When I promote systems like Site Build It! or WordPress themes like Thesis, I’ve noticed it doesn’t sit well with some people.
A lot of the critics I’m referring to are programmers and designers.
Many of them believe that programs like SBI! and Thesis provide help and/or tools that you can get or learn for free (or cheap) by simply Googling the information or buying a couple of “how to” books. Why buy Thesis when you can learn CSS from scratch?
Now, I have to admit this. Even if you set out to create your own site and use tools like Site Build It! or Thesis, you should still learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS.
I have a basic understanding of both languages and I’m very glad I do because it has helped me greatly along the way.
However, what some people need to realize is not everyone wants to learn coding from scratch, and fortunately it’s not necessary to have success online. Coding your site is definitely a part of it, but the other piece is marketing.
There are many 6-figure Bloggers and Webmasters out here who aren’t designers (I’m one of them). We choose to outsource some or part of our work and use products like Thesis so we can focus on what we enjoy and do best.
I personally love writing and marketing much more than I love sitting and staring at code. So tools like Thesis allow me to get things done faster so I can focus on what I truly enjoy.
I wouldn’t expect a product like Thesis to provide much value to a programmer or a designer who writes CSS from scratch. But some people find great value with it. I recommend it because I know there are people just like me.
Sometimes paying for tools is fine if they provide individual VALUE, and everyone values different things.
Below is my response to criticism often handed out by designers and programmers when they see people using or promoting web tools that make life easier for those of us who don’t care to become certified programmers…
UPDATE: For the record, I don’t let these people get to me. I made this video to make the point that you don’t have to become a programmer to make a lot of money online.
So in a sense, these critical comments actually gave me inspiration to create this video so I can teach others. It’s about turning negativity into opportunity and education. 😉
This is still all too true! I’m not good at site programing and have a start-up website for non-techie. It brings awareness to a dilemma senior citizens and the non-techie have been facing as the result of the mobile revolution.
Unfortunately I’m not well connected and not able to spread the word about it, so there’s very little support. But like you, I don’t let the negative folks out there get me down and I keep on going.
Next time you here a programmer giving someone grief about using the tools available to them, ask them if they consider themselves to be good hackers.
If they answer yes, you’ve got them by the b***s. Ask them why they feel that other should solve previously solved problems, and refer them to this document.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe2
This type of argument has been around for a long time and extends to web designers who are “scratch coders”. Some, decry the use of web editing tools like Dreamweaver and find it’s use somewhat “beneath them” as oppose to “free styling” your web property.
They say editors like Dreamweaver generate code that is not all that clean or pristine and are a detriment to those who they feel need to learn HTML, CSS, from the ground up…
If it weren’t for Dreamweaver, which employs a split screen that lets me see code as I develop a site, I would not have a clue as to what type of code is used in it’s creation.
I still can’t hand code a site, but I am more familiar with how code works then I would have been otherwise. Internet Marketing is hard enough and I just can’t learn everything. Writing content, building links, keyword research, takes up enough of my time thank you very much!
If you want to spend hours perfecting or tweaking your site with the right HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, whatever, there is no shame in your game. Your into design, or programming, I get it.
Just remember I am a marketer not a coder. I am going to find the quickest route I can to develop a landing page or adsense site which will help get the profit ball rolling. I am worried about, the bottom line, not the “lines” of code that goes into a site.
Just don’t think that everyone has to “go your way” in order to establish their web “bona fides”. You are not the paragon’s technological virtue. There is room on the “Interwebs” (lol) for profiteer and purist alike.
To those who developed Word Press and all the themes and plug-ins that go with it, I say thank you. You have made my life a lot easier in terms of site development.
A tip of the “thank you” hat to the folks at Adobe for buying Dreamweaver and trying to make improvements on a really good piece of editing software. It is the only web editor I somewhat understand and appreciate.
Nuff said…….
