Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
What are the most important or must-have bum marketing tools in your arsenal?
I talked about the bum marketing method in my previous post. Today, I want to spend some time to talk about the essential bum marketing tools that I use quite often.
1. Brainstorming for Niches and Products
In brainstorming for ideas or niches to target for my bum marketing efforts, there is one place you will love to go to.
CB Engine – it is quite simply one of the best tools to find hot products to promote. I like the feature that lets you filter off the search results according to your preference such as minimum commissions and commission payout percentage and so on. Personally, if the commission payout is lower than $20 per sale, I will ditch it.
From here, you can also get to see which are the market movers and what are the most popular topics. With the pro version, you get a full set of cool tools to use as a ClickBank affiliate.
One word of advice here – the “make money online” market is one where the buyers tend to be very well-informed! It may not be that easy to make money out of them.
While it is also such a huge market where tons of products are sold, it is not recommended for the newbie bum marketer. Target the other niche markets using your bum marketing method.
2. Keyword Research Tools
Once you decide on a market to target, it is time to do proper keyword research. A lot of people get this wrong by focusing on keyword research first before looking at the market’s profitability.
Some tools I use frequently include:
a. Google’s very own keyword research tool
This is a free tool to find long tail keywords. But it is not the best since you cannot figure out what is the exact search count.
b. Keyword Elite
If you have money, invest in Keyword Elite. It is one of the most powerful keyword research software I use to find the right keywords to target for the bum marketing method. This is hands-down one of the best bum marketing tools!
c. NicheBot
NicheBot is a super dynamo when it comes to churning out laser-targeted keywords for your bum marketing articles. I use the paid version which gives me detailed run downs on what are the exact keywords people are searching.
This bum marketing tool also suggests which “Jackpot” keywords you can use to dominate any niche market you are in. These are keywords and keyphrase where there is almost zero competition! This is perfect for my bum marketing method.
It is meant for more elaborate keyword research and ideal for PPC campaigns as well.
3. Writing Content for Bum Marketing Articles
I used to write all my articles for bum marketing traffic. But with a network of 50 over blogs, it can be extremely challenging to write all my content.
There are some tools and services that make things really simple for me.
a. Instant Article Wizard
This is my baby for the bum marketing method. The reason why I say that it is a tool made for bum marketers is because in the whole bum marketing strategy, pumping out articles fast is the key to win the game! And that is what Instant Article Wizard does.
Oh, do not simply slap an article together with the search. Well you can and chances are the article is highly readable, but I expect a lot out of my articles.
So I will normally use it to do my content research. Find all the necessary data and information and then write an original article altogether.
b. Hiring GhostWriters
Ghostwriters are so important if you intend to run a successful business. Outsource your writing to good writers. Pay them well enough and you are never in lack of quality unique content.
$5 for an article is quite reasonable. I often use GetaFreeLancer and DP Forums for my content writing needs.
4. Submitting the Bum Marketing Articles
Article directories are my main battlegrounds to charge up profits from the bum marketing method.
I rely heavily on article submission software and article submission services.
Article Post Robot is the ultimate well-invested tool I found. It has earned me many fold the one-time price I paid for it. With one click, my article is distributed to over 400 article directories including EzineArticles. So far, this is the only tool that can post to the correct article category.
Read this review about Article Post Robot to understand what it can do for you.
The next are the article submission services, Unique Article Wizard and JetSubmitter. Both are hands-free services that distribute my articles to well over hundreds of article directories. Read about these two services at this article submission service review site.
I love UAW more simply because it also posts my articles onto their network of blogs. So far, I have seen quite a number of my articles that are posted on blogs ranking Top 10 in Google. I consider this my secret weapon among the bum marketing tools I own.
I hope I did not miss out on any tool that is useful for bum marketing. Feel free to post your comments about your arsenal of bum marketing tools here.
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, General, Online Marketing Learning, Product Reviews, SEO, Web Traffic | 7 Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
The Bum marketing Method – has it died? For all those who have been marketing for at least a few months should be quite familiar with the bum marketing method or what is commonly called bum marketing. For the entire 2007, it was a hot topic.
Today, while everyone is talking about Web 2.0, I want to share a little bit about what bum marketing really is and whether you still can make any money with it.
Just What Is Bum Marketing?
In one sentence, this form of marketing makes use of high traffic, search engine favored sites like EzineArticles, Squidoo, HubPages etc to channel traffic to the affiliate sales page and make sales.
Traditional SEO is challenging and for newbies, it can be a daunting task. To rank a web page in the search engine can take months and there is no guarantee at all.
With the bum marketing method, even newbies can take an article from nothing to Top 10 in Google. So, do you want to be a bum marketer?
Bum Marketing Explained
There are a few key elements to make this whole bum marketing method profitable for you.
1. A Profitable Niche
2. Long Tail Keywords
3. Website that Gets Google Love
4. Target Website (Optional)
Finding a Profitable Niche
Not all niches are profitable. Forget what some “gurus” say about using your favorite hobbies or interests as your target niche. While you may be a “professor” in your favorite subject, it can prove to be ultra unprofitable when it is not something sellable!
Popular niches like weight loss and dog training may be competitive, but these are also topics with a hot and huge market ready to buy. All you need to do is to narrow down your niches. This is the key to success with the bum marketing method.
Here’s a Quick 2 minute Litmus Test to find Profitable Niches for Bum Marketing:
1. Search ClickBank’s marketplace. Now, ClickBank has 10,000s of products and has a wide network of affiliates marketing the products. The reason why we want to look at this is simple. If the product is selling well and their affiliates are making money, then it is worthwhile for us to copy! It does not take you more than a few seconds to see what is hot!
In each category, find the top 10 most sellable products, these are broad niches you can dig deeper into. Pick one or two niches. For example, “weight loss”.
2. Hop over to Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool and do a quick keyword search on the broad term “weight loss”. There you will find all the related keywords to weight loss. You probably will be able to see some trends here. For instance, many are searching for quick ways to lose weight, weight loss pills, and weight loss diets.
So, from the broad niche of “weight loss”, we have managed to find 3 narrower niches to target!
3. Finally, Google the 3 narrower niches “quick weight loss”, “weight loss pills” and “weight loss diets”. Take a look on the right and see how many Google ads are there.
Chances are the one with the most ads is the most profitable! Otherwise, they will not promote and pay so much for the ads right?
I did cover about Long Tail keywords or Long Tails in my earlier post. If you missed it, you can read it here.
“Using Long Tail Keywords for Article Writing”
Compile a list of 10 to 20 long tail keywords. These are what we will create unique content around.
If you are not great at writing, or find it daunting to write 10 to 20 articles based on the keywords, use Instant Article Wizard. You can easily write one unique article within 10 minutes!
Using EzineArticles and Squidoo for the Bum Marketing Method
Using the articles, go and post it to EzineArticles or Squidoo. EzineArticles does not allow you to link directly to an affiliate sales page but Squidoo does.
If you are using Squidoo, then feel free to slap your content with your affiliate links throughout your content. But for EzineArticles, it works best if you could simply create a 1-page website or a blog from Blogger.com and WordPress.com embedded with your affiliate links.
One trick here, is to link to the Squidoo lens from your EzineArticles article!
If you follow my instructions on how to select the right long tail keywords and article writing techniques, then it will not take long for you to start seeing traffic and sales coming in within 1 or 2 weeks if not days.
The magic is in the ranking of your EzineArticles article and Squidoo lens in the search engines for your target keywords. My friend teaches you the exact steps to writing an article that gets ranked Top 10 in Google! See how he does it.
In my next post, I shall reveal some powerful bum marketing secrets to help you supercharge your traffic and sales!
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | 11 Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
How do you create unique content that the search engines love? And do so quickly in 15 minutes flat?
These are some simple ways to create unique content fast and good. You can use it for your article submission or publish the content on your website.
