Butterfly Reports - A New Money Maker For Content Publishers & Product Owners by Mike Filsaime

Your posts are always so much better than my posts. Sigh.

I just wanted to note here for the record that I see your RSS stats are now over 2000!

Number of reports on BR is starting to grow. I share your concerns about long term success, and therefore definately recommend Gold.

BTW, my aff ID is 4411 — and I see some very low ones on the system. They are claiming that over 10000 people have signed up. So, I am thinking this may be real.

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@Mark, Lol what a silly thing to say! There is no “better”, different writing appeals to different people. Yeah I was pretty chuffed to see 2000 subs today :)

Chuffed?

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Thanks guys for providing more affiliate links for all of us to sign up for to make you money. You two are a great one-two punch!

Thanks Sarah. Good to hear from you again. I find your point of view interesting as it is so far afield of mine.

As you have correctly surmised, Caroline and I are in this together to make a fast buck. We are actually are biologically identical twins separated at birth now reunited in a quest to control the Internet. Mike Filsame is one of the many dark agents under our direct control.

Sheesh.

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Ok Caroline, I signed up for Gold using your link instead of one of the many I’ve already received in email from everyone and his dog. I was interested to see that my $1 paypal payment went to rodb@anywidget.com, who has 129 transactions according to Paypal.

The aff link generates a cookie on the first visit, and that cookie is the one that is used if you buy.

Mark Mason’s last blog post..Josh Spaulding Announces Private Coaching Forum

Is it just me, or is this very similar to CrunchyCMS?

It looks better, but costs money.

Caroline wrote: “He is what I could consider to be a typical “sleazy marketer” and he’ll use every trick there is.”

This is why I read you Caroline. You speak your mind. Good for you.

First, I am sorry to hear about the loss of your cat!

Next, This service sounds interesting, but couldn’t you stage a somewhat free version of it by submitting official-type stories to PR-Inside and promoting those/hoping they get picked up?

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Thanks for summarising all of this. I saw that email come in and deleted it. Pay dot com took so long to take off and the support is or was appalling. I
So I think you maybe correct in your scepticism.

Maybe I’ll do the free one but something tells me not to bother. Will be interested to see how you find it in 29 days, please report back

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I think you are right on the money with your critique of Butterfly Reports and everything behind it. I can’t tell you how much I admire your bravery and appreciate your blunt words.

When I see a product like Butterfly Reports - something that has a great idea at it’s core but that is flawed or overpriced or buggy or limited in some way - I get excited because I know that soon somebody out there is going to seize the idea and do it right.

All this concept needs is somebody hungry and with imagination to make a great product out of it. Your breakdown of the features and flaws will give some talented marketer a blueprint to follow. I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Thanks for another great post.

I totaly agree with your opinion of Mike Filsaime.

As far as I am concerned anyone who offers a product for free and then tries to get you to upgrade a $200 spend using a fear factor that the offer is only available for 45 minutes is a con man. If that is the way he treats you when you first sign up then what sort of service are you going to get as the year goes on?

As an example of how this guy preys on peoples’ fear and lack of knowledge:
If you say yes to the Silver (free) offer and then attempt to re-register (even under a different email and user name) the 45 minute counter will still be running.
If you clear your cookies and try again - guess what? - you have a brand new 45 minutes!!!!!

Anyone who has been around the net a while will know this, so Mr Filsaime is attempting to extract money from the newbies and the naive. Not the type of chracter I would want to associate with.

I’m not too sure about the yearly membership… a lot of internet marketers would be suspicious as well I would assume.

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@Mark, is chuffed another UK-ism? I have no clue what I say that isn’t known in other parts of the world heh!

You do make me laugh! (in response to Sarah)

@Sarah, I’m always going to use this blog as an opportunity to promote affiliate programs.

@Kevin, ahh yes as Mark points out I think the cookie takes the first visitor. Thanks for the thought though!

@Adam, not heard of CrunchyCMS…

@Tee, for this kind of system to be successful, it needs to be heavily used so needs somebody like Mike Filsaime to be behind it. It wouldn’t work if an unknown launched it I think. Anyway the Silver service is free.

@Suzie, I’ll keep my eye on it but to be perfectly honest I don’t think I can find a use for it within the next 30 days. I don’t really want to promote other reports (unless they are really good) and I wont be writing any of my own until my Stumble Rush course is finished and that wont be in 30 days I don’t think.

@Paul, unfortunately that is a very common practice in the IM industry. I think its fine to have a freebie and then make a special offer. I was really just skeptical of the annual fee - as if he doesn’t expect people to stick it out for a year otherwise.

Love your work Caroline - I could not have written a better review myself.

