You’ve seen it before:
“Don’t buy “Testosterone-Driven List-Building Matrix” until you read this!”

Google is overflowing with such drum-beating, bated-breath fluff each time a known Internet marketer launches a game-changer. The trouble being that I have never met a marketer who doesn’t want to trumpet their thingy as a game-changer for everyone.

The objective critic is – with few exceptions – a biased affiliate looking for a cut in the action. But unlike the guru who launches the product, the affiliate provides NO numbers to verify the super duper results supposedly attainable using the goldmine product.

As more fodder in their ranked, Google listing, the unbiased author will use a trumped-up Ben Franklin approach line to help you see that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Folks, this is horseshit on a stick in the same vein as “As seen on Oprah,” should be your seal of approval. The product may actually be good and relevant for some folks, but for most it is just another chance to chase a stray rabbit down a foxhole.

Even more insulting to our intelligence is when the marketer (through his affiliate) proudly tells the potentially duped that a 30- or 60-day money-back guarantee makes the product a no-brainer.

If you’re in a landscape business and someone sells you a product that helps you build a network marketing downline of 10,000 on steroids, is that 60-day money-back guarantee worth even one nose follicle to you? Have you got two months to waste on greed-driven, pie-in-the-sky launches?

Bob Dillon wrote, “Don’t think twice, it’s alright,” in one of his songs. For the IM world we live in 40 years hence, the new lyrics should be “Don’t think twice, hold your wallet with all your might.”

There is a sucker born every moment. Our job is to not be one of them. Live life on purpose, so that every shiny object doesn’t blind or distract us from our mission.

Butterfly Marketing software – introduced by Mike Filsaime some seven years ago – is an effective yet often deceitful tool meant to “bait and trade” the unwary customer into  buying not only the attractively described info product or online service, but also the numerous up-sells and cross-sells.

Over time, the users of this software (or clones of it) have become increasingly slicker in getting skeptics like me to let down my psychological guard long enough to let the bait set in.  Such  is the case with my recent purchase of Anik Singal’s Commission Domination.

Anik has been basically an honest and very successful online marketer in his mercurial rise and he could perhaps attribute a lot of that success to his alliance with Mike Filsaime.  Mr. Filsaime, as well, strikes the average bloke as a very generous and kind multimillionaire marketer with a Butterfly twist.  Both have their video promotion techniques tweaked and those promotions often give one a trigger finger to the order button.

Remember: one of the seven deadly sins is greed.  In Dante’s Purgatory, the sinners were bound and laid face down in the soil for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts.  How many marketers openly and wantonly exploit this common flaw of character to the detriment of a customer with sweet talk and dreamy, unprovable notions?

Truly, kudos to successful marketers who know how to get into your head and anticipate your  objections and reservations before they rise to the surface. But then, beware of the whammies.

In Anik’s case, he convinced me that he had a “Can’t miss!” software that can be had  for less than $50.  Hey, that’s less than the cost of a romantic dinner for  two and, if it works, as he insists it will (with 60-day money-back guarantee to boot), it must be a no-brainer, right?

Nada.  When I made my payment, I was led to a page that introduced three different up-sells after you rejected the previous ones.  They all seem so syrupy sweet and necessary to get maximum impact of using the software.  Huh?  Time out!!  Why the hell doesn’t the software perform up to snuff without all these sweeteners?  I bought into his initial  vision, but now he tells me that the car (his initial product offering) is a stripped-down frame without an engine or brakes.

Of course, I found myself incensed again by this manipulation.  He (Anik) even made it seem like I would have to switch my hosting to his recommended provider.  In reading between the lines, I did determine that was not necessary, but the overall feeling was/is that I was taken to the cleaners (again).

I say again, because several months ago another sweet-talking marketer with a great rap pulled the same software shenanigans on me.  I returned his product without hassle, fortunately.  Anik’s product I have decided to keep and try to seriously implement for profit without the proper engine and brakes.  I will not let it collect cyber dust;  I will either make it work without the butterfly trimmings or return it on day 59.

We live in a world where the term “caveat emptor, or “Let the buyer beware,”has taken on more meaning than ever before.  With major economies tanking, unscrupulous or reckless marketers will use every trick in the book to induce you to make a purchase which will sink you incrementally deeper into debt and into a state of disillusionment.

There is a fine balancing act which must be mastered so that skepticism doesn’t keep you from seeing authentic opportunity.  Marketers can help make that balancing act easier by abandoning the “stripped-down version” of their product and just charging what they think it is worth with all the parts in place.

Final words to chew on:

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising?  Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public. ~Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1964

Here’s the kicker…MLM is, by and large, a dumb, lowest-common-denominator business model that promises the world overnight and then gives you a pile of dung.  It is so American in design and so pervasive in the world that one must wonder what part of the brain God neglected in His design.  When these deals cross my desktop, I respond to the dealy by say out loud, “Any friend of yours … is a friend of yours.” My rant continues on audio: