"Those were the days"

Still carrying a pencil behind my ear

Hi, My name is Bill Bradley.

I live in Darwin, NT Australia and I am the one man band that created and runs this website. I started it when I retired at the age of 65.

I was born and bred in Lancashire UK where I served five years as a bound apprentice before receiving a large piece of paper in fancy calligraphy and signed under a fat red seal by some old codgers! It stated I was qualified by the "City and Guilds of London Institutes" to practice the trade of Carpentry and Joinery.

I was qualified, (and I gained quite a few other paper qualifications during the next few years) but those bits of paper really mean nothing! They were just a starting point for a wealth of experience... and I reckon I'm still learning and enjoying every minute of it.

I quit my comfortable job and went out on my own, "on the lump" as a subbie carpenter. A year later I did the "ten quid tourist" trip to god's own country, Australia. I never looked back. I got married (she's still here, checking my spelling) and built my first house in 1968.

We formed our own construction company here in Darwin in 1974 and were members of our local Master Builder's Association for twenty-odd years.

The best thing since sliced bread, or How I Built This Site

You may be wondering how an old fart like me who knew nothing about web site building has got this thing up and running. Well I'll tell you.
When I retired at age of 65 I built a little website with the intention of giving back some of my knowledge to the young guys coming along. Much like the stuff that I used to teach my apprentices. (I also thought it would give me something to do and keep me out of the pub.)
You wouldn't believe it, I got absolutely no visitors apart from family and friends. "Blimey" I asked myself , "what's the point if nobody is looking?"

So I did a bit of thinking and a bit of reading and I found out that there are literally millions of website out there, and to get found by other people is not easy, to say the least. I had to tap the mat and admit that I needed help. Looking at a few good websites that I admired and found usually on the first page of Google I realised that they were all using the same web site building program and hosting service. Site Build It. I checked them out and they got me. It was the best thing I ever did, They sure know how to get visitors to a website and that's what it is all about.
They take care of all the technical stuff, and that leaves me to get on with what I do best. Writing about my own particular passion.

They are not by any means a quick fix scheme. The whole process is slow and steady, using well tested ways of making a site that works. Gradually ithe search engines find the site and then they send more and more visitors. They sent you didn't they. :-)

Update mid 2010 I wrote the previous in mid 2007 and so three years later here is more.

My reasons for starting the site were never about making money, and they are still not, but I get a lot of people asking me about the site, how I did it and is it worth it. Some of them are upfront and they ask me if I am making any money out of it, and could they make money out of a site.

Well, I'll give you my take on it. More by accident really I am doing quite well. I have easily doubled my retirement income and we had two eight week holidays overseas last year, Europe and Vietnam, that were paid for by the site.

I started the Google ads {which most people seem to accept these days.} In the expectation of just covering the site expenses, and I would have been happy with that, but hey, nobody knocks back a bit of extra eh?

Now do I think that others do it. Well my answer to that one is if I can, anybody can.
Currently I am getting around 3000 unique visitors a day to the site, with going on for 300,000 pages viewed a month. With those sort of figures anybody can make money.
I can give you lots of information about my little journey on the World Wide Web, but everyone is different, so why not have a look at Site Build It and see for yourself. If you want more details by all means contact me on my contact page.

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