Giving Stuff Away – Butterfly Marketing & Perceived Value

April 24, 2009 by Lee Jones
Filed under: Articles, FREE, Reviews 

This is probably the longest post i have ever written to date, and is purely because i feel so strongly about it.

If the current trend does not change or end soon, many big name marketers will die from starvation.

Giving it all away for FREE !

Have you noticed a trend within the Internet Marketing Community, a trend that I’m not too comfortable with.  I thought after many years of marketing successfully online, I would take this opportunity to express how i feel about this insurgence, of high value products being freely given away………..

I for one, am just glad that this particular type of behaviour, has not yet infiltrated into every business model, both online and offline. In fact, i don’t think it ever will, i’ll explain in more detail a little later.

One such product that you may already have, or are about to receive soon in the post, is Butterfly Marketing by Mike Filsaime.

Butterfly

I myself, have been running an online business for a number of years, and find this current fashion of giving stuff away a little disturbing to say the least. It’s not because I believe giving stuff away is wrong or immoral or anything like that!  …… On the contrary, it is definitely a great way to build your list and encourage people into your sales funnel, but what has been happening lately,  is a lot of marketers are giving away high value ticket items ($1500 -$5000). and i just don’t think it’s good business practice, and cannot understand why they are doing it -

Or do I?.

Now, I’m sure like me, you are very grateful to these marketers for supplying their very expensive products, at the lowest price break possible (FREE) …… is it going to damage them, their reputation or their business ?……… Well, i or anyone else will not have the answer to that question just yet, but I’m sure it wont be too long before we all find out, and I’m equally sure Mike Filsaime has his reasons for giving away his best ever software / info product, but personally,………. I just don’t get it !

Only 5,000 copies of Butterfly Marketing 2.0

The is how I see it, 5000 people originally had the opportunity to get Butterfly Marketing for nothing, not a single cent was requested for this best ever product. All that was required is the payment for shipping and handling, and the 30 day trial of Mike’s Newsletter – MARKETINGDOTCOM – The Best Damn Newsletter

A single shipping & handling payment of $29 (us & Canada) and $39.95 elsewhere was requested. . . . . So for me, as i currently live in the UK. (seriously have to think of moving away from the UK , as a 50% tax rate will soon be upon us, but that’s another story!) . . . . the cost for shipping this product to my door was $39.95

If i recall correctly, there was an early bird list of 33,000 people ready and willing to get a copy of Butterfly Marketing, so in theory the demand for that initial 5000 copies should of got snatched up immediately on launch day – 24 March 2009.

It was inevitable i suppose that the servers taking the orders would crash, and multiple times. Mike Filsaime and his team, quickly announced that 10,000 copies would be made available, followed by 15,000 copies and everyone who wanted a copy would get one, not to panic, to wait a couple of days and give the servers a chance to cool down.

I continued to receive emails from Mike encouraging me to get BMF 2.0, for quite a few days, even though at this time i had already placed an order. It got to the point where it seamed a plee of desperation, trying to squeeze every bit out of this current promotion.

As of today, Friday the 24th of April 2009, www.butterflymarketing.com and this offer is now closed, but i could not help to notice that only 14,000 units have been claimed, so i guess the other 18,000 who didn’t bother for what ever reason, will miss out this time. I say this time, as the remaining 1000 copies of the course will be made available at a later date to be announced. So if you missed out the first time, make sure you get on the list to get yours when it is released again.

What’s in the box

So what do you get for your $29.95 or $39.95? – half the box was filled with paper , the other half contained a shrink wrapped package of goodies.

2 sheets of printed paper, the first being a letter of thanks and another requesting you phone a number before doing anything else – I wonder just how many actually phoned ?

The next thing out of the box was the 16 page newsletter, looks to be of good quality and the content well written by a number of the Mike Filsaime’s team. whether or not this monthly newsletter is worth the subscription will soon become evident as future editions are released. I personally think , it may well be the Best damn Newsletter produced specifically for Internet Marketers, but i do think most people will not continue beyond the first edition, some will obviously forget to cancel and others will just try it out for a while, but it’s got to be truly outstanding to fulfill the dreams of everyone,and i just don’t feel any publication produced today, no matter how well written cuts the mustard anymore. We live in a world of Multi-Media, and written publication are just old hat.

Butterfly Marketing Confidential Manuscript – This is a must read to get the most out of the BFM 2.0 script you now have to use on your websites. It goes through many, if not all of the strategies and functionality, to get you up and running successfully with your own Butterfly Marketing websites.

Another spiral bound publication included is the 7 Figure secrets. Not exclusively for butterfly marketing , but can be useful in giving you a much better understanding of the ways in which you can run,and improve upon your Internet marketing business.