Robert C – The Wholesale Products Guy
It really depends on the topic of the blog, I really think that if you are blogging about web design then you do have to create your own theme or design . . . but if your blog has nothing to do with web design then yeah. . . no sense in reinventing the wheel. . . but a basic knowledge would be useful though, just like how lisa has incorporated some coding to make her website much more functional, clean, elegant and usable. . .
I also agree with John that affiliate marketeers make more money than web designers do. . . 🙂 but if your a web designer and a marketeer, the success might be just a knock on the door. . . in fact because I learned web design and how to make my own wordpress theme, I got my first job as a web designer just recently for a denmark based company. . .
Lisa has experience in internet marketing so web designers who plan to do blogs should know how lisa became successful.
Lisa, Im an experienced developer, programmer and internet marketer. I have 9 years of coding experience, as well as graphic design and DBA. I can pretty much code anything. PHP, ASP, .NET, VBscript, HTML, .CSS, Javascript and so on.
But let me tell you, Ive made MORE MONEY in the last 12 months by focusing my attention on INTERNET MARKETING rather than bugging out over code than I have over the last 9 years.
I respect what programmers do – heck Im one of them – but the reality is this. Extremely wealthy property developers like Donald Trump, wouldnt have a clue about how to lay bricks or paint ceilings – they focus on the marketing, project management and task/people delegation – NOT the hands on technical stuff.
Programmers make good money, business owners, and investers make the most.
John
Excellent point John!
Hi Dear Lisa.
I watched your css lectures, and let me say you are great teacher.
While I do consider myself someone of a techie when it comes to computers, but it’s a different story for me in regards to web development from scratch. In that regards, I am somewhat of a hack and need templates and tools like the Thesis Theme to do what I want to do.
I think most criticism comes from fear. Fear of losing income, fear of becoming obsolete. I’ve seem creative geniuses create some wonderful looking website that are useless in the search engines and not user friendly for users. On the same note, I’ve also seen great website designers that don’t know a thing about SEO and could use programs like SBI to teach them a few things even if they don’t need the web creation tools.
Looks like you have the best of both worlds going for you… an eye for great looking websites, but also the “know how” to get the traffic. 🙂
.-= Lowell Christensen´s last blog … Site Build It Research Guide. Learn more about Site Build It! =-.
Boyoboyoboy could I wade into this one!
But I won’t.
Fortunately, I *do* have the coding chops to tell anyone to FOAD if I get beefed about shilling for Thesis or whatever. Thesis is very well engineered. I’m happy to have bought it and not had to reinvent the wheel. Again.
My coding chops are a matter of public record too. Publicly archived on sourceforge.net since 2000.
So don’t worry about what anyone thinks.
What’s coming next: drag and drop WordPress theme layout (if it’s not here already). I know how to do this in theory, and WordPress would support with Thesis like theming. Would take me 6 months to ramp up on the required Javascript. But it’s coming. After that I suspect we’ll have multiple loop capability within WordPress… tied into the drag and drop framework. Again, a simple matter of programming. Future is very bright folks.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog … Value Versus Effort: How Much Time to Write a Blog Post? =-.
hey lisa,
there are those that agree and those that disagree.
you just need to get with the ones that agree, like me.
I love your stuff.
please see my site, and help me find a product I can sell on it.
dean
From the developer and designer perspective…
There is also a good side, for us, to promoting tools that produce garbage code because guess who gets called in to ‘fix and optimize’ sites when things don’t work or just slow down…or better yet when end user realizes their site looks like 100,000 other turnkey solutions.
Unfortunately, many developers don’t see it this way and turn into overprotective grunts. Now whole another story is that tools like these ruin (or do not make) good, accessible websites and give fake sense of “I can make websites” to people who should not be making these statements. I see a lot of people in discussions (eg. dreamweaver forums) looking for help because they use these tools and have no understanding of what exactly they are building.
Here is a scenario how those attitudes are developed:
—
I have a hammer,nails even a power drill…I can do construction! ….3-4 months later…”My roof is leaking can someone help me for free?Oh no, not with advice to hire someone who know what they are doing but with solving my issue for free”
—
My favorite quote when it comes to these types of discussions is…
“Only Fools Worship Tools”
Painting is art but if you can paint your house by yourself and be happy with results then go for it. But if you bring a professional painter by your place and he/she critiques the quality be ready to accept it.
