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When it rains it pours!

Cut straight to the chase - Download the free report Death of Internet Marketing by Mike Filsaime (aff).

Fresh from reports about the death of AdSense, and Internet business manifestos, and final chapters and life after AdSense and product launches and endless free reports and information on how to make money online I have yet another free Internet marketing report for you to read.

This one, of course, is different, because it’s from Mike Filsaime.

I have to be honest with you, I’m not one for hero worship but in the Internet marketing world Mike Filsaime is about as close to my hero as you can get. Mike is one of the few Internet marketers who’s newsletter I remain subscribed to and I think his Butterfly Marketing (aff) product is one of the coolest tools available in Internet marketing - it’s the most expensive Internet marketing product I have ever bought too!

I love Mike’s work and as soon as I heard about this free report I went and downloaded it eager to see what Mike was up to. I was curious whether it was a new product launch or not and what Mike’s take is on where Internet marketing is heading, especially given what Rich Schefren and Scott Boulch have been writing about in recent months in their free reports.

It turns out that no, this report is not specifically part of a product launch (I think - you never know!) although Mike is definitely building a list he intends to make money with in the future.

There are some neat features about this free report you should check out - and I don’t even mean the report itself! Here are some of the cool things about the Death of Internet Marketing:

• If you are an Internet marketer you have to go download the report just to see how Mike is confirming the opt-in. If you thought double opt-in was good, well Mike is using what I can only term “triple opt-in”, asking for email verification and extra verification via a captcha code you have to enter after double opting in. Yes this makes for quite a bit of work by the person wanting access to the report but it also means Mike’s new list definitely want the report - they went through three steps just to get it! That also means they will probably take extra time to read it and the list will be of a good quality when he goes to monetize it later this year or next year.
• Mike is of course using his Butterfly Marketing membership system (aff) to deliver the book and his viral marketing principles as he lays out in his manuscript (you can read my review of Mike’s butterfly marketing manuscript to learn more).
• He’s not pushing a one-time-offer or anything after you opt-in, you just get the e-book, however you also can recommend the book and Mike is paying out $1 for each person you refer to a two tier level. That means you get paid for both the people you refer and the people they refer under them (so essentially Mike pays out $2 per download of his book - he will probably end up paying about $50-60k to build this list).

  This is similar to what Scott Boulch did earlier this year with the Death of AdSense report that launched his Click Flipping business and just like that report, those who were in early earned the most referral commissions.

• Mike includes a survey (like Scott Boulch did) that attempts to gather some market intelligence about people interested in Internet marketing, which I think is a good move and like he says will help him craft his business plan for the coming year.

  As an aside - the survey function is a feature I’d like to see built into the members version of Butterfly Marketing, along with the triple opt-in function, and I expect it’s only a matter of time before Mike delivers. He keeps updating the software which is great - he didn’t just do the Butterfly Marketing product launch and walk away with his millions. He’s been consistently upgrading and enhancing the software month after month, albeit upgrades during the early months after launch were to fix some nasty bugs that the software had and I expect some people asked for refunds as a result. Those who stayed with him got to see the software mature into a very functional tool.

That’s enough Mike loving for now. I recommend you download the report as soon as possible and then tell your blog readers and email list subscribers about the report so you can earn your commissions. This really is super-easy money for those who act quick enough, and you get a very relevant e-book and can watch a master of Internet marketing ply his craft.

And yes of course if you download via my link I get a dollar and I get a dollar for the people you refer who download it, so of course I encourage you to do like I am doing to help spread the word for everyones benefit and take advantage of Mike’s offer while it is available for two weeks. Since this doesn’t cost you anything you certainly shouldn’t feel bad or cheated or greedy - everyone wins here. Don’t make the mistake of missing the opportunity because you don’t think it’s right to make money from this - I didn’t when I “paid” my dollar to Brian Clark who’s link I decided to click to download the report (and there were plenty of options).

Download the free report: Death of Internet Marketing.

What Is The Book All About?

This e-book touches upon pretty much everything we have been hearing lately, especially Rich Schefren’s teachings. Since Rich is also Mike’s coach it is not that surprising that they agree on a lot of things. Your going to hear about opportunity seeking and the long tail and product launches and pretty much everything else you will have read on my blog and in many other places if you study and/or work in Internet marketing.

Is Internet marketing dying? No. Are there too many product launches and is the market becoming jaded with them? Possibly. What’s going to happen next? - Mike’s report has some ideas that will certainly make you think. It’s a good read.

I like that Mike is a hugely successful Internet marketer himself so is in prime position to actually experience what is going on from the top. I think you can tell by now that Mike, along with Rich, are two of the only guys I still listen to in this industry and look to for advice.

One last time - Download the Death of Internet Marketing.

Yaro Starak
Internet Marketer

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Review of SEOBook by Aaron Wall

Search Engine Optimization Book by Aaron Wall (SEOBook.com)

Name: SEOBook by Aaron Wall
URL: www.seobook.com
Purpose: Search Engine Optimization education

I’ve meant to complete a review of Aaron Wall’s seminal SEOBook and get it out to you for a while now. There’s one reason why it has taken me so long – the book is massive!

The version I read is 290 pages and I believe it has been updated since then so may be even larger in current form. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t do some skim reading – I would never have finished it otherwise. There was a lot of content I already knew in this book so I think it was safe for me to skim now and then, however if you are new to the Search Engine Optimization (for here on known as ‘SEO’) world this book really is the bible on all things SEO, and you would be wise to read it start-to-finish.

About Aaron Wall

I discovered Aaron, like many people do, through his blog at SEOBook.com. I enjoyed reading his life history and felt an immediate rapport with him – he has a blogging style I can appreciate, very honest and open, which reduces the barrier to buying his e-Book. This is one of my favorite strategies for selling an e-Book online, the blog + sales page combination is fantastic and Aaron’s successful execution of this strategy is testament to its effectiveness.

Aaron has an interesting history, including time in the navy, before eventually finding himself in the SEO and search engine marketing world. He’s labored long and hard online and his passion for search engines is pretty clear. He’s one of those worrying people who enjoys things like algorithms and figuring out how search engines work – personally I prefer to learn from people like Aaron, and reading SEOBook is the best way to absorb much of Aaron’s knowledge in a fraction of the time it took him to accumulate it.

The SEO Education Industry

With the recent launch of Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkin’s StomperNet, Brad and Andy removed their previous SEO product, Stomping the Search Engines. As far as I can tell it is no longer possible to sign up for the free SEO e-course Brad created to sell Stomping the Search Engines and since doors are currently closed on StomperNet (at the time of writing this review), there are not that many reliable SEO education sources left.

Brad Callen (not Fallon) has a great e-course and free e-book on SEO, but his materials are designed to upsell his SEO Elite software and while the education is sound, it’s not quite as all-encompassing as Aaron’s SEOBook. In terms of credible experts with materials you can study online, Aaron is almost all alone in the SEO field – that’s “credible experts” – there are plenty of SEO specialists out there, it’s just difficult to know who is good. Aaron, with this e-Book and blog, proves his position as a top consultant and trusted source on SEO.

It Really Should Be SEMBook

When I begun reading SEOBook I was somewhat surprised. I was curious to see what Aaron could teach me because by the time I found him I was already well versed in SEO, and nothing was really blowing me away in terms of advanced techniques. I was hoping that Aaron’s book could offer something new.

What I was not prepared for was the range of topics covered in SEOBook. I think the title is somewhat misleading, which is why I was surprised – it’s not really a book about just about search engine optimization – it contains content on the bigger picture - search engine marketing.

What’s the difference you ask? Well generally search engine optimization is purely about ranking well in the search engines for the right keywords, while search engine marketing is a broader topic covering how to use the all aspects of search engines to bring traffic to a website and often branches into pure Internet marketing as well.

This is why Aaron’s SEOBook is so large – he’s covered topics that go beyond just SEO, including subjects like choosing a domain name, copywriting, pay-per-click advertising, usability, hosting and even a history of the Web. On the face of it, this is fantastic because in SEOBook you really do have an all-in-source to learn everything. If you have never done any Internet marketing before, reading this book will get you up to scratch really quickly. SEOBook in a way teaches almost everything I know about the web in 290 pages – that’s a scary thought – but great for you if you want to save time and get into Internet business.

My One Gripe

I can see what Aaron is attempting to achieve with his book – he’s providing all the background and ’surrounding’ information required so you understand how SEO fits into the bigger picture of Internet marketing. It’s helpful if you understand something about copywriting and conversion (etc) so you can better leverage good SEO. It’s good to know all the pieces of the puzzle before attempting to assemble the final picture.

What bothered me about this was that I had to wade through a ton of content I already knew to find the nuggets of information that I didn’t know. Bear in mind I have been working online for nearly as long as Aaron, so perhaps my situation is rare, and it’s certainly hard to berate someone for being too comprehensive, but be prepared for redundant information if you already know your Internet marketing and were expecting pure SEO techniques in this book.

