Review: The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript, by Mike Filsaime
If you have spent more than 10 minutes searching for information about Internet marketing, you have probably experienced the results of Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing System. He created a detailed and integrated marketing system and built software that allows anyone to put the system into use with minimal technical knowledge.
This software, bundled with The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript*, and other audio and video training materials, sells for thousands of dollars – and it is worth the price!
After the initial launch of the Butterfly Marketing System, Mike Filsaime decided to sell the The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript* e-book separately from the rest of the package. This e-book explains the entire system and is available for less than $100. It is also the focus of this review.
The name, Butterfly Marketing, refers to the chaos theory concept known as the butterfly effect. This concept states that small actions can create big changes in the final outcome of an event. The example usually given to illustrate the idea is that a butterfly flapping its wings today can create disturbances in the atmosphere that eventually lead to storms instead of sunshine in the future.
In The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript*, Mike Filsaime focuses his attention on identifying small changes that online marketers can make to the way they do business that will have a huge impact on their profits.
The butterfly marketing approach is more evolutionary than revolutionary in nature. It includes viral marketing strategies, free membership sites, joint ventures, affiliate programs, developing pre-launch buzz, testing and tracking, email marketing, contests, promotions, one time offers, and more. Each concept is explained in detail – what it is, how it works, and WHY it works! For novice marketers, this information alone will save hundreds of hours of research and trial and error. But, The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript* doesn’t stop with the basics.
Mike Filsaime takes all of this information and structures and sequences it to give readers a complete blueprint for their online marketing projects. Those that spend the extra money for his software also get a complete business system built to operate according to this blueprint.
To further explain and demonstrate the Butterfly Marketing System, the manual provides 10 case studies of Mike Filsaime’s websites and products. These are familiar sites, but readers are given an inside look at why and how they work.
I highly recommend this book with a couple small caveats. First, Mike Filsaime is a former car salesman and car sales can be a pretty high pressure sales environment. I don’t question his honesty, but his tone can be a bit blunt.
When he describes how some affiliate sites provide links to their affiliates he exclaims, “Oh My Gosh, this is just damn insane!” The bulk of the book is on target, well written, and packed with high quality information, but these types of comments are peppered through the text and they might put some people off.
My main reservation has more to do with the way some of the ideas he presents have been implemented in the marketplace. One topic that Mike Filsaime teaches centers on giving affiliates a wide range of easy to use promotional resources. These include things like affiliate links, banners and buttons and also complete pre-written email sequences for them to mail to their lists. On the surface, these are all a good ideas. But, lazy affiliates just cut and paste these letters into their mailing programs. The result is that I often get 15 or 20 copies of the exact same letter from various affiliates who all just had to write and tell me how their best friend so-and-so has just released the most amazing new product that I just have to check out.
Coupled with the emphasis on building buzz and expectation before a launch and then driving tons of traffic during the launch, this can get aggravating and turn off potential customers. I’ve seen it happen many times.
I spend a lot of time in the Internet Marketing worlds and it is a crowded marketplace. This annoyance may not be a problem if you are applying the Butterfly Marketing System in a different marketplace.
Novice and intermediate online marketers should read The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript*. It is like getting a degree in online marketing in 125 pages. Print it out and keep it next to your computer. You’ll be referring to it often.
* Indicates Affiliate Link
Thanks for the review. I haven’t been through Mike’s system (yet) but I am guessing it’s a lot to do with the old Chinese saying that a butterfly flapping it’s wings in Australia can cause a windstorm in Chicago… In other words, little changes cause big results.
I too subscribe to that notion. Little changes as they are proven repeatedly, cause big results – they are cumulative.
however, I might be way off base. These are just my impressions from what I’ve read so far about the course.
Brad,
You are right on target about the butterfly metaphor and Mike makes a compelling case for his approach.
This book really is a good overview of the foundations of online marketing. I read the ‘leaked chapter’ first and was really blown away by the level of information being covered. It is not a breezy discussion of basic topics. The book covers the nuts and bolts of how and why people buy online and what you can do to persuade them to buy from you. Mike talks tactics and strategy.
The is one is definitely worth the price, but be prepared to either spend some time or money implementing what you learn. This is not for the cheap and lazy.
The Go-To Guy!
Ive gone through my R&D this month so I’ll hope to hear more about your experiences before I can give it a try.
I just want to say thank you so much! The techniques I learned from Butterfly Marketing played a BIG part in helping me in making sales. We got some absolute gems of advice in Butterfly Marketing which have, without a shadow of a doubt, contributed in a big way to the overall success of AdSenseVideos.