If you have things to write and share by all means run something such as free & simple theme and WordPress and ignore what people say. Writing is art and chances are those developers can’t do it as well as you 😉 .
So keep it up Lisa!
quick question. Nobody on the internet can agree on website width. I am building mysite 800 pixels wide even though very few people have this resolution. Would it be safe to jump up to 1024? any input would help, thanks 🙂
Hey Dave, great question!
According tohttp://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp you’re pretty safe switching to 1024 resolution.
As of January ’09 only 4% of internet users are still at 800×600. 36% are at 1024×768 while 57% are even higher than that. So I would say upping your dimensions to 1024 would be more than safe. The 1024 is pretty much the new 800×600.
Hope that helps you out!
– Frank
I agree with Fcarentz, there just aren’t enough people on 800×600 to design for them anymore. You’re fine with 1024. I usually do 1000 to give myself a little room on both sides.
actually you need to make sure you go lower than the full 1024, i’d even say down to 980 tp play it safe for your max width. Some browsers are off by 10-20 pixels, so if you play it save at 980 max width you will fit for everyone. 1000 probably works fine too so it’s really up to you, i just like to play it very safe with the 980.
Lisa and fellow readers,
Being a designer and a programmer myself I would like to point out that not all of us are against these fantastic tools that are giving power to the people. The truth as I see it here, as to why some programmers/designers dislike such tools is because they are thinking to small. Tools like these will never put professional developers, programmers or designers out of business. There will always be people out there that just don’t want to commit the time to learning these tools and those folks will end up hiring us. Similar to a plumber. I could go and learn all about plumbing when my pipes break and try to fix them myself, or I could hire someone that already knows how to do it. Myself I’d hire some one, others will go and haev a go of it on their own. It’s the same thing here. Kudo’s to you and your audience for giving a go and being successful at it. WordPress is a great system and thesis looks pretty neat as well. On a side note, even developers and designers are using these systems to make their clients lives easier, and there’s nothing stopping those clients from downloading them without your blog and giving it a go. So I think it’s fantastic to see such a wonderful resource here for those very folks. Not everyone can afford professional designers, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a nice website.
So again, Kudos to you! Keep up the great work, and don’t let the nay-sayers get to you!
Lisa, You’re arguments are very balanced, diplomatic, poignant and I gotta say, I am grateful for someone like you voicing opinions for people like me. I’m just gettin started online with marketing, but I liken the similarities and differences between marketing and programming to finance and accounting. Very good stuff. Keep it coming and keep up the good work. Tryin to get my fitness wear page to rank….any advice?
Lisa:
This is THE TOPIC that has plagued me for the last two years!
I agree with most everything mentioned in this thread prior.
There are several other issues to contend with:
1 Left versus Right brained functions.
While I am mainly a “creative type” I have forced myself to work on learning hand coding of XHTML and CSS (Thanks to your videos).
As you know, I am a Videographer (creative type) who got into web going on 3 years ago because I couldn’t find a local designer. Since then, the argument on “Clean Code” makes sense to me if I continue to move toward adding web services to my clients. They deserve to have paid for something that has value behind the design. Admittedly, as a creative type, this is very hard to overcome.
For those that are not aware, the Web is a VERY COMPLEX thing. It is NOT Microsoft Powerpoint on steroids!
The question is, where do we draw the line on code versus content? This brings me to my second point!
2 CSS Purists will tell you all kinds of things in regard to “Junk Code”.They will bring up that apps like Dreamweaver (Their worst enemy) used in “Design View” causes all kinds of problems. I agree with them in that I have found this out the hard way. The problem is that in order to avoid any of these errors, you have to learn all the rules before you break them which takes TIME AND ENERGY! A LOT OF TIME IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THE MENTAL CAPACITY OF A CODER.