That’s not to say you won’t find fantastic content on SEO – topics like link building, constructing websites for SEO, evaluating link exchange partners, buying links, free links, keywords, site navigation, internal linking, title tags and generating content (etc) are all covered. Aaron realized that not everyone was going to read his book from start to finish so he has clearly categorized each section in the book and provides a quick start checklist at the end too, so if you are like me hunting for the goods in between what you already know, it shouldn’t take too long to find what you are a looking for.

Ideas

Perhaps the best feature of SEOBook is all the ideas it will stimulate. Aaron presents you with the techniques to get traffic to your website – and wow, he presents a lot of them! - so you may find yourself swimming in things to do. It’s important to pick a few key concepts (hint – look in the link building section of SEOBook for best results) and focus on implementing them if you want success. Aaron is not going to do the work for you and if you follow his instructions from start to finish you have a huge job ahead of you.

One of the best uses of a book like this is for a small company. If your business operates online you could place one staff member in charge of SEO, sit them down with a copy of SEOBook, tell them to read it from start to finish and then implement the techniques. This would ensure your new in-house SEO expert would have all the core information required to start optimizing your web presence.

Aaron provides a section in the book on outsourcing your SEO, so if after reading SEOBook you feel ready to help others, advice on how to land work as an SEO consultant is available to get you started. You know you have found a good book when you can begin a new career based purely on what it teaches you.

Table Of Contents

I’ll wrap this review up with a list of the table of contents from within the book. I think this is necessary given the breadth of topics covered. Note that these are the major categories, each category has between 5 and 15 sub-headings under it, but you will have to buy the book to find out what they are.

• How To Read This Book
• Why Search?
• Brief History Of The Web
• General Internet Topics
• Writing For Search Engines
• Directories and Communities
• Search Engines
• Link Building: AKA The Holy Grail
• Pay-Per-Click
• Monitoring Results
• The Social Web
• Hiring a Search Engine Optimizer
• Selling SEO Services
• Quick Start Checklist

Bonus Materials

Aaron includes several additional resources along with his SEOBook, including a collection of SEO Tools and a 111 page book of interviews with other SEO and Web specialists. Since I received the book many months ago the bonus materials may have changed so you should check the SEOBook sales page to see what currently comes with the e-book.

Recommendation

The only reason I wouldn’t recommend SEOBook to you is if you don’t have the time to read it. It’s big, detailed and comprehensive. This is a good thing and a bad thing, depending on your time and patience. Individuals looking for the “bible of SEO” or a conclusive introduction to search engine marketing should look no further. Experienced Internet marketers looking for ideas will also benefit from SEOBook, as long as you are prepared to do some skim reading to dig through all the content to find what you need.

If in doubt, spend some time reading Aaron’s blog first and get to know the guy and his writing style. If you don’t enjoy or find value in his blog then perhaps the book is not for you. Remember a blog is slightly more casual in writing format than a book, and although Aaron keeps his style casual in SEOBook, it is still about the content and he rarely goes on tangents like you would commonly find on a blog.

If one or two extra sales from your website would cover the cost of this book then it’s a no-brainer. Aaron wall will teach you enough to easily recoup the investment of this book. It really is a must-have on the shelf of any serious Internet business person and you will find yourself referring back to it on many occasions in the future.

Click here to read the SEOBook sales page.

Yaro Starak

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Review of Marketer’s Choice - 1ShoppingCart.com Shopping Cart/Online Marketing System

1ShoppingCart Online Shopping Cart, Email Autoresponder, Affiliate Manager and more.

Name: 1ShoppingCart/Marketer’s Choice
URL: www.1shoppingcart.com or www.marketerschoice.com
Purpose: Shopping Cart, Email Autoresponding, List Management, Affiliate Management

Let me start out by saying I was very excited when I first started my 30 day free trial of 1ShoppingCart. I logged in and was blown away with the potential - the possibilities - my young Internet marketer’s brain started churning away thinking about the products I could launch and all the cool things I could do to market them, all through 1ShoppingCart.

The problem, which I must admit even as I write this is still a problem, is that I didn’t have any of my own products to sell! However I signed up for 1ShoppingCart because I was looking for an email autoresponder to start managing my Business client lists with and I figured since my path was taking me down the Internet marketers road then no doubt I would make use of the rest of the 1ShoppingCart features eventually.

What Does 1ShoppingCart Actually Do?

Okay, let’s cut to the chase - what can you actually do with 1ShoppingCart?

Online Commerce

First, the obvious - it’s a Shopping Cart - which means you can set up products for sale and copy and paste forms into your website to set up a fully functional ecommerce system. 1ShoppingCart works with a whole range of payment processing providers including the ever popular Paypal and 2Checkout, so you shouldn’t have too much difficulty setting things up to start taking orders.

