Joseph Chmielewski

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Mike Filsaime wrote:

(Note: This is my response to a copyrighted E-mail message sent by Mike Filsaime concerning the sale of his 7-Figure Course. That message could not be reprinted here because it contained a copyright.)

Quoted copyright from that message…
“(c) 2009, MikeFilsaime.com, Inc.
3555 Veterans Memorial Hwy, Suite C, Ronkonkoma, NY 11779, USA”

Here is the text of my E-mail response to that high-powered sales message…
_____

I don’t need another copy of the 7-Figure Code. I already have two printed copies. I don’t need another copy of the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript. I have one printed copy, and I also have an electronic copy.

I also don’t want to spend $15 for more copies of the same materials, and I don’t want to sign up for any more of your newsletters. I found that Matt Bacak’s and Russell Brunson’s newsletters to be much better for my needs than your newsletters.

I expected that access to the online 7-Figure course materials to be free, as advertised, but the $15 is not free.

Since I read the 7-Figure Code and Butterfly manuals, I am not sure that the online 7-Figure Course content is worth $15.

Please provide the totally free online content that your ads seemed to promise.

Since I read your defensive E-mail concerning all the people that wrote comments that you deleted and who posted Blog comments; I know that lots of other folks believed that the offer ads failed to live up to the promises that those ads made.

Subtle or distracting wording probably fails to meet the intent of the new FTC regulations that require transparency.

“Totally free” means absolutely no cost. $15 for shipping and handling of products that we don’t need is a cost that is substantially higher than “free.”

If you have trouble unloading 10,000 copies of these (not really free) manuals as your last E-mail plea suggests; even though E-mail sales pitches were sent to over 1,000,000 E-mail addresses touting the offer may indicate that…

1.) The market was already saturated with these manuals
2.) Each person received hundreds of the same E-mail offers as I did
3.) The perceived value of the manuals failed to exceed the cost of shipping and handling
4.) Folks were irritated (even angry) that the free offer turned out cost $15.
5.) Electronic copies of those manuals could have been placed on a DVD (with a higher perceived value) and sold at cost, including shipping for $1.75.
6.) The flood of negative Web 2.0 social media publicity cast too much doubt as to the value of this offer

Hopefully, you didn’t print all 10,000 manuals ahead of time, and only your reputation, not your pocketbook, suffered from this launch.

It will take some time before the current crop of Internet Marketing “gurus” learn to transition to the new FTC requirements for transparency and accurate (no fine print) advertising. So look for quite a few other “gurus” to retire or go out of business.

Hopefully, you won’t be one of the high profile marketers that the FTC chooses to use as a test case to compensate for the FTC’s lack of investigative, regulatory compliance and enforcement personnel.

Thank you.

Joseph Chmielewski, M.S., L.P.C.

Congressman Lamar Smith
2409 Rayburn
House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Smith:
 
Here are the comments that you requested.  Your survey card was crafted in a way that guarantees that the answers reflect a narrow, politicized (party) view of pressing issues.

Here is what you need to know, and what you need to do.

Reject the gridlock-oriented party politics of the past and get behind our president. President Obama is a novice and learning the ropes; and he needs your guidance.

What you need to do is learn from President Clinton’s playbook and develop legislation that is moderate and centrist.  Both the Democratic platform and the Republican platforms are stilted and dangerous. Neither party has enough answers to benefit our country. Both party platforms get issues wrong more than they get issues right.

Your cooperation by doing what is right for our country means rejecting the extremes of both parties and helping President Obama get on track. By your extreme resistance, you are driving President Obama into the arms of the extremist Democrats who you vow to resist because their ideas are just as bad for our country as the ideas of extremist Republicans.

Your resistance to doing what is needed (moderate, centrist) for our country guarantees that President Obama will become a Carter-like “One Term Wonder,” but the backlash to the extremes of President Bush go too far in the other direction…and our country continues to suffer for lack of moderate leadership.

Obstinate and wrong-headed Republican and Democratic policies, sticking to extremes and lack of cooperation make both parties look like children on a sandlot…one has the ball, one has the bat…and no one gets to play because they can’t  agree.

My advice to both parties: Grow up! Put our country’s need before party ideology. Finally do the job that you were elected to do. Or, go home and let country-first, party-politics last folks replace you.