Finally a case containing a 10 disk collection, the first being a quick start bonus and links to download the Butterfly Marketing Script – Yes, it is a download and not included on the CD Rom. This is apparently to allow you as a registered owner of the script the ability to have access to the most recent version of the script software, and to enable anyone who refunds or returns the product, to be removed from the secure servers member section.

A further 6 Cd’s contain Bonus Mastermind calls with various marketers such as Rich Scheffron, Mark Joiner and Craig Perrine, to name a few.

And finally the last 2 are DVD’s part 1 & 2 entitled – Denver Presentation, so the whole package is very comprehensive and gives outstanding value, yet i still cannot understand why anyone would want to give away their best selling product for FREE, unless there was another reason , I’m not aware of for doing so. That brings me onto my next point – Perceived Value

Perceived Value

I have always been a believer, you should only get what you pay for, and that most people are quite savvy, and know when they are on to a good thing or just being conned. Likewise, if you are offered something for free that originally cost $2000, you will probably realise that the product is no longer worth $2000, or it would  still continue to be selling for that price.

And this is the problem with Internet Marketing as i see it today. Many marketers are eager to make a quick buck, some just by accident can make an obscene amount of money online, while others are just plain greedy, and will do anything to bring in the cash by what ever means necessary. Are these same Marketers going to continue with the amount of sales and profits they have already made in the past, or have they had their best days and everything from herein is down hill, especially in these times of being in the deepest world recession ever known.

The Free-line has been moved so much, that it will eventually be impossible to sell anything in the Internet Marketing Niche, unless your prepared to give your house and soul way for FREE, as many of the buyers out there will have learnt to only expect everything for FREE.

Where did it all start to go wrong ?

It all started with enticing your potential buyers onto your mailing list, The money is in the list, Right ?

Signing up to a free newsletter was a great way to do it, and worked very well to start with. Then you were offered Free reports, ebooks, collections of ebooks and software, audio and mp3’s, followed swiftly on with video, where does it end ?

Even the affiliate marketers out there are having to produce FREE info products, and recently i have noticed affiliates offering laptops or cash backs just to encourage or bribe there list to buy through their affiliate link and not another Marketer.

There is nothing left to give!

Where does it all end ?  . . . . . . . . How many emails do you get in a day that you never even bother to open now, how many FREE videos do you decline from watching?, how many FREE courses do you not bother to download having subscribed?

I think you get the point by now. . . . .

I am not saying all this to try and put you off, or say that
Internet Marketing/Email Marketing are Dead, or there is not enough money to go around due to saturation being reached, as this is simply not true.
But the FREE line has moved so much lately, unless your prepared to come up with some outstanding offers or something completely original then your simply wasting your time.

This has been a long post, and if you are still reading this far, i would appreciate you leaving a comment of what you think, and how you feel it has all effected you and your marketing efforts. . . .

More soon . . . . . . . . . .

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Comments

2 Comments on Giving Stuff Away – Butterfly Marketing & Perceived Value

  1. Desiree Thomas on Sat, 6th Jun 2009 6:17 PM


    2. Hi Lee,
    Very interesting post and I totaly agree. I have been a member of loads of newsletters which i can honestly say I have joined because of the free products. These days if I want something be it software,ebook or just information then i look for it as a free gift.Internet Marketing is going to the dogs. A lot of young marketers ride on the coat tails of the “Gurus” and have pics of themselves and these Gurus to make people belive that they are just as succesfull as these people and that they are best friends. When it comes down to it they have made say $100,000 from a product launch but fail to come up with anything remotley interesting or new so slowly fad away into obscurity.Free products do take the p *** out of trying to sell anything in this “Niche” as there are so many giving so much away that people take it for granted and are reluctant to pay even shipping costs.
    So where do we go from here ? soon the market will be saturated with “Free” gifts and you wont be able to give it away unless it is twice as good as the last persons offer.

  2. Lee Jones on Sun, 21st Jun 2009 9:35 AM


    3. Hi Desiree

    Unfortunately, All of what you say is only too true!. . . . . .

    Also, there are now many sites geared up to just sharing links to many of the latest product releases, which again dilutes the marketing potential even further . . . In fact, I have even had people ask me for links to go and download products and get stuff for free, they honestly believe they have the right to get it for FREE as well.

    When i started my first Internet Store over 10 years ago, I provided products with a very good markup, kept the pricing high, and never gave away anything for free – Is this wrong? . . . I dont think so, as it is still going strong today and produces a very good and increasing profits and income..

    I have never known any commercial enterprise or entrepreneur to simply give stuff away and successfully make a profit in the long term, yes it works for a while, but how much lower can you go when you have reached FREE, there is no way back.

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