The actual shopping cart module in 1ShoppingCart is quite robust and you can stipulate all the tiny details about your products, including shipping, taxes, recurring payments, commissions for affiliates, landing page, thank you page - everything! I feel comfortable telling you that almost any product will work fine with 1ShoppingCart. There is a learning curve though and I was certainly intimidated initially looking at all the customization options, but the 1ShoppingCart team provide a ton of help files and videos. It’s all very intuitive and after the initial set-up and I doubt you will need to make very many changes again.

Client Management

1ShoppingCart is not a CRM system but it does have a fairly standard client database management system. You can see which autoresponder clients are on, search the database by different fields, import and export client lists and all the rudimentary features you would expect. It’s not exactly a relational database, so beyond seeing which autoresponder clients are on you won’t be able to do much analyses, but it does the job well enough for a small online business.

Email Autoresponder

1ShoppingCart has a very good email autoresponder. This is the main module I made use of until I switched to AWeber. I switched because I only needed the email autoresponder module and I was paying a high monthly fee with 1ShoppingCart for all the additional features, which I didn’t make use of. AWeber offered a specialized email autoresponder service at less than half of what I was paying for 1ShoppingCart. As I have stated previously, if you just want an email autoresponder, go with AWeber or GetResponse.

The 1ShoppingCart autoresponder is a little bit clunky compared to the dedicated email autoresponder providers I have used but it’s not really a fair comparison since 1SoppingCart isn’t *just* an autoresponder. The fact that you can plug it straight into the shopping cart and affiliate management system is fantastic and if you plan to need all these features I would strongly recommend choosing 1ShoppingCart. As I have recently discovered it’s damn hard to integrate different third party providers if you want to have different companies handle your email autoresponder, shopping cart and affiliate system - at the moment it’s not really possible at any price even close to what 1ShoppingCart charges.

The 1ShoppingCart email autoresponder will do exactly what all good autoresponders do - you can set up a sequence of emails to go out at set time intervals. You can automatically move clients from one autoresponder to the next as they take different actions, for example from the “prospects” email list to the “clients” email list once they make a purchase.

Top Internet marketers have been using the 1ShoppingCart email autoresponder for many years. That was the original reason I chose 1ShoppingCart. When I saw at the end of emails from Alex Mandosian and Perry Marshall (etc) that they were using using 1ShoppingCart - that was all the recommendation I needed.

Affiliate Management

Here is one of the areas 1ShoppingCart really excels. The affiliate module, while once again a bit daunting at first to comes to grips with, provides a powerful suite of options that even a single individual can make use of to manage their entire affiliate system. I know many online marketers, including Andy Wibbels, Joel Comm and Brad Fallon, who use the system to affiliate sell their products. In fact many of the affiliate promotions I run through this blog go through 1ShoppingCart.

In a nutshell the affiliate module allows you to take on affiliates, manage them, and set up promotional tools for them to use to promote your products. You can set up banners, text links and the usual range of affiliate resources. You can also customize the look and feel of the affiliate area and brand it with your own custom logo in the header (etc).

For me the best feature of the affiliate program is the fact that you can integrate it with the autoresponder module. That means that you can seamlessly use your affiliates to build your email lists, pay them commissions on sales and keep everything all in one place in a nice and tidy interface. There aren’t many other services out there that can boast this feature at the price 1ShoppingCart charges.

Other Features

I’ve covered the main features and now I’ll just briefly mention what else 1ShoppingCart can do. It has a solid ad tracking system which you can use to track and test any online advertising campaigns using media such as text links and banners. It has a custom form builder which you can use to create the input forms for your customers and email list subscribers to join or purchase from. There is also a pop-up generator which you can use to have an input form pop-up on your website.

Most of these features are available in other places, for example Google has a fairly reasonable ad tracker in it’s Google AdWords program which is handy because you can use it alongside your AdWords PPC campaigns to test PPC against other online advertising media. The thing with 1ShoppingCart is once again, it’s all integrated in the one place, so when you combine ad tracking with email autoresponders and affiliate promotions you have a pretty powerful set of tools for optimizing your online sales process.

The Good, The Bad and…Well that’s it!

The only problem with 1ShoppingCart is that it does a lot. It’s a complex system that requires some learning to get the most out of, but as I stated there are plenty of help files and audio and video teaching tools too. One potential risk with a “jack-of-all-trades” service like 1ShoppingCart is that the individual modules may fall behind in overall features and quality when compared to specialist providers, which is the argument you could use when comparing the AWeber email autoresponder to 1ShoppingCart. However the gap is not that big and if you do want the extra features 1ShoppingCart wins hands down.

