Wow! I ACTUALLY made a Sale!

WEll, whady'know, after 2 weeks of nothing I actually made a sale, I couldn't believe my eyes - I had to look twice! Though it was on a bum article I did nearly two months ago, so the recent challenge efforts didn't play a single part!

Anyway, this coincides with my announcement today that I am putting this project on hold. Why?

Because I am moving flat in little over a week and I need to do some packing. And coming back home to crank out articles usually means that time flies by and it is time for bed in no time.

So, over the next three weeks (it'll take a while for my broadband connection to get back up when I move - this is inefficient England after all) at least I'll post updates of the odd thing such as the odd article written.

I'm also doing a mini experiment so expect to hear about that as well - Adwords. Its kind of like pay per lead effectively. So we'll see how many signups to my list I can get from Adwords, should be interesting. In my ad, I am trying a technique of saying that I offer a signup by email course, so it should mean more clicks turning to leads.

Saying that, I just paused a campaign on a generic keyword because I had 9 clicks and only 1 sign up - even though I blatently pointed out the email aspect! I guess a lot of people don't think about where they click!

Quick Update

Bad days generally.

Bad day at work. My heart races and my chest doesn't feel right (not tight like a heart attack), I'm in my late 20s. I'm fed up of this place and am going to do some contract work and cream that f**king money.

Not particularly great news for my niche blog incl. squeeze page either. Its early days and basically I'm really only on Day 3 of my corrected and new challenge. I've got about 50 page views of my articles but barely 1 or 2 bio follow ups. This is getting ridiculous now.

I'm going to look at forums now for getting people to my squeeze page but they are few and far between for this niche - and also I feel as if I've nearly cornered the market in high volume keywords. Nevertheless, 3 more articles today - 2 for ezine and 1 for the blog. It is relatively early days though.

I have a couple of secret promotions I'm doing. We'll see how they go and maybe I can reveal them later.

I'm also tempted to try an Adwords experiment and spend a few bucks.......

Sunday Update - Site Setup Complete incl. Autoresponder!

So, today was a good day.

I started around 10.30 and spent about 3 hours finishing the autoresponder series, creating an opt-in page and a couple of thank you pages.

You really can't rush this and I really didn't because I wanted it to be really good and personal so that my conversions are good. It really helps if you have a passion for the topic, which I do because there is a personal connection.

I'm quite proud of what I produced although it took around six hours which is the same amount of time it takes to pump out maybe 5 or 6 articles.

Anyway, for this bum marketing and the product creation, I've now done all the preparation so that just writing and not building or other tasks are left. And I've done it before the end of the weekend which is great because I never get that stuff done during the week.

In fact, apart from a couple of articles, I might take the rest of the day off - frankly I deserve it.

Later

Article! 4th Update Saturday

Another 4 articles pumped out, so overall progress for today is:

• 4 articles to my niche blog
• 4 articles to ezinearticles point to the niche blog
• product creation outline finished
• 5 day e-course for niche blog outline finished

I'm also going to change where my bio box links to. So far, I've been linking direct to the main blog page. But what I'm going to do after designing the e-course and opt-in form is to link to a single page containing the opt-in and a simple, "no thanks, let me see the main page" link at the bottom in small letters. I can create several of these and compare the hits on the main page from the opt-in page to the ezinearticles count for outgoing clicks to get a rough conversion rate. I could even split test if I want to.

I don't think I'll change the bio links on my existing posted articles at ezinearticles for now, I'll just leave them as they are.

Also, I noticed that my site is already indexed! Google came visiting yesterday! I'm sure this is because ezinearticles is pointing this way.

So, you can see how the original bum marketing method which relied solely on the article site pages ranking high and providing inbound traffic, can change into a sort of affiliate site with seo. This is Stuart's method and the one I want to replicate.

Product Creation Progress! 3rd Update Saturday

OK have done some product creation. I know have my outline sorted.

Basically the title of each section in my book. It strikes me that you could now actually outsource the rest of the project i.e. the writing. Though, if it something that you have a great passion for, it would be quicker to write it yourself!

I have calculated that, at five minutes per section, this is going to take me 7 hours to complete. By the way, if you are intrigued to learn more about the product creation technique that I am using, then check out the 24 Hour E-Book Writing System that I am using.

So, 7 hours to go, not including tidying up. I wonder if I can get this written this weekend. It will be interesting to see. I still aim to complete a 5 day email course for my niche blog, and hopefully some new articles.

We will see. I want more of a rest day tomorrow so today could be the huge effort. Its only 3.30pm so I have plenty of time left. Time to get some munch and refuel my body and mind.

2nd Update Saturday

ok 2 more articles.

So 2 articles for ezines and 2 articles for my blog, posted today.

Before I add an autoresponder or Clickbank ad, I needed to do a bit of both to start the wheels rolling on traffic and indexing.

Next, I'm going to create a 5 day Ezine course. I aim to have this finished by end of today. I need to think what I will put in it though.........I will do some product creation in the meantime.

Quick Update Saturday

Just a quick update. Written 2 articles for my passion blog.

This is great. It really feels like you are making much progress.

Instead of a few articles per niche funneling to someone else's page (though as an affiliate), this feels like all your work is for you as the traffic will hit your page before they see the CB vendor.

This is a great feeling.

Off to write more!

