SBI isn't about building a website. It's about building a web based business.

If you have the education to build pages, and all you need to know is how to get traffic, then yeah, I would say build a free site and find tuts and articles on how to get traffic to it.

But if you want to build a business and draw an income from that traffic in the most lucrative ways possible....I would say invest the $300. The forums are worth the $300 alone.