Essay Online

Bum marketing is so called because even a bum can make money using this method. You need no outlay and can start with nothing. Absolutely zilch!

I had absolutely zilch because I had maxed out 7 credit cards. I used to laugh when I read about others doing that with just two, but I did it myself &ndash in spades! My only word to you would be very careful how you use PPC programs like Adwords because I wasn’t. But that’s another story.

I discovered bum marketing because if there is one thing I am good at, it is writing. Bum marketing involves finding a profitable niche, or one that could be profitable. It has to be something with a reasonable large following, and a reasonable number of topics attached to it. Like fly fishing or quilting, or something similar. Something that is followed by people you would expect to have money. You don’t want people flinching at paying $97 for a product related to their hobby or interest.

You then have to find some decent keywords. For bum marketing it doesn’t matter too much if there is competition for them, but not too general. Not ‘quilting’ but perhaps ‘hand quilting machines’ or ‘deep throat quilters’. Then get a website set up. You can get a cheap functional site for under $5 a month and then set up a website. A sales page for a product and a few pages with some content. If you can get it, register a domain name that is the same as, or relates to, one of the keywords you have chosen.

Write a few articles on the topic of your website, and use one for each of the web pages. Bum marketing is all about article writing. You should have one web page for each keyword you are using relating to your website. Find a few products to sell. If you have your own then great, but if not sell affiliate products.

Then write a few more articles and submit them to article directories. Each directory will allow you what is known as an ‘Author’s Resource Box’ in which you can say a little about yourself and provide a URL for people to click on for more information. The URL should lead to a page that relates to the topic of the article, and should ideally be a text link with the keyword or phrase that is the title of your web page. The text link should be hyperlinked to the page; what is termed an ‘active’ link’.

If the directory does not specifically provide a Resource Box, you can add that information after your article. It has to be included and will go with your article whenever it is copied and used. The article will not only bring you traffic, but also valuable links back to your web pages.

It is important that you continue to write and keep pumping out new articles. I like to write two every week and send them off to the top 25 directories. That’s all I have to do because most of the top 25 provide material to other directories, and before you know it your articles are all over the internet. That’s bum marketing.

As I said, even a bum with no money can do it. I know, because I was that bum at one time. I am no longer!

Article marketing is an ideal way to improve your website traffic without expending too much energy. All you need do is to write a few decent articles, and your traffic will increase significantly.

The writing must be relevant to the topic or niche of your website, or at least the page that you intend to direct traffic towards. That is one tremendous advantage that article marketing has over most other traffic building programs: you can direct the traffic to whatever page on your site you wish.

This is done by means of your author’s resource box, that is an area set aside by most article directories for a few words about yourself and a link or two back to your website. That link need not be only to your home page, but can be to any page on your site that you choose. The page you choose, however, must be relevant to the article you have written. You don’t send a reader to a page on octopi if you have just written an article about giant squid or turtles.

One mistake that many authors make is to fail to understand what is allowed in the resource box, sometimes called a bio. Some allow HTML and others don’t. Some allow links and others don’t. If you are not allowed a link to your site then there is little point in providing a directory with a free article. Don’t use these sites, and there are several of those that I have come across. Some directories do not provide a resource box, but allow you to add a few words with your url at the end of the article.

It doesn’t matter, as long as you are allowed to provide a link back to your website. You then get a one way link to your site, but even better in many cases, you also get traffic from people that like your writing and click on your link to visit your website for more information. Depending on the topic of your article, and how you submit it, that can be a massive short-term jump, or a steady stream over a longer period. The ideal is a combination of each, but that depends on your submission strategy and how many versions of your article you submit.

The versions matter, because if you can produce a few versions and submit different versions to different groups of directories, then you will get better results. That is because after a while, the search engines will begin to detect that a number of article directories, and other websites, have the same content (your article). They will then begin to drop some of these from their listings as being less relevant, and this will continue theoretically until there is only one directory or site with your article on it.

So make the best of it and submit it to as many article directories as possible for a quick burst of traffic, then write others to keep it going. Rather than write four versions of your article for four sets of different search engines, you are better writing four articles, each to be sent to all the search engines. That works better because I have tested it.

Article marketing can be used to increase your website traffic, but you can maximise that increase if you use the directories and your articles intelligently.