James: James Schramko here with my good friend, John Lint. Welcome back.
John: Hey. What’s up, everybody? Good to be back, James.
James: Good to be back. We’ve spent some time together recently in the Maldives. And it’s always the best trip. And we had some fantastic discussions around where we’re at in the lifecycle of online marketing and website development.
Of course, we have this encouraging discussion because you own and run a program called 10XPRO.io and it’s simply the world’s best tool for doing such things as creating sales funnels, memberships and courses. And we had a few people in our group over the two weeks, we had two groups of ten and we were having discussions with them about the tool. And I’d say by the end of two weeks, almost everyone on the boat is using 10XPRO now compared to when they got on the boat. Because every single conversation we had, they’re like, Wow, it does that?
John: Yeah.
James: It’s a hard one when you’ve got a tool that’s so capable, and unexpectedly good and simple. It’s hard to convey that without trying to come across as being an expert in absolutely everything. Kind of like my coaching in a way, actually.
John: Yeah.
James: If I have deep knowledge of certain things but I have lots of things, it’s hard to just say that in a sentence. But this topic is controversial, John, but we did come up with the idea on the boat that you do not need WordPress in 2019. And let’s talk a bit more about that.
John: Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of people in our industry, they know WordPress, I think it’s important to look back at the history of the internet. And you and I have pretty much done stuff online since the very beginning of the internet.
James: I started doing my first things in the 90s, you know, when everything was hard, and at the very beginning, when you wanted to create a website, you had to get a developer or you have to be knowledgeable about coding that page, there was no tool like 10XPRO.io that would easily allow you to create any page with your mouse. So you have to know about coding or you need to hire a developer and you would be using tools like Dreamweaver, and you know that, if anyone is listening and they know what that means, then you have been online for a while then as well.
You know, Dreamweaver is the software that would allow you to create your web pages. And it’s something that developers back then was using. I think they’ve gone down, it doesn’t exist anymore. I haven’t heard the name for a long time. I haven’t heard about FrontPage either, which was the other tool at the time but, you know, when I started on the internet, it was actually 1995. And the browsers and everything was different. It was Mozilla and Lycos, Netscape I think. They’re the brands I remember. And it was very, very slow. I used to wait for the page to fill in, as it loaded.
John: And we were talking about dial-up, dial-up connection.
James: Dial-up was the first 10 years at least. I went back on the internet in 2005 and my biggest challenge was to build a website. I got a free website account with my internet service provider, and it had kind of a tool that you could build something but it had absolutely no SEO value, it had nothing useful. And I mean, almost everyone who follows me knows I eventually, have to try in Dreamweaver but not being a rocket scientist, I found it impossible to use.
And I didn’t learn how to code in Notepad, like some people. And I found this software back then it was called XsitePro. And it was good, but you had to have a Windows computer. And it did do SEO, and it did have lots of features. But it was very restrictive. You had to build it on your computer and then upload it to the internet via FTP process.
John: Yeah.
James: And after that, being good, you know, WordPress became huge. It was blogging software. And it was on the internet, and it was free. And it was open-source and it had plugins, you could do a lot of things with it, you could turn it into things. And of course, almost everyone in our world has some kind of course or a blog. There’s a lot of people with a blog, there’s a lot of people with a course, and they’re trying to do it all on WordPress. But WordPress, you know, for all its great side of things, there are also some downsides. It really wasn’t built to do all these things.
John: Never. Never.
James: And it also becomes quite vulnerable. You know, like, every hacker out there on the planet is trying to take down and exploit little back doors and plugins. And it’s constantly needing upgrading and changing.
You know, John, when we had 1000 websites during my SEO days, I hired a husband and wife team whose only job was to update all my websites, just to go around and tune the plugins, close the back doors and make sure they were tuned and polished. It is a bit of effort. And there is some complexity to running a great website. Even a team like mine who’s been around for almost a decade. Occasionally, they’ll tick the wrong box or won’t have the right thing setting and the website doesn’t work the way it should. It’s not a beginner tool.
John: Not at all. And it’s not a friendly tool, either. Again, it’s because it was never designed to be that website management system. It was just designed to be an awesome blogging system where you go in, you can create a post, there’s a theme, but what they did is that they also created and allowed plugins. And with that, a lot of people and entrepreneurs saw that as an easy way to say, Hey, I’m going to show you how you can get your own website. And don’t worry, it’s free. It’s WordPress and we can add these plugins.
But the problem is that by doing that, you’ll keep on adding plugins and plugins and plugins. And in 2019, you need more than just a blog. If you want to do online marketing, if you want to grow your online business, if you want to sell your own online courses, if you want to accept payments online, get your own affiliate system, all of those things, campaigns, funnels, etc. You will need a ton of plugins…
James: And you need hosting!
John: You need hosting, you need to manage all of that and the problem is, each of those plugins is developed by different developers.
James: Yeah.
John: Every time they update, it might break each other.
James: They conflict.
John: Yeah, they conflict. And the interface of WordPress is never designed to be, hey, let’s manage your own website, just the way they structure their left sidebar, and it becomes a nightmare. And that’s where people get overwhelmed, they get confused, they don’t know what to do and they get into trouble, their website is not working, they tried to go on holiday, the website is not working. Now we need to deal with that, they need to try to talk to their support, it’s actually a nightmare.
