There are better and more honest tools out there

Hi Bryan, and thanks for your honest review.

We understand you have particular criticisms of SBI!, and while some of those might be valid from your perspective, this is a forum to discuss bizXpress, so we’ll try to address those concerns exclusively.

SiteSell has never been “hostile” toward WordPress. We have always maintained that WP is a great way to manage content, but that for building an online business, it is incomplete.

We had never meant to imply that WordPress simply can’t accommodate a web business, only that out of the box, it would be beyond the scope of the typical user’s knowledge.

As a company, we’re proud of the success rate of our methodology. And while every system of site building is repeatedly tested by a constantly changing web, our sites have held up remarkably well.

That’s not however, to say that our customers are immune to the downturns that have plagued millions of others due to algorithm changes and consolidating markets. Of course it has happened.

But the core of bizXpress is very confidently built around a system that continues to work extremely well for thousands of our customers.

bizXpress is defined (partly by WordPress itself) as a “Software as a Service”. It was subject to a rigorous approval process in order to be listed here and we worked very hard to comply with this directory’s stringent guidelines. If at any time WordPress though we were violating either the spirit or the letter of their terms, we would not have been allowed to list here.

That said, your complaint is something we’re taking seriously. People have asked us about the plugin’s architecture and have wondered openly about whether bizXpress is a “proper” WordPress plugin.

We went to great pains to provide the most up-to-date and positive user experience we could create, while still complying with WordPress plugin best practices and guidelines. We felt that releasing bizXpress in this way allowed us to keep our resources and tools as current as they can be without a constant barrage of update nags. (As our knowledge base is updated weekly if not daily.)

And while we could have built an API with which to access our information programmatically, it wouldn’t have improved the user experience in any noticeable way.

Furthermore, we’ve created bizXpress to fit the needs of those who have yet to start their own WordPress site. This means making these resources available in the same form, accessible from any browser. And since we didn’t want folks to have to content with 2 separate products, accounts or logins, we tailored bizXpress in this way so either inside or outside of WordPress, the experience would be seamless and consistent.

Regarding the Lite limitations – again, we worked hard to build the most value we could into the Lite version with the aim that it would demonstrate usefulness on its own to everyone who installs it, yet still save our premium features for the Pro version. We’re in a constant process of evaluation and if customers consistently ask for changes, we take those requests seriously – including yours.

While Brainstorm It! does utilize some WordTracker data, it’s not simply a rebranding of WT’s tools. Far from it. BI! is the product of thousands of person-hours pulling in an array of technologies that work in concert to deliver incredibly relevant data. It’s not just cheerleading – our keyword tool doesn’t have an equal in the market.

Regarding the article “6 Big Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your Site…”, we’d like to thank you for pointing it out to us. We’re very sorry for the erroneous information, and feel you deserve an explanation.

A significant portion of the bizXpress knowledge base was taken from our existing article pool. Many of the articles directly reference SBI!, the site-building product you referred to earlier in your comment. We wanted to apply all of our existing, relevant content from that pool to bizXpress. Unfortunately, these conversions were done by hand and were subject to human error.

We don’t want to dismiss this simply as “we made a mistake, it’s been corrected”. This particular article was converted among a batch of hundreds of others with a common mandate to convert all product references to bizXpress. Of course, this mandate missed something very important – context. And for that, we apologize.

And to further impart just how seriously we think this is, we acknowledge that the erroneous article may appear downright misleading. Please believe that it was never our intention to release false information. This one slipped by our QA process.

Thanks Bryan, for helping us build a better product.

– The bizXpress Team

BizXpress,

I’ll point out up front I’m neither pro nor con SiteSell or SBI. Any mention I made of your company’s other products are highly relevant to my review of this product. As stated at the beginning of my review, I was drawn to your other product at one time in the past, but the inability to use WordPress and have your tools together was the dealbreaker for me. I, and people reading this review, need those references for context to make the most sense of my review. I would have never even considered trying BizXpress if I weren’t aware of its connection to SiteSell and SBI. Since BizXpress appears to be a divorcing of your SEO tools and methodology from your proprietary site development platform (in my mind a good thing since I was unwilling to buy into your proprietary system), I don’t think it’s a healthy discussion to completely refuse to discuss SBI here if you want to convince people in this community (myself included) that your product is worth $150 a year in comparison to other tools available on the market.

