marketing or design?
 

What is more important? Marketing or design?

both!

Marketing always. Lots of people with basic designs do very well.

Ever seen TheHun.net?

being a designer, and programmer... focusing specifically on the product and having totally disregarded marketing for so long, i'd have to say MARKETING is most important.

you can have the best fuckin unique site in the world but if you dont know how to get traffic it just sits there and rots away, like so many of my attempts.

focus on marketing and have a designer design whatever you need.

very true :thumbsup
I would have to go with marketing as well

marketing for the reason of all these little programs that have awsome sites, awsome conversions, and no webmasters, compared to some of the big companies that have sites which just plain suck ass and thousands of webmasters....

my experience has been the same actually, when sponsors have so many tools at your disposal, the marginal difference between great design and just putting the link to the product up is smaller than the difference of investing money in quality clicks. The only thing I've noticed is a great design gets repeat bookmarkers more so if you run out of money you'll still have income if your ads go down....

traffic, marketing, iran, iraq, its all the same shit.

indeed!

Marketing is the most important... But, design IS part of marketing.

Just look at real-world examples. What beer sells the most? It sure isn't the best one. ;)

As a marketeer and designer, I say: Marketing

Design should stand in service of the marketing strategy

An integral part of marketing, especially in this primarily visual media, is the ability to convey your sales pitch through your designs. Thinking that they are seperate, is a mistake.

TheHun is not an exception, his viking logo in an example. It was branding and a strong message that got the Hun to the front. Not to mention innovation so early in the game...

Lastly though, there are many facets of design...and not all are as important to selling a product as the rest. And great marketing will allow you to slack a bit on the design. But to blend the two well, and you'll make an impact.

Marketing, dont even think of designing the site to you have your marketing done, some of the most amateur designed sites make the most money

indeed

though even marketing with poor design would be more succesful, than great design with poor marketing...