My Bum Business

Why Should I Put Links in My Blog Posts?

2010-05-03T15:08:00.000-07:00

You should try to write at least one link inside your blog post back to your own blog, a site linking to your blog, or some other location which eventually can lead back to your site or a product associated with your site. Why should you put links in your blog posts? It's simple... websites that rip your content and paste it on their own sites will take credit for your work no matter what measures you take to prevent it. Therefore, why not allow these sites which steal your content to become billboards? Why not turn this around and use those sites to drive traffic to your own?

Sounds simple and easy, but it actually takes some thought as you don't want to annoy your regular readers with links to your home page, so try to spice things up by linking back to old articles or sites which in turn link to your own. You can also put the name of your site in there without using a link, and I highly encourage this so that people will google and find you. The reason you should do this is because many of the sites which steal your content and reproduce it word for word will take out your hyperlinks which destroys the whole point of putting links into the posts in the first place. Therefore it would be wise to put your blog's name inside the article for users to search for it.

Best Article Sites for Generating Blog Traffic

2010-04-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

There are many sites to choose from when attempting to generate traffic for your blog. I have found from personal experience that the sites with the most restrictions are generally the best ones to use. Sure it takes longer to generate content but they will give you the best results in the long run. While you wait for major article sites to publish your content, it is also wise to use less restrictive ones to publish immediately and get your content out there. Here are the sites I use for generating traffic to my blogs:

http://articoolz.com/

http://www.articlesbase.com/

http://ezinearticles.com/

http://www.3stepads.com/

http://www.squidoo.com/

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi

Every time I create an article on my blog I then modify it and submit to each of the above listed article sites. This guarantees that my content will start generating traffic for my blogs and the longer I've been successfully submitting to each of these sites the better the results. Of these sites, ezinearticles and squidoo are the most restrictive, followed by articlesbase and then the remaining three. Having a healthy mix of restrictions allows for content to be released over time and reach a wider audience.

Online Marketing - The Reverse of Real World Advertising

2010-04-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

Whenever new members to the internet marketing community appear you can always see them making the same mistakes over and over again. One of these common but not well known mistakes is the idea of saving your best content for your premium products. Now obviously you will want to save some information for those that are willing to pay you money, but you should always be willing to put large chunks of extremely valuable information out there for free. Why? Because people surfing the internet are always looking for free information, and unless your free information is better than what they can already access, not many people are going to buy your product that costs money after reading your free information.

What you decide to put out there for free has to be enticing, valuable, instantly usable and leave the browsing internet user hungry for more. The information has to be good enough to make them think of it as more valuable than the other free information they've seen so far in their searching endeavors for whatever topic they are researching. Often times newer members of the internet marketing community will promise the best information behind an expensive curtain and not many people are going to be willing to risk their finances (even with refund guarantees) on information that is promised to them. If you instead offer some of your best information and then sell a decent amount of equally valuable data then your sales will increase substantially and your refund rate will go down as well.

You see perception is reality in the marketing world and you also need to deliver on the expectations of your clientele. The only way to do this is to deliver during the sales pitch with the same level of valuable information as you do after the sale. What I've done with this article is practice exactly what I preach, by giving you valuable information and pitching my product: Successful Blogging Story which also contains scores of useful tips that are just as important as this post.

Post Labels: Why are they important?

2010-03-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

Post labels are an essential part of blogging. Those are the little categories which you can click on that appear below each post. Some blogs go nuts and will have a dozen labels per post, others (like mine) only use one or two labels per post. The reason I only use one label is that google looks at it for keyword SEO, and spamming too many of the same keyword through links and other uses throughout the website is a terrible idea.

Google hates spammers, and links are the first thing google checks when doing SEO on the body of the page. This goes for all links, not just labels, so be careful and use links to send readers to important information without spamming the links and their keywords all over the page.

Giving Stuff Away for Free

2010-03-01T16:43:00.000-08:00

This is a difficult concept for most people who sell products online to wrap their minds around. First off, you want to give away as much stuff as you can for free without reducing the value of your online product. What's more, you want the free stuff to boost the confidence of the person with regards to buying your primary product. How do you do this you ask? Well you want to develop free materials that are 'stand alone' and capable of providing a small measure of success to the person who uses it, just enough to make them wonder how great the real thing must be. You DO NOT want to tease someone with useless information or give them free advertisements with no real knowledge behind them. This will turn them away from your product and make them believe it has no real value either!

Is Blogging a Dead Medium?

2010-02-04T20:12:00.000-08:00

It's a sad fact that most blog readers are bloggers themselves, hence why blogs which focus on the blog writing audience do so well. I've had many friends and family members look at me like I have two heads when I show them how much money I make from blogging each week. "Seriously," they say, "... isn't blogging dead though?" The answer is that yes, blogging the way it used to be done is dead.