I’ve got a series of questions I’ll ask below to give you the chance to clarify, and perhaps change my mind and other prospective users reading this review.

Regarding my mention of the action guide and SBI customers being Google-slapped strictly adhering to the SBI version of the action guide, I’ve got a few questions. How does the bizXpress action guide differ from the SBI action guide? Please be specific. There’s plenty of documentation out there of disgruntled SiteSell customers who saw their traffic and income evaporate after Panda & Penguin. In fairness this happened to many regardless of platform. However, it is very relevant for prospective customers of bizXpress. If you seek to minimize the concerns of customers who followed your system and saw their business collapse, you can’t expect people to see your company as one of integrity and trustworthiness. Additionally, if the bizXpress action guide isn’t significantly different from the SBI action guide, and isn’t innovative in the post Panda & Penguin world, you’re expecting a generally saavy WP community to buy into a system that is proven in the old world of SEO but not today’s. Without giving lite users full access to the whole action guide, instead of just 30% of it, users can’t really get a good idea of how relevant your method is in today’s world without making a $150 gamble. I know your method has been historically effective since I’ve repeatedly stumbled upon your customers ranking highly with quality content when searching for content for personal use. But in today’s environment, you can’t validly claim what worked then works and is proven today. Convince me, and prospective customers, that bizXpress isn’t just your old system recycled and that you’ve put deep thought into making your bizXpress work in todays SEO environment.

Regarding the tools themselves. You state: “While Brainstorm It! does utilize some WordTracker data, it’s not simply a rebranding of WT’s tools. Far from it. BI! is the product of thousands of person-hours pulling in an array of technologies that work in concert to deliver incredibly relevant data. It’s not just cheerleading – our keyword tool doesn’t have an equal in the market.” Perhaps my suggestion you just rebrand WordTracker tools wasn’t specific enough. You clearly use their data within your own unique interfaces, with your own branding, and your own terminology. I’d concede that your tools probably integrate other data sources as you state. Here’s what matters though. Are you claiming that your tools are so unique that the WP community can’t use other tools to obtain equally “incredibly relevant data” and perform critical decision making obtained by those tools? Are you suggesting users of WordTracker, SEO Powersuite, or any of the other popular tools can’t arrive at highly relevant data for niche selection & keyword research? If you are claiming your tool is superior to all other tools on the market, i.e. “doesn’t have an equal in the market”, then please explain specifically the competetive advantages of your toolset over the competitions. If you can do so, you’ll probably be able to gain my business and that of many more in the WordPress community. If you can’t demonstrate specifically how your service and tools are superior, most here will decide your words are vague hype without substance. Give us substance and win us over.

Regarding the content problem I brought to light. I appreciate your explanation and concession this was a mistake. At the same time, it brings more questions and concerns to mind. If it had been an issue of machine filtering content to swap out SBI for bizXpress, one could understand how this slipped by. But for a human to do so by hand is even more egregious. Unless the person just mindlessly combed content for “SBI” and literally just plugged in “bizXpress”, there’s no way they could not have noticed the contextual differences & consequences. Perhaps more concerning is your admission that you wanted to recycle a large amount of content for use in bizXpress. As I’ve already pointed out, it seriously matters to me and others that you demonstrate you’ve made a concentrated effort to not rest on past successes and evolve your methodology to reflect today’s SEO realities. You’ve admitted to rebranding content without any consideration of context within the content itself. This is also a tacit admission that your content reflects old realities, and doesn’t appear to even attempt to address today’s realities. Sure, I noticed you have a content section that mentions Panda.

Show us that, on the whole, you’ve adjusted your entire system, action guide, and content to be successful in the post Panda & Penguin world. Claims of past success in the old world won’t cut it in this saavy community. You need to show us how you’re evolving to make your customers succeed today and tomorrow. If you can do that, you’ll win our business. If not, my instinct will remain to say “run away!”.

bizXpress, I’m still hoping you are willing to answer my above questions with specifics and not vagaries. Please give specifics to convince us of the superiority of your product, and that you are putting serious effort into helping your customers succeed in today’s SEO environment.

