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.

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?

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.

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!!

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