Though the marketing principle is seemingly effective, I don’t think that it is a system that has much integrity. For example I received an email with a video link for one of his “SPECIAL” offers, after watching the Butterflied video, with the unbeatable irresistible offer, I was directed to a page where I could make my purchase. Now right at the outset of the video Mike tells me that by now the offer is probably sold out and when I get to the offer page it shows me with a countdown clock there is only 36 minutes left. I am not the overly impulsive type so I left the site. A few hours later I went to the site again, not to buy the product but more to check on a curiosity. I checked the site and it had told me that the offer had run out but I could get on a list. Still curious I used a different computer (hence a different IP) and went back to the site, and lo and behold the site showed me the 36 minute countdown again. Hmmmm!

For the time being lets give Filsaime the benefit of the doubt and pretend that there is value to his products, the fact that deceptive pressures are used to sell the product is something that does not sit well with me. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have sales or special offers, I am just saying do them with integrity and honesty. If it is 24hrs then make it 24hrs. As a side note don’t be drawn into thinking that there is a limited quantity of a down loadable product. If Mike Filsaime is selling a down loadable product for $300 and tells you that there is a limited quantity of only 100, do you honestly think that if another 900 people ( $270,000) want to buy it he wont sell it to them.

Now for the value of the actual products. In this video Filsaime was pushing a new widget that he designed. As I was watching, I was thinking that BlogRush (you can see the widget on the right side of my blog) has the same thing, and its free. In his savvyness Mike mentioned the same fact. What was the benefit of his product over BlogRush? You get his prefab site and marketing tools with it.

Now if you do a little research you will find that although BlogRush gets you tons of coverage, it brings in very little traffic. Likewise Filsaimes widget will have the same results. What is the benefit of his widget? That you market it for him and he has at least two of his links showing every time the widget appears on someones page. He makes money selling you the package and he makes money from people occasionally clicking on his ads in the widget. If you do get any traffic through the widget it will be a minuscule fraction of the traffic he gets.

Most of the product that these people sell for hundreds of dollars can be found for free. Google has many free tools in their Adwords and Adsence programs. I use 1&1 for hosting and their inexpensive hosting packages come with plenty of free optimization and evaluation tools which can be upgraded for a small cost (and without urgency).

Now what about the “Testimonials”? Most of the testimonials are by people pitching Filsaime’s products, you don’t see many testimonials of others that used the system to market something else. If you can’t use it to sell your own products it does not have solid value, and as I said before, I don’t think the system has integrity, so why would you want to deceive your customers.

As a final note, I don’t want to create the impression of absolutes. Even if you are being Butterfly Marketed, the product might have value. If you think something might have value, then take sometime to think about it, see if it will really help YOU. It will still be there tomorrow. As proof, in the past week I have gotten at least 5 emails from Mike Filsaime selling me the same “limited time”, “already sold out” offer. Needless to say the offer is not something that I want.

My recommendation is to make sure YOU are controlling YOUR decisions, don’t let somebody else manipulate YOU.

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For the past six months my CRT monitor has been fading. I have been resisting buying a new monitor because for one, I am frugal (some call it cheap) when it comes to buying bigger ticket items and two, even when I do decide it is a drawn out decision making process (I want the best for the right price. This all changed on Monday when my wife sent me out of the house with “don’t come home till you have a monitor”.

I had already done some research so I figured I would go to Best Buy and pick something there. When I got there, the greeter was pleasant and the staff was friendly. I headed over to the LCD section and within a few moments a sales person was there to be of service. I was having a hard time because although all the monitors were on, the screen program that they had running was of inferior quality, and all the images looked fuzzy. I asked questions of Contrast Ratio and 8ms Refresh vs. 2ms Refresh, and got simplistic answers at best. In the end I decided to go with a 19″ Samsung 931C, 2000:1 contrast ratio, 2ms Response. I figured I can’t go wrong with the best 19″ there. When I got home I excitedly set up the new monitor and booted up the computer, ready for the view to end all views. Man was I disappointed. The colours were horrible the graphics sucked and the text was very pixelated. I figured that there was probably some things I needed to tweak, so I took out the users manual to figure things out. After reading the manual (not very useful) and checking out the Net (very useful), I came to the conclusion that I probably would benefit from a new graphics card with a digital connection (the older generations of monitors used analog connections).

So the next day I went to Best Buy. When I got to the LCD section there were some sales people grouped together and one of them recognized me from the previous day. I mentioned my dismay at the quality and also how it might be worthwhile to run a better program on their monitors so people could get a sense of what they were buying (you would think the last point was obvious). They told me that part of the problem was that all the monitors in the store had an analog connection, and would much better if they had the digital ones. This was a great segway to my graphics card request. Well a salesperson took me over to the graphics card section, selected a mid-range card, told me it would suit my needs well and sent me on my way. I got home and opened up the case to find an analog connection only graphics card. Hello….. We were just talking about digital connections.

Day three. Returned graphics card. Went to Graphics card section and asked for help. After a few moments of questions the first sales person was good enough to use the three words of the wise man “I don’t know”. He told me cards weren’t his specialty and went to get me a graphics card specialist. I explained my need again and the sales person suggested a card. This time I check inside the box to be sure it was what I wanted. I also noticed that there was a higher model for the same price. I asked him what the difference was. He wasn’t sure so we compared the two. The higher model read better, yet he said the lower one was better. When I mentioned that all the specs were superior on the higher model he responded “Oh yeah, the higher model is better.” This was when I clued into the fact that he didn’t know what he was talking about. He was like the majority of the sales people there, CARD READERS. Anyway got home took out the card, and guess what? That’s right another strike. The card didn’t fit in the motherboard properly. The sales person didn’t ask me the right questions.

Well you know where I will be going tomorrow. Insane. Though this is a rant, there still has to be some positive lessons.

There are a few I can think of.

28. Don’t Waste Your Time. Be Prepared.

29. If You Are Going To Sell A Product. Sell It Well.

30. Emphazise Your Strengths. Be Honest About Your Weaknesses.