My SBI! Story

More Than Just Websites, It's E-Business Building

In late summer of 2009, I took a deep breath, and clicked the "buy now" button, starting my SBI story with a bang.

Solo Build It! Keeping It Real

Frustration, eagerness, exhaustion, exhilaration, I hit the highs and lows for a whole year while I built my first site, Drought Smart Plants.

As a Certified Horticulturist and owner of my own Sedum and succulent nursery, I need a website to sell my drought tolerant plants.

The experience of building this site, which is now over 580 pages of informative, useful articles about succulents of all kinds, and how to use them in a dry garden setting, has been a dream come true.

From the time I started with this domain (the site you are on right now), bluefoxfarm.com in 2002, I wanted to learn all about how to build my own site.

Sadly, the challenge of trying to figure out html, and ftp and all the other highly technical parts of website building was beyond me.

So, the site as it was, languished.

I paid professional webmasters hundreds of dollars to make minor upgrades, without having full hands on control of it.

Eventually, in March 2011 as the domain came up for renewal, I again took a deep breath, dumped all the content, and the site has been reborn to how it looks today.

In early 2012, I started yet another garden niche site, and then another.

What fun, and what a challenge.

The first site is always the steepest learning curve, but with the help of the super forums on Sitesell, (now known as Solo Build It!) and the wonderful support staff, questions were answered quickly, and the response to technical issues swift.

When we built our tiny house in 2013, a new site chronicled all the activity on No Frills Build - which has now undergone a name change and transmuted into Frill Free.

My sites are my pride and joy, bringing incredible feelings of accomplishment. I've had a lot of fun rebranding them all, and giving them that personal touch.

I've now been diagnosed with MS, Multiple Sclerosis, so my sites now may be called upon to deliver even more - passive income.

Where before they were developed to be the storefront of my nursery where plants could be ordered and paid for online, and delivered by mail, now the sites have to have more options to give visitors like you meaningful information, in easy to obtain ways, so it's right at their fingertips.

The concept of the many E-Books on both sites is now front and center. Other ways of monetizing will be developed over the next few years.

With many visitors from across the globe, all eager for snippets of information, interesting pages of succulent plant and rustic craft tutorials, the possibilities are endless.

If this sounds like something you've always wanted to do, but felt it was above your capabilities, you're in the right place. Find out more about it here:

Today is the First Day of the rest of your life

Still have questions? You can go right to source and get answers here: Ask a question (PS: this is the real deal - if I can do it, so can you!)