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On the first months of my internet venture, I’ve heard tons of ways to make money online. For a start, you have those “Get paid to” sites. Pretty tempting for a 13-year old back then, but I never tried one. You have eBay and a whole lotta other ways. But what have most intrigued me is this - bum marketing.
For the next months, I will be doing a live experiment, testing if bum marketing still works.
What is bum marketing?
Easy as pie. You write an article related to the product that you will be promoting as an affiliate then submit it to Ezinearticles.com. Do the process hundred times. Wait for the search engines to rank you article.
Higher rankings = more traffic to your article = more clicks to your affiliate link = more affiliate sales.
Listen. Here’s the secret to bum marketing success… domination. Dominate every search term for the product.
Let’ say you will be promoting a fishing tip product. To dominate the niche of your product, try hitting long tail keywords e.g. trout fishing, Alaska salmon fishing, Florida fishing, etc. and write one article for every keyphrase.
Why bum marketing?
I’ll skip the long paragraphs and bull point it out ;-)
- No computer skills required
- You can start with a low budget
- You can start right now
- Money on snowball effect
Why not bum marketing?
- Too many articles to write
- You depend too much for search engine traffic
The solution
- Too many articles to write - If you don’t have the money, you’ll have to pay time to get money. If you don’t have the time, you’ll have to pay money to get time. Now I have the money, I don’t have to write the articles - I ordered my first batch of 15 articles from one of my writers.
- You depend too much for search engine traffic - Then why not add a dash of web 2.0? For this case study, I will be using Social Poster to bookmark the articles I’ve submitted to Ezinearticles.com. I will also make a couple of Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com pages.
What I’ve done as of now
If you want to do the same and test it for yourself - or do it for the profits, here are the things that I have done at the moment.
- Looked for a product to promote over at PayDotCom (Clickbank alternative) with a good conversion rate and a reasonable price
- Bought a domain name because Ezinearticles.com don’t allow direct affiliate links - $7.15 (with coupon price from godaddy)
- Bought 15 articles related to the product I will be promoting - $45
- Set upped a campaign on my autoresponder (I am currently with GetResponse) to capture leads for long term traffic - $17.95
- Bought a private label product to give people an initiative to sign up to my list - $3
- Hosted (I recommend Media Temple) my squeeze page where I will drive my traffic to - $20
- Did a keyword research via Aaron Wall’s keyword suggestion tool and targeted the keyphrases with around 100-300 overall daily search to compete with less competition
- Submitted an article to Ezinearticles.com
- Bookmarked my article using Social Poster
- Made a Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com page for my article
With that kind of set up, it would cost you less than a hundred dollars to start.
I did my best to cut the cost here for everyone to take play. You can eliminate some expenses like the buying of articles by writing ones on your own and probably the hosting if you’ve got your own host.
By the way, if you’re wondering what my squeeze page looks like, you can download a copy of it via this link.
What do YOU think?
Now, now, I’m not a bum marketer on any perspective. I just read a couple of guides here and there for this case study, added some of my ideas and a dash of today’s new traffic tactics.
I’m expecting a positive result from this experiment as the principles are quite promising.
How about you? What do you think of the experiment? Will I earn my money back? Is there anything you would like to add?
Social Bookmark
72 Comments →
Nice post Carl, thanks for sharing your secrets. I’m checking them one by one now. :)
I agree with ya!
I second that, anyone need email marketing, these guys
Netmax Marketing are the best.
At $45 for 15 articles, that makes $3 per article by my reckoning. Out of curiosity, what kind of quality of article do you expect to get for that sort of sum, or is that irrelevant to the overall aim?
The company I got for my content generation is still pretty new - but hey, they’ve been doin a great job for me for months and so far, I’m satisfied bout the quality of the articles.
Bum marketing certainly still works. In fact, I currently live off the daily revenue articles I wrote 9 months ago are bringing in :-)
The downside to bum marketing is it can take up to 4 months before you start seeing a noticeable amount of revenue coming in. It is certainly more long term.
If you want to see some immediate conversions, setup a PPC campaign with Adwords, MSN, or Yahoo and drive paid traffic to your EzineArticles page. Run that for a while, then once you start getting high rankings shut off your PPC campaign and get rich off of organic traffic.
Just my 2 cents.
P.S. - Long tail keywords are king
Live off? Man that’s awesome! Would you like to share how many articles did it take you to reach that level?
I guess some can wait for four months for the organic results? ;-)
By the way, the web 2.0 bookmarking will give it an instant exposure and some backlinks for start.
Yes, I would use social bookmarking of course. I also use Pingoat.com and BlueHatSEO.com’s QUIT tool (both highly recommended). My articles usually got indexed within 48 hours. However, it took time before they had a steady place on the first and second pages of google for my keywords.
