Posted by David Chin

On paper, CMSInfusion looks to be a great product, but we all know too well what “Great Products” end up doing for you all too well, don’t we?

Yes, CMS Infusion is a product for completely managing mega sites, the kind you wish you had. (Disappointingly, you only get to build 10 sites with the license they provide - a crying shame for the $997 demanded up front).

It may beat the pants off any of the open source CMS systems (I’m thinking Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc) …

… But you have to ask yourself this crucial question: Do you really need it?

If you’ve already set up for yourself the objective of only building 30 pure content pages around a niche topic (say bodybuilding) that promotes one or two nutritional supplements, all you need is a domain name, shared server hosting, and the free Wordpress blogging software.

With a little SEO configuration, high quality content, and SEO-friendly techniques (such as making high quality posts in Google-crawlable forums with a signature link back to your site) your Wordpress site would do extremely well in the Google index.

I should know, since I own a few camera blogs (although they don’t look much like your typical blog anymore, since I’ve done a bit of optimization on them).

If you want to manage an email list on your Wordpress site that sends out really nicely-formatted notifications on a schedule that you determine, all you need is the free Zookoda service (yeah, you don’t even need the pricey AWeber software - this is contrary to what many Internet Marketing “Gurus” are trying to push to you).

For an excellent example of how one site uses Wordpress and Zookoda, head over to Digital Photography School, and sign up for their newsletter. If you’re even remotely interested in digital photography, you’ll find their weekly newsletter to be highly informative.

By the way, Digital Photography School belongs to ProBlogger Darren Rowse - if you’ve been around the Internet Marketing or blogging scene for a while, you’ll have heard of him.

The only software that’s paid for there is the one that manages the forum portion - they’re using vBulletin.

If you need a forum software but don’t want to pay for it, I highly recommend the forum software by Simple Machines (a.k.a. SMF).

An excellent example of a forum that uses SMF is PentaxWorld - see how effectively they’ve used that software to manage the interaction of their members.

So, before you get sucked into the hype that’s CMSInfusion, carefully examine your specific needs and requirements.

There’s no doubt that CMSInfusion looks to be a highly capable piece of software (I’m even tempted to purchase it and try it out), but at a $997 price tag, it’s imperative that you have a clear business plan and framework for the type of sites you intend to build before taking out your credit card.

Let’s take the major selling points of CMSInfusion one by one, and examine if they’re applicable to you. For $997, you’d better have a checklist ready and objectively base your purchasing decision off that.

1. “… Guaranteed To Revolutionize The Way Money Is Made Online …” - totally irrelevant phrase. It’ll only benefit a few buyers who already have known beforehand the type of sites they want to create. Do you?
2. “… Tap Into The Minds Of Marketing Legends …” - there are no such personalities. Anyway, they became legends not through the use of this software, but by dint of hard work and creativity (and outsourcing), and viral methods, etc, etc.
   In other words, these folks will continue to become “Marketing Legends” if you won’t stop letting their sales talk trick you into quickly taking out your credit card to buy software after ebook after software from them (while the rest of us with successful websites continue on nicely with the free Wordpress / Zookoda / SMF).
3. “… Access All The Strategies You Can Completely Replicate That Pulled In Results Like These … -followed by some $$$$$$$ figures” - uhmmm, hogwash, in my not-so-humble opinion.
   It’s a piece of software, for crying out loud, not a strategy.
   It’s like me saying to you, buy Microsoft Office which can automatically generate a Table Of Contents, and you’ll be able to produce a product equivalent to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter.
   What many people don’t realize is that money is made through sheer ingenuity and creativity of the person (or persons - yes, there’s often a network of close buddies behind every big product launch, who then gleefully share in the profits after selling it to folks who didn’t know better, while the rest of us continue using the free Wordpress / Zoo …) behind the product.
   You don’t need to have fantastic software to earn the money - no, what you need is much more difficult to obtain, and that’s an IDEA coupled with EXPERIENCE coupled with KNOW-HOW coupled with a few hard knocks.
   Remember Rich Jerk and Affiliate Project X? They certainly did not need any CMSInfusion-like software to get rich.
4. “… the power to ‘Take Control’ of any online marketplace quickly and easily and with devastating results …” - that’s just another phrase to subliminally make you think you can be Top Dog in any marketplace you choose.
   Yeah, I’d like to see them “crush” DPReview.com and Amazon.com with the CMSInfusion product.
   Folks, even if you have software that can do EVERYTHING a big authority site is already doing, you’re not going to be able to dominate “any online marketplace”, much less “quickly and easily”, unless you have the smarts to get thousands upon thousands of links back to your site from authority sites like Wikipedia and other authority sites in your niche.
   You can get “devastating results” if you’re fortunate to pick a niche that has little competition AND a great product to sell as an affiliate - I get a $1000 check every month from promoting a guitar course on a free - yup, you guessed it - Wordpress-driven site. I thank God for allowing me to “take control” of that niche, since only less than 10 sites WORLDWIDE promote that guitar course.
5. Richard Quek’s testimonial says “It is a total turnkey internet system that anyone with an online business will need!” - errr, no again - not everybody with an online business needs it - we’ve all been doing fine without it all this while, thank you very much (Richard - you disappoint me deeply by allowing your “testimonial” to appear there, worded that way).
   Again, buy CMSInfusion only if you absolutely need all the features it comes bundled with.
   $997 is not “CHICKEN FEED” (it’s OVERKILL) if you’re only going to use it for publishing simple content sites.
   Remember, you successfully “innovate, replicate and dominate any niche in a heartbeat” by coming in top in Google and other search engines, and Google isn’t going to give you that just because you used CMSInfusion.
   And you most certainly will NOT dominate a marketplace “in a heartbeat” - where did that come from?
   You’ll be lucky to even appear in Google within the week (actually, you can, not your own site, but by using backdoor techniques that ensures that anything you write appears in the Top 10 or 20 Google search results within a week or two - there are a few criteria that need to be met to increase the likelihood of that happening though).

… let’s take a little break here.

Notice how the CMSInfusion selling points make use of words and phrases that you somehow skip over as you read them, but yet reinforce your impulse to buy the product.

That’s subliminal programming at its finest. You find yourself whipping out your credit card even before taking the time to really think it through.

I’m all for it if you want to create the next big mega site, but really, that has as much chance of success as Paris Hilton becoming a nun if you think that all it takes is to hand over $997 to Jeremy & Simon.