That’s the headline I expect to read once man figures out how to make computers complex enough to think for themselves… to act on their own. We’ve all seen Terminator, iRobot and Eagle Eye right? It happens! Everything in Hollywood is the truth…

A little over a week ago I received an email. I know, shocked me too. This was no ordinary sales pitch however, this email was spreading news of new “revolutionary” software that was “radically changing lives”… lives people!! (You’ll get the irony of the ‘new’ part when you read further down…)

Titled “Turn your computer into a marketing robot! Let your Computer do your work FOR you!” It asks me if I’d like to:

• Save hours every day?  (Yes please!)
• Get more done?  (Of course!)
• Increase your revenue? (Who doesn’t?)
• All while working LESS!?  (Oh my goodness you’ve read my mind!)

Granted, those questions at least pique my curiosity, so kudos for that. And the next paragraph, albeit poorly formatted in it’s email form, also keeps my attention. (Just)

It’s all about automating the things you do each day. It’s about taking the burden off of YOU, and putting it onto your computer. After all, that’s what your computer is there for, isn’t it? It’s there to HELP you. Yet so many of us sit at our computers every day, slaving away… when our computers should be the ones slaving away for US! This program automates the tasks that you hate, and makes your computer do the dirty-work.

Unfortunately for me, the first sales pitch giveaway was the fact that the affiliate promoting it used TinyURL. Don’t get me wrong, TinyURL is a great service, but it screams “affiliate link” when used in email and on obvious affiliate sites (review sites, blogs, etc). Of course, when it is used, it makes it even easier to identify affiliate links and avoid them – something those using TinyURL for their links should take note of.

See, TinyURL allows you to preview where the link is taking you. A very hand feature. So when I clicked on the link in the email, I see the following screen:

And there you have it, a Clickbank link. Of course, if I had absolutely no idea what affiliate marketing was, and there are millions of people out there who don’t, then the preview feature wouldn’t mean a lot to me. But for everyone that does know what it’s all about, they’ve either just closed the tab and ignored the link, or switched the details to their affiliate ID and the original promoter has just lost a sale. (Especially as this person hasn’t even updated their links to the new somewhat masked clickbank links… tsk tsk)

Ignoring the lack of attempt to mask the affiliate link, I click ahead anyway. Now the product itself, Push Button Marketer, isn’t actually too bad. When I first read the sales letter, I must admit, I was skeptical. After all, it can supposedly automate all of your day to day tasks like checking email, writing content, managing PPC campaigns, building websites or web pages, writing your sales letters, creating ebooks and blog posts etc. Sounds a bit much right?

As you read down however, you learn that it’s basically nothing more than macros. Hardly revolutionary, but at least somewhat realistic. And the fact that they actually tell you it’s macros and give you at least a minor insight into the product you might be buying is a good thing. I’ve seen way too many sales letters that say a whole lot without actually saying anything at all.

I did have a hard time believing that this software was created and manipulated by someone who graduated with a degree in Drama/Television. The two don’t really mix. But then I had to remember that I knew absolutely nothing about HTML, web pages or PHP back in 2004, and yet I learned as I went and ended up running the biggest membership site in it’s niche at the time. So I have to give the benefit of the doubt and think that if it really did take a couple of years as stated, then it’s well within the realm of possibility the brother-in-law was able to build this program.

My post isn’t about the program necessarily, although if you are familiar with macros and what they’re capable of, by all means go check it out. No I’m here to talk about the ‘marketer’ (and I use that term loosely) that sent it out. Or should I say the second marketer. See, in my research about the product for this post, I went back to my email account and did a search for a few different terms. And this search provided a very interesting result.

Mr no name Leonard Worley (apparently aka “Daddy Greens”) sent me the email on the 30th of November. However, back on the 21st of June this same year, I have word for word the exact email from a Mr Fabian Tan. Who wrote the email first? I think everyone here can figure that out.

I should also mention that Fabian’s email was correctly formatted, paragraphed and much more pleasing on the eye to read. Leonard’s? Not so much. And remember the purposely pointed out ‘new’ tag at the start of this post? If I received the first email back in June, it hardly makes it new in November (practically December). In computer software time, it would be researching retirement homes by now…

I understand that emails aren’t technically covered by copyright, and that everyone has to start somewhere. But c’mon? Copy and pasting someone else’s email word for word, right down to the “I’m personally looking forward to letting my computer do more of the tedious work of my business. I recommend that you grab this program right away and put it to work for you ASAP.”

Oops wait, Daddy Greens altered that line to “I personally use this every day letting my computer do more of the tedious work of my business. I recommend that you grab this program right away and put it to work for you ASAP.” I mean, why stop at just copying someone else’s email and changing it to your affiliate link, you might as well go that one step further and claim to use it every day.

Unless of course he is using it, and this is what happens when you do – identical emails from multiple people. Hrm, that probably wouldn’t be a good sales plug for the program now would it?

P.S. Push Button Marketer guys, a major annoyance with your site.  Every time a user goes to click on another tab (not even close your tab, but simply switch tabs), don’t have a pop up window that requires closing before continuing. Quickest way to have your page closed and never seen by that person again. Once when someone tries to leave, fine. But every single time is too much!