Weekend Update - Lot's To Do Today

First of all, need to get this of my chest. F**kin estate agents! I rush home from work to accomodate their viewing. One hour later, noone has turned up! Then the guy at the office blabs some c**p to say that the guy will turn up soon. One hour later I ring up and same guy claims he told me the appointment was cancelled! BS! Next time they want to view, I give them a 15 minute window or they lose the opportunity. Simple as that. I hate timewasters and if I'm waiting for someone, I can't write articles or do any work.

Anyway, I think Friday night is going to be rest night for me from now on. I'm always really tired. I heard someone saying it was an excuse before, but I often work early (7am) and I have never in my life been an early bird. I had really bad hayfever last night (where the hell did that come from) and I started to nod off at about 10pm last night. My throat and nose feels on fire and I slept until 8 in the morning. So now I am fairly refreshed.

Today is gonna be a big day. I want to pump out lots of articles and product creation.

I'm going to concentrate solely on this single niche passion blog of mine. After writing a few articles for it, I realise that I should have concentrated my efforts like this in the beginning, instead of spreading around my efforts for diversification. Another thing I recently noticed is that those two sites that I was using a special technique for, they are starting to get hits from search engines. I was quite surprised but for reasons that I cannot divulge at this stage - rest assured, I will later. So I may write an article or two for these.

So I'll report back later today with my progress - look out for it and please leave any comments you have because I always reply to any questions or comments. Thanks

PS take a look over at Bum Marketing Adventure. The guy is starting to see some regular sales coming in. Mainly from Squidoo lenses. Wow! I had heard of them being good traffic funnels but never thought that you could make good CB income off them. The problem I find with Squidoo lenses is that they take forever to construct. Is there any way that you can save a template and use it for each lens of yours, but change the keywords?

New Blog Created!

I decided to create the blog tonight instead of waiting till the weekend. Let's just get it installed!

This way, as well as my product creation (in a different niche by the way), I can create and post 2 articles a day - one on the blog and one with an outbound link on ezinearticles.

I used Wordpress as I know this is very SEO friendly. So far I haven't put on any Adsense - I've installed a theme but I may change it as it looks good but there could be something a lot better available.

Also installed alinks, which automatically creates links out of post keywords that you specify. So I configured it so that four common keywords will link to Clickbank products. I have another blog which has brought in a little cash using this technique so I am hopeful it will help for this blog as well.

The aweber opt-in form is yet to come.

Also installed Spam Karma 2. In my experience, without this you either have to sift through all the spam, or let it through. This kind of plugin is essential.

Also installed a statcounter plugin and Ultimate Tag Warrior. UTW is pretty cool but the Yahoo tag search feature is temperamental. Its supposed to suggest tags for you based on your post which is great, but yo have to trick Yahoo by changing your id on each post to get it to give you suggested tags. Dunno if I can be bothered to do this on every single post but we'll see.

Got delayed today due to more flat viewings so only got an hour left in the day until bedtime......should I burn the midnight oil tonight? I guess there's only one day left until the weekend so we'll see if I get any product creation done tonight.

Good Product Creation Progress + Usual Bum Stuff

Another typical day in some respects but a good one nevertheless. Even though I must go to work early due to work commitments.

I'm currently watching "The Apprentice" on TV whilst writing this.

I need absolute silence or music to write articles or do other "work" anyway so this is a great time to update the blog.

Again no sales - no surprise. Most bizarre but no surprise nevertheless. Something like 300 sales page views and not a single sale - and my author boxes do not lie about what is coming up either (the sales pages and products) so I figure should have a few sales out of 300+ views. Anyway......

2 articles written for my passion/niche/blog. Still haven't created the blog but wrote two more articles nevertheless. Although it is not good for the challenge deadline to delay building the site, I don't want to rush it so I'll wait until the weekend to do this while I still write articles each day.

Product creation - was going to do 2 more half hour sessions of brainstorming but did half hour because I actually didn't need to do the 2nd session. I have exhausted all my ideas and am really stoked (as you Americans might say) about this project because I have such a passion and a knowledge for this product I'm creating.

It also got me thinking about the product creation process - I might, for my 3rd book, create a book on product creation. Based on several product creation courses and my own input, I think I can create something pretty good. Heck, I'm even thinking of taking a week's holiday just so that I can work like nuts and maybe get 2 products done!

Quick Bum Marketing Idea - Your Help Needed!

OK, I have an idea for a new direction in my bum marketing. I have already mentioned here my increasing emphasis on product creation and my lack of success with my articles so far (direct to clickbank and also direct to own site including opt-in).

With the latter, I have only used my special methods which were intended to be a regular system and use more "automation" - I won't go into more detail than that at this stage.

But I have not yet created my "passion blog" but created at least 5 articles for this niche.

So maybe I should just concentrate all my bum marketing/article marketing on this single niche. I don't like not diversifying but I think it would be a good idea to concentrate on a single passionate subject rather than many subjects to which I may feel indifferent.

Yes, this is the direction I will go in.

I just need your help guys - can you recommend any good Wordpress templates that are good for affiliate marketing? I mean the type that include digg symbols and stuff but do not look too "money generating". Oh, by the way, unfortunately there won't be any Adsense on this new blog because it is on one of many topics which are not allowed under the Adsense T&Cs (no its not illegal!).

Readers, I await your wisdom ;-)

What Is The Secret Of Bum Marketing Success (Day 11)

Hi all, hope you are well.

Done half an hour product creation work and half an hour bum marketing (1 article).

It is tempting to ditch this Bum Marketing and concentrate simply on product creation.

"Ah, but you haven't even given it 30 days" some of you might say.