And herein lies the true strength of 1ShoppingCart…There is no other completely integrated set of tools like it for the online marketer. It really is the “marketer’s choice” when it comes to selling goods online. If you know how to make use of all the bells and whistles, you actually have a need for all the bells and whistles or you plan to in the near future, it is actually mind-boggling to think about how truly powerful 1ShoppingCart is.

That being said - for me, it’s too much right now so I don’t need to spend the monthly fee for all those bells and whistles. If you are in the same situation and you really only need a shopping cart or perhaps an autoresponder there may be cheaper alternatives. However if you plan to grow, which I am sure you do, and no doubt will eventually need an affiliate module, ad tracking and all the other features then perhaps starting out day one with 1ShoppingCart will save you from the pain and anguish if you have to later move your email lists and client database into 1ShoppingCart.

Trial Period

The best thing about 1ShoppingCart is that you can try it for a 30 trial period so you can make the choice whether it is right for you after actually playing with it. You can sign up right now from here - www.1shoppingcart.com or www.marketerschoice.com

I hope that helps with your decision making and good luck with your online business.

Yaro Starak
Online Marketer

[ Add Your Comment | 15 Comments ]

In my last post you got the details of the The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript Prelaunch. In this post I’m going to actually review the product so you can decide whether it is right for your situation.

******

Mike Filsaime pretty much shot out of nowhere in 2005 to become one of the top Internet marketers. He used to be a car salesman, who turned to Internet marketing during nights and weekends and eventually became a full time Internet marketer. Today he makes like a bajillion dollars per month (around $185K per month is what I heard last) from his many viral membership style information product sites and other online products, his coaching club and affiliate marketing. It’s safe to say, in this case, “I wanna be like Mike”.

He was quietly busy during 2004 and 2005 making many thousands of dollars online via his unique marketing methods which eventually became known as Butterfly Marketing. He really shot to online fame when he did a full “launch process” for the Butterfly Marketing package, which is what I purchased, but not the focus of this review. This review is about the book - The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript - which teaches exactly what Butterfly Marketing is and how to replicate Mike’s online marketing processes. Mike has released the manuscript as a separate product for those who can’t afford or do not need the full Butterfly Marketing package.

What Is Butterfly Marketing?

Let’s get this question out of the way first. Mike explains things in more detail in the manuscript of course, but essentially to “butterfly market” is all about viral marketing. Viral marketing is when the marketplace itself - as in your customers and the general public - promote your product for you. It spreads “virally” without you having to proactively sell or promote beyond the initial system you set up. If you have success with viral marketing you don’t need to spend money on advertising or ongoing promotion - it’s set and forget.

Mike’s system is all about doing many little things that contribute to viral growth. The butterfly effect is when small changes make a dramatic difference to outcomes. By using the techniques taught in the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript you learn how to set up a managed membership site with built-in affiliate systems so that each and every product you market online becomes viral. Read on to learn more…

What I Learnt From The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript

I have to state that in many ways I am an ideal customer for Mike and his manuscript. I’m a person already making some money online who wants to further build an information marketing business. At the time of writing this review I was about to launch my own information product for bloggers - Blog Traffic School - and many of the concepts taught in the manual are ideal for what I want to do. I am the target market.

If you are also interested in online marketing and you either already sell your own or other people’s e-books, courses, manuals, downloadable audio, software or other form of digital product, or intend to in the near future, then you should consider yourself the target market as well. If however you don’t know what a landing page is, or what an opt-in list or namesqueeze is, you have never heard of an autoresponder or AWeber, and the whole “making money online” thing seems a bit confusing still, then perhaps you need to get the basic knowledge covered first, then move to something like the Buttefly Marketing Manuscript.

I’m going to briefly cover some of the major topics from the manuscript, but bear in mind this is drawing from a 120+ page book, so I’m only scratching the surface, there is a lot of content in the full manual. In most e-books I buy about 80% of the content I generally know already if it is about Internet marketing. It’s the 20%, the “ah-ha” moments, that really count. While certainly The Butterfly Marketing Manual also contained a lot of information I was familiar with there was plenty of really practical value for me in this book, more so than usual for me. I think the reason for that was because as I mentioned, I am the target market, and that Mike really has the experience - he draws from exactly what he does online to make so much money - the practicality of what he teaches really shines through, which isn’t always the case with some books.

The Launch Process

For me, this section was one of the most valuable - how to go about prelaunching and launching an online product. I have to admit I was somewhat frustrated after reading about all the different things I should do to maximize the success of my product launches. The ideas I got from this section were fantastic - my frustrations came from not having the people or systems in place to implement it all. Of course that set me down the path to building a better business so I can have the resources available to me in the future, but that’s another story.

