Last week I received a note from a friend on twitter asking me if I had heard anything about a new product called Syte Black. Since I had not heard anything about it, I asked a few questions and was intrigued by the concept.
What Is Syte Black?
In a nutshell, Syte Black is an application (or tool) that has been designed to create a complete website, including integration with affiliate programs from ClickBank, AdSense, and Amazon, in a matter of minutes.
According to the official website, Syte Black is described as:
It will be your own ready-made money making website with cutting edge features and super-sleek graphics. No need to put up with an ugly website anymore!
Syte Black is being billed as a “set it and forget it” type situation, at least in terms of the website itself as you will still need to spend time (and money) promoting your new site. However, I wanted to know more about it and if I thought it would really work to make me money.
Sounds Interesting, But I Want To See It
The product doesn’t officially launch until December 11th, so even if I was entertaining the idea of purchasing it to use as an experiment, I was out of luck. However, I quickly had the idea that people might be jumping at the chance to buy this product so I signed up to be an affiliate.
That same night that I learned of the product, I had taken one of my domains and created a Syte Black splash page and linked it up to my affiliate link. In addition, I signed on with Google AdWords to do a little promotion of my splash page in the hopes of landing a few affiliate sales that would cover the cost of the product if I wanted to make a purchase.
After giving it more thought, I wasn’t content to sit back and wait without knowing more about the product. So I fired off an email to the creator of the software, Adam Carn, and asked him if he would be interested in providing me a copy to review. He agreed and I now had a chance to see what Syte Black was all about.
Getting Started
Syte Black is a breeze to get started, as I simply had to unzip the package to my local system and launch the EXE of the main program. Once the tool fires up, there is one simple screen that is standing between you and your new website (and theoretically your Interweb riches).
It is a little difficult to see in the screen above, but there are four basic fields that you need to get started: domain name, ClickBank ID, AdSense publisher code, and Amazon affiliate ID.
Once you enter these values, which if you have not yet signed up with each affiliate program you will need to do so, you are ready to start on the values for your new site. There are seven preset categories, or pages, for your site and you only need to enter a page description, keywords, and a link to content. For the content, Syte Black is setup to pull in content from Article Dashboard so you simply need to visit the website and select articles that you feel will be relevant to the topic of the page.
After entering in all of this information, simply clicking the “Modify Files” button begins the process of inserting your affiliate information into each page and integrating the content articles that you had selected.
Publishing Your Website
With the modifications completed, you have two options on how to actually publish your new site:
- Open your own FTP tool and transfer the files to your host manually.
- Enter your domain name, username, and password into the tool and click the “Upload Files” button.
Personally, I opted to manually upload the files to my hosting account on my own. Since that is a process that I do on a regular basis, I felt it was just as easy as entering all of the information into the Syte Black tool.
In just a few short minutes, I had created and published a Syte Black sample site that has my affiliate information completely integrated.
Sure, But Can It Really Make Me Money?
This is the question that we all really want answered - can Syte Black live up to the claims and generate a “money making website”?
While the site looks acceptable, particularly for something created so easily, and I believe the site will make some money - I have doubts on how much money it will make.
Of the three types of revenue built into the site, only one, ClickBank is going to make you much on a per-action basis. While I believe in using AdSense and Amazon affiliate links, the fact is that they each require a large number of clicks and/or purchases to generate a considerable amount of money.
So what does that mean?
Well, as with any other site, the ability to earn money with a Syte Black generated website is really going to come down to how well you can drive traffic to the site. Without high traffic volume, I just don’t see how this website is going to generate any type of income.
However, the real appeal of Syte Black is how easy it is to build a website and have it published to your host. It really is a matter of minutes, with the most time being spent trying to find relevant articles, until you can have a new website, complete with three sources of potential revenue, created and published.
If the idea of creating your own website is too daunting for you, then you might find this tool to be useful. However, if you are comfortable with writing code and creating your own site, you might be better served by continuing to do the work on your own.
Final Thoughts And Impressions
In terms of what Syte Black was designed to do - quickly and easily build a website with integrated revenue streams - it does the job fairly well.
However, there are a few things that I think could be improved upon, such as allowing the user the option to set their own categories and using a dynamic layout with CSS styling as opposed to an HTML table layout. In addition, having a site with free content from a site like Article Dashboard means it will be more difficult to rank well in the search engines.
Personally, I don’t feel that Syte Black is the right tool for me but that is because I have a technical background and am comfortable with designing my own website and writing code. As a matter of fact, I have created sites (SpicyTechDeals.com and CheapTechPrices.com) that are somewhat similar to what you get with Syte Black.
Given that this tool is aimed more at beginners and/or people without the technical knowledge of creating their own site, I do think that Syte Black has its purpose. If you don’t know how to create a site, and either don’t want to take the time to learn or hire someone to do it for you, then you might find Syte Black useful.
Of course, you need to keep in mind that your ability to earn money with your Syte Black website will depend on how much traffic you can bring into your site. But ultimately that is true whether you have created the site on your own or with the assistance of Syte Black.
If you do decide to give Syte Black a try, I’d welcome you to purchase the tool via my Syte Black affiliate link.
Not Convinced? How Would You Like A Free Copy Of Syte Black?
In talking to the creator of Syte Black, I asked if he would be willing to sponsor a contest here on the blog to give one of my readers a free copy of Syte Black.
If you’d like to get your hands on a copy that you can use to test, simply leave a comment below letting me know why you would like to try Syte Black.
I’ll select one winner at random on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 (meaning you need to act quickly if interested).