I also want to ask you to respond with specifics to the very fair review by KeepitReal titled “Disingenuous at best”. The two things in that review I especially want to see addressed, WITH Specifics, are as follows:

That reviewer has a very valid point about basing one’s business model on a complete reliance on dominating organic search traffic, which your method seems to do. If it is an accurate assessment that your method does rely principally on organic search traffic please explain why you think that is a superior model in today’s SEO environment. If your method doesn’t depend completely on organic search, or you are moving away from depending completely on organic search traffic, please explain specifics of what your model does emphasize to succeed in today’s SEO and online marketing environment.

The second issue I’d like to see addressed from the “Disinginuous at Best” review is your company’s commitment to making bizXpress the best tool possible for WordPress users. The reviewer referred to statements by Ken Evoy on SiteSell forums intimating that bizXpress is only a vehicle to raise capital to better fund the SBI service, and that he has no intention of fully developing the bizXpress plugin & service. I’ve seen reference to those comments by Evoy in other venues as well, with the bizXpress plugin not referred to as a useful plugin, but rather a “free trial”, and that Evoy has no intention to put money into “developing a real plugin” which would suggest even he doesn’t view the current plugin as a fully functional plugin. The whole argument over whether this current plugin should be considered a plugin has been authoritatively answered by moderators here. I want you to state your intentions regarding your commitment to WP users and further depeloping the plugin, service, and model to the changing SEO environment and user’s needs.

Again, I’m inviting you to win us over with specifics! Have at it!

For everybody reading reviews, apparently BizXpress isn’t willing to substantiate their claims made in this thread and answer sincere questions if they’re hard questions. They jumped on a response to my initial review with lightning speed, I assume for damage control. The system here notifies posters of new posts in a thread they’re part of, so I can’t imagine they don’t know of my multiple responses and rounds of questions. It appears they know they don’t have any valid answers to any of my very sincere and valid concerns & questions, so are choosing to ignore my inquiries. Considering this is a public forum they apparently hoped to be a primary sales channel, it’s surprising they would take this approach. Their silence seems to validate my initial gut reaction of “RUN AWAY”! If you’re out there somewhere with substantive honest answers BizXpress, we’re listening.

I agree SoCal Bryan. I have been waiting for SiteSell to come back with some kind of SPECIFIC details about how this plugin and its teachings are any different than their other product (other than the obvious fact it’s for WordPress).

I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt but it’s hard.

But if you are just copying and pasting content from the old guide with a few updates here and there and throwing them into this plugin (that’s not even a plugin, mind you) then this is a disgrace — especially if you want so much money for the paid version.

Come on SiteSell, you at least owe that to us as potential future customers and/or affiliates. Why wouldn’t you want to clarify unless of course you cannot prove this is any different and you worry that commenting will just make things worse than they already have?

My guess is that SiteSell has to tread very carefully with this plugin. They cannot put too much focus and money into it because they’ve poo-pooed WordPress for so many years, they have to be careful about coming across as a hypocrite just to earn extra money.

Ironically I’m guessing the whole purpose of this plugin was to gain new customers from a different audience, but it’s actually hurting them as a whole because the WP community will be mad this isn’t a real plugin and ex SBIers see what’s going on.

They would have been better off just improving their existing platform by improving their traffic building help and incorporating WordPress. But then again that would mean going back on a lot of their criticism of WP and it wouldn’t look good to their current customer base who would be wondering why the change of tune all of a sudden.

A slippery slope indeed and I think they know that. But here’s your chance to set the record straight, SiteSell. Let’s hear it! If you want this plugin to drive more business for you, now is your chance to sell us on it.