Needless to say, this chapter of the manuscript is vital if you want to do online product launches and you haven’t already invested in something like Product Launch Formula already. You learn about finding and coordinating joint ventures partners, creating buzz and just get this huge dot point list of specific things you can do during the launch phase of your product. Really good stuff taken from Mike’s product launches.

Affiliate Marketing

One of the key concepts of Butterfly Marketing is that each member you get, that’s paying members and free members, all become instant affiliates. This part of the manuscript Mike explains all the different techniques he uses to encourage affiliates, including a break down of all the tools he offers and how to set up an affiliate system with minimum resistance. This is such an important concept - if you want your affiliates to actually promote your product you need the process to be simple, dynamic and instantly rewarding. Mike explains exactly how Butterfly Marketing achieves these goals.

After gaining awareness of an affiliate system like this every other affiliate system out there just pales in comparison. When I was looking for a system to sell my product nothing had the elegance of Butterfly Marketing - it just makes the process so simple and yet so powerful. You won’t appreciate it though until you read the manual or actually join and promote a product that is using a Butterfly Marketing system.

One Time Offers

I’m not 100% certain, but I think Mike is responsible for coming up with the concept of a one time offer (OTO) in online form. What Mike does is set up membership sites by giving away a free resource of some sort to entice the sign-up. Then once the prospect fills out the online form a one time offer is displayed to them before they enter the membership area.

The one time offer is exactly what it is - an offer displayed only once - with audio and good sales copy, and of course a product or service closely related to the membership site niche focus (for example an upgrade to a premium membership or an ebook on a related topic). One time offers have been tested to convert at rates of about 6-9%, and while I am yet to test one myself (very soon I will) I can see why they work so well. The timing is great, the sense of urgency is there and the targeting is spot on. It’s generally considered that a sales page converts at around 2%, with OTOs the conversion is a lot better.

Mike provides links to examples of his own Butterfly Marketing membership sites with OTO in the manuscript, so if it’s not clear to you yet, you can sign up for one and see what a OTO is like. This is definitely one of the core revolutionary concepts that Mike introduced to the online marketing world and the manuscript explains them in detail.

Viral Thank You Pages

This next technique sort of brings together all the other ideas and basically revolutionizes the concept of the opt-in namesqueeze to build a list. Instead of having a standard opt-in landing page where you have an enticement to opt in to a mailing list, using Butterfly Marketing you have the landing page appear like a private members area thank you page. Your joint venture partners circulate the private members thank you page to their list which is an opt-in to a butterfly marketing site and as per usual the enticement is a free product or service. The person landing at the page thinks they have bypassed the payment part of the membership site and have been given direct access to the members area.

After signing up the full Butterfly treatment is given, including a one time offer, the affiliate backend and so on. This concept may be confusing to you, I didn’t quite get it at first but once I read the manuscript I had a real “ahhh, I see” moment. Using this style of marketing to build a list with joint venture partners is powerful since the positioning is no longer about giving away your email in exchange for something - it’s “look, I have arranged this free membership service/product just for you, go join now”.

To be honest I do find this method a little bit deceptive in nature, however ultimately it does provide value for free and if the prospect is the right target they will no doubt get something from the membership, perhaps will buy the OTO and maybe make some money by promoting as an affiliate too. It’s win-win-win for the members and the marketer.

Once again if you want some examples of viral thank you pages the manuscript has links to plenty of them for you to study.

There’s A Lot More

That covers the core concepts but as I said, I’ve only scratched the surface of what you get in the full Butterfly Marketing Manuscript. Other sections cover outsourcing, automating your systems online so everything discussed above happens on auto-pilot, there is content about keeping everything simple, about setting up a helpdesk so you don’t have to deal with emails/support, Mike covers the marketing funnel as well which I have talked about in the past too, personal branding is mentioned and the book ends with a series of case studies which demonstrate Butterfly Marketing.

Potential Problems and Conclusion

All in all you get a comprehensive look at Mike Filsaime’s business structure - how exactly he does what he does. As someone looking to emulate his success I found the manuscript extremely valuable - probably the best book I have read about Internet Marketing so far. In terms of bad points - initially there were quite a few spelling mistakes, but in version 2.0 of the manuscript, which you will get if you purchase it, I believe things have been tidied up, and really things like spelling errors are only minor quibbles - I make enough of them here on my blog.