My experience from many of the CSS forums out there is that when you ask for help, you get a lecture about all the things that you have done wrong first! Not a lot of love out there:( (It is starting to change though).
3 Marketing is considered the Anti-Christ by most of these guys for one simply reason! We marketers have perverted their System of Purity for transferring “Information” and have converted it into a Media-Centric Distribution Channel; IE Television and Radio for the 21st Century.
Why do I personally think this is so? Because before we had added Media (Video and Audio) to the web, we had TEXT! Throw in some graphics and then photos and now the Internet is a completely different thing for a completely different purpose.
Back to the Purists. Many of these folks are not of a Media mindset (Seen any “KILL YOUR TELEVISION” bumperstickers around?). They tend to put more focus on the written word than anything “captured”. If then, the paradigm has shifted from a written word text based format to that of Video and Audio of the same content, it really throws a monkey wrench into how a web page is coded. After all, a web page is nothing more than code to tell the browser what to display and how to display it.
That said, Marketing is about selling products and making money, NOT strictly conveying information. See the problem? Suddenly, the dilemma of “Code For All to See” versus “Code for Your Target Market” is a HUGE argument.
If you are an informational site, then you want your sit to be viewable to EVERYONE! This includes kids in East Africa, the Blind or your coworker across town!
If you are a Marketer, it is all about a Target Audience ONLY!
CONCLUSION: INFORMATION AND ENTERTAINMENT are like oil and water. This is the bottom line!
A short time ago, I thought that all this was because the “intellectual coder” was really afraid. Since their skills were based in text and the web is moving to media, then is proper coding really necessary if the web becomes a “Shell” to house the media that conveys the message?
I think for some, this is true in the same sense that it is true for some Journalists who are afraid to embrace “New Media” and let the Printed Newspaper succumb to it’s own destiny.
Why does this even matter and how do I know about it?
Because to the CSS Purist, I am the problem! As a Videographer and Media Producer, I see the web as a place to share my content (and yes, to profit from it).
The reason I am the problem is because I place more value on the content than the code that it takes to get it out there. Maybe my thoughts on this will change in the future, I don’t know.
I will say this. Because we are all using the same internet which is nothing more than a bunch of pages created from a bunch of code, we do have a duty to at least create good content. So, the next time you want to start a site for whatever reason, ask yourself it it is unique or necessary. I want to make money alone is not a good foundation for starting a site.
What constitutes “Good”? Well, beauty in in the eye…
FOLLOW UP!
The reason Lisa and others are making the money that they are is this:
1 They provide GREAT CONTENT from a sincere personality.
2 They have been at it for many, many years in the niche that they are creating content for.
MORAL OF THE STORY? SPEAK FROM AN AREA YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT!
If you have something to say but don’t have the tech skills, find someone who does! See my article on this here: http://aretheygurus.com/BUDDY%20UP.html
IF you don’t really know about something more than the next guy…you most likely will end up frustrated and remain broke anyway!
Or learn something new and tell people what you have learned. Works almost as well and it helps everyone stay in the game.
Mikael:
True!
However, from my experience, learning something new that is truly of value will take some time in and of itself.
If it is a quick skill we are after, odds are there is a tutorial out there somewhere already.
I definitely agree. Learning something new will always require some time. However you do not need to be an expert in order to share information. As long as you know something that some people don’t I believe that you have a right to share that information.
Secondly repetition is the mother of skill so even if you share something with people that they have already read before it will never hurt them to read it again. 🙂
Not all, but many techies ( ie. Programmers, Network Admin’s, DBA’s ) are in positions where they are not calling the shots and making the decisions on the future of their project or system. I know of a great Technical Manager who, after investing a lot in building a cohesive & functional team, was faced with a budget cut in his department and agonized over which members of his team he would call into his office to fire.