That's true, but I would counter with the fact that I have done circa 40 keyword optimised articles with no sales. Is there any point in continuing without changing strategy? And until I have worked that strategy out, I might as well hit my head against a brick wall.

Well, I have not given up as you may have noticed, but I've certainly downscaled my efforts.

Concerning the product creation, I'm quite happy with the way that things are going - this 24 Hour E-Book Writing System is pretty damn good. Though I am tempted to skip some stages, I am giving each one the full half hour work that it deserves.

Anyway, I'm really looking for some solid bum marketing tips that I hope some of you may have. I'm talking about:

• how to write articles
• how to pre-sell in articles
• what kind of style of writing to use in article to get highest click throughs

These are the things that not many people share and, to me, this is how to succeed at bum marketing - knowing the answers to these questions. I welcome any comments you have and advice you can offer, not just me, but the readers of this blog :-)

Change of Emphasis

OK, I'm gonna be making a change of emphasis to my bum marketing.

First of all, I'm not going to concentrate solely on pumping out articles. As I have already mentioned before, I am creating my own product. I intend to spend at least one hour on this each night. That means I have 21 hours more work still do to.

I guess that, even including weekends, this should take around a month to do. That's because I'll also have to write copy and I am in the process of moving. Not to mention the internet downtime I am sure to experience. What a nightmare that was last time - took around a month to get reconnected!!! That's the UK broadband market for you!

Probably sounds like an ideal time to write but if you can't do any research on the net then it is useless. So I am pretty sure that it is gonna be more than a month till this product launches.

When it does, I can still use bum marketing, except that this time, I will keep all the profits (save for fees). Also, I can get other affiliates working for me as well.

I truly believe that product creation is the way forward. If you are just a beginner starting out and thinking - wow, bum marketing is so great, its so simple and perfect for a beginner, but product creation is really out there and maybe I'll never be able to put something together so good as a product....think again!

If I could go back to the beginning of my IM career two years ago, I wish someone would just tell me - forget the crappy buck a day content sites, forget the black hat generators - just make your own product. If you're still interested then check out the system that I am using:

24 Hour E-Book Writing System

So instead of 5 articles a day, expect a few less due to concentration on other matters. In fact, perhaps I should start a product challenge with some other people - that might be quite interesting.....Assuming that a book takes 24 hours to write, throw in the sales page copy and some other basic marketing - we could have a 30 day product creation challenge. I'm going to wait until my 2nd product to do that but it would certainly be interesting to do. Is anyone up for the challenge? If so, please leave your comments. Thanks!

Day 10 Bum Marketing Challenge Update

Actually today I had planned to do only product creation and also some well overdue chores around the house.

Well its midday here and I have written two direct to merchant linking articles and submitted to ezinearticles. I don't do goarticles because I found that I wasn't getting indexed and with ezinearticles I get indexed in a few days. Also, I'm now on Platinum status which is great.

One thing I have noticed with Wordtracker is the amount of crap keywords. I mean, sometimes there is an obscure six phrase keyword that apparently gets searched 20 times a day! Yeah right! You really have to sift to find the gold because either the popular keywords are too competitive or the apparent gold is fools gold as I have just outlined. Also, some niches are full of searches with the word FREE.

In fact, despite choosing what to write my first product on, I am thinking of changing it already because I think there may be a load of freeloaders or kids in this market who will not buy my product. This would also put potential affiliates off with poor click through rates on keywords. Mind you, this same non-IM niche is one of the top selling on CB and not too competitive. I think I will stick with it and choose a totally different niche for my 2nd product so as to diversify well.

So, how about you? How are your own bum marketing efforts going? I would love to hear about them and if you want to write a post for this blog full of your backlinks, I am more than happy to show it. Remember that there are not too many bum marketing blogs out there (I know because I am always looking for them!) so this is a captive and targetted audience in that sense.

Product Creation Update

So, I've started my product creation. Actually, I started product creation a few weeks ago but barely covered the surface.

As a newbie internet marketer, I have gone the whole gamut of education and it is more about applying it. As most marketers do, I started off with Adsense sites. I just could not reach the $5 mark per site, I think I lacked passion and only one or two sites are what I would call quality. Problem with these niches are that there are no obvious info products or affiliate products to promote. One of them is a travel site so I can push hotel bookings but it is quite rare that someone makes a booking.

Not to mention with bum marketing turning into general IM, to be most effective you need to have

1. articles providing backlinks
2. decent seo for your site articles
3. nice looking design
4. autoresponder series with good content
5. good follow up content
6. other traffic building strategies

Whilst I do like to multi-task, I have no passion for the above, I just find myself creating bland sites.

Then I learned of product creation. I saw how people created some products to entice people to opt in to lists, in fact I created a small guide myself. I even created a WSO that unfortunately was not very successful. Whilst I believe the advice was solid and even got an offer to use my ebook from a guru (I was stupid and asked for too much money!), it didn't make me much more money than a hundred bucks or so. Also, how many gurus make most of their money from Adsense sites? Most of them are involved in product creation in some way. And the thought of having other people going out there promoting my products sounds like a great idea. Of course, it may take a while to get many affiliates on board but the concept is still alluring.

So, I did a little research on Warrior forum where there are surprisingly few threads on product creation. However, I did glean some good info and found myself an attractive product on Clickbank. First of all, I don't often buy these products. I have seen that many WSOs and CB IM products are a waste of time. Especially WSOs. Probably the reason that many WSOs are $7 is because most of them are sh!t and the value of all WSOs went down due to a flood of cr@p in the market.