If you don’t actually own the full Butterfly Marketing package with the software script you may be frustrated because most of the functions Butterfly Marketing runs off, while simple in concept, are technically challenging to implement, especially for a self employed Internet marketer doing most of the web tasks without help. You will very quickly be tempted to buy the full package, however I don’t think there are many copies left at the moment, about 250 at $1497. Whether Mike uses the release of the standalone manuscript as a marketing tool to sell more copies of the full package I don’t know, it would certainly make sense though and wouldn’t surprise me. If you don’t have the cash to upgrade however that’s a moot point for you and may lead to some frustrations.

That being said, there is enough practical theory in this book that you could easily generate the money to buy the full package implementing just a few of the techniques. For example launch a product with a full prelaunch process so you can make $10-$20 thousand dollars in one big bang. Once you have that money you can easily buy the full package. It’s a good stepping stone for the junior Internet marketer. Of course, if you are the kind of person who reads info products, gets excited for a few days but never actually does anything I don’t recommend buying Butterfly Marketing, you won’t find any miracles or get rich schemes here. There is work to be done if you want success.

The Bonuses

A product launch process wouldn’t be complete without bonuses, and of course Mike practices what he preaches by offering a bunch of extra stuff if you buy the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript. Since I am a Butterfly Marketing owner I’ve got access to the download page already even before it’s released so I can tell you exactly what you get and my opinion of the bonuses.

You get the manual - The best bit and the reason why I would recommend buying.

Dissection of a Million Dollar Launch - Is an MP3 call recording with Mike, his business coach (and mine too!) Rich Schefren and Jeff Walker, the guy behind Product Launch Formula. I’ve listened to this and can tell you that you get the prelaunch concepts drilled into you once again but with even more ideas if you didn’t have enough already from reading the manuscript. It’s a mostly content call though, no sales pitch, which is nice.

Mind Map PDF For The Butterfly Marketing Launch - Mike did over a million dollars when he launched Butterfly Marketing originally and this mind map will show you in a simple drawing each step he went through during the prelaunch and launch process. It makes it a lot easier to understand from a big picture point of view.

The last bonus has to do with Simpleology but since I don’t have access to that yet and haven’t read about it in much depth I’ll reserve my judgement until I am more qualified to give my opinion.

Do You Need This Product?

As I said previously, if you are already at a certain level with your Internet marketing business Butterfly Marketing is ideal and has a lot of valuable concepts. Personally I’m really excited about applying Butterfly Marketing techniques to my own products since I love the idea of auto-pilot viral growth. If you already have a niche and already market online there is a good chance that Butterfly Marketing will make you more money. If you don’t have a niche yet then perhaps you need to think about what your business exactly is, before worrying about setting up a Butterfly Marketing system to sell it. The same goes for you beginners reading this - don’t think opportunistically, this won’t make you lots of money until you have value to offer the world and people have to want the value you offer as well.

From August 8th you can go download your copy from: http://www.thebutterflymarketingmanuscript.com/

Yaro Starak
Butterfly Marketer

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You can find a list of other reviews and links to the products and resources I use to run my online business in the Resources Section of this website.

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UPDATE: Everything written below was accurate for the time I wrote the original review, however it now seems this product is not getting many updates. I now recommend Butterfly Marketing as the best all-in-one affiliate and membership site online marketing tool and use it myself. I have not since used Motivated Marketing System because it was too buggy and didn’t do what I wanted it to do.

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In a previous post - Motivated Marketing With Butterflies - I mentioned a new online marketing service called “Motivated Marketing System” which I recently purchased.

I’ve had some time now to experiment with the system so I’m in a good position to report back to you my initial impressions.

In A Nutshell: If you don’t have time to read the full review here’s my “snapshot” opinion. Motivated Marketing System (MMS) is a simple and efficient software package to build a website that can manage affiliates, members and to distribute information products. It also has a one-time-offer functionality that is only available elsewhere in the much higher priced ButterFly Marketing package, so if you need this functionality you either build it yourself or buy MMS.

As MMS currently stands it’s not perfect. As I write this the MMS programmers are working on bug fixes and new feature implementation. With each update of the software it gets better and better and closer to a good solution. As it currently operates it can function well enough to use but personally, being the control freak and perfectionist that I am, it’s not good enough for me. I will keep it though and not ask for a refund because I will use the software because it is very simple to implement a very quick system for setting up a product or membership site.

The full price of $247 is too much. I bought it when it was just released before they raised the prices. I think $97 is a fair price for the package as it currently stands so I wouldn’t recommend paying $247 for it unless you absolutely have to have it or you are at the stage in your business where you can justify expenses like this in order to stay up to date with the industry.

Luckily for my fast-acting readers for the next three days I arranged a discount so you can also get it for $97 - but you have to act quick! (see below for details).

