and managing high value inbound links (another criteria for ranking highly at the engines and building traffic). This automated inbound link-building tool has saved me time on what is otherwise a tedious time consuming task. My time is much better spent writing more and more content.

Other great SBI! features I use are easy-to-use form builders with auto responders. These allow you to build contact forms, surveys and polls to easily communicate with visitors. Having these tools integrated into the SBI! package saves the time and expense of purchasing additional software to accomplish these tasks.

SBI! was created by Dr. Ken Evoy in 1997. He realized that the average business person needs more than some information in books, no matter how good. S/he needs both the C T P M process and an all-in-one Web site hosting, building and marketing suite of tools that enables them to execute the process flawlessly. To this day, SBI! is unique.

So there you have it... Thats how I built Under The Cyprus Sun.

Why did I choose Site Build It?

answer any questions

So What's Next?

Under The Cyprus Sun is going from strength to strength and my families financial security is growing with it.

My next goal is site number two!!

Life is Good!

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