Solo Build It Review: How does it compare to Wealthy Affiliate?
Solo Build It claims themselves to be the ONLY all-in-one platform for solopreneurs to build their profitable online business.
This is a pretty bold statement given that there are so many awesome platforms, services and communities online.
So, in this Solo Build It review, I'm going to show you whether SBI is really the ONLY all-in-one platform or it's just a scam.
Warning:
Let's be honest, if you've tried doing some research for SBI, it's hard to make a decision, isn't it?
I can categorize all the SBI reviews online into 3 categories:
- People who have achieved success with SBI and highly recommend it
- People who struggled with SBI and hate it
- Affiliates trying to promote SBI & make money
So basically, the attitude towards SBI is pretty distinct. People either love it, hate it or just want to make money by promoting it.
For me, I'm just trying to give it an unbiased review and help you make the best decision for yourself by laying out all the facts for you...
You don't have to trust or believe my words. Just go through the review and listen to your own heart 🙂
Solo Build It Review Summary
Product Name: Solo Build It (used to be "Site Build It")
Founder: Founded by Ken Evoy in 1997
Product Type: Online Marketing Training Platform
Price: $29.99/month or $299/year
Best For: Anyone interested to build their own website & make money online
Summary: Solo Build It is a comprehensive platform to help people build their own online business and make a passive income from it. They have pretty good tools and training but the platform itself can be very restricting. I'll explain why in this review.
Rating: 75/100
Recommended: Legit but not my top recommedation
More...
What is Solo Build It (SBI)?
Solo Build It is a membership platform that provides you with tools, training and support to build your own online business from scratch.
They call themselves the All-in-one platform because you don't need to look for your own third-party website hosting, website builder, keyword research tool by yourself.
They provide you with everything you need to start running your own profitable online business.
Site Build It vs Solo Build It?
Solo Build It used to be called Site Build It in 2001 but they changed their brand name to Solo Build It in 2017.
You should be concerned by this because companies won't just change their brand name for no reason.
Apparently, there are 2 possible reasons for this...
Firstly, SBI claims that they are not just a normal "website builder". Instead, they are a "business builder" or even a "solopreneur incubator". This could be the reason that they change their name from "Site" Build It to "Solo" Build It.
However, there's another saying that because Site Build It was not living up to the expectations and had a number of negative reviews online, they want to revive the reputation of the company.
So Ken, its founder, decided to rebrand the company and called it Solo Build It. This allows them to retain the well-known moniker of "SBI" while allowing a host of new reviews to be found on Google.
I don't know the real reason but I suspect both of these are the reasons behind their name change.
While this doesn't show anything about the legitimacy of this company, it's just something you might want to take note of.
How Does SBI Work?
SBI teaches people a process called C-T-P-M which stands for:
- Content: Your website, blog, post, etc.
- Traffic: Different ways to increase visitors to your website
- Pre-sell: Develop trust and relationship between you and your potential customer
- Monetize: Convert visitors into buyers and make money
To be honest, this process is pretty vague, right? Do you understand how to make money using SBI by looking at this process? Probably not, especially for beginners.
Let me break it down for you by using the process developed by My #1 Recommended Platform (Wealthy Affiliate):
I use this framework because SBI works in a very similar way like Wealthy Affiliate.
- Choose an interest of yours to decide on the niche market you want to go into
- Build a website on the niche market
- Create contents, rank them on Google and Drive traffic to your website
- Recommend relevant affiliate products to your visitors and turn them into buyers
So basically, SBI and WA has a very similar concept. They teach people to build websites, create contents, drive traffic, and make money from their websites.
That's the way to make money if you want to join SBI. I'll explain why I recommend Wealthy Affiliate rather than Solo Build It in a moment.
Let's first take a look at what training, tools and support are provided by SBI...
I'm Jerry!
I Created My Own 4-Figure Monthly Passive Income at just 21 Years Old!
SBI Training, Tools & Support
Training
Solo Build It's main training is called the "Action Guide". With this Action Guide, you're provided with a 10-Day course.
This 10-Day course will guide you from scratch to the point where you can monetize your website.
You won't start to make money in this 10 days. It's impossible. What I mean is that they'll provide you with the necessary instructions and guidance to help you get to the point of making money from your website
However, do not expect yourself to be making money within a short period of time. You'll not see any results in the first few months for sure.
Now, let's take a look at the breakdown of their 10-Day course:
- Day 1: Master the All-important Basics
- Day 2: Develop your best site concept
- Day 3: Brainstorm more profitable page topics
- Day 4: Investigate and plan monetization options
- Day 5: Refine your site concept and register your domain name
- Day 6: Build a site that gets the click
- Day 7: Build free traffic from a variety of sources
- Day 8: Develop relationships
- Day 9: Know your visitors
- Day 10: Monetize
I won't go into details for the course because they have a lot to teach. Go to their Action Guide sales page to learn more.
Tools
Since SBI runs on a complete different platform from WordPress, they don't have the advantage of millions if WP's plugins (mini tools for your website).
So they have to build their own. That's why they have literally tons of tools within their platform.
Let me just list down a few for you:
- Brainstorm It! (Keyword/Niche Research Tool)
- SiteDesigner (Website Templates)
- SiteBuilder (Drag and drop page builder)
- BusinessCenter
- TrafficCenter
- PageManager
- InfoCenter
- DownloadCenter
Within each center, they have even more tools for different purposes, such as social media tools, autoresponder, auto blogging function, etc...
All in all, they just have a ton of relevant tools to help you build your business. This is pretty awesome given that they only charge you $29.99/month.
However, the downside is that it's a bit too complicated and overwhelming for beginners. Even for more experienced marketers like myself, I find it a bit overwhelming too.