However, not all Clickbank products are bad and I have bought a few decent ones. It is just that there is a lot of both good and bad.

Anyway, I found a book by Melanie Mendelson who incidentally also appears on Warrior Forum from time to time. I was intrigued by some of the claims on the sales page:

• write your own e-book in 24 hours
• screenshots of regular large daily Clickbank income
• a step-by step system (this is what I really needed, I didn't have a clue where to start and how to write a book)

You can read more about it here:

24 Hour E-Book Writing System

Anyway, I bought the book and it was exactly what I needed. I skimmed through and it is written very well.

Anyway, the crux of the book is that it splits the writing process into 48 half hour chunks. You need to each half hour interuppted but other than that, you can do them anytime that you want to. Write your book as quickly or slowly as you want.

The beauty is the simplicity of the system in giving structure to your writing. I remember why Blogging To The Bank and Affiliate Project X caused so much fuss when they were released. Why? Because on these rare occasions, the writers actually showed the readers what to do, in a step by step fashion. There are too many IM books that are full of crap and fluff and many people think they have bought a good book and then learn that it is full of only a couple bits of new information and mostly cr@p. Hence why one guy I know is leading a crusade to make all these IM books free, illegally of course! He gets a lot of sympathy from his readers.

So, I've done the first few stages of the book which are to, via an evaluative process, decide on the topic you are to write about. The great thing is that I have a shortlist of products to write about. All of which I know are marketable, have a captive audience and that I know I can write about with some passion. Meaning that once I have completed an ebook, I can move onto another ebook.

I should add that the book does not cover making sales pages or marketing your book to affiliates. That is something that I will need to learn later. However, this can be an ongoing thing that can be refined over time once the book is completed. Will keep you up to date as things progress.

Day 9 Bum Marketing Challenge Update

Jesus, what a boring GP.

I managed to write two articles during the race which is 3 laps from finishing as I write!

Another 2 articles written so new total for today = 6 articles.

Time to start some product creation.

Day 9 Bum Marketing Challenge

Update, no more articles done yesterday but today I have done four already, all on different niches. These niches I like a lot actually. These are direct to clickbank links.

Gonna watch the Monaco GP now (come on Massa and Ferrari!) and then write more articles for direct hoplinks and also my 2 niche content sites.

I think I can even do some of these during the GP!

btw still no sales, at least I'll be ecstatic when I get some!

I might also start my product creation tonight.

Day 8 Bum Marketing Challenge

No articles for yesterday for reasons I will not go into.

So far today 2 articles via Method 1

3 day weekend here in the UK (Monday is a bank holiday), so hope to pump out a lot of articles.

btw these crap sales are making me think about product creation rather than Bum Marketing.

Even my so-called passion niche is difficult because I do not feel a close affinity with any of the products on Clickbank, which seems to me a great reason to make my own product.

Anyway, will post later today with more progress.

Total articles written today so far = 2.

I Am A Zombie - Busy Day with Zero Articles

Not much to say today.

First of all: f**kin estate agents!! Actually, they're not all bad. Long story, I won't bother, but I had some obligations out of my control for 2 hours after work.

Secondly, I was knackered again. I was delayed starting due to the above. Then I ate my dinner and watched the Lost Season 3 finale - 80 minutes worth. Some of you may say - "if you're serious about Bum Marketing you shouldn't be watching TV". My response is that this is one of few TV treats I have and if I didn't watch it (I was looking forward to it btw) some fool would have told me what happened.

Then suddenly with 2 hours to go before bedtime, I felt really tired. Even more tired than yesterday. Its the damn early shifts screwing with my body clock. They say that shift work knocks 10-15 years off your life - I can believe it!

So no articles done today, no keyword research, no site building. Not even on the train. I was a zombie on the train too. I'm not sure that article writing on a train is sustainable....I am a zombie and its time for bed.

Day 5 Bum Marketing Challenge Addendum

Ah well, I got zero articles done. Well I wrote one article on the train but nothing more today and nothing submitted. I had to clean the apartment because there will be some viewings soon and I watched the Champions League final. Good news - Liverpool lost! Result I wanted because I support Man United. AIG=Another Inzaghi Goal ;-)

Anyway, I needed the rest. Tomorrow I will carry on as normal. No, not trying to make up for it because that never works with me. Just back to normal.

G'night

Day 5 Bum Marketing Challenge Update

Well first of all I checked my CB stats when I got home and disappointed to see yet another day of nothing. But now I've just thought about it...5 days is nothing yet in my challenge, and although I started my bum marketing efforts before the challenge, they were sporadic and nothing like what I am doing now. So I shouldn't be too disheartened.

I regularly look at other blogs, I have named Stuart's and Trevor's below, especially Trevor's I check every day as we are doing the challenge at the same time and hopefully spur each other on to do well.

I also found another one - check it out:

Bum Marketing Adventure - The 120 Day Story

Its a 21 yr old college student (no name??) who has 120 days to kill in the summer and is trying to reach a $10 a day goal. Wow, that would be great money for a student, I remember those days! I hope he reaches his goal - I noticed he is using Squidoo quite a lot as well, something that I am not currently doing.

Anyway, today I felt so tired and drained. My day job involves working various shifts and this week I have been rising very early. It really kills you in the evening. Of course, as you know, I have been caning the articles and doing pretty well for myself. On my way home today I was in some kind of a dizzy daze, totally out of it. Yawning continuously and yet holding a notebook trying to write an article on a niche, whilst balancing on one leg on a train! People must have thought I looked like cr@p!

