What You Really Need To Know About Your Food

July 2009 - Posts

• Week Three - Decision time...

  Week 3 – Decision time… Well, it came down to a choice… I had received this opportunity on the premise of focusing on food safety – specifically, putting together my “dream” of having a web site that allows the public to understand and know more about how to keep their food safe and what they aren’t told about the food. However, as I explained in a previous blog, I couldn’t find the “ideal” numbers that SBI was saying I should have… so it was stick with the original idea or find something else…  which was a harder decision that I thought. I came across an article by Ken Envoy, the founder of SBI, who talked about some who put together a successful web site just because he believed in the topic and understood it, even though the numbers didn’t show it.  The site grew to be successful down the road… despite what the initial numbers said.  The gentleman knew his topic and believed in it, and created a niche of his own.   That settled it… I was going to stick with my original idea. Now we started to lay out the plan of how the web site pages were going to fit together – I put together an initial plan, but I quickly learned that this is a initial plan when I found I wanted to change it right off the bat – I started adding more pages and details and things started to come together. The next step was to find the perfect domain name.  I’m still working on this… I want to get feedback from Bernie first.  It was an interesting theory on domain names.   SBI doesn’t focus on the most “pretty” domain names- they suggest a domain that is more functional and pretty.  And it obviously helps – some of the SBI sites are some of the most viewed in the world! I also started working on the content for the web site (finally).  Remember, I thought this was the first thing that we needed to get done, but SBI wanted to create a foundation of knowledge before getting into writing. Looking forward to the next class to get some answers! Posted Jul 26 2009, 07:11 PM by mlichlyter with no comments

• Week 2 with SBI…

  One thing that I have learned about SBI is the basics must be in place.  When you build a house, you need a good plan and foundation to build a successful house; the same is the focus of SBI sites.   I wanted to race ahead and start writing pages, get a web site domain name, etc right off the bat, but these week has proven why it is so important.  This week, we started using a tool that SBI has called Brainstormer.  In a nutshell, this tool helps determine what topics would work best and possibly make more money for your site.  SBI is about building a business versus a pretty site.   So, basically, I entered my topic that I want to do into the Brainstormer and it searches all of the popular sites and data info and lets me know how it thinks those topics will do on the web.  It points out how many people are looking for that kind of info, how much info is out there, and it projects if you could make money on the topic/keyword.   So I ran three topics as our instructor asked – all three seemed to be a little bit “lower” in popularity than the “recommended” topics, but I was surprised to learn and see that my focus topic, food safety, did WORSE than the other two topics.  To be honest, it frustrated me.  Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree. But the cool thing about SBI is that I’ve got a coach, Bernie, who suggested that I run a different test in Brainstormer (one that we would usually do the next week); with that, I found more and more results for various topics dealing with food safety – which made me feel a little bit better. My conclusion at this point – I’m still sticking to Food Safety as my main topic, but I’ll have wanted to tailor my individual content pages to some of the other keywords/topics generated by brainstormer.  But I’m also keeping my thoughts wrapped around the other two topics that I tested. I heard an analogy on the radio this week about web sites and I had to agree.  “A web site is like putting your sign in a forest of thousands of trees.”  And that’s very true.  Last week when Bernie pointed out that ugly “poem” site, I was not impressed, but the fact that it is built with a good foundation and has people coming to that tree, it makes money regardless of the appearance of the web site.   Posted Jul 14 2009, 12:13 PM by mlichlyter with no comments Filed under: web page, SBI, small business

• Week One - Intro to SBI...

  I wasn’t able to start the classes for the first round that they offered me because of a personal commitment, so the start of my SBI experience was delayed by about two weeks.  Wednesday night, we had our first class. I made a commitment to myself that I was going to fly through this program; however, as I was starting to do the lessons that SBI sends out, it was clear that SBI didn’t want us to go ahead to quickly.  The two weeks before I was finally able to get into the class, I had spent writing notes, articles, and doing research – heck, I had even started to think about domain names…  I thought I knew exactly what I was going to be asked to do. However, once I had the registration stuff for SBI and had a chance to go through everything, I realized that I was moving way to fast.  In fact, SBI told me that I should NEVER be moving ahead like this.   You see, SBI lays a foundation of basic understanding of the web pages, e-commerce, and how the most successful websites work BEFORE you begin to actually create “content” (web site information).   The instructor told us to stay with him, not go ahead. The first class was what I would call a “Get TO Know You” class.  Bernie, my instructor, and all the students who are in the class (or at least on the call that night), got together on the conference call and talked about their goals and experiences.  It was a lot of fun, I have to admit.   My biggest “WOW” moment during the class is when Bernie showed us a website about poems .  The site looked like &#$!  No bells and whistles.  But Bernie explained that it was one of the top web sites because the “spiders” from Google would come to the site and “liked it” so they link to it more and more.  It makes sense – spiders can’t see the cool graphics and such on most web sites. Since the class, I have done the other homework, but I also have been doing some random searches on Google just to see what and who is in the lead for different key words – there is a reason why the spiders like these sites.  If you do a generic keyword like “Camping” you’ll find a lot – but there is a reason why the spiders chose those in the top ranked sites over others. So, now that I’ve had to slow down and do everything different, I’m analyzing things differently than I used to both on the web and in my goals and dreams. I’ll keep everyone updated on how next week goes – we get more into the philosophy behind how SBI works.   Posted Jul 05 2009, 03:14 PM by mlichlyter with no comments