Support
Solo Build It offers a 24/7 support which is a pretty good service. You can get help very fast if you need it.
They also have a SBI forum where you can ask and answer questions. But it's not active as it used to be.
Pros & Cons
The Good
1. 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Solo Build It offers a 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee which is pretty good.
But the disadvantage of this is that you still have to pay for it first. Whether you are able to get your refund is another story.
On the other hand, you can test-drive Wealthy Affiliate for FREE without any credit card information!
2. Awesome Training
SBI's Action Guide is very detailed and step-by-step. They'll cover most of the things you need to know in the 10-day guide.
It's not just beginner-friendly, it's also easy-to-consume because they offer the guide in three formats - written, video and mobile!
3. Long History
Solo Build It started off as a series of book in 1997 (the year I was born, lol).
It then turn into a SiteBuilder called Site Built It in 2001 and then renamed in 2017 to become Solo Build It, the Solopreneur incubator (that's how they describe themselves now).
The point I want to make here is that SBI has come a long way and they couldn't have survived for more than 2 decades if they're not providing much value.
This definitely shows that SBI is a legit platform with resources that can really help people build a profitable online business.
Click here, if you want to learn more about SBI's history.
4. Affordable Price
Honestly speaking, the price of SBI is pretty awesome, given that they provide you with so many tools for your business.
With $29.99/month or $299/year, you can get everything you need to start your own online business. Pretty awesome deal!
Apart from the affordable price, they offer a 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee like I just mentioned.
There are a lot of programs out there charging a few hundred bucks but they don't provide as much value as SBI.
So I would highly recommend SBI in terms of price.
Recommended: This is how I create a 4-Figure Monthly Passive Incom e at 21 years old...
The Bad
1. Bad Navigation
SBI has a poor navigation on their platform. I couldn't find anywhere to login to their platform. The only way for me to login is by clicking on the link they sent me when I signed up.
That's not really user-friendly. And their platform may be too overwhelming for beginners because of the poor navigation and the long-winded contents.
2. Inactive Community
SBI community is in the form of a private Forum. But this forum is just a regular forum for you to ask and answer questions. There isn't really any unique features for their forum.
Over the years, the activity within the forum has dropped. Some members have complained about their questions not being answered.
To be honest, managing a forum and keep it active is not easy.
That's why I'm really grateful for Kyle & Carson, the founders of Wealthy Affiliate. They managed to create a truly 'pay-it-forward' community (more than just a forum) which is really active and engaging 24/7.
I'm not kidding on this. Join WA here and check it out yourself 🙂
By the way, SBI is still using extremely old testimonials in their promotional video:
Judging from the video quality and the bulky computer in the back-end, this looks like a pretty old testimonial. But they're still using this in today's promotional video.
Also, if you go and take a look at the website by this guy HamRadioSecrets, you can see that websites built using SBI are really archaic and non-professional at all. They are the old school kind of website.
This leads me to the next point...
3. Outdated Old School Websites
Just take a look at some of the websites build by SBI members:
To be honest, these sites are not really visually appealing. Just compare them with my website.
Since SBI has a long history, these websites are built based on the old designs and templates. If you look at modern websites, they won't look anything like these.
These outdated website design will not get a lot of attention as people's attention span online is just a couple of seconds.
If they can't catch visitors attention within 3 to 5 seconds, people will just leave the website and never come back.
I'm sure you want to build more professional and visually-stunning websites than these.
4. Content Lock-in Issue
Since Solo Build It websites run on its own SiteDesigner and BlockBuilder software which is totally different from WordPress (unless you purchase SBI! for WP), it's very hard for you to move your website to a third-party hosting if you want to.
In addition, SPI offers a lot of tools which you need to heavily rely on. This creates the "lock-in" issue, meaning that you're bound to using SBI products for life for the websites hosted at SBI.
5. Only Focus on Organic Traffic
SBI claims that they don't need to purchase Google Ads or any form of Ads because they can help you drive FREE targeted traffic, which means they are solely focusing on organic traffic from Google or other search engines.
From my experience, organic traffic is a long term strategy which can continuously drive targeted traffic to your website.
However, the downside is that it takes a long time to build. The average is that you need to consistently create content for at least 6 months before you can see a jump in your traffic and thus sales.
By consistently, I mean you need to blog at least 3 to 4 post per week. That's minimum. If not, you'll just take even longer time to see results.
The problem is that most people give up within the first 3 months because they couldn't see any results with organic traffic.
That's just the harsh truth. For most people, you're not going to make any money within the first 3 months but you'll spending hours everyday to work on your business.
I agree that Wealthy Affiliate also focuses on organic traffic. But they do include training on using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) to drive traffic. There are also many training created by fellow members on different paid traffic generation methods.
Is Solo Build It a Scam?
Solo Build It is not a scam. In fact, it is a pretty very comprehensive platform to help beginners start their own profitable online business.
However, I don't like the fact that they are not using WordPress as the primary method to build websites because WP is the largest and most popular Content Management System in the world. They are the biggest for a reason.
I also don't think you want to be locked-in to the system which means you're unable to transfer your website to other hosting when you need it.
So, I would recommend Wealthy Affiliate over Solo Build It. WA not only uses WordPress, you are offered with 2 FREE websites and you can host up to 25 websites on your own domain.
How I Make a Living Online...
I'm not saying you can't make money with SBI. I'm just saying that here's my result with Wealthy Affiliate...
I've personally created a 4-Figure Monthly Passive Income Stream and become financially independent at just 21 years old without any College degree or working experience!
Through my own hard work, I went from a broke restaurant waiter to living my dream laptop lifestyle in less than a year's time...
If you want to discover the secrets of how I did it at such a young age, click here!