Since BizXpress appears to be blatantly ignoring my sincere questions and inquiries in this thread, I’ve commented on their two YouTube marketing videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XBbTxtGjx8 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aITcmogy1VM ) suggesting viewers read this thread and the “Disingenuous at Best” review thread, and challenging SiteSell to substantiate their claims made here and answer my questions with specifics and substance. The videos reference “proven” methods, tools, and education, and suggest Brainstorm It will allow users to “dominate search results”. These are some of the exact vagaries I’ve asked them to substantiate here given the great upheaval created by Google algorithm changes. SiteSell, your methods were proven in the old SEO world, but win us over with substance explaining why your methods, tools, and education are valid in today’s world, why we should believe your service is better than the competition (as you clearly asserted), how you have adjusted your methods, tools, and education to fit the new realities, and how deep is your commitment to WordPress users.

If you visit the bizXpress website, you’ll see they are using vimeo versions of their promotional videos instead of YouTube. On Vimeo they can lock out comments, negative reviews, and thumbs down that are possible with YouTube. On Vimeo only positive feedback via “like” can get through. Convenient. It seems they’re trying to insulate themselves from the overwhelmingly negative reviews their product has received, and from difficult inquiries like mine.

In a comment above, I mention commenting on BizXpress YouTube promotional videos in an attempt to bring them back to this conversation they are blatantly avoiding. Within 24 hours of doing so, they again responded with lightning speed, but now labeling me a troll and stating while they were busy with an attempt to get answers for me (really a month wasn’t enough?) my latest comments show I’m disingenuine and they won’t converse with me. I responded refuting that claim and asking them to engage substantively in the conversation here. see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XBbTxtGjx8

Here are their comments and my reply for reference:

SiteSell

Bryan, I left your first comment and was actually trying to get you an answer. But then you copy and pasted the same thing to another of our videos and now this. You obviously do not care about a resolution, but are simply trolling. We won’t play those games.?
Reply ·

Bryan

Pretty convenient to call me a troll and avoid substantive responses to issues I and others have raised in the WordPress repository. You responded with lightning speed to my initial review there. When I asked you to substantiate some of your claims and answer some difficult but sincere product questions you left the conversation and have ignored repeated attempts at dialogue for over a month. Don’t pretend you were unaware because the WP repository notifies you of comments in the thread. So it is because I genuinely do want answers and resolution that I brought the conversation to your promotional videos to prod you to answer. And it worked since you again responded with lightning speed! Rather than call me a troll and using it as an excuse to avoid a substantive conversation, can you now please address the issues and questions in the review threads I reference in my comments here??

SoCal Bryan, this thread looks like it’s getting derailed.

They just began to engage the YouTube comments I mention above, and the person responding there claimed to be unaware of the thread here. I am asking them to request the responsible person to re-engage here. Could you please give it time instead of locking it?

Hi SoCal Bryan.

I apologize for not getting back to you. It looks like this thread and others fell between the cracks while we worked on content development for bizXpress, and marketing efforts.

I’m pasting in each of your questions, and replying to each one before moving on to the next one.

—

Regarding my mention of the action guide and SBI customers being Google-slapped strictly adhering to the SBI version of the action guide, I’ve got a few questions. How does the bizXpress action guide differ from the SBI action guide? Please be specific. There’s plenty of documentation out there of disgruntled SiteSell customers who saw their traffic and income evaporate after Panda & Penguin. In fairness this happened to many regardless of platform. However, it is very relevant for prospective customers of bizXpress. If you seek to minimize the concerns of customers who followed your system and saw their business collapse, you can’t expect people to see your company as one of integrity and trustworthiness.

Reply: Many of the SBI! customers who were Google-slapped weren’t, unfortunately, strictly adhering to the Action Guide. We can’t force people to write excellent content that provides a lot of value to visitors. And thus, many SBIers were penalized by one or more of the Panda algo updates. Many others did their own thing regarding link-building, overdoing it at Yahoo! Answers, or buying a directory submission package that listed their site at hundreds of low-value directories. Again, we can’t make people only find good links to their site. And thus, many SBIers were penalized by Penguin.

You didn’t mention anything about the data mining, and thousands of hours of work done by volunteer SBIers to help us come up with ways to undo some of the Panda and Penguin damage. Those SBIers who followed our recommendations more often than not regained some or most of that lost traffic.

Our research from a year ago also determined that Google had overshot on both Panda and Penguin penalties, damaging far more sites than they should have. The latest Penguin algo updates, and Panda 4.0, confirm that yes, indeed, there were far too many false positives for even Google to be comfortable with. And now, many of the sites that were penalized are seeing traffic increases. Part of that is due to the work they did to improve content or clean out low-value, unnatural links. The rest is due to Google coming to its senses, something we told SBIers that Google would have to do eventually. That time is now.

—

Additionally, if the bizXpress action guide isn’t significantly different from the SBI action guide, and isn’t innovative in the post Panda & Penguin world, you’re expecting a generally saavy WP community to buy into a system that is proven in the old world of SEO but not today’s. Without giving lite users full access to the whole action guide, instead of just 30% of it, users can’t really get a good idea of how relevant your method is in today’s world without making a $150 gamble. I know your method has been historically effective since I’ve repeatedly stumbled upon your customers ranking highly with quality content when searching for content for personal use. But in today’s environment, you can’t validly claim what worked then works and is proven today. Convince me, and prospective customers, that bizXpress isn’t just your old system recycled and that you’ve put deep thought into making your bizXpress work in todays SEO environment.

Reply: The SBI! Action Guide, and the bizXpress version, both go into great detail about the need to go beyond just creating content on your site. One day of the Action Guide is devote to finding traffic for your site. Search engine traffic is one portion of that page. We also discuss social media, including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, and RSS. And our articles feature dozens of articles on social media, including 24 for Facebook, 6 for Twitter, 8 for Pinterest, and four on Google+ and authorship. So you can hardly say that we expound an over-reliance on search engine traffic. Given that search engine traffic is usually the biggest traffic driver to just about any site (otherwise, why do so many sites plummet with every new Google update), we can’t simply ignore that aspect of traffic “to be relevant.” Search traffic is completely relevant. It’s just changed a bit, and then only since Hummingbird came out last year.

—

Regarding the tools themselves. You state: “While Brainstorm It! does utilize some WordTracker data, it’s not simply a rebranding of WT’s tools. Far from it. BI! is the product of thousands of person-hours pulling in an array of technologies that work in concert to deliver incredibly relevant data. It’s not just cheerleading – our keyword tool doesn’t have an equal in the market.” Perhaps my suggestion you just rebrand WordTracker tools wasn’t specific enough. You clearly use their data within your own unique interfaces, with your own branding, and your own terminology. I’d concede that your tools probably integrate other data sources as you state. Here’s what matters though. Are you claiming that your tools are so unique that the WP community can’t use other tools to obtain equally “incredibly relevant data” and perform critical decision making obtained by those tools? Are you suggesting users of WordTracker, SEO Powersuite, or any of the other popular tools can’t arrive at highly relevant data for niche selection & keyword research? If you are claiming your tool is superior to all other tools on the market, i.e. “doesn’t have an equal in the market”, then please explain specifically the competetive advantages of your toolset over the competition’s. If you can do so, you’ll probably be able to gain my business and that of many more in the WordPress community. If you can’t demonstrate specifically how your service and tools are superior, most here will decide your words are vague hype without substance. Give us substance and win us over.

Reply: I’m not sure where you read the bit about Brainstorm It! and WordTracker, so I can’t comment on what it says. However, here’s what I can tell you: Brainstorm It! uses WordTracker data, Amazon product search (keyword) search data, and our own data based on the hundreds of thousands of keywords that searchers have used to find SBI! sites over the years. Yes, that particular data stream is slowing because of Google’s [not provided], but Bing and Yahoo! still send traffic to SBI! sites, as they send traffic to your site, and millions more around the world. So we continue to have demand data to combine with WordTracker and Amazon demand data.

And our supply data isn’t just a quick peek at Google to see how many pages it says it found containing a particular keyword. Probably 95% of all those pages Google finds aren’t about that keyword; it just happens to be there in the content, perhaps to gain some long-tail keyword traffic. Our supply algorithm discounts pages where the keyword isn’t the main focus of the page. Why? Because any page that’s not about that keyword isn’t competition for your or my page that is about that keyword. Do any other brainstorming tools take into account that most of the competition isn’t really competition at all?

