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Cheers,

OK, I have been seeing many people including clients that are using products that I really do not care for and dislike using. Mostly because they are a pain in the ass to use, are outdated, don’t work well, are expensive, or will help them lose money. And if you really hit the jackpot, some of these products all of the aforementioned things.

I just happened to pick the names out that I see most bandied about as the greatest thing since sliced white bread and the ones that my clients seem to have the most trouble with and that ones that I hate to work on these days. The people that say they are great is because they usually have a vested interest or they don’t know any better.   But I am willing to be convinced otherwise. But, it is going to take a lot, and I do mean A LOT of convincing.

This is just my little old humble opinion from having knocked around the internet for going on two decades now. Wow, how is that possible? LOL

Here is the long and short of it.

What has happened is that WordPress has taken over as THE code to build profitable Websites with these days.

Groupon got started on WordPress. It is now over a 5 billion dollar a year company.

Joomla and Drupal became obsolete when WordPress came around. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. So therefore, most things that have anything to do with them have the same shortfalls.

As far as some of the other things such as Infustion Soft, AWeber, GetResponse, Constant Contact and others,  I will tell you why I don’t use any of them and try and wean my clients off of them as soon as I can.

Mostly because they are a pain in the butt to use, and overpriced in my book. There are custom solutions that you can get done for you for less than you pay for all of them. And soon, I know of an app that will replace all of them and cost pennies on the dollar compared compared to the apps mentioned and do a much, much better job, while being far more user friendly.

I asked one of my great partners who also happens to be the sharpest programmer that I know what his thoughts were about CMS or content management systems and some of the other things that I have mentioned. When I say he is sharp, that is saying a lot as I have worked with folks from Apple, IBM, and numerous start ups. He smokes all of them.

Here are some of Dan’s comments and mine.

1. VirtuMart is a module for Joomla so all the cons of Joomla are applied to VirtuMart

2. Joomla and Drupal are CMS’s (the classic version of the term). Each one is fat, hard to understand and consumes a lot of resources compared to WordPress. Trying to make a plugin or a theme for Joomla or Drupal is a pain in the ass. For example: they are using blocks for each widget inside the theme so you need to style each widget individually. Hooking an e-commerce plugin in this monster is like you driving a car while another car drives over you.

Andrew’s two cents. I cannot in good conscious, put anyone into Joomla or Drupal. It can ruin your business in my opinion.

3. osCommerce – is the father of all e-commerce solutions but it’s outdated. They have trying to create a new version for years. The osCommerce is based on the code wrote in ~2000. Customizing the osCommerce it’s not easy: you can’t create a custom theme easily or change the layout. In order to do that, you need to be a very good programmer with a ambition and patience

4. ZenCart – is based on osCommerce. The code is better but the theme system works the same. Instead of widgets, you have modules. Also, if you want to change some elements of the theme, you need some good php/html knowledge.

Plus, each one of those products have a plugin database but you can stuck with two situations: 1 the plugins are outdated and are not compatible with your current install; 2. The plugins are hard to install and maintain.

5. Magento is a solution for enterprises and i think the only reason they offer an open-source version is for the beauty of open source. They have a module management integrated inside the product so you don’t need to work with files, but i never (and I tried for 100 times) succeed. The product is heavy and you need a dedicated server to manage a shop, even a smaller one (100 products)

6. PrestaShop is a french e-commerce script and it’s a good (not great) solution for low-budget sites. You can search for plugins in forums but you don’t have any kind of warranty because they are made by the community. Of course, you can buy other plugins made by the creators of Prestashop or third parties. Another thing that I don’t like in Prestashop are the unfinished features. For example, they have an affiliate module but you can’t use it because: 1. it lacks of functionalities; 2. you don’t have an affiliate manager interface, 3. it’s not working. After some research, i found that you need to buy an affiliate plugin in order to have the whole thing working. Also, their interface is a complete mess. It’s hard to follow options or to change basic options. A pro for PrestaShop: they have a nice and informative dashboard with Statistics (no. of sales, orders placed, no. of registrations and product pages viewed. They also have some statistics as an alternative of Google Analytics but the interface ruins everything.

Thank you Dan!

Now as far as AWeber, Constant Contact and Infusion Soft. It is not that they are terrible products, it is just that I never ever feel comfortable letting someone else keep my mailing list hostage. It is the one thing that is the heart and soul of any online business.

I feel that once you get rolling all of them are over priced and in the order I listed them, they become more expensive and harder and harder to use.

I want my customer list on my server, not someone else’s. I also do not want someone else dictating what I can do with my mailing list.

The key with all of them is that they have to keep very tight controls on the users because if anyone of them does something questionable, they can get shut down. So, they have to treat everyone like a 3 year old and not an adult Business person.

Plus true integration and customization into your site is a pain in the butt.

So there you have it for what it is worth.

WordPress is the only platform I can recommend and it is getting better and better all of the time.  As far as the rest, I will be giving you some alternatives that cost a whole lot less and work much better. At least I think so and perhaps you will too.

If you have an opinion, would love to hear it.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

Well, like a lot of revelations, this one popped up rather unexpectedly right after I took a Green Pill this morning.

With this revelation came a whole breadth of understanding like revelations often do.  Point in fact, one of those revelations is I can tell you are Intelligently Lazy too because you are here reading this.

Hopefully, if I communicate this to you correctly, you are going to want to become the laziest person you know.

You may not know it yet, but I am actually giving you quite a compliment.  Let me explain to you why, by giving you two old adages you may have heard before.

• Most people are too busy making a living to ever become wealthy
• Most people are too busy doing urgent things, rather than important ones

This is because, as the old saying goes, it is hard to drain the swamp when you are up to your ass in alligators.

You are probably saying OK, what the heck is he talking about?  Well, I bring this up for a couple of reasons that I will make clear in a minute.  Here are some scenarios so that you can see what I mean.

Which Pill Are Your Taking Everyday?

I am going to call this option #1 or the Red Pill which is the Intelligently Hard Work Pill. You can use your intelligence, work hard, and spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to do things on your own.  This is what 99.999% of people do.

I am going to call this option #2 or the Green Pill which is the Intelligently Lazy Pill. You can read a book or a blog and learn the basics from someone else who may have spent their whole life learning about a subject or perhaps spent millions of dollars learning what works best and then emulate what they do, or even hire them.  These people most likely love what they do and are therefore very, very good at it.

So I ask you this,  which pill would you rather take?  The Red Pill or the Green Pill?  Which one do you think is going to cure your malaise called lack of wealth or put more money in your pocket the quickest? Which do you think is going to work the best?

Now if you are here, you have the propensity to be Intelligently Lazy which is a great thing in that you are out trying to learn something from someone else on how to be profitable.  Now what we have to do, and this goes against nearly all conventional wisdom, is  get you to become even lazier by learning from others even more.

Once you recognize that the lazier you become in this particular area, the faster profits are going to start hitting your bottom line.

I am going to reveal something else that I know about you.  You are involved in selling or marketing something.   You have a website or work in a business that sells something to customers who then give you money.

Even if you are not directly involved sales or marketing, nothing happens with any business until there is a sale.  With that in mind, and remembering how we decided that taking the Green Pill is the only smart way to go, how many books have you read on sales and marketing lately?

Hmm…do you think it might be a good idea to up your reading list a tad?

I am going to suggest that you read some of the following so that you are not inadvertently slipping yourself a Red Pill.

1. Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins – You can download this one free in PDF format by going Here

2. Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy

3. How to Advertise by Ken Roman and Jane Maas

4. How to Write a Sales Letter that sells! by Drayton Bird

5. Obvious Adams: by Robert R. Updegraff

6. Personality Language by Marilyne Woodsmall and Wyatt Woodsmall. If you click on the title, you can get $5 off of this book

7. www.21to21.com and of course this site.

Are there others? Absolutely, and I will post more at a later time,  but these should get you pointed in the right direction.  So the choice is really just how Intelligently Lazy can you become and how fast can you become truly lazy?  Your bank account could become larger right away.

You can get most of these books on Amazon.com and if you buy used versions, you can pick them up for only a few bucks.

Doing Things That Are Urgent Versus Doing Things That Are Important And Alligators

Here is where it can get out of focus sometimes.

You need to figure out which alligators are merely a pain in the butt and is not putting you in mortal danger. These non life-threatening alligators can take the form of having 20 things to do seemingly all of the time, having customers needing attention, an email that has to get out, or just trying to keep up with all the different things going on that absolutely demand your attention right now.

Could you put off sending that email to customers until tomorrow?  If that’s the case, use the time today to read a chapter out of one of the books above and make your email even better.

The result could be you getting a better response rate and getting 5 more orders which in turn eliminates an alligator that was biting you.  It can take the form of  a vendor looking for payment or alligator that said you really should get a new computer.

I am not suggesting you make a list per se, although I do find once you write down the alligators’ names, they are usually a lot less scary.

Then you simply take a step back and look at what you can do to be more Intelligently Lazy about things.  Oftentimes, it will make several other alligators go away as well.

Now I mentioned that I got the revelation after taking my Green Pill this morning.  I was reading some Drayton Bird who was a partner of David Ogilvy’s and is a pretty smart Bird if I must say so.

I have been pushing for Planned Ignorance as well with myself and my clients, which is a whole other subject and I will explain at a later date.  Because of this, when Bird mentioned Intelligently Lazy, it fit in with what I have been observing over the years with successful people and in my own success.  Let me have another one of those Green Pills please, Gulp!

The choice is really that easy and we make the choice every day, whether we realize it or not.

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

PS  Here is to taking only Green Pills!