Remember Microsoft FrontPage? It was discontinued in 2006, but its WYSIWYG spirit lives on in products such as XSite Pro. With XSite Pro ($197), you can create an entire website without writing a single line of code. Then again, there are much cheaper ways to create your own website without coding, such as Artisteer ($130) and Weebly (free). So, is XSite Pro worth the price? Well, it depends.

But having a beautiful website is not the point here, really. XSite Pro is all about effective websites that generate revenue for their owners using affiliate product sales and banner ads. The application makes it easy to create many (somewhat) different websites in a short amount of time, each with its own marketing copy and banner ads, and each targeting a different niche. You don't begin working by creating a website, but by creating a project which can contain numerous websites.

XSite Pro also lets you evaluate how effectively each page is written: The Page Analysis tab shows a word frequency table (so you can make sure you're targeting your keywords properly), as well as a list of Suggested Actions such as "You should have the main keyword appear at least once in the links on your page."

XSite Pro itself is aggressively marketed: After you download the application, you get no less than 12 overly friendly follow-up emails, some of which try to upsell you on related services.

So to answer my own question: If you are a non-technical user and you feel that affiliate marketing is a good way to make money online, XSite Pro will make it possible for you to test your marketing prowess with a minimum amount of technical fiddling. Your websites will not win any design awards, but they might convert users into paying customers and net you affiliate fees.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's page, where you can download the most recent version of this buy-only software.

--Erez Zukerman