I aborted that article so I've written one today and don't feel like anymore. I think I need to give myself a rest. I'm going to get to sleep on time tonight and maybe right one or two articles. Sometimes, you just need to chill out and relax after continuous working and I think that tonight could be the night.

So I think I might just do some leisurely keyword research tonight as my Wordtrack week's subscription runs out soon, and maybe start my niche "passion" blog as well.

Later

Day 4 Bum Marketing Challenge Update

Well, on target for today.

Covered the same 5 daily target articles that I did also yesterday. Looks like its taken me just under 2 hours. Not bad. But I still don't have my niche blog up yet.

Maybe I'll do it tonight or maybe tomorrow, I'm not sure. Does anyone have any good affiliate Wordpress templates (I'm not interested in Adsense)?

Oh yeah I looked at my stats again and they are still zilch! I want to swear argh!!!!! I will try not to look at my stats and maybe in a week I will be pleasantly surprised. Or even more pissed off!!!! lol!

I'm also thinking about trying to get my picture on ezinearticles front page! Well not my real pic but maybe I'll nick something from flickr! Haha. Many of those chumps don't realise that they have allowed their pics to be modified and used for commercial means! You can use this tool to find them:

FlickrLilli

Anyway, not much else to report at this stage. Oh, I noticed what people mean by critical mass in Bum Marketing.

I figured that there would be a steady increase in page hits and author link views at Ezinearticles. Actually, I've noticed that my early articles are now increasing very quickly, and the same will happen with the articles I am writing at the moment. So it seems that there will be some kind of exponential wave of traffic!

btw I noticed on ezinearticles that the top authors have varying visits to articles ratios. From maybe 400 hits per article to up to 2000. Now my average is 268 but bear in mind that most of my articles are new and written in the last month so I think this is pretty good. I just hope that enough of these visitors will not only click through but also buy!

Day 3 Bum Marketing Challenge Continued - Quick Update

ok just a quick update, I've got some cleaning to do! Chores don't stop unfortunately!

I reached my target for today. So:

* 2 x articles on two different topics with links to affiliate pages
* 2 x articles to content site containing CB ads and opt-in boxes (this is a secret how I do this, currently an experiment that will be revealed later, I'll call this SECRET METHOD in future)
* 1 x article on new niche page

The only thing about the last article, is that I haven't yet created a blog. Any advice for a blog? I have a lot of experience with Wordpress blogs but I find that they look kind of crappy. To be honest, I don't like reading Wordpress blogs personally, they are flippin everywhere!

PS my Wordtracker subscription runs out in a few days. Tomorrow need to do some KW research!

WTF Is Going On With My Bum Marketing!!

I just don't get it. I know that the blood, sweat and tears I am currently shedding may only bear fruit in around two weeks but I still don't get why I am not doing any better.

Here' s some stats. Check out my Clickbanks stats on the right.

You have seen this before when I reported my $100 plus stats-great! I knew they might be just a blip but I don't understand why I have had 10 straight days of no sales??!?!?!! Is this normal?

Also, here's my EzineArticle stats, on the left. Ignore the blurred out bits - they are for a different pen name. I have a click through rate to my publisher link of about 2.4%. Is this normal? Seems quite low to me.


Anyway, today I wrote one article going to work and none on the way home because I had to see a new flat (apartment) that I am renting. I'm moving in just under 4 weeks and I'm glad I got the flat hunt out of the way. Will give me more time for bum marketing!

Anyway, I'm gonna get back to it now. Damn, so much stuff to do, so little time!!!!!!

Day 2 - Bum Marketing Challenge - My Strategy Defined

Well Day 2 is going pretty well. Day 1 was rather strange.

As you know, I write articles going to and from work. This is an amazing tip and I'll tell you why.

On public transport, I normally fall asleep, I can't help it. But by writing on my small notebook, it is surprisingly enjoyable. I do this with my tunes in my ear. I get some funny stares but I don't care! The only thing I need before I head out are a couple of keyword phrases for the 2 articles I will write.

I normally type up my written articles that night but on Friday, well a tough week at work - my job is very stressful - so I typed up on Saturday.

Then I screwed about for a bit and was quite angry at myself for doing this :-( Luckily I saved the day and did some good work in the evening which actually gave me ideas for my strategy.

- I am going to abandon my own product creation until after 30 days. I need to concentrate on this challenge
- I will continue to write 2 articles a day going to/from work. These will link to clickbank products and not include email capturing from an opt-in form
- I will write 2 articles per day that will link to a content site with clickbank ad and opt-in form. This is an experiment to me. I will be using some interesting techniques that I have never heard of before but hope to be successful
- Lastly, I will soon start a passion niche site. No, this has nothing to do with porn or s3x ;-) I have noticed that Steve, Stuart and Trevor have started by having only one site from fresh, but something that they are very passionate about. I am quite knowledgable so enjoy writing about many things but I really need a no.1 passion that also has a product on Clickbank, then start to write about it. Stuart showed that from a single niche alone, one can fulfil this challenge. That is my objective.

Maybe sounds like too much but remember:

- no more product creation
- 5 articles. 2 of which written on the train, 2 of which I will use an interesting technique to write very quickly. 1 of which will be about something I love. I think this is achievable.

All this and I will be moving out of my apartment in one month. Yikes, these things always come in twos!!

End of Day 1 - Challenge Report

Maybe I should save this for day 2!

