I was watching a commercial for “The 68 Minute Solution” the other day that referenced a site called – suprise – The68MinuteSolution.com and the first thing I wondered was why “68 minutes”? Why not “65 minutes” or “83 minutes”?

Of course I know from studying direct marketing that details sell, so I would imagine doing a commercial for The Solution that takes “a varying amount of time” probably wouldn’t pull nearly as well.

Anyhow, I was still curious as to what it was all about so I went to the site and saw it claimed to offer a “Turnkey, Autopilot system, that eliminated all of the sales and marketing.”

Umm. Then what was the commercial for? Although I know what he’s getting at. I think what he means is that he’ll help you reduce your sales and marketing RISK and FRICTION by offering his or others’ expertise.

I mean no matter how you slice it customers don’t magically fall out of the sky.

However it IS true that some sales and marketing systems are much better than others and certain ones are MUCH better for people NEW to home businesses. I’ll grant the site that, because the sales copy looks pretty good for the market they’re targeting. REALLY good actually.

The other PLUS for them is that they actually seem to REALLY be sending the DVDs for free – not pretending to send them free and then charging some hidden monthly fee. I don’t even see them charging for shipping and handling which still would be fine if that’s all they charged. So score one for the gipper there.

So far so good so I headed over to the actual Speed of Wealth site. Unfortunately it was a bit too slow for my old Mac G4 so I’ll need to wait until ’til I can kick my boy off his MacBook.

The main business seems to be an opportunity called “Retirement Tracs” which I don’t have time to look into at this point.

However, the one thing I can say is Wayde definitely seems to really understand direct marketing which as any good marketer would tell you is way more than 1/2 the battle in getting a business to succeed.

Really the only thing I wasn’t crazy about were the testimonials with no full last names, although I’ve had to resort to that as well when I haven’t gathered the proper signoffs for displaying full names on testimonials. Although I see one testimonial says:

“Just wanted to let you know that you can use my contact info. and picture in case anyone wants information from me.” Man, I’d be all over that – although MarketingExperiments recently stated about testimonials:

“Skepticism toward this marketing tactic, combined with the spread of Web 2.0 style user ratings, has raised the bar for marketers. As testimonials and other credibility indicators become increasingly prevalent on Web pages, marketers need to know how to use them most effectively to help increase conversions.” – from their recent Web audio clinic on using testimonials effectively.

The other minor point is his use of the term “super affiliate” but that in all honestly that term is misused more often than not. Within the upper tier of affiliates that term is usually reserved for affiliates growing over $200,000 per month. But it’s just one of those terms that has become so bastardized that it doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

I signed up for the newsletter on the affiliate site, but the more I look at this the more I realize that the main product is outside my area of expertise so there’s no way I can comment on the product itself. The only thing I can tell you is from a marketing standpoint that Wayde (or whoever he hired) seems to really know his direct marketing.

I had started with the title “The 68 Minute Solution – Prelude” because I was FIRST going to look at the marketing and THEN look at the product – but as I’ve mentioned in the last paragraph you’ll need to find other expertise or make up your own mind about the product.