I was invited to promote this one too but after Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula 2.0 release I didn’t have time to properly research Butterfly Reports and I don’t like to talk about something I haven’t tried myself. I’m glad you did it for us.

I like this concept and I think it will get better as time goes by as we see how many people start to really benefit from the system. Although I have to admit I only like it from the point of view of putting my own reports in there, not grabbing other reports because I suspect finding the good reports will be much like finding good blogs - few and far between.

Congrats on the 2000 readers too!

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Anyone who has been around the net a while will know this, so Mr Filsaime is attempting to extract money from the newbies and the naive. Not the type of chracter I would want to associate with.

I think this pretty much sums it up.
Weird you got hooked by it.

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Caroline,

Even though I only scanned over it, I had pretty much the same impression you did-where’s the beef?

I’ll be passing on this one for now.

Thanks for taking the time to review this.

Jeff

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One of the things that has bugged me for a while about various types of information marketing/ niche adsense sites etc is this recycling of canned PLR articles, reports etc to the point that it seems like the Internet (especially the IM sector) is just one big copy machine -ugh! I know there is nothing REALLY new under the sun, and also I am all for everyone making money, but somehow this kind of thing just seems like the digital version of the old making money by stuffing envelopes routine.

Anyway, Kevin Kelly has this great post entitled, Better Than Free He starts out talking about how “When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.” Then he goes on to talk about 8 things that can’t be copied and which are consequently scarce and valuable. The 8 “Better Than Free” things he discusses are: Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage, and Findability.

:-) ~megan

It seems to me that there are two separate issues here. 1) Are the marketing ethics of Filsame acceptable; 2) Is there merit in the BitterFly reports model itself.

I mentioned this to Caroline because it looks to me like this could be a valid viral marketing approach. I wonder what others think? My understanding is that rebranding is not new, but that Mike is shooting for something better here.

Regarding ethics - that is an important discussion too. In my mind, it is appropriate to separate the “cheesy” from the “sleasy.” No doubt Mike is cheezy.

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Hi Mark - I don’t think Filsaime is doing anything “wrong” or “dishonest” or “unethical” - he’s just trying to earn a few bucks by putting a new spin on things, merging affiliate marketing, PLR & re-brandable ebook information marketing etc, membership site, in a way that everyone can find a way to use it to benefit them. But somewhere down there at the end of it all is the consumer - the person consuming the information because they need it , their trying to solve a problem, whatever -

I take the stance that “I am the consumer - the consumer is Me” every individual deserves a better meal than canned spaghetti - sometimes we can only afford canned spaghetti so that’s what we have to eat until we can afford better, sometimes we are in the mood for canned spaghetti - we like it and it makes a quick easy lunch, but sometimes we want home-cooked spaghetti sauce - is it even available ? if it is how do we find it? if we see an advertisment to “Try Our Homemade Spaghetti” if we look in the kitchen will we find it being carefully made with wholesome ingredients “from scratch” ? or will there be some empty cans hidden from view? (this is where ethics comes in)

for me, if someone drops by I would feel comfortable saying I have some canned spaghetti in the cupboard - want some? or I can invite people over for a home-cooked meal “from scratch” but personally I would not invite someone for a homecooked meal and then put canned spaghetti on the plate.

just my .02 megan

HI Caroline this is just a few words to congratulate you on your excellent blog ;-) and honest advice. I was also really sorry to hear about your cat as in my other life I am a cat and horse (strange combination, but with many similarities) vet and my partner and I are setting up a feline only practice in Durham, UK
.
I have been marketing online for some 18 mths having previously been a Geek and I agree totally with your slant on IM. I also feel very uncomfortable with some of the IM techniques by M Filsame and other big Gurus. However they obviously work and are not illegal but I think are not 100% honest either.

I feel a much more considered honest European type philosophy would work much better. I also never feel as though I am a true marketer as I am really a Vet and Geek at heart. I try to “Do no evil..” as another on-line behemoth suggests and actually add value to animals and peoples lives as honestly and profitably as I can, but honesty always comes first.

Keep up the blog and I am sure you will be very successful it just takes time and a bit of luck ;-). I know from first hand how much work these take and have put off running my own Cat related blog for similar reasons.