Anyway, today I created a mini-site. Basically, I will link to this site in my ezinearticles.com articles.

This site I built in XSite Pro. It features a picture and text link to the clickbank product in the right margin, a text link in the footer and an opt-in page on every page in the center.

It took me about 1.5 hours to build though!

Is this normal? I noticed some opt-in pages for bum marketing are a blogger blog with just 3 articles posted maybe. Is this enough? It would seem to me that people will not bother opting in if they see that the page looks lightweight. By the way, I'm not talking about 1-page sales pages or pre-sales pages here for opt-in purposes. Unless, maybe this is what I should be creating? Would certainly take less time. I'd appreciate your feedback.

Cheers

From Zero to $4500 in 30 Days Challenge!

I've been inspired by a few blogs recently.

I saw Steve Rowland's blog, Online Cash Cow, and I was amazed to see just how close to completing this challenge he was. I mean, when he posts his daily results and I see hundreds of dollars a day being made, all in the first month, my jaw dropped!

I should also mention the blogs of Stuart McIntosh, How To Make Money Online And Build A List, who inspired Steve and the blog of Trevor Somerville, 30 Days To Success - With Bum Marketing 100% Free Methods!, who has similarly been inspired by Steve.

Actually, readers of this blog will know that I have already made a bit of money from Bum Marketing, but not too much. So, although it will skew the results a little and I get a slight headstart, I am hardly anywhere near completing the challenge so they are irrelevant earnings in my opinion when compared to this challenge. Hopefully they won't matter in one month's time!

So the challenge starts today Saturday 19 May 2007. Wish me luck!

Yes! More Bum Marketing Sales!

Hi all,

I thought I would share with you, my Bum Marketing is going pretty well.

I must be picking up some good search engine traffic because my bum marketing stats are suddenly doing very well.

Actually, since the last time I wrote, I have had a small vacation and this has upset my rythm and objective for posting an article a day. Trust me, you can't leave everything till the weekend!! It won't work out.

So my motto is "must do one article a day".

And check out my stats, I'm pretty happy with them. In a couple of weeks, I have made what takes me two months to make in Adsense! And it took me over a year to get to that level in Adsense but only about two to three months of Bum Marketing!

So get writing!

Bum Marketing Is Working!

After creating about 20 articles, some good, some bad, and learning a lot along the way, I am finally starting to make some sales. About one sale with Clickbank every 1-2 weeks.

At least now I can see the power of Bum Marketing and that it really works.

After a three day holiday that has disrupted my efforts and set them back about two weeks (argh!), I am going to commit to two things - bum marketing and product creation.

Both require the same - lots of writing!

So I better get on with it!

Later

Finally Posting Articles!

Well I've had 4 days off this Easter, and this is my final day.

I can say that I have been much more productive than I have been in the past. It has been great.

For Bum Marketing, I've posted several of my rentacoder articles to ezinearticles. They all required a quick run through for grammatical changes. I'm glad I chose three because if I outsource again, I will ignore one of them, the writing and grammar was very poor for this individual concerned.

These articles are already getting approved and I'm posting several a day - will probably have them all done in a week's time.

By the way, Ezinearticles now allow you to link to Clickbank and other affiliate sites. It looks like a recent rule change of theirs. The only caveat is that you must redirect from your own domain, and when you link to it, you must link to the top level and not a sub-page.

This will help a great deal - I guess ezinearticles probably gave in when they saw many other people using sneaky redirects and realised that they couldn't police it.

Yikes Still Not Posted The Articles!

Need to get back on track. At least I have 4 days over Easter coming up......

Terrible Outsourcing Experience Delivers At Last!

Despite setting a deadline of a week for each set of articles which was more than sufficient time, my outsourcing experience this time round has not been so great.

With the first two suppliers, the writers ignored half of my criteria despite my specific say-so and emphasis that they must be adhered to the letter. Instead of canning the project though, I was willing to extend the deadline, so long as the criteria were met. I was happy enough with the general quality of the articles to give these writers another chance to deliver on the project.

The third writer produced the best articles but had some severe internet access troubles and was the last to deliver.

Whilst I had some bad experiences, ultimately I got what I wanted. Here is some advice when outsourcing work on such sites as rentacoder and elance:

• Never pay out until you are 100% satisfied with the completed work. No matter how long the deadlines are extended and how frustrating it gets, never cut your losses and accept lesser work - always insist on 100% satisfaction or don't pay a penny.

• State explicitly what you need in the original tender and state that this must be met. Do not leave any room for ambiguity, be as specific as you can.

• Be willing to accommodate the writer's circumstances. For instance, if there is an emergency in his/her life, kindly extend the deadline. We are all human.

• If the work submitted is not as requested, be polite but demonstrate how this is the case, extend the deadline, and insist on a resubmission.

• Always communicate via the website as all communications are put on official record and cannot later be denied by either party.

• Don't be fooled by ratings of 9.9. Make sure to check the comments as well as the ratings. If you still have some doubts, try a smaller project first. For instance, I have 3 small projects and may well choose the best person to do a larger project on later.

I hope you find the above advice useful. Now, to post my articles and create the hook text at the bottom. Please leave any comments on the above!

BUM Marketing Outsourcing Update

An update - 3 projects nearly completed from rentacoder. Unfortunately, 2 of the 3 projects have come back not up to the required standard. I requested a specific keyword density and format of the articles yet this has been ignored!