Send President Obama the kind of legislation that makes him look like the best president ever, quit squabbling. Send legislation that is good for America, legislation that Democrats can’t refuse to get behind because they would look like quacks, charlatans and idiots.

Right now, both parties look like stooges…hostages of their party ideologies.

It is time for creative, collaborative thinking and cooperative action.

In a way, the scandals reflecting lobbyist and special interest influence in our legislative process act as a smokescreen and a distraction from our legislative dilemma; i.e., trusting in two political parties to do the work that we need when neither of those parties has the wherewithal to deliver unless they work together on centrist common ground.

Please quit being a Republican and become an advocate for America. Reject Democrat ideology and reject Republican ideology, and build a coalition of folks who want real change.

President Obama was elected to bring change to our country because his predecessor damaged our country and our country’s reputation. But, that change was supposed to be a benefit to our country. We were supposed to see cooperation, not a Democratic agenda that will prove just as defective and just as detrimental to our country as that of President Bush.

So, take true leadership and get off the Republican stonewall. Stop the Democratic mule that is heading over the precipice by offering the carrots and sugar of reasonable, cooperative legislation that will stop their blind charge to disaster in its tracks.

Please do what our county needs, and please do what our country needs soon.

Fireball E-mail comes with a lot of marketing hype, and big promises. But, are those big promises going to pay off for purchasers?

And, has the product jeopardized its credibility with a "sneaky marketing trick?"

I loose confidence in a product when I suspect that the promoter needs to use a sneaky trick to get me to buy.

The program promises to create a viral E-mail system similar to Google’s Gmail. This software then can then provide free E-mail to people that sign up. Then, the outgoing mail has a branded message similar to the branding that HotMail made famous.

Sounds good, so far…

But, here is the sneaky part.
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At one time, the Earth was considered to be the center of the Universe. Narrow thinking?

Then, we learned that the Sun was the center of our solar system. Now we know that the Universe is about 13 billion years old, and that the Earth is more like the “dust on the dust on the dust of the dust” in importance, size and grandeur.
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I followed a Twitter link to the Advanced “Twitter Marketing” sales page. From there, a Google search lead to the TeamChampigny site (not on the first page of Google Search). I attempted to place this comment there, but it was rejected. (Rejecting honest comments torpedoes credibility!)

Here is the issue…

Many of the Marketers who provided testimonials for the “Advanced Twitter Marketing” product also created sites with the standard…

* Reviews
* Domain Names as variations of “Advanced Twitter Marketing”
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Jeff Johnson produced some great SEO insights, and his Blog ideas bring quick Google Search Engine rankings.

However, I was concerned to hear Jeff’s repeated reference to …his guys."

My concern was that Jeff Johnson continued to refer to "his guys" as $8.00 per hour employees. He also pointed out how much money he made on the SEO campaigns that these "guys" ran for him.

My concern is with the ethics that would allow an Internet Marketer to make millions from the work of minimum wage employees. It would be difficult for me to justify keeping so much money for myself if I had employees that were doing most of the work required to earn that money.
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Response Magazine, May 2009, Page 10, notes that QVC settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for $7.5 million. $6 million to consumers, $1.5 million as a civil penalty.

This payment stemmed from a promise that QVC’s made to the FTC in 2000. The promise: QVC would stop making false and unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of health-related products that it was selling.

The charges state that QVC aired 200 programs where false and unsubstantiated claims were made for a variety of products. (See article above for source.)

Also interesting to note: QVC’s legal counsel claims that because of the way that the information was presented, there was no deception.
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Howard Gardner is a visionary and psychological observer.

His best contribution was the concept of “Multiple Intelligences.”

It is not that these constructs exist in separate realities, but that these ideas break free from the obsolete notion of Intelligence Quotient (IQ).
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Some highly motivated, ambitious folks believe that sleep is a waste of time.

Some others might label such a person, a “Type A” personality.

The fact is that our bodies perform a huge amount of maintenance work during the time that we sleep. So much that, people who spend less time sleeping tend to gain (or retain) more weight. Our bodies use up lots of calories during this nightly repair routine.
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I studied some “Big Name Guru’s” promotional pages as part of the Thirty Day Challenge. And I was dismayed because, I can not,in good conscience, write sales material that make such exaggerated claims of income-earning potential.

The issue is, that if I were to write using such hyperbole and if I were to pretend that “atypical results” are common, then I would be lying to the 98% of the people that purchase the product or service with the hope of similar earnings (without having to work for them).
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