Of course, we think Brainstorm It! is better than any other product out there. Just as every WordPress managed hosting service thinks its offerings are better than their competitions. But do we think that you won’t succeed unless you use bizXpress? No, we don’t. We just think it will give you a better chance with demand and supply numbers that don’t deceive and, at the same time, don’t give you false hope.

—

Regarding the content problem I brought to light. I appreciate your explanation and concession this was a mistake. At the same time, it brings more questions and concerns to mind. If it had been an issue of machine filtering content to swap out SBI for bizXpress, one could understand how this slipped by. But for a human to do so by hand is even more egregious. Unless the person just mindlessly combed content for “SBI” and literally just plugged in “bizXpress”, there’s no way they could not have noticed the contextual differences & consequences. Perhaps more concerning is your admission that you wanted to recycle a large amount of content for use in bizXpress. As I’ve already pointed out, it seriously matters to me and others that you demonstrate you’ve made a concentrated effort to not rest on past successes and evolve your methodology to reflect today’s SEO realities. You’ve admitted to rebranding content without any consideration of context within the content itself. This is also a tacit admission that your content reflects old realities, and doesn’t appear to even attempt to address today’s realities. Sure, I noticed you have a content section that mentions Panda.

Reply: I, the person replying to you today, was the person who converted all of the content, when conversion was relevant. Many of our articles weren’t relevant to bizXpress users. Those weren’t added. Many more, including our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ articles, not to mention articles about how to write, how to create a hierarchy of content, and other topics, are evergreen content, applicable to anyone creating content for a site that they’re turning into a business.

Others in the content marketing world talk about the same principles, using different terms. Brian Clark calls it cornerstone content. Others call it foundation content. Whatever the name, it’s content that rarely changes. The specifics might change, but the theory, the why’s, don’t change much.

And yes, mea culpa. I made a decision, which, in retrospect, was made with poor judgment. While I did copy and paste for the most part, I also re-read every article to make sure that what it explained was current and relevant. Please don’t blame the product for my error in judgment.

—

Show us that, on the whole, you’ve adjusted your entire system, action guide, and content to be successful in the post Panda & Penguin world. Claims of past success in the old world won’t cut it in this saavy community. You need to show us how you’re evolving to make your customers succeed today and tomorrow. If you can do that, you’ll win our business. If not, my instinct will remain to say “run away!”.

Reply:

I hope the above addresses your concerns. If you need more info, please reply here. I’ll be following this thread so that I don’t miss any follow-up questions from anyone. Especially not for 4 months or more!

bizxpress, I had completely forgotten about you and this thread until I received an email from SBI this week stating you are clearing your email lists and I’d have to opt in to continue receiving emails… something I never opted into in the first place as mentioned in my original review.

You say I slipped through the cracks for 3 months. That’s a bit hard to believe considering your person handling your YouTube and Vimeo channels began a direct interaction with me about my comments there trying to get you to respond to this thread 3 months ago. Since my comments were apparently damaging to your messaging, that person locked all comments to your channels, labeled me a troll before locking comments, claimed to know nothing about the thread here, but committed to informing proper personnel to follow-up. My suspicion (may or may not be valid) is that release of Panda 4 gave you some cover in your responses above.

Really? The Google slapping of a reportedly very large percentage of your customer base was their own faults and Google’s fault? Your system is just as effective and proven as ever, it’s just that Google screwed up and a vast amount of your customers did too? I don’t buy it after everything I’ve mentioned above in this thread.

I do notice that you pick and choose which aspects of my above questions to which you’re willing to respond. You left a lot unanswered. I’m not going to step through your responses or press for real answers to the more challenging bits because it no longer matters to me. The whole experience has reinforced my initial statement in my opening review to recommend people reading these reviews “run away” from your product and your company. I honestly don’t trust you, and ended up purchasing Link Assistant’s SEO Powersuite for some great tools from a company that appears to be very proactive about assisting their customers navigate changes in the SEO environment and evolving realities.

You’re right, Bryan. There’s nothing I could say to you, even if I used 1,000 words to answer each complaint you have, that would make any difference at all since you believe that I’ve lied to you.

So let’s both consider this thread closed and move on with our lives.

done