Therein could lie some of the resentment that surfaces toward affiliate-marketers and internet-entrepreneurs, but I think it would occur mainly among the younger and less-seasoned techie-programmer types. Most seasoned(ie. experienced) techies have seen languages, projects, & systems come and go. They’ve seen some worthwhile projects die early deaths and other useless ones live long after they should have been put to rest. If you’re a techie who has invested a lot in training and certifications, it can be somewhat devastating to have the plug pulled on your “Trophy” Project. And, oh yeah, it’s probably even more devastating to have your “Trophy” Project outsourced “alive-and-well” to an offshore outfit. But, eventually that’s what happens and some have trouble dealing with it … either the actual event or the very real possibility of it happening soon and not being prepared for it.
There’s newer stuff out now, but “The E-Myth” and “The E-Myth Revisited”, gave me some much-needed new perspective on work and business several years ago. I didn’t really appreciate it then, but I do now. My advice to the Techies who feel the need to complain would be: “Wake Up and Take a Look Around. Look ahead 5 – 10 years. Visualize where you want to be … Hopelessly Complaining or Optimistically Satisfied. Make your Choice(s).”
M. Noel
Lisa, I’ve always noticed that a lot of people that are very technical despise people that are affiliate marketers. I think the reason for this is that most affiliate marketers have something that you can’t teach.
They’re able to connect with people either through words or videos to help them and at the same time make some money.
Most tech guys/gals don’t like this because a lot of them don’t have the personality but they have the technical skill to do what affiliate marketers do.
There’s just a different culture between techies and marketers.
A majority of people on both sides get a long but there’s a loud minority that HATES what affiliate marketers do and how they do it.
So all we can do (which is what you said already ) is brush it off and keep helping people help themselves.
Peace and God Bless.
Folusho Orokunle’s last blog post..3 Reasons That Web 2.0 Has Transformed Internet Marketing And How You Can Make Money With It
Everyone are able to have success online and without knowing anything of html, css or php. Personally I would rather be able to outsource 100% of my business to other people because that would free up my time.
Now I know that it is easier said than done because you will need to know what it is that people should do for you because if you don’t you’ll most likely be paying a lot of money for something that is not that valuable. (I’ve seen that so many times when people are hiring webmasters to maintain their sites YIKES).
So my secret to success is to know enough and then have other people do the work for you 😉
Mikael @ Retire Early’s last blog post..Struggling to Make Money Online? – Not Any More
It’s probably just that many programmers and CSS designers are alarmed about the proliferation of tools that allow (us) non-techies to get what we need easily without them.
Personally, I get my Blogs themes for free and then add plug-ins as I learn about them.
But believe me, if it was all about monetizing blogs (which I hope to do one day!) I’d be using Thesis before I gave my money to a programmer or designer on whom I could have to depend on for just the simplest of changes for the life of the Blog.
What programmer or CSS designer really wants me, you, or anybody else to learn CSS or HTML from scratch?
I think they’d rather we try to do it, throw up our hands, and call them.
With Thesis around, we won’t have to!
Angiel’s last blog post..Internet WOW – Mozilla Firefox Is Fantastic
Designers are always ahead of the affiliated programs, they now create (and have been for years) personalized CMS websites where once its up and running even a child can update their own website. Where do you think these affiliated programs originated from (CMS).
The only problem with programs such as thesis and sitebuild is security, not very high standards….. and they do not use the latest code, its very yesterday……..just take a look at the W3C standards ouch “120 errors” in code geez thats gotta kill the bandwidth (extra costs involved there)
http://validator.w3.org/check
BUT! hey that’s not to say that you cant make money from thesis and such, if it works ‘go for it’ but if i was a professional business i defiantly would want a professional site… sorry just an honest opinion.
Happy blogging 🙂
Lisa ,you are so right Iam just learning this internet ,I need all the help i can get marketng ,if i had to learn code too i would give up.You ,sitebulld it, and Yaro and other resources you have sent me to has been a great help and encouragement thanks ,Taiwo
You’ve given me some food for thought with this post. Do I want my site to flourish? And do I really need to be a guru in order to have that happen?
I love code, I’m ready to move my site Look and Feel to the next level and I’m not sure I want to take the time it would take to learn how to get that sharp look I want myself. But I’ve almost convinced myself that paying a designer for a template and a banner design is some kind of cop out.