You may be interested in this blog link below as it is very similar to your own and I have subscribed to lots in my IM junkie days but only a few remain ;-( http://lostballinhighweeds.com/

Looking forward to the stumbleupon course though not sure how many cat owners actually use this and other Web2 sites ;-)

However I do have other fingers in the IM Pie

Paul

PS: I realize we could go crazy with this spaghetti metaphor - there getting your spaghetti dinner catered, or created by a personal chef, gourmet spaghetti sauce in a jar, what if your homemade spaghetti sauce tastes awful … you get the picture ;P `megan

Megan — I understand what you are saying, and now I am hungry for pasta (thanks a lot). What would be cool is if the ranking system in Butterfly Reports was used to judge the report’s quality. I am sure that it will be used to judge other things like conversions and opt-in effectiveness. But, if really great reports propagated virally, that would not be such a bad thing. Caroline’s ebook is a good example. If Caroline could use BR as I suggested to make her eBook go viral, I think that would be good because the report is of very high quality. She argues in this post that BR may not work for her, but at least you can understand my original intent.

I think there are people that have responded to this review that have decided that Mike Filsame is a “bad guy.” I don’t really like the “As seen on TV — Act Now” flavor of his pitch either, but I am not sure if I have seen anything that I would call unethical. I am interested to hear what others with more experience think.

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Mike - I think a ranking/ peer review system would definitely be a plus - hopefully something like that is in the works :D - megan

oops - I meant Mark - sorry I was thinking about my brother (Mike) who makes excellent homemade spaghetti sauce ;P ~megan

I can’t agree enough regarding Mike’s marketing. The other day he was defending in The Warrior Forum about the “server crash issue” during a big launch. He admitted feeling ashamed about it every time.

Thought he likes that feeling. :-)

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Caroline, found your blog when searching for some ideas. What I find refreshing is that you’re not afraid to tell it like it is with this program. It seems that you might even be holding back alittle on this post. If you think its stinks just say so.

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@Yaro, Thanks for stopping by, always nice to see your name in my comments :) I too don’t like to promote something I’ve not seen - must have been tricky promoting PLF!

@Stefson, just because I don’t like Mike’s tactics doesn’t mean the product is no good. I am intelligent enough to be able to make up my mind over something in an objective manner and ignore the marketing hype used to promote it.

@Jeff, I think this would benefit from a second look a few months down the line…

@Megan, yep that’s probably my biggest worry, especially within the IM niche, that we’ll just start seeing the same crappy reports promoted all over the place. I think this will work better if it gets picked up in non-IM niches.

Btw, your second comment made me hungry :)

@Paul, regarding your last point - pets are a MEGA HUGE niche, cats especially! Way bigger than Internet Marketing! In fact, cats have an entire StumbleUpon category for themselves, in addition to the more generic animals category.

I’ll check out that blog - not encountered that one before.

@Caroline — Cool, a visit from Yaro! Whoo Hoo!

Regarding chuffed, I have never heard that word before. I went down the hall to ask my friend from Sheffield what that meant. He laughed at me kindly, and said “any Brit knows that means pleased.” He actually had a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary — we looked it up.

Adjective

* S: (adj) chuffed (very pleased) “I’m chuffed to have won”

So, as usual on your site, I learned something.

LOL

@Megan — I had pasta for lunch. Thanks!

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Thats really nice thanks for sharing this informations

@Mark, lol glad I can provide an education on British slang! I probably should try to write better English heh! I’ll seriously have to watch that when writing for my SU course.

Just signed up, but I don’t like paid membership :-D

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Sorry but there was a plenty of Money Piramids like that, I think it won’t work. Here in Germany Money-Piramids like this one are prohibited. We call it “bubble system” or Snow-ball-systems.

Hi Caroline - thanks for such a fantastic and open review.

Whether or not you ‘go’ for this Butterfly Report membership (ie. the ‘paid’ version) - perhaps also base your decision on Mike’s ‘history’ of sorts - I don’t think he is dishonest, but I am not over the top about some of his tactics either (and he did work for the car sales business for many years!! hee hee)

I was extremely pleased to see such an honest opinion though - many people are often afraid to speak against the ‘gurus’ in fear of being perhaps ’stepped upon’ in their own rise up in the ranks :-)
But then there came the ‘guru-bashing’ period too last year, which many people didn’t deserve (a bit like the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ - an Australian practice, where people at the top get ‘chopped down’!).

I am a member of Mike’s full Butterfly Marketing Site product/membership, launched in early 2006 if I remember correctly (BFM) (the membership site software, forum, reports, DVDs, MP3s everything). Mike is in fact, an extremely generous person, and I was grateful for his friendship back at that time. This was before he became ‘famous’ with the BFM launch, and reached ‘guru status’.

In fact, Mike and I had quite a good email relationship, which started in his blog ‘launch’ campaigin and some commenting issues. We were good friends, well I thought we were, perhaps naively?