Well, I don't hand over money until the job is done, but it is very annoying, and these people seemingly have very high ratings! Methinks that people are stroking each others' egos on these sites and giving each other high ratings.

Anyway, I'll let you know what happens.

My other projects which I have been neglecting lately are an Adwords project (that I will hopefully get under way today) and also a Clickbank project, which is to write my own ebook, but on what I do not know.......

Keyword Crazy!

My ad on rentacoder for freelance article writing is going well and I will choose one of more writers soon. In the meantime, I have drawn up a long list of several tens of keywords to be used.

The key to getting good results from outsourcing is to be very specific up front about what you want. That way, there are no nasty surprises or arbitrations further down the line. This is probably the most key thing.

You also usually indicate a rough price range i.e. you enter your offer into one of the many price ranges but this is merely a guide and not even necessary and does not play much of a part at all.

Probably tomorrow I will accept one or more bids and wait for the articles to be written.

Now, I just need to make better use of my free time. given that I won't have to write any more articles for a short while. I think I will consider Adwords as I have read Day Job Killer and gotten many ideas from it.

Bid Request Posted on Rentacoder

So today I posted a bid request on Rentacoder. This week has been terrible for me in terms of article writing - think I have only written one or two - but at least I have put this work out to tender. My new plan is not to write the bum articles, so next I will concentrate on making a Clickbank product which is something that I don't think you can really outsource, because it has to be above a certain high quality standard.

Now, to wait for the bids to roll in.......

Zen and the Art of Outsourcing Article Writing

Not much progress made recently. The weekend was out, as I met with a friend of mine who will be leaving these shores shortly. Although I didn't plan it, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hang, even though I knew it would hit my articles progress.

Monday was a continuation - all play and no work, same goes for today (Wednesday) though Tuesday was pretty good.

I'm seriously beginning to doubt some of the Wordtracker keywords. Some of the so called gold are such narrow terms that nothing can be written on them!

So back to outsourcing - it has been said that a single bum marketing article will yield one sale per month. So let's assume $30 per article per month. Then, in order to make $30 per day, I would need 30 articles. And in order to reach $150 per day, I would need 5 times that, or 150 articles written.

If we assume an outsourcing cost of $5 per article, then 150 articles will cost a grand total of $750 (about £380).

Now, if these articles yield $150 per day then we break even in about five days! Of course, it will take time for indexing in the search engines so this is a little simplistic but outsourcing does seem to make a lot of sense.

There are a lot of crap writers out there but I am hoping to choose a few writers and get them to write, say, 20 articles each. Then the best writer will get the contract for the remaining articles.

I think I'll still write the author bios though as this is the major selling pitch that I need to retain control of.

Have you had any experience of oursourcing? I'd love to hear from you so please leave your comments and share with all of us.

USFreeAd today for a change...

So today I posted a USFreead for a change. I'm totally knackered because I'm working the early shift at work this week, entails waking at 5am :-0 and I am most certainly not a morning person. I resemble a woken grizzly at that sort of time!

I wrote something on Day Job Killer. Yes, you have probably heard of it but, if not, you will soon - all the gurus are promoting it. I'm sure it's a good product, I mean, I bought Affiliate Project X by the same author and was very impressed, but it is quite sickening when the gurus force it down your throat all day!

I've also promoted it elsewhere, on a non-internet marketing forum that I frequent. It gets some heavy traffic and I have a theory on the target audience that I am testing so it will be interesting to see what kind of response I get. I really wish that Clickbank would show how many clicks your link gets so that you could do more testing and conversion tracking etc. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't see these features.....

By the way, if anyone knows of any good Bum Marketing blogs or RSS feeds, please let me know and I'll add them to the left. Always good to have some useful links.

Thanks

Great Bum Marketing Resources

Many marketers, myself included, are guilty of doing too much research and not enough action. Well, I'm doing well with my commitment so far but it may well be a good idea to do some more research in case I am missing something. After all I have no sales so far :-(

One thing I intend doing is reading all the popular Bum Marketing posts on Warrior forum. Check 'em out here: Warrior Bum Marketing

Just type in bum marketing as an exact search phrase.

That reminds me, good Bums copy ideas. I have found some successful marketers and I know the names that they post under so I shall use some of their interesting and successful ideas. Not plagiarize but I may use some of their keywords - like a true bum, let others do the keyword research for me!

Problem is, at one article per day, I really need to ramp it up if I am going to be able to do my 1st target, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. with each target being a slightly different method.

There are some people doing 30 articles a day!!! No way I can achieve that - quite apart from working 9 hours a day and taking an hour to get to work and an hour back I have a lack of time but I would also get writers block! But I would love to achieve 10 a day at some point, at least on average, probably ramping it up at the weekend.

So now I will set a new target....when my keyword research is over, I will raise my daily target to two articles. I mentioned this briefly before but this is a new commitment!

Wordtracker Keyword Gems

Still no sales I'm guessing, I'm tempted to not even look at my stats today.

Well I'm ahead of schedule so far. Friday night I was very tired and got an earlyish night, one article written. Saturday I wrote two articles and today (Sunday) three. I originally had a wild plan to do twenty articles this weekend but I knew that wouldn't happen.

One thing that slows me down in that respect is having to do the keyword research. To make the most out of my limited Wordtracker subscription, I'm researching at least one niche per day which obviously eats into my article writing time. I'm hoping that by the end of my subscription, I might be able to raise my daily article quota to two. That alone would mean that I could write the approximately 140 articles remaining (my first objective) in seventy days or a little over two months!

