About me - Robin Green

How and why I built my energy efficiency website

Hi - I'm Robin Green, and you might think my last name is no coincidence! I've been an avid recycler, bicycler, and renewable energy geek since the age of 15, when I collected neighbors' newspapers to drop off at the fire station, biked an hour to school, and built my own wind generator.

I've worked hard to make my 90-year old Toronto home more efficient, with new windows, a high efficiency furnace. I gutted and reinsulated three bedrooms. As a family we cut our electricity bill to 1/6 the local average.

I've also worked for the same company for 25 years. When the company moved out to the suburbs, my bicycle commute went from 20 minutes to an hour. So I switched to an electric bike!

It costs me 4 cents of electricity to get to work - green, carbon neutral electricity of course - and keeps me fit without wearing me out!

Wanting to make a difference

I used to worry a lot about climate change. Every week there's more bad news about melting polar ice caps, dying species, record heat waves.

I knew saving energy would help, but what difference can one family make? And I felt bad that my work wasn't making the world a better place.

If only I could turn my personal passion for saving energy into something to help others do the same!

A year off work leads to a new idea

In mid 2008, my wife and I decided to take time off work. We felt our kids would benefit from a year abroad, so we headed to Costa Rica.

But I needed something to keep me busy while the kids were in school. That's them on the right, their tiny school in the background.

I thought, why not use my own experience saving energy at home, to write energy efficiency articles, and get them published on the Web?

In the first months, my site grows by leaps and bounds

Six weeks into my year off, in mid August 2008, the first pages went live on my own website, and visitors started to trickle in. By October more than 1,000 visitors had dropped by, and another 3,000 in November alone.

By June 2009, I was getting 1,000 visitors per day, who found me through the search engines or from links originating on other sites. They consulted over 200 pages of energy efficiency articles I had written - some were simple Q&A pages, while others provided detailed information on particular energy saving techniques, appliances. or home upgrades.

What thrills me the most is that through my site I have helped thousands of people make their homes more energy efficient - people I've never even met!

Making my passion make a difference

As of June 2010 I've had over 600,000 visitors. If just 1% of them use my site to cut their energy use by 1%, I've helped save more energy than my house uses in 60 years!

That's one reason this hobby is so satisfying - I'm using my passion to make a bigger difference than by just doing efficiency upgrades in my own home.

And I'm making making money making a difference! I average about six cents per visitor in earnings from advertising and product sales - enough to cover site operating expenses and pay me a decent reward for my efforts!

What's your motivation for wanting to save energy?

You probably came to my energy efficiency website for one of two reasons:

You want to save money on energy, because energy costs keep rising, and you'd rather spend your money on other things.

You aspire to a greener lifestyle, and you know that cutting your energy use will help address issues like climate change and smog alerts.

In other words, you're here to save money, or to make a difference.

Well, how about a way to make money and make a difference at the same time?

Maybe YOU have a website in you too!

Some people shy away from the idea of starting their own website because they don't think they have any worthwhile expertise.

Technically I'm no expert. I have a BA in Literature and didn't do high school physics. But I've been saving energy in my own home for years.

That's all the expertise you need to start your own website.

Experience: helpful. Expertise: optional!

Writing web content isn't as hard as you think

It's not hard to write a web page people find helpful, once you have a topic in mind. Do research online, then write up your new knowledge from your own perspective.

You don't even need prior writing experience: just pretend you're talking to a friend, but instead of speaking the words, type them into your computer.

Good writing is just that: a chat with a friend.

Putting up a website, on the other hand, can be daunting. Finding a profitable topic is crucial, and most people get that wrong. Drawing visitors to your site is hard. Then you have to turn visitors into income.

Even a beginner can succeed
with the right tools and a logical process

I overcame these obstacles, and built my traffic and web income rapidly, thanks to a service called Site Build It!. SBI! helps you decide on a profitable concept, and write pages that get lots of traffic. It helps you turn growing traffic into a growing income stream. And you can do it without knowing HTML, or search engine optimization, or web servers. Site Build It! takes care of all that.

If you've ever dreamed of making money on something you feel passionate about, I suggest you read my detailed Site Build It! review.

You might be as surprised as I was when I started out - maybe there's a money-making website in you too!

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