Alicia’s last blog post..Make Homemade Laundry Soap
Hello Lisa,
We programmers used to have the “Keys To The Kingdom” and we hung out with folks like Phillipe Kahn & The Woz who did really cool & productive stuff with code that wasn’t being done yet and that got us worshipped and respected(for a while).
Wow! Those were the days.
But, Corporate-level Department Heads & Consultants(whoops, I’ve been one of those) got together, jumped in, and introduced Object Oriented Frameworks, IDE’s, Code Reuse, Code Libraries, Code Repositories and Other stuff that commoditized our “coder” expertise and some of us were a bit reluctant to wake up to the “Handwriting on the Wall”.
Certified ___ ____ ‘s are fiercely proud of their titles and the annual subscription fees paid to maintain ’em and, you know, I think Corporate IT departments & Data Centers still need that for “Dilbert-type Continuity”.
But, Life goes on and I sincerely appreciate the “Fresh Perspective” you bring to the table.
Keep doing what you’re doing!
– Thanks Lisa
Hi Lisa,
My favorite response to this kind of issue is ” One Man’s Meat Is Another Man’s Poison “. Just ignore them ! 😉
William
Honestly, I think the programmers and designers who have contacted you are not only jealous of your success but also scared that with solutions like Thesis they might not be as needed as before. I just purchased my copy of thesis (after watching your video raving about it) and have to say I am super impressed and can’t wait to get into customizing the theme and play with it. I have pretty solid CSS and HTML skills but rarely time to use them (the writing and marketing takes time, you’re right…). I haven’t had time to really learn PHP so I am very glad there are solutions like thesis out there 🙂
I dont think that web designers will fade out because of programs such as Thesis. To be honest with you if your company is going to spend hundreds of thousand dollars (as they do) on building a website, the only way to go would be using a private designer/developer and then for CEO(boost your search engine rankings) purposes use affiliated programs along with your website.
But if your building a personal business website buy all means affiliated programs are the way to go. 😉
It’s so true, some programmers are super arrogant and patronizing towards those who don’t know how to do what they do. They seem to think that anyone can just google stuff and learn it as quickly as they did, and if someone has trouble learning it, they’re stupid or something!
I am really good with HTML and CSS, and my design skills are solid (I ran a web design business back in the day), but my brain is not able to grasp more sophisticated programming languages like php so well. It saves me time (and sanity) to buy a wordpress theme and customize it instead.
I agree with poster #3, I think they’re just annoyed with your success!
ThemeGrrl’s last blog post..WordPress Hosting Providers
Some people, just have nothing better to do than bitch and moan…;) For instance, I love your site, have learned many new things, but I for one have not bought SBI or this Thesis thing…
You know, it’s up to each individual to research and learn. If I wanted an easier way and the dough, maybe I would have gone the SBI route….But I reviewed it, it wasn’t for me, so went with learning coding by hand…
I don’t know who is giving you grief, but I wouldn’t worry about it…Let them do their thing, you do yours, and ignore those that have nothing better to do than complain…They just aren’t worth making a video about, or commenting on…although I just have, lol!
…Or could it be, that they are just jealous of your success. 😉
I agree, but I want to emphasize that the reason I made this video was not so much for the critics, but for my audience. So many people assume you have to become a programmer to have my kind of success and it’s just not true. So these people actually gave me a great opportunity to make a point to the people that I reach. That was my primary reason for the vid. I realize some of these people are just angry for whatever reason and I don’t let them get under my skin. I do appreciate them giving me the opportunity to make a video though. 🙂
I haven’t been following your blog or videos for long Lisa (only because I didn’t come across you until I visited the Thesis website!) but I agree with what you say. I too, like the fact that there are simpler options available that give great results!
As Shirley Conran once said “Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom” – let’s take advantage of the fact that someone else has done the behind the scenes work so we don’t have to – and be thankful they have!
So true, Louise! Thank goodness for the techies! LOL