BUT IT ALL CHANGED! And I do not … well, I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, but as noted, I do feel a need to say that I too am uncomfortable with some of these marketing techniques - but they are everywhere with the older-style ‘guru’ big guys. Times are a changing though! and many of these ‘gurus’ are not looking into softer relationship marketing - in fact, i don’t even like ‘marketing’ - i much prefer the concept of ‘networking’ with people …

Anyway - after mike’s great success with the launch of his full Butterfly product, which made him nearly a million I think - do you think I could contact him?? Nup. No peep. Try as I might - he had become ‘noticed’ by the ‘big guys’. All of a sudden he seemed to be part of ‘a club’ - ‘the club’ - try as they might to deny that such a ‘club’ exists!

I had his email, his NY phone number, gmail, his assistant’s number, etc (I did manage to speak wth his assistant, who was lovely person) - and leave messages - and mike did ‘remember’ me - but no reples. Even when I stupidly left a message in almost desperation - I thought I was dying (well, I was at the time) and really needed help in getting a ‘help me’! fund/sale to try and fund some new medication which would save my life. Still no response.

The moral of this story?!?! well, his techniques are quite common in the IM world, whether we like them or not. but there are other, better ways, like your blog Caroline and building your network, your readers and supporters :-)

Always being honest and transparent is great.

Anyway - history issues and longevity of the ‘Butterfly Reports’ may be questionable - if you do join - but it may work - who can tell.

All I can base it on is my own experience with the the original butterfly marketing product - the fully ‘butterfly products/software/forum etc - it was virtually deserted when bigger and better things came along later for Mike - and many people who paid the full amount - quite a large sum - were apparently not impressed - including all the bugs in the software!! I don’t know what is happening there now, as I haven’t been back for sometime

- but it was a fantastic forum - hopefully it still is - will perhaps get back to you on that one?

- it was also great piece of software/script for membersites if you could get it working - again, based on the free level to join first, followed by the special offers, OTOs upgrades, etc (although you didn’t ‘have’ to adopt these tactics if you didn’t want to within the software) - this the whole basis of mike’s business though - viral marketing, building a list and getting a large army of free affiliates!

In fact, there are 100s of free level BFM (butterfly marketing) memberships out there - and many of them provide great value even at the free level - they are easily recognizable, with the special OTOs upgrades, etc - its a wonderful rolodex of free membership sites to have!! :-)

I don’t ‘hate’ Mike for ‘deserting’ our contact. I think he just got caught up, like a ‘kid in a candy store’ perhaps, and it must have been very exciting for him. And to be honest, he was very busy after this, and probably never found the time - there were literally 100s if not 1000s of people after his attention at the time.

So, I don’t blame him. Mike is actually quite a lovely guy, and is still learning, like all of us. I do wish him well. I also hope that he calms down a little, slows down! I think he will. He will have to, as the internet changes so much…

well, enough from me once again! I always write too much - sorry!

Again - another great post Caroline. Will be interested to see how this butterfly site turns out too :-) (but I am going to pass on it for now).

Warm Regards
Meg

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@Megan, that’s very interesting. It does seem like there is a ‘club’ of sorts because when you start to get the newsletters you find that all the big guys talk to each other and seem to be doing very similar things.

I too would like bucket loads of money (who wouldn’t) but I do hope I don’t end up ignoring people in the way you describe your experience with Mike!

Since this review, I never really got around to looking at the system again and I cancelled my membership.

Now it’s July 10th a little over 3 months later. Which of the predictions came true, Caroline? Can you write another review so we can see just how much insight you provide on the newest Secret launches?

Your review was great and the fact that you yourself joined and actually used it gives you credibility. These “gurus” do prey on the newbies and the QRQers because the target market is huge and probably never-ending. Instead, it’s growing by the hour.

At least click-bank requires a 56-day refund policy and the $47, $97, $197 is not enough money to break the bank for most people who find out these programs required discipline and real work. Promoting a down-line in the hopes that “they” will do it won’t work.

Pay-dot-com allows physical goods/products to be promoted on their marketplace. I’m going to check that out next. Any other helpful information would be appreciated and thanks for the reveiw/post above.

Now I understand it much better and by the way, when I was looking at their program about 2-3 weeks ago I didn’t even pay the $1.00 trial or SIGN up for the program with my email address at all. They have no paypal account unless they use the one you put in the affiliate area. I got a WELCOME email and thanks for joining with my login in name and temporary password without paying the $1.00 trial. How did they do that and what happens at the end of 30 days or did I slip in under the FOREVER FREE “Titanium” membership level. I just made that up. I guess I’ll see what happens now???

@thriftgirl, to be perfectly honest I signed up, played around with it for a day or two and then forgot all about it. I unsubscribed myself from the paid program just before the payment kicked in and never went back for another look! I haven’t heard much else about it since the launch so I don’t know how its going now.