Okay, let’s get to the full review…

The Software

The Motivated Marketing System (MMS) comes with the MMS software, the MM guide e-book and a collection of other e-books on creating and launching an information product. While the information in these books is certainly valuable I bought this package for the software and that’s what I’m here to review.

The main MMS book by Eric does have some good marketing advice regarding setting up websites that use the MMS software but it’s not intended to be a technical manual - it’s only about marketing. The full documentation on using the software is not provided (yet) so if HTML is something that scares you this package is probably not for you, unless you have a partner/employee who does the technical stuff for you.

Core Features

The concept behind MMS is very much similar to Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing which I also bought but have not received in the mail (it’s more than a month now too!), so straight up one good point about MMS is you receive it instantly as a downloadable zip package. No waiting for this one.

I’m not entirely sure who invented it and certainly Mike Filsaime was the first person I came across who labelled it with a brand name including butterflies, but essentially what we are talking about is an automated website building tool with some core functions, which are very important to doing business online as an information marketer. There are also some relatively new innovations that I think we have to credit Mike Filsaime with creating - namely the One-Time-Offer (OTO) and membership sign-up thank you page, which is a new style of namesqueeze, which I’m quite impressed with (I can’t really explain it to you in this review - but it’s a very cool way to build a list quickly). MMS has many of these core functions including -

Affiliate management

MMS has a fairly rudimentary but well integrated affiliate system which empowers all your members with tools to sell your products. The idea behind a system like MMS is to encourage a pyramid like viral growth pattern with existing members bringing in new members (yes, it does sound like MLM). The affiliate section is crucial and one of the main reasons I bought the package.

In some ways I was disappointed with the affiliate options available in MMS. The system is basic with a single link for affiliates to use and the possibility of offering banners and emails for your members to use (you add these through the admin panel). Users can view statistics about their clicks and conversions and there is a two tier structure so affiliates can bring in sub-affiliates and earn a share of commissions.

Simplicity - An Advantage and Limitation

That’s about where the affiliate system ends. Yes it’s limiting and you certainly don’t get the power of a dedicated affiliate system yet it’s the simplicity that I find one of the best parts of MMS. You get complete control of the HTML templates so you can change the look and feel but you only need add your own custom header, footer and background to brand the system as your own. The core content area is very clean with nothing but basic text to deal with which goes straight up and down the page.

I’ve shopped around for an affiliate system that integrates with a membership system and so far MMS does it best, yet it doesn’t do it well enough. At this time I don’t think there is one perfect affiliate/membership system out there, but maybe I’m just picky. Other affiliate management systems offer many more features and controls but tend to overcomplify basic functions and certainly turned me away based purely on the end-user screen shots - I need a system that doesn’t confuse or intimidate beginner affiliates.

MMS is certainly good enough to use out of the box if you just want your affiliates to refer people to a sales page or thank you sign-up page. It’s perfect as a cheap and easy system to get selling online quickly.

One Time Offers

A one-time-offer is a cool method of displaying a sales page just after a person has signed up but before they get access to what they signed up for. The offer is only made available once to make it more compelling. I’ve yet to make use of a OTO but I’m very eager to. Some other marketers report back sale conversion rates of 8% or more using a OTO which is pretty good. It’s definitely a great feature and worth testing especially if you sell non-internet marketing products since your customers have probably never seen a OTO before so it will perform very well.

Admin Interface

The admin interface continues the trend of simplicity. A left panel navigation window lists all the functions and each section only has a handful of options to manipulate. I expect as the system is upgraded the admin panel may become more comprehensive but for the moment it’s certainly sufficient, as long as you don’t want to do anything beyond the basics.

Open Source

Every page of the system uses templates which you can modify. As long as you don’t mess up the code the system can be customized quite significantly with only a knowledge of HTML. MMS is open source and you can change the code to meet your needs if you have the PHP skills to do so.

The Verdict

If you need a simple and customizable solution to sell an ebook or similar info product Motivated Marketing System provides the basic tools. You can set up custom sales pages with sign-up forms to take memberships, integrate one-time-offers and have a basic two tiered affiliate management system all under the one roof. The developers of the product are committed to meeting client requests too so you can expect in the future the software will be even better.

If you are looking for a robust affiliate system look elsewhere. If you need a comprehensive membership system look elsewhere. If you plan to market online by selling information it’s worth having this tool in your marketing toolbox even if it won’t fit every project. If you can’t afford ButterFly Marketing this is pretty good alternative and 90% cheaper.

Reminder: If you want the discount on the package you have until the 17th May 2006 to buy from this link - http://www.motivatedmarketingsystem.com/yaro.html

Yaro Starak
Motivated Marketer

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