I currently have about 17 different products I promote and about 4 articles for each product. Around 65-70 total.
It’s a small living, but I am planning on expanding it. It was enough for me to quit my 9-5 which is good enough for me.
I definitely think you will make some money. It will take a long time but sure as heck you’ll make money. I’m actually trying that out, with other things though.
I like the bum marketing title lol.
Sounded like a song to me… bum, bum, bum…
Interesting guide. Hope to see your analysis after sometime.
Bum marketing always sounds great. However, any time you make money its work…..Peroid.
If you would, when posting results take out the traffic driven to the squeeze page from this site to give us an idea of the “organic” traffic generated. No doubt this site will drive traffic, but how will this work for a true “bum marketer” without the number one ranking for make money online.
Anyway, best of luck and I hope you succeed and help others do the same.
By the way I’m going to stumble everyone who has commented, any and all love back will be appreciated.
Actually, I was thinking of not publishing the link here to get a more natural result.
I’m going to use the Social Poster, thanks! :]
Hi Carl,
Just a quick question from a newbie here. When you use Social Poster, isn’t your article submitted to ALL those social networking sites? Does it matter what topic my article is about?
Thanks,
Rhea
It’s your choice whether to submit it to all sites. The submission by the way is semi automatic. You will have to point and click, all it does is give you the submit link and copy pastes the description of your article.
Most social bookmarking sites provide a nice set of category you can choose from that is relevant to your article.
Thanks for sharing. Could you a case study when you’re done with your experiment?
These are new times, and this method sounds really interesting.
Peace.
Yes of course, I’ll post the results afterwards.
I tried BUM marketing a long time ago and I was not very successful, it takes a long time, you are giving your content away and the traffic is not always the best, also the people using my articles sometimes would not leave a backlink to my site.
Bum marketing is probably my favorite way of getting money on the fly… Though, should be patient with it… I have 6 months doing it w/o pay and now its giving me a consistent money…
The article reviews for affiliate products is a good way to make some good commission but I don’t know if its necessarily for bums… I doubt any old bum could reach high ranking in search engines….but who knows.
Hi Carl,
I look forward for the results of your experiment. Hopefully, it turns out great.
I also want to get into affiliate marketing in the future and I need some blueprint
to follow. Hopefully, this bum marketing still works.
Regards,
Richard
hey carl, why do you use getresponse? i mean every marketer uses aweber, proabably 99.6%
And where did you get that statistics? ;-)
Well, its just a wild rough estimate and guess… theres a thread about this in dp forum that almost all voted for aweber… http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=7294763
i dont really have anything against getresponse.. =)
I think that its still works but u have to put much efforrtt in it, write tons of articles daily so its not for everyone.
Well thats all great Carl,
but isn’t this so mainstream that it doesn’t work anymore? like, bum marketing must be more complicated than this!
are you giving it enough credit if you can just summarize it in 7 or so steps?
how do i find out more?
Kunal
I like Bum Marketing because anyone can do it.
If you’re not a great writer, take existing articles and rewrite them in your own words.
Or, like Carl, you can pay to have them written.
I’m a fan of some of the software that gathers research for articles - it’s simple enough that kids can use it and produce pretty decent articles without taking hours to do it.
And anyone under 16 who has started on Bum Marketing, come on over and enter our YouTube Video Competition - you just might end up getting a storm of publicity like you never imagined!
http://raisingentrepreneurs.org/blog/2008/04/07/kids-in-business-cash-smart-kids-youtube-video-competition/
Good luck with it, Carl, I’m sure with your organised approach you will absolutely make a success of it!
Jenny Ford
http://cash-smart-kids.com
Blogging at http://raisingentrepreneurs.org/blog
Wow’ thats a great post you’ve made in a long time. How about some results in terms of money earned or hits? ^_^
Hey Carl,
I earn a lot of money with article marketing. Bum marketing is good for starters, but as you said, you’d better capturing email addresses.
By the way, I remember that the very first product (or second, don’t remember) I bought was the affiliate cash vault back in the days… I bought it from… Travis Sago!
I saw his ad on USfreeads and I got it. Disapointment though…
Anyway. Article marketing is a long term strategy.
But if you do it well, you can reap “quick profits”.
There is an art to this.
You are doing well till know.
Looking to see how your experiment is doing.
My TIP: article marketing is a number’s game… The more you write (or outsource) and submit, the more you will earn.
Franck the body guard.
It is a good idea but if everybody will start doing this I don’t think it will work.
Believe me, there are millions of opportunities in IM, so as in Bum Marketing.
This technique can be used for ANY topic you can think off. Think out of the box, this is NOT about products, it’s about people.
So the idea behind Bum Marketing is to provide valuable information for smaller groups of people, help them with a problem and offer a solution to the problem (shouldn’t that be always this way ?).
If people like what you write, and if this help them, they will most probably click at your recommendation.
Now you use this logic with Article Marketing and Long tail Keywords and you have it.
You can slice a market in thousand of niches and subniches, there are litteraly no limits. So even if all do Bum Marketing, there is still roon to play.
G.
I learned Bum Marketing From Travis Sago, the Master, here in Wealthy Affiliate.
Kudos to you Carl
When I was 13, I was shooting hoops and spending my lunch money on baseball cards.
Way to raise the bar ;) haha
scott
This is a very interesting experiment Carl, I am wondering if it would work well for me. I am not sure what products sell the best, any tips in that regard would be great. I thought something along the lines of Nascar products would do well but I am unsure.
Thanks and let me know!
Wow, $45 for 15 articles. I don’t know how much articles normally cost but this seems low to me.
I write articles for companies via PayPerPost for as low as $5 per article so $3 per article doesn’t seem to far out of the ordinary.
Most bloggers who start out with payperpost write articles for $5 to begin with.
This doesn’t seem like much, but I’ve earned nearly $300 in my first month with no PR and a high Alexa ranking.
Your not writing article dude, you’re getting paid for doing a review! get paid to blog is really the easiest for beginners but then I dont really feel its a good choice and it doesnt really have a great long term effect
Hy Carl
Very Interesting. I see that the technique of my buddy at Wealthy Affiliate, Mr. Travis Sago which invented the BumMarketing Method is still at discussion.
Travis is today a w=very welathy man, thank’s to his bummarketing method in first place, and because he is a very smart man who knows how to match people and products online like no other.
YES, the Bum Marketing method WORKS, ever worked and will work for ever. Why ? Because the BMM is based on LONG TAIL KEYWORDS, like “how to stop my doberman from barking” which is a “ask” keyword.
“Ask kw’s” are how, why, where, who, what etc. Those Articles have content which resolves questions, what most people use the Internet for anyhow. So Google simply loves fresh content about such themes. Of course they are not very much searched in terms of volume, but they get a good indexing due to the fact explained.
So if you find a long tail keyword whit about 50 - 100 daily searches and only about 5000 competition, you have a great chance to outbid all listed sites with a Ezine Article.
But there is a little trick involved, and that are the links from one Article to a other. Text links for the Keyword inside a article can boost the receiving url a lot. So write Articles to link to Articles, use Squidoo, Hubpages, a Website, Scribit, Press releases etc. together for One single goal and link all to one main page where you want to make the sales.
This way it does not take 6 month to see some results.
Well, the BMM is only one of the methods we learn in WA, Travis is always around and help out who needs help.
Hope that helped all interested in the BMM (as well you Carl, LOL)
G.
I learned Bum Marketing from Travis, The Master himself, here at WA
Yes, it does work I have done it to promote a few of my blogs.
Most of the traffic came from ezine articles I submitted 10 articles.
You need to submit on seperate days so that they all dont show up
at the same for the serps.
But it is alot of work. you have to keeep adding articles or
it just drops.
What website are you using to buy Articles from. I Would be interested in using them if they are of a nice quality.
Thanks Carl
Great stuff I have been bum marketing a few months and just jumped on the Youtube train.
Thats for all the great advice, “Never Stop Learning”
Forgive me if I’m a little bit slow on the uptake here ;) But the domain you registered - do you have a link to it in your articles and do you have information on this domain about the product etc. or is it used as a redirection to the product you’re trying to sell?
Thanks. I look forward to seeing your results :)
There are many types of money making sites. Amongst of all of them, I consider one of them for its best quality. Such a sites are those, where its owner pays upfront some constant amount of real money as so called entrance fee for his future customer. He is doing this for the sole purpose of acquiring next client. And the real money is really paid on entry and this is absolute different approach to the common one, where the customer must pay his fee for presented, almost endless possibilities which entrant will receive - but after doing his upfront payment. You could experience this special treatment here.
i love to write articles on any subject but especially on business generation. I can say i learned a lot from you people here. Well done, Carl:-)
While I agree that article writing is a great tool for promoting products online, the best SEO tools are in blogging for the fast response time to the search engines.
Hello
At the moment i still learning how to make good income from internet, searching for great tips and advice to help me successful.
I found your articles very help me to get an idea about how to make money online.
Thanks once again.
JBiggs :)
“To dominate the niche of your product, try hitting long tail keywords e.g. trout fishing, Alaska salmon fishing, Florida fishing, etc. and write one article for every keyphrase.”
This is a good tip. :)
Buddy, you are not #1 for make money online anymore. Sorry…
Good luck CArl, and good luck getting the number one spot on google again.
I started with bum marketing but did not continue to pursue it - for me the results were next to none. I wrote 50 articles for a popular bestselling clickbank product (watch satellite tv on pc).
I guess since this is highly competitive it was not the right choice, or I did not use enough web 2.0 tactics - but I found other methods that give me a better return on time (believe it or not: AdSense!)
Anyway, look forward to your upcoming posts!
You have to target long tail keywords where you have around 50 - 100 daily searches and perfectly not more then 5000 direct competing pages.
If you go broad with your Keyword, or if you have on Googles first page only heavy weight pages with a high PR you wont make it on first page with Article Marketing.
Like always, do a proper research about the Keywords and the market before you spend your time to write 50 articles.
I have a buddy at Wealthy Affiliates who makes about 100.- a day with Bum Marketing only, no other methods. So this proofs that it works, in the right niche.
I personally use a mix of all, my sites are made for a broad keyword, while I use long tail KW’s for Bum Marketing to drive traffic to it.
It’s anyhow good if you use all in a system to create a link net with Articles, Squidoo Lenses, Hub Pages, Blogs and Websites. That gives you the best results.
G.
A proud Wealthy Affiliate Member
Wow carl no more numero uno.
This post has been featured in FullTiltBlogging.com’s Daily Blog Summary today. Great post!
This is a great post :)
I should really try that. I’m way older than you but I think age matters, right?
I’m going to use bum marketing for a product that I absolutely love and have been recommending to people both offline and online for years. It’s damn good, everyone loves it, and I’d be a fool not to sign up as an affiliate, so that’s what I just did. Good thing about it: There seems to be about two other people doing bum marketing for this product, and they aren’t doing a very good job at all. I think that’s the biggest problem people have with this: They suck at it. They’re just not doing it well enough. They’re not taking the time to learn about it and they’re not being dedicated enough to do an outstanding job. Their standars for their work is just too low. Also, people quit to soon. You don’t TRY to do this stuff and see if it works or not. You just DO. And then you keep at it until you succeed. (I know that sounds like Yoda, but it’s true. There is no ‘try.’) I think Bum Marketing will work well for a long time, but only for those who make a REAL effort at it. If you’re just going to ‘try it’ then it’d be better to just get a job flipping burgers somewhere instead. Anyway, good post.
Awesome post. Bum marketing will always work…forever. Trust me, it is a VERY VERY VERY longterm approach, you will not get rich fast. BUT, once the snowball effect kicks in, you will have recurring passive income possible forever. The hard you work, the more money you will make. Its all a numbers game…submit like crazy!
That would be me! I do these jobs all the time, it’s so much fun by the way!
I’m really going to give it a try. It sounds interesting.
Hey great post buddy, but i think when going into bum marketing you need to have very good idea about what you are promoting and studying it before writing about it. Its a tough work of patience :P
Hm…my only problem is getting a domain name. How can you get a domain name at such a young age without asking your parents? I like post4domains but not complete-offers for domains. That’s my real problem here. Also as I just started out with ezinearticles my articles are taking much too long to be accepted and I only have one.
Any tips are welcome, post here or send to email, thanks.
Keep it up!
You can start with a free blog at blogger.com. Later on, you will be able to transfer it on your own domain.
Great post, Carl. :)
Ok here is my question. You say that you send the visitors to affiliate offers. But you also say that you use squeeze pages and autoresponders. So how do you do it? I mean how do you send the visitors to the affiliate site AFTER they entered their email at your squezze page?
knowledge indeed is power. I sure have a lot to learn from you. Thanks for sharing anyway. I’ve never really taking time to learn about squezze pages, I guess I have to read up on them. Cheers.
Great Post Carl!
Wow, cool one! Don’t forget to let us know about the results :)
Hi Carl,
I chanced upon your website and am amazed by your achievements at such a young age!
I just started my BUM marketing efforts recently too. Do update us on the results of your experiment here soon!
:)
I have used the info gathered here to start a bum marketing empire of my own… So far the results are nonexistent due to traffic not yet trickling in… but once it starts, I am optimistic that this experiment will do well!
Hmm nice read…I’ll be referring to this again real soon
http://pocketmoneymaker.com
This is a great post. I have just recently started using this method myself. It’s something I learned from doing the 30 Day Challenge last year, but I didn’t know it was called Bum Marketing. I chronicle my efforts on my blog My Make Money Online Adventure. The thing I want to say is that there are lots of other ways to get targeted traffic to your site and still make some money while you’re waiting for your articles to kick in.
Great job Carl and I look forward to seeing the follow-ups.
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