Notice that I did not say, “write” here. Because you really do not have to write your own content if you find it challenging to do so.
1. Google for Results and Rewrite the Content. (Plus a Sneaky Trick!)
Before you shoot me down with such an obvious method, read on for the twist.
Google the main target keyword.
Browse through the top 10 search results. Copy the appropriate and relevant content onto a notepad or Word document.
Pick out the 4 or 5 key points. Using these key points, start writing an article.
Okay, I may sound a bit exaggerative here about the 15 minutes. But with practice, it is achievable for a 300 word article.
There is a sneaky trick here which you may want to use.
You can copy a few pages of content on your Microsoft Word, then go to your toolbar, click the “Tools” section, and activate the “AutoSummarize” function.
This will squeeze your article down to a nice length according to your needs. Then simply rewrite it or rephrase the content. There you have a ready piece of excellent unique content.
2. Use an Article Writing Software
In the market, there are different article writing software that helps writers to create unique content. I have used quite a number of them like Instant Article Wizard and Content Assistant.
Instant Article Wizard is hands-down the best so far. Basically, what it does is it goes scrapping for actual sentences containing your target keywords. You can do that for several keywords at one go.
From there, you just compile all the sentences that you deem as useful and rewrite it. You can whip up an article easily within 8 minutes.
Others are pretty crappy and basically scrap off some irrelevant advertisement content. Hardly readable and trashy stuff.
3. Buying & Rewriting Private Label Rights (PLR) Articles
You can use PLR articles. But rule of thumb is to modify the content at least 30%. I tend to be a bit careful and will rewrite up to at least 50%. Work on the introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
There are dozens of PLR sites that offer PLR articles at $1 per article like
1. Great Niche Content – less than $1 per article
2. Fresh Niche Content
3. Easy PLR
4. PLR Mini Mart
Or you can sign up with those PLR sites that offer monthly batches of articles. That will solve your problem of creating excellent unique content.
4. Research at the Library/Buy a Second-Hand Book
Go to the library to pick up a book or grab a second-hand book on the topic you are writing about. Summarize the content and rewrite it in your own words.
When you do so, you can actually churn out a few articles at the same time within an hour.
This is particularly helpful when you are targeting age-old topics like health, remedies, dog training and stuff that have existed for a long, long time.
I recently grabbed a cheap book on home remedies for over 100 ailments for about $5. This is enough to create unique content for an entire website!
5. Hire a GhostWriter
I have personally tried hiring writers at a few free lance sites like Elance, ScriptLance and GetaFreeLancer.
GetaFreeLancer is my favorite. There are many good writers there willing to write an excellent unique article for $5 – 7. In case you think that these are low quality articles, then you are grossly mistaken. For that price, you can get articles of high quality.
Another place where you can find good article writers is DP Forums. Under the “Buy, Sell or Trade” section, you will be able to start a thread to buy content. Or you can browse around and send a private message to the more popular writers there. NicheRockets also have a section where you can buy limited PLR packages or hire some good writers for low rates.
6. Use Voice Recognition Software
Nowadays, voice recognition software can do wonders! If you find it too slow to write, you can simply just talk and let the software convert your voice into text.
For topics which you are familiar, getting an article created takes no more than 5 – 10 minutes.
Well, for topics that you are not so familiar, you can always research online, paraphrase what you read and let the voice recognition software do the writing. One of the most powerful tools is Dragon NaturallySpeaking Software V9.0. According to users, accuracy is up to 99%. No script reading or “voice training” is required. You can start dictating straightaway.
I checked out the prices of this tool. Surprisingly, buying at the developer Nuance.com is not the cheapest. Nuance is selling at $99.99, while Buy.com is offering at $82.30. The cheapest is at …..Amazon.com, $59.99!
If you are keen on buying this nifty tool, you can always check out the links:
7. Invite Article Writers
This method involves you inviting article writers to write unique content for you. For this to work, you have to offer a “bribe”.