One thing that has struck me about my Wordtracker research is that there are some very obscure terms that have apparently been searched many times. All the more suspicious when you find out that there are no competing pages in Google for the exact terms. So, like Overture, you do have to interpret the results to some extent.

Anyway, off to check my Clickbank stats, I can't resist!

Great Progress Today in Bum Marketing!

Well, still no money. Like the watched kettle that will never boil, my daily checking of Clickbank stats continue to show earnings of zero dollars, much to my disappointment.

To be honest, today may as well be day zero. I say this because I don't believe that I have previously used any decent keywords.

However, since my Wordtracker subscription taken out yesterday, I have been mining for keyword gold.

I have also written about three articles today. Two published on goarticles and another article on one of my sites. I liken mining for keyword gold to arbitrage in the final markets - in the latter, these opportunities are few and far between in the mature securities markets, but in the IM world there is still plenty of gold - this market is far from mature in my opinion.

Hopefully, I can keep this up - I'm not going to try exceeding my single article target yet, its too early for that. A single article a day plus say minimum 4 at the weekend will mean 9 articles per week which should mean that I achieve my initial target of 150 articles in four months. I think this is quite achievable.

USFreeads is something I need to look at again this weekend. I think I may reserve the keyword gold for which I cannot or will not write decent content in the form of articles for. They will simple serve as bait on my ads. But I'll look into that this weekend and let you know.

Why Wordtracker Is King

Well I'm real tired today so will cut my losses and just do some keyword research. I recently bought Keywords Analyzer based on recommendation but am a little disappointed with the keyword generation.

However, I don't think it is their fault, more because they are relying on Overture for data and as everyone knows, Overture is really slow these days. Unfortunately for these keyword tools, it does reduce their effectiveness somewhat. However, it does have the ability to import lists from...

Wordtracker - an oft overlooked tool, I first found out about this from Andy Williams' blog, EZ SEO News. Overture simply doesn't compare to the results you can get from this tool. I won't bother with a hard sell because there is no affiliate program for it, but you can get a free trial or use for a day for £4.25 - that is usually what I do, but this time I have bought a week's worth.

So tonight I'm really tired, sometimes you just need to cut your losses and get some sleep, get your affairs in order and tonight is that night for me. I've done one niche worths keyword research and an quite happy with the keywords, some real gold I have found.

ttfn

How I Organise My Bum Marketing

I published another article today...right on track.

I have generally been quite poor at tracking and testing. It's strange because my background is in engineering, a scientific discipline where experimentation is all part of the process. The problem is, tweaking only one thing and retesting is such a laborious chore in all aspects of life!

If we only tweaked one thing at a time, it would take forever to go through all the permutations and potential opportunities would be lost, in my opinion.

Nevertheless, we should still try to keep some structure, especially in Bum Marketing.

For my Bum Marketing project, I've decided to keep a spreadsheet with columns such as:

• Keyword Phrase
• Clickbank Tracking ID

I've also created more columns which act as checks for my keywords:

• Overture score between 1,000 and 5,000
• Less than 1,000 results in Google for USFreeads/Goarticles
• Less than 10,000 results in Google for Ezinearticles
  
• Top 10 Google Results mostly low PR sites

All my chosen keywords must meet the above conditions, with some rare or occasional exemptions. The reason for this is that to make the most return on my time, I must be efficient in my use of it so therefore only good keywords will do. Poor keywords are a false economy in the long run.


Well, gotta get some winks so I'll see you around, hope you found the above useful!

An Article A Day

Well still no sales and seemingly nothing indexed yet. Hmm...yet I obeyed the keyword rules so should be ranking by now....anyway more on my progress in a bit, first I thought I would share with you my current plan.

I'm a natural procrastinator - play now, play later and work last. I can't help it, I've always been that way. Even a Myers-Brigg test revealed that about me.

I aim to do work during the week and inevitable end up delaying till the weekend, I'm so tired after work. Then I spend the weekend sleeping and playing because I feel I "deserve it". Then I see where I am 3 months down the line and get angry at myself for having achieved hardly anything!

Not so this time. I've decided to set an easy target to keep to - an article a day during the working week. That's barely 20 minutes of my time.

Someone on Warriorforum is making 150 bucks a day from Bum Marketing with 150 articles and 300 USFreeAds. So at a conservative article a day it should take about 6 months to reach this.

It's not forever but hopefully I can up the pace within a few weeks.

One thing that does concern me is that I'm only advertising on Goarticles at the moment whereas everyone else seems to use Ezinearticles. Problem is, you need to invest in some domain names for cloaking purposes on Ezinearticles and I'd rather make money before investing in domain names - in the past I've always invested first and earned later, usually less - this time I would rather put my earnings towards my investments in that order!

Welcome to Bum Marketing Blog

Hi!

Welcome to Bum Marketing Blog!

The Bum Marketing Method is a concept created by Travis Sago - it's a free way to make a lot of money from internet marketing, you can read more about it here: Bum Marketing Method.

Just a quick note to say that I have no affiliation with Travis Sago or the Bum Marketing Method. This blog is simply a record, journal, trials and tribulations of my own efforts at Bum Marketing.

I started this blog because I started Bum Marketing about 3 weeks ago and haven't made a single dime from it yet! Perhaps I am doing something wrong or perhaps not...

Here I will share my progress with you and I hope that we can all learn from each other to improve outselves and out Bum Marketing efforts.

Right, its past midnight and I've got work tomorrow so I'll write more later, cya!