REFERRERS/FINDERS Mar/2009   I'm Going SBI! Full-Time! by Nori Evoy Well, I'm back at Square 1. I almost feel like I'm 14 years old again, like on the photo at the left. I can still remember starting anguilla-beaches.com. It was simple, even then. The Brainstormer pointed me in the right direction. My Dad helped me with DAY 4, which was about planning how I would earn income. And he helped show me how to write better. But except for that, he just pointed me in the right direction and said, "Just skip anything you don't understand." I set about telling our stories, adventures and misadventures, in Anguilla. Favorite restaurants, hotels, villas. And I was so surprised! People came to visit my site, little me, 14 years old. And that's basically what I've done for the past 6 years, on a part-time basis. (I learned a little later about how much SBI! does of the heavy lifting, letting me focus on writing about Anguilla. But I must say, I'm no "SBI!-wiz.") Now I'm 20. My Dad took this at Mango's, a seaside restaurant, just the other night... Back to why I'm kind of embarrassed. I'm afraid that people who read this think I'm some kind of SBI! expert since my Dad is Ken Evoy. But I'm not. "All I know I learned in kindergarten." Actually, in the past couple of years, I would often go for months without touching my site. And yet thousands of people kept visiting. Those visitors earn me thousands of dollars per month through Google ads, a real estate agent joint venture, Anguilla villa and hotel and car rentals, referrals to an advisor-friend who handles offshore corporations, affiliate income, and even from the sale of my own DVD and anguilla keychain. My site kept growing thanks to Content 2.0, where visitors write Web pages, describing their favorite experiences on the islands and where other visitors comment on that. That's way more powerful than blogging, where I would still have to write content. Instead, visitors write content! I am still amazed how SBI! takes care of all the technical stuff, so I can focus on business, and how my business keeps growing even when I didn't have the time due to university. But it's time for me to dig deeper into SBI! and get more serious about this wonderful island called Anguilla and the business that I have almost accidentally built. 2009 will be a big change. I went to school all through summer and fall 2008 (no summer vacation), so that I could spend winter with my parents. Yes, it finally happened! We moved to Anguilla. And now that I am here, I am digging into Site Build It! again, back at Square 1. Or I guess I should say DAY 1. I am noticing far more than I did when I was 14, partly because I'm older, and partly because SBI! has added so much more. When I look at my site now, I blush a bit because it didn't "grow up" or mature as I did... It's still the site I designed when I was 14. I have so many buttons on the left. I have not changed the Look and Feel. The material needs to be reorganized. I have so much new content ready to be written. SBI! has added so much Social Media Marketing. I should be going after major corporate sponsors. I should be monetizing in so many more ways. I could go on and on and on. I keep getting new ideas as I watch the Video Action Guide (which did not exist when I was 14 years old). Now that I live on Anguilla, and am looking at SBI! anew with eyes that are now 20 years old, it's exciting all over again. I'll be working full-time on SBI!, learning more about building a business (at least until I go back to university in the fall). My site looks like this right now... Soon I will be using Site Build It!'s upcoming new layouts (which I am beta-testing). My site will look more "grown-up," something like this (I am still experimenting with the layout)... So much to do, I hardly know where to start. My site has carried me this far with very rudimentary knowledge and with part-time work that can't have averaged more than an hour or two per week. Now it's going to be fun to see how far I can carry it. Nori Evoy anguilla-beaches.com Back to original case study See May/2005 Update See Feb/2007 Update     Close Window