You can use a product such as an ebook or software where you own the rights to give away. Or offer to provide a backlink the next time you post on your website or blog, or whatever.
Post the invitation on your blog or forum.
These 7 tips should get you a constant stream of quality unique content for your publishing and article submissions. Begin to create unique content of excellent quality now!
Feel free to leave your comments here.
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
As promised, I mentioned I will share more article writing tips about creating a killer article that pull in traffic, bring in more subscribers and make more sales.
What is the Perfect article?
Personally, an article is “perfect” if it achieves what I wrote it for. Whether it is for more traffic, or to build up my credibility as a subject expert, or for bum marketing, as long as it can hit the target, it is. Over time, I do come to realize that there are a few key ingredients that are essential to write a winning article for article marketing.
In writing for article marketing, you need to pay attention to the following in order to see your articles rank well for the targeted keywords, get publishers to publish your content for more traffic and to pre-sell your readers.
1. A Powerful & Attention-Grabbing Title
You need to create a great looking article. Your article title is the first thing readers see, not your content. It determines if it is interesting enough for your prospect to click on it to read. So pay attention to it!
Use words like “How to”, “Tips”, “What”, “Where”, “Who” etc. Use numbers. Call them to action. Example “10 Tips to Approach the Girl of Your Dreams”.
Always remember to include the target keyword in the title. Miss this and you lose the chance of ranking well.
2. Keyword Density
I mentioned in my earlier post that an ideal keyword density is between 1 to 2%. This is applicable for most article directories. Stay within this and you should be safe from being banned for keyword spamming/abuse.
This appropriate density is also ideal for SEO. Remember to use the target keyword in the introduction, article body and conclusion.
3. Article Body
The ideal format of a well-written article is to have an introduction that summarizes what the reader is getting from the entire article, a body with the various points elaborated, and a conclusion that calls them to click on your resource link for more information.
So in short, an article should have an introduction, point 1 to 4 (or more) and conclusion. Stay within 400 to 600 words.
When writing your content, make it informative. Give them facts, details and anything that you feel will be useful for them.
There are different types of article content or format of writing.
a. List of resources or places
You can either write your article as a list, such as listing the top 10 places to get free links or 10 free tools to do something.
b. Review
You can write a review of a product or service, explaining each feature, pros and cons, and give your honest comments.
c. FAQ format
I seldom see people doing that but this is a good suggestion for you. Think of some relevant and commonly questions people ask about the topic you are writing about. Then offer the answers.
When writing an article, always leave the readers with a good impression and wanting to find out more. Bait them, make them curious enough to look at your author resource box!
4. Author Resource Box
This is the most important part of your article. Why? This is where your “sales pitch” or any form of promotion can take place without getting banned by the article directory. Once again, be creative and make your author resource intriguing and attractive enough for your prospects to click to your website.
Compare these 2:
Dave is an online entrepreneur. Visit his site at XXXX to find out how to market with articles.
Dave makes well over $10,000 monthly from article marketing alone. You can too! See how he converts a piece of plain content into a traffic-sucking and sales converting article at XXXX.
Which One is Better?
Remember to use the target keyword as anchor text for backlinking purposes.
These are the real ingredients that make up an excellent article that can pull in more readers, subscribers and sales for you. Make full use of these powerful article writing tips.
Read this secret report that can propel your article marketing efforts and supercharge your profits!
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | No Comments »
Monday, February 18th, 2008
Before you even start writing your article, keyword research is a must. It is so critical that it can determine whether your article marketing effort is a flop or success.
Keyword Research for Long Tails – Your Key to Fast Traffic
Long tail keywords or long tails are worth gold to every article marketer. Using long tail keywords for article writing is smart because they are easier to rank than normal keyword phrases.
What is a long tail?
A 4 or 5 keyword phrase is a long tail version of the root keyword. For example, “make money online with PPC” is a long tail. Or “buy red Toyota Prius” is another example of a long tail.
Why using long tail keywords for article writing is beneficial?