And again, it’s not WordPress’ fault, but they never designed it to be that way. It’s a great blogging system. Great if you want to do articles and all that stuff. But that’s it.
Nowadays in 2019, really using WordPress as your online business solution, to me, it’s a total mistake, especially if you’re starting out, especially if you want to add more things to your site, maybe have your own membership site, have a forum like in 10XPRO, you want to be able to do live streams, webinars, whatever all of that stuff, using WordPress is going to be a problem, it’s going to be a mistake in my mind, it’s going to be confusing, it’s going to be overwhelming. And that’s the number one reason people quit online by the way.
They just say, Hey, this is way too complicated, I don’t get it, things are always breaking down. And to be honest, that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people are coming to us because one solution, we take care of everything, we manage the whole thing, you know that is backed up daily, you know that we always deploy the latest features, one clean interface that allows you to do different things that you need, such as creating pages, funnels, accepting payments online, having your own affiliate system, deliver your members area, all of that stuff, courses, all of that stuff in one easy solution.
James: And a fully hosted solution as well.
John: Fully hosted. Yeah, you know, it reminds me I was helping my brother like last year, he was, hey, I want to do stuff online. Okay, great! And he heard from some person that, Oh, the solution is WordPress. So, obviously, I’m trying to tell him but he’s my big brother, so he doesn’t listen to me, of course. So he does his WordPress thing. Two months later, he asked me, Hey, can you really help me out? And I don’t know what to do, I log in. I take a look at this. I’m kind of a technical guy, right? I mean, obviously, I’m taking care of 10XPRO. I look at this thing, I’m getting confused, I’m getting overwhelmed, I have no idea where to go, what to do, what to update. And I say to him, Listen, man, I’ll give you a free license of 10XPRO. Please, let me give that to you for your birthday. And now he’s using 10XPRO.
James: What a brother. So look, here’s the thing, some of the biggest incomes being generated by marketers these days are hosting, where people are going to put their site, and maintenance services. I remember one maintenance service, who’ve got so big and popular, they were acquired by GoDaddy. And that’s because you need to have someone either in your team, or you have to pay a service to continually update your WordPress website and tune it or it will fall behind. And that’s all taken care of with 10XPRO. You just pay one payment. And with that one payment, you get your hosting. You get all your tech developed by the same team and it does all the things you need to do where they have a course, a membership.
A couple of quick questions, John. Can you blog on 10XPRO?
John: Yeah, actually, yeah, we do. We have a blogging system, very simple blogging system that you can customize the layout, you can very easily use a mouse.
James: So if you are a blogger, it’s still going to work.
James: Can you get good SEO, things like descriptions, titles, image properties, and sitemaps and RSS feeds on 10XPRO?
John: Absolutely. All of that is in there. Just go to the option, click one box, add your info, you’re done and click on Save.
James: And do you have to go and update any technology or tech stuff in the backend of 10XPRO to keep it up to date and free from exploits?
John: No way. That’s our job. We take care of that, we deploy the stuff, you just relax, you build your little pages with your mouse and you’re up and running.
James: So really, this is the discussion we had, we’ve gone almost full cycle. Now, you know, like what’s in the food market? Now, the thing that’s really hot is organic food, no one’s messed with. We’re back to those easy-to-build websites that rank well, that are now fully hosted and have everything in one place. Like it’s the thing we wanted in the beginning but couldn’t have.
John: Right.
James: And if you’re trying to patch together, glue together or Band-Aid together your course, your blog and everything else in your shopping cart, and you’re sick of doing it, and you don’t need to hire a small team to manage the thing, just get 10XPRO straight up. Don’t waste your time going around the long way. Because this is getting a movement.
I’m noticing now, every single day I’m seeing conversations around 10XPRO. I’m seeing it in Facebook groups. Initially, by the way, Facebook groups came into the market well after I was running forums, and everyone’s like, oh, we’ll just have a Facebook group. Well, guess what? Some of those people are now discovering they can’t upload native videos or they’re getting ads run or people are scraping their members’ list, or they’re just getting plain old shut down. That’s not a good idea either.
I don’t use WordPress for my own membership solution because I already identified that it sucks for that. The WordPress forum features are not great. They were not built for that. For my new installation of 10XPRO, that’s where I’m starting to migrate things to as well. Because I get it, it makes sense. And I’ve got legacy content. So it’s a little bit harder for me than if you’re starting today. But I’m still on that path.
So, John, thank you for sharing with us why we no longer need WordPress in 2019 and beyond. And keep up that passion and keep developing the world’s greatest tool. I’m so happy to share these discussions with everyone I know. And if anyone asked me what do I need? I say, you need 10XPRO and choose your favorite autoresponder service of choice and you’re good to go.
John: You’re good to go. That’s right. Thank you so much for having me.
Check out the all-in-one paid membership features of Kleq.com
See our products HERE
I’m now looking into this platform for our audience to get up and running quickly, but I’m wondering how it handles podcasts. Will 10xpro handle podcasts in the same way that Blubrry powerpress does it with WordPress by allowing you to create a separate podcast feed on your own site? If not, what is the suggested way to use the platform for podcasting (along with everything else one would need it for)?