Most website designers believe that a blog is all about how it looks, or all about how it works. That's because a lot of web developers are graphic artists or programmers.
But you and I are marketers, and in today's Internet, really the most important part about a website is what it says, and how clearly it shows that.
Len sent me a message the other day that I thought was worth answering in public.
Mark,
I heard some big internet marketer promoting a self-hosted autoresponder system called "Autoresponse Plus", but I know you use third-party autoresponders. This guy went into all sorts of reasons about being in control of your own marketing and not being at risk by the actions of the service's other clients. Can you clear this up for me, Mark. What should I use? Autoresponse Plus or a hosted service like Aweber?
It just so happens that I have a friend who knows a bit about this issue. His name is Tom Kulzer, and he's the founder of the Aweber autoresponder system.
I wrote Tom and passed along your question, and this is what he said:
I frequently get questions like this from newbie internet marketers. They don't know what shopping cart to use. And usually the question boils down to 1ShoppingCart or Clickbank. Here's how Daniel phrased the question.
Mark, I'm confused and stuck, and don't know what to do. I've received some advice that I should sell my new ebook at Clickbank, but other people say I should use 1ShoppingCart. I've got my ebook nearly done, but I am stuck because I don't know what to do about this. What do YOU think?
Dan
Hi Dan.
Well, I won't give you an answer to use one or the other, but I will help you make your decision by helping you understand what the advantages and disadvantages of each solution are, and what you need to add to create a complete solution.
From my perspective, you need the following abilities for a complete internet marketing setup.
Is that what you need, too? Probably.
John C wrote me the following email. . .
> Hi Mark
>
> I have been looking at your Landing Page Cash Machine site
> for a few days and have a question:
>
> I am in the middle of rebuilding my site(s) with Xsitepro,
> this does a lot of SEO work etc and I wonder whether the
> LPCM program will have a lot else to offer. Give me an honest answer.
>
> John C_____
I had a discussion with a client the other day. We had already built them a website, and designed a set of integrated, cross-pollenating autoresponder series to offer different whitepapers to his visitors. (Cross-Pollenating means that when someone joins one autoresponder series, they'll eventually get a promotion to the other autoresponder series. They all promote the others.)
They spent a considerable amount of time and money developing the whitepapers that are given away in the series, and the subsequent autoresponder messages that dive deeper into the points made in the white papers. It's really an excellent piece of marketing.
The goal of the autoresponders is to