They are targeted and specific and much easier to rank. Hence, the conversion is better. Those who search “article submission software review” probably have some knowledge about article submission software. So if your article is targeting the keyword “article submission software review”, isn’t it very specific and targeted?
Compare this with targeting the keyword “article submission”. Yes, it gets a lot more searches from Google, Yahoo and MSN. But ranking for this keyword is much, much tougher than “article submission software review”. Also, when people search for “article submission”, they may be looking for article submission services, or how effective is article submission, or so on. Very untargeted!
What is a good long tail?
a. Use a keyword research tool like Keyword Elite or WordTracker.
b. From there, look for keywords that have lower than 1000 search counts. Normally, the actual search counts in Google are at least 3 times higher than this.
c. Go to Google the keyword. See if the search results is lower than 2 million results. The lower this figure, the lower the competition, the better for you.
d. Use the “allintitle:keyword” search at Google to see how many web pages are optimized for the keyword you are targeting. Anything lower than 3000 is good.
e. Repeat the whole process until you have 10 to 20 keywords.
Once you have gathered 10 to 20 keywords, write 10 to 20 articles around these keywords and submit them to EzineArticles.
Sit and wait for the traffic to start pouring in…
See the following screenshot of an article I wrote and submitted to EzineArticles that has thus far received over 30,000 views or about 30,000 unique visitors over a year. Today, it is still ranked No.3 in Google.
All the views are from the search engines. That works out to about 2200 visitors per month. Assuming the click through to my site is 30 to 50% which works out to about 660 – 1100 visitors per month from 1 article.
What if you can convert at 1%? That will be 6 to 10 sales! By the way, the conversion of this article is about 1%.
Now, what if you have 10 or 20 of such articles? You do the math. Using long tail keywords for article writing rocks!
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | 3 Comments »
Saturday, February 16th, 2008
Writing articles for the web is not the same as writing a school essay.
I have realized something very important. You need to write both for your readers as well as the search engine spiders. This is where many online writers fail miserably.
The truth is there are a lot of good writers with a flair for writing and profound knowledge about the topic they write. But the trouble is, they often think in terms of the human readers and not the search engine spiders. Therefore, they write in such a manner that attracts the reader’s attention, but score poorly in the eyes of the search engines.
Online publishing is different from normal offline literature. You can use bombastic words and write an article with all that creative juices but it will still receive low readership. I have seen many articles of high quality receiving low page views. What a waste!
Article marketing cannot depart from good SEO practices. By that, you need to take note of a couple of factors when writing your articles or web content:
1. Keyword Density, both in the title and the content
2. Latent Semantic Indexing
Article marketing basically is targeted at the search engines. If you cannot rank your article in the top 10 search engine results, you can be sure that your readership will not be outstanding. Conversely, any article that is ranked well gets tons of targeted traffic from the search engines.
So how do you rank them in Top 10?
Treat your article as a web page. In all web pages, the meta-tags and content are optimized for the target keywords. In the same manner, the meta-tags are synonymous with the article title, and the web content with the article body.
Did you realize that the article titles of all articles that are indexed in the search engines are showing up like the meta-title? Likewise, the content is showing up like the meta-description?
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) in layman terms simply means that you have to pay attention to the keywords and topic you use. On top of keeping an appropriate keyword density of the target keyword at about 1% to 2%, you need to associate your content with related keywords. Also, do not go overboard in targeting your main keyword. Never spam your content!
In the past, simply littering the content with the targeted keywords is good enough. Today, rules have changed. For example, if you are writing an article on “article marketing”, instead of just repeating “article marketing” as the only keyword, you probably would think of “online authors”, “EzineArticles”, “article title”, “bum marketing”, “web traffic”, “article submission” and so on.
Likewise, when writing an article on “buying a used Toyota”, you will associate it with “car dealers”, “auto insurance”, “Toyota Prius”, “Toyota Rav4” and so on.
The whole idea is to stay relevant.
So how do you come up with the associated keywords to use in your article content?
