bizxpress

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.

Hi Godigital.

I’m glad that bizXpress is giving you an advantage over others in your niche. Remember that you can ask questions in the forums about WordPress-related topics, or any other topics about building a successful online business.

Hi Ken.

Well, yes, you will miss out on a lot by not installing the plugin. You get access to Brainstorm It!, all of our documentation, and our Support team, from one location, your WordPress installation.

You also get our forum newsfeed, after you activate the feed reader widget and then set it up in your dashboard. That newsfeed is where we let bizXpress users know about all of our new articles, and other updates, like the one I did a few days ago about the new version of the Jetpack plugin, which is a big improvement over the old one.

Hi Tigris.

I’m from Canada, and I’m still not used to the American way of saying “niche.” But then, people make fun of my “out and about.”

I’m glad you’re finding bizXpress a valuable tool to help you succeed with WordPress this time.

Hi Melagali.

I’m glad that you’re finding bizXpress useful in your WordPress venture. I’ll disagree slightly with your comment about it not being for seasoned entrepreneurs. I’d add that it’s not for successful, seasoned entrepreneurs. Given that there are over 50 million sites built with WordPress, and most are traffic and income failures, being seasoned doesn’t necessarily equate with successful.

Hi Sparkles.

I’m glad that you’re finding bizXpress helpful. Our intention is to provide a path for WordPress users to follow that can help them be successful. Well over 50 million sites are powered by WordPress, and most are dismal failures when it comes to traffic generation and income production. bizXpress (the tools and the information) will help you become one of WP webmasters who are successful at creating an online business.

Hi Tin Man.

Our CEO is in the process of developing a 10 part (likely closer to 15) series on creating a physical product for sale. But not just a product for sale. A product that will succeed. It doesn’t take much thought, planning or development to come up with a product that fails. So his series starts right at the beginning, with how find ideas for products.

We already have a series on digital products, which is being converted into articles to follow.

I’ll be adding the digital products series to the bizXpress content library as soon as they’re available, and adding the physical products series as soon as it’s completed.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

Hi Balagoplan.

If you downloaded the plugin, then you have to upload it via the WordPress Plugins page. Click on Plugins in the admin panel on the left. Click on the Upload link in the row of links at the top of the page. Select the ZIP file from your computer and upload it.

When you see the message that the plugin has been installed successfully, click on the link to activate the plugin.

You can also install the bizXpress plugin directly in your WordPress installation. Click on Plugins in the admin panel on the left. Select Add New.

In the search box, type in bizXpress. Click on Install Now, next to the Details link.

That will install the plugin. When that’s done, click on the link to activate the plugin.

If both those methods don’t work for you, the final option is to upload the files to your WP folder at your host.

Unzip the files. Log into your host and go to the FTP option. Or use your own FTP software.

You want to upload the files to wp-content/plugins. Once you’re in the plugins directory, upload the entire folder. If you can’t upload the folder, duplicate one of the existing plugin folders. Rename it to bizxpress. Open the folder and delete ALL of the files inside that folder. Then upload all of the bizxpress files from your computer to the new bizxpress folder. Once they’re all installed, return to your WP admin and activate the plugin.

I hope that helps. If you can’t get the plugin activated with any of the above methods, contact your host’s support and ask them to check if anything is restricted in your setup.

Jeff

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

Thank you for the advice. I am of the view that our brainstormer is second-to-none and represents tremendous user-value, with features that cannot be found anywhere else. It’s a business-grade tool which delivers incredible market intelligence. This being said, I respect your opinion.

In my humble opinion, the brainstormer is an industrial-grade keyword research tool, which compares with tools two or three times more expensive than it (re: keyword supply, demand and profitability for hundreds of millions of keywords, “groups” feature, 5,000 limit, etc). I believe, by itself, the brainstormer justifies the investment in Pro. On the other hand, if your needs are met with the available free keyword research tools and you don’t require our service’s business-building guidance and training, that’s great … then bizXpress may not be for you. ??

Hi, Daniel, here – SiteSell’s CEO -. I don’t send anyone to discredit reviews nor do I condone that behavior. Bonafide criticism is useful, as it helps make our service better for the benefit of all users … So, thank you for your reviews!

Hi kentaiwan98, and thanks for your feedback.

The choice to integrate vs. link out was a difficult one. In the end, it came down to providing the best information for the end user. Our knowledge base is updated on an almost daily basis, and development of Brainstorm It! is ongoing. We decided that it was better for users (like you) to link out in order to keep the plugin as current as possible, without prompting you to upgrade every time we add to a resource.

Technologies change on a dime and we’re committed to offering the most up-to-date product in the market. This method was our very best option.

Despite your critique, we hope you derive great value from bizXpress and that our service can help you grow your web business.

Thanks again!