SBI! Reviews: Rental Agency
Update #3

by Fiona McCardle and Jim Andrew

"Rent a Villa in Tuscany" puts on long trousers. No more training wheels. No more getting our fish fingers cut up into bite sized pieces. It's proper grown-up stuff for us now. (I've even been caught wearing a suit recently!)

We've been online for over five years. In internet terms, that means we're almost pensioners!

Is it still fun?

Yes, there's new stuff to learn all the time!

Has the novelty worn off?

Well, yes and no.

We're not surprised that SBI! works - the novelty of that wore off long ago. We expect new pages to be ranked by Google. (Yes, SBI! spoils us.)

What does surprise us is when people still try to convince us that the internet is so complicated that the only way to win is to find tricks and ways to fool the search engines.

Get real, guys.

Content arrowTraffic arrowPREsell arrow Monetize works, slowly but surely. Follow what Ken says.

Has it got any easier?

No, in fact it's probably got tougher. Competition is fierce, the web is a giant free for all, and you have to watch for people who want to piggyback on your success. Thank goodness for SBI!.

Are we worried?

Not really. Persistence pays off. Keep two steps ahead as there are always challenges. There is also no room for complacency, but slow and steady progress is the best way.

Our main site (we've now got 33 registered domains) is constantly changing; new pages, new offers, free stuff, most of all, new collaborations.

This is probably the single biggest change to our way of working since we started. Instead of trying to work 24 hours a day ourselves (a spell in hospital this summer has changed my ideas on that one), we've spent time building relationships with other companies. We now pass on a number of things that before we would have handled by working harder ourselves.

The result? More business all round and conversely, people also passing on business to us.

Future Plans

Slow but steady, turtle fashion! (The SBI! mascot sits proudly beside me as I write.)....

  • Keep growing the business; some pages have grown enough to merit their own sites.

  • Do more collaborations with like-minded people.

  • Try to keep up with all the new SBI! stuff Ken keeps adding.

  • Re-read the action guide now and again. (Stray too far from it and things start to go wrong.)

  • Oh yes, relax and enjoy life under the Tuscan sun!

SBI! has changed our lives. It's hard to remember life before...

The morning traffic jams... the clock watching... the boredom... the boss!

Thanks SBI!. Thanks Ken and everyone at SiteSell.

Fiona McCardle and Jim Andrew
www.rent-a-villa-in-tuscany.com