1. Use the “~” search feature in Google. Say you want to find a synonym for “car”, simply go to Google ~car and you will see some possible synonyms.
2. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and search for related keywords and phrases. Remember to check the “Use synonyms” box. This free keyword tool will churn out keywords that Google deems as related to your target keyword.
3. Ask your family and friends. Sometimes, they can tell you some interesting words you may not have thought of.
4. Google the main keyword, and find the top few websites. Take each url and place it in the https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Remember to check the “Website Content” box.
If you will pay attention to the above 2 factors, your article stands to rank well. This strategy will work very well with EzineArticles.
Of course, other than these 2, there are other key factors such as creating unique content, picking long tails and more. I shall talk more about this topic in my next post. We will also discuss later on what makes a “Perfect” article.
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Article marketing is my pet topic. This is one powerful marketing technique that has brought me more than 460,000 unique visitors and $10,000s of sales. But it was not always a bed of roses. Let me tell you a little silly story why. When I started marketing in early 2006 as a complete newbie, I was making use of safelist marketing solely.
It was only when I chanced upon the NicheRockets forum in end 2006 that I got to hear about article marketing, ie writing and submitting articles to free article directories for traffic and sales. I also picked up some free ebooks on article marketing as well in the forum.
The people there were using articles to drive traffic to built-for-Adsense sites and making loads of money in the tune of $1000s every month. Of course there are other stealthy tools and killer tricks that they use and talk about such as advanced content generating tools and so on.
The first article I wrote was for an online golf gaming software that ran on a MLM model. Matrix, Level Up, 2 Up and all that jargon that most people cannot understand. I left the article alone and never took a second look at it. I just chucked the article marketing technique aside to do other stuff.
But on one occasion, a very innocent search I did on Google revealed that my article posted at Article Alley was ranked No.1 for a highly competitive keyword related to “country club”. There were about 200 million results for that keyword! I was Excited!
But then came my Exasperation…I forgot to check if my affiliate link was working…and it wasn’t…and I couldn’t update the link. I felt really silly!
So even though I made it to the top of Google for a highly competitive keyword which drives tons of traffic to my article, I never made a SINGLE CENT out of it.
Of course, that was my silly past. I have since learnt my mistakes and for the entire year of 2007 worked diligently on mastering article marketing.
Why is Article Marketing useful for all marketers, whether you are an affiliate or webmaster?
1. Article Marketing is Free.
If you can write quality content, you can submit your article for free without paying a single cent. It works whether you are a newbie or experienced marketer.
2. Article Marketing Drives Lots of Traffic.
There are a few ways to drive traffic using articles.
a. An article that is optimized for a target keyword has the potential of ranking well in the search engines. We all know the benefits of that.
b. A well-written and informative article will be picked up by publishers. These publishers may place your article onto their websites or send it to their lists. More traffic!
c. Submitting an article to dozens of article directories can get you instant one-way backlinks. Many quality directories carry a high PageRank, so that means more link love and higher search engine rankings for our sites.
3. Article Marketing Builds Your Credibility
You are what you write or so it says. Your content will reveal your understanding and knowledge about a topic. So if you are selling weight loss products, contributing articles regularly on the topic establishes you as an expert. People are more willing to listen to your advice and…product recommendations.
4. Article Marketing Pre-sells!
A well-written article can pre-sell your prospects and convince them to do what YOU WANT them to do. Trust me, it improves the conversion rates much better than just flashing the product sales page!
One product that converts at 1 sale per 100 clicks has been shown to convert at less than 50 clicks. Disclaimer: Not all products will see such dramatic improvements but you should still see a great improvement.
The reason is simple. When people read your article, their intention is to find out more information. But little do they know that their subconscious minds are starting to buy into what was presented to them.
So it warms them up to feel good about the product or service you are promoting. You know what happens when they click the author resource link to see the sales page. The likelihood of them flashing out their credit cards dramatically improves!
This is just an introduction to article marketing. In my subsequent posts, I will share in greater details of how to make money using article marketing.
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | 1 Comment »
