In this article, I’m going to describe how I got involved in Bum Marketing, but more importantly, how YOU can get “quick-started”, by skipping all the initial mistakes I made. I’ll also warn you about some other “potholes” to avoid, and talk about how much WORK is involved.
Surprisingly, Bum Marketing was recommended in one of my many email subscription newsletters, by an Internet Guru entirely unassociated with Bum Marketing. My being a writer, the methodology sounded intriguing, so I went to the main BM site and subscribed to Travis Sago’s e-newsletter.
I was in the midst of doing something else online, so reading the BM emails was slow. But after a long delay, I had heard enough to convince me to devote some time to further researching it.
Again, as a writer, BM looked appealing. But it took me a long time to be “sold” on it, which means you can do your investigation much faster…
How YOU can “quick-start” Bum Marketing, by avoiding my initial mistakes
Travis Sago himself has written MUCH more about it – and it’s publicly available. Plus, several people who have been involved in Bum Marketing for awhile, have published their own information about it.
I didn’t discover this til Travis mentioned it in passing in one of his e-newsletters. You don’t have to wait for that.
Search Google for Bum Marketing, and give preference to anything written by the creator, Travis.
Even better though, are the publicly-available Videos. Go to Youtube and run a search on Bum Marketing there as well. Again, give preference to any videos recorded by the creator…
When I actually started, I made the mistake of concentrating on a small number of products. Well, one did very well.
Unfortunately, one of the others was a total disaster.
The remaining few, seemed to just stumble along. All in all, it did not perform well.
Two insights I have had since, promise to potentially improve BM product performance:
1) For a fragile methodology like Bum Marketing, it’s even more important to diversify widely, rather than concentrate on a small list of products.
You should also have a list of several different niches, and then choose one product from each niche. (Rather than concentrating on only two niches, with multiple products selected from each, as I did.) This is best, due to the fact that Bum Marketing appears to fail miserably in certain niches.
2) Where you find these affiliate products?
Well, in his initial writings, Travis highly touted Clickbank. However, it turns out that Clickbank products and Bum Marketing, do NOT go well together.
I’m not saying it can’t be done. I have sold Clickbank products but it’s an uphill battle – and one YOU can avoid by reading this article.
Specifically, (and only after I did a lot of research), I found an article by Travis, contradicting his earlier Clickbank recommendation, and admitting that for Bum Marketing, there were much better Affiliate Networks to use.
His personal recommendation? Commission Junction.
(Wish *I* had known that, from the beginning. )
As I said in my earlier article, Travis’s time estimates for producing articles, leave out many necessary work items.
Niche Research:
Due to the fragility of the BM model, you must spend many hours finding multiple niches from which to select a wide diversity of products.
Keyword Research:
Because the BM method depends so heavily on your writing a high-volume of articles, you must spend many hours finding lots of “article-friendly” keywords related to your niche and niche’s products.
Writing Articles:
Once again, according to Travis, “You should be able to write 5 articles per hour – AT LEAST.”
This is one of the most contentious assertions of Bum Marketing – and the one most people find impossible to believe. It will take a complete article to discuss this fully, so I’ll leave that to the near future. However, briefly…
It appears that it *IS* possible to attain this rapid level of article production – but with SEVERE requirements. If you don’t know how to approach this “step”, and don’t know what these requirements are…
…then you ‘aint got a snowballs’s chance in hell of coming anywhere near it…
Article Submission:
EVERYONE recommends mass submission of your articles, to as many Article Directories as possible. Travis appears to be the only exception to this rule.
So who is right? Travis, or everyone else??
Amazingly, the answer appears to be: Travis.
Our Next Episode
If YOU are thinking about becoming a “Bum Marketer”, or if you are doing it NOW – then the next article is going to be of HUGE value to you.
I’m going to talk specifically about ways to reduce the apparently Overwhelming Workload involved.
Stay tuned.
Andy
As for Article Submission – Travis is not an exemption, nor did he was first to do/mention it (at least from my time notes)
The first one I heard this from was Captain Tim Gorman (goes under the name Tim G.) from Keyword Avalanche who works Exclusively with Ezine Articles and is making 5 figures/month with his article marketing.
I “personally” believe Travis actually has been just cotton-tailing on his method (again, when I compare my time notes I have about Tim and Travis) = simply re-packaged what Tim has been preaching since he reformed from BH to this ‘angelic’ WH
On the other hand, kudos to Travis!
He Definitelly made this method more popular than Tim although Tim created couple of free ebooks and videos as well.
For those interested – one of the free ebooks Tim G. wrote is called “The Power of Article Marketing”.
And no, he is not focused at Clickbank either! At first most of his income came from Adsense, later on – what I’ve seen on his sites – he added affiliate programs and CPAs as well.
Correcting Dagmar’s errors…
1) I have a copy of Tim Gorman’s “The Power of Article Marketing”.
If you’ll read it closely, Captain Gorman recommends submitting to Ezine AND doing Mass-submission.
So it appears Andy is right here:
Travis IS the exception.
2) Andy never claimed that Travis was “first” with anything.
However, if you read Captain Gorman’s document closely, and compare it to Bum Marketing, there are significant differences.
As for timing, that’s a difficult call.
I know personally, I too, read Captain Gorman’s document long before I ever heard about Bum Marketing. But that’s not proof…
Ray
I have been doing a bit of bum marketing – not enough though. I really should start doing more, as I was getting some good traffic from it.
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for your comment.
Bum Marketing definitely has it’s merits as you noted. The only downside is pretty much the heavy amount of work required to make a full time living from it. Pretty much switching one full time job out for another…
Alex,
Yes, this is what worries me the most about Bum Marketing. The workload.
I’m looking forward to Andy’s upcoming articles, hoping he’ll give us some guidance on how to reduce that workload…
Ray
I’m lost here! Who is ‘Andy’ and how can I link to his futher comments and/or articles. I am relatively new, a biginner, and I am very interested in anything that I can begin generating an income with. I first heard of Travis Sago and ‘BM’ at the WA Forum. After struggling for so long trying to go at it alone I’ve decided to get and follow the directions/examples of others who have already done it.
[...] Bum Marketing – How To Get Started In this article, I’m going to describe how I got involved in Bum Marketing, but more importantly, how YOU can get “quick-started”, by skipping all the initial mistakes I made. I’ll also warn you about some other “potholes” to avoid, and talk about how much WORK is involved. How I got Started Surprisingly, Bum Marketing was recommended […] [...]
[...] Bum Marketing – How To Get Started In this article, I’m going to describe how I got involved in Bum Marketing, but more importantly, how YOU can get “quick-started”, by skipping all the initial mistakes I made. I’ll also warn you about some other “potholes” to avoid, and talk about how much WORK is involved. How I got Started Surprisingly, Bum Marketing was recommended […] [...]