People who blog just for the sake of blogging are certainly a dead medium. Nowadays you have to compete with a thousand other bloggers in your same niche and the only way to do that is to provide content no one else can or to create a community which will attract even more visitors.

These are changing times but blogging is certainly not a dead medium. You just have to adapt and become a better blogger in the process.

Getting on a Bloglisting Site (Not a Blog Roll!)

2010-02-03T15:11:00.001-08:00

Blog directory sites are basically directories for website categories, similar to EzineArticles but for blogs instead of articles. This is not the same thing as say a site roll, which is nothing more than a list of blogs one person in particular reads. Often you'll find site rolls on the right hand side of a blog and it will contain the title of the site in question as well as the latest post by that author.

Blog listing sites usually require that you leave a small rectangle on your site with a piece of code which allows them to track your website. This will help them when they show people using their site and searching through a category to find your blog.

To find a directory site, simply Google 'blog listing sites' and look around at what you find. Pick a free website that requires you to put a small bit of code for tracking onto your site and you're ready to go. Add the tracking software somewhere out of sight (I use the very bottom of my website for this purpose) and you will now hopefully start getting more visitors from the listing site you signed up with.

Don't stop at just one site though, be sure to get on as many as you can to improve your readership!

Getting on blog rolls is a great way to get readership, but if you want fresh new visitors who perhaps haven't even heard of your blog yet then you want to get on these blog listing sites. Remember, you can never get enough of this free traffic!

Simple Sales Funnel

2010-01-30T11:21:00.000-08:00

Here is an example of a simple sales funnel you can follow when selling your clickbank products:

User finds your sales page thanks to an article you wrote that they found on google.
User opts to give you their email address in exchange for a free product you are giving away.
User receives several emails and eventually is given a link to your main product's sales page.
User clicks to buy your product.
You offer an additional product during the purchasing procedure. Call it Step 1 to X for purchase.
User purchases additional material.
After purchases are made, direct the user to a social media site which they can use for free for a month but will have to pay to continue using.

There is a simple sales funnel that will generate real income for you that can last a very long time.

Hello? is Anyone Listening to Me?

2010-01-22T17:45:00.001-08:00

Blogging can be frustrating, especially at first, if you see no comments and believe no one is really reading your content which you worked so hard to create.

Getting a program like google analytics goes a long way in helping you grasp just how many people are really visiting your site and reading your content.

The best way to get started generating readership is to simply google around and find sites in your niche. If you've been blessed with google searchers finding your content (which you noticed because you went and got google analytics) then you will know what key words to focus on when looking for blogs with similiar content. Getting those blogs with similiar keywords to link to you is huge for google search engine optimization.

Don't despair, your readers are really out there, you just need to get within ear shot and be ready to impress them when they finally read your content.

My Blogging Story

2010-01-17T17:03:00.001-08:00

Read my story for $9.99 on how I became a successful blogger.

You can find my pitch page on making money online here and being successful.

Inside you'll find exactly how I made $4000 - $6000 per month blogging.

Simple, honest methods for making money with online blogging. Get your copy today!

Importance of the Share Feature

2010-01-15T03:04:00.000-08:00

You can add a 'share' feature at the bottom of your posts (simply google how to do this as it is really just a cut and paste job) on blogspot.com.

What's the power of this? There's no way to tell just how beneficial this feature can be for your site, unless of course you test it out. The share feature allows people to use any number of social networking sites (over 200 actually) to tell friends about what you've blogged about. This create a mediocre free link to your site which helps boost your rankings on google. What's more, your content gets passed via viral marketing to another person.

What's not to love?

I definately recommend getting a share feature for your blog!

Click Away! vs Catering Mentality

2010-01-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

There are two very different ways to deal with comments on your blog, mainly complaints.

The first way to deal with complaints is to say "Click Away if you don't like the content!"

The Second way to deal with complaints is to say "Ok I will change X and modify Y to fit your needs, please don't go away!"

Obviously a happy medium of accepting the validity of complaints is where you will most likely succeed with blog comments. However, for some blogs it is better to simply be a jerk or an appeaser. It really comes down to not only the personality you blog as but also how many people are complaining.

Do some thinking on this concept and iron out for yourself how you will deal with complaints and suggestions on your own blog. Will you be an appeaser, a jerk, or somewhere in between?

Importance of Links Inside Articles

2010-01-01T07:12:00.000-08:00

Whenever you write for your blog, website, etc. you should include links somewhere in the article to another page or site that you own. The reason for this is that there are thousands of automaticly generated websites indexed by google who steal content from other sites. These websites are often run by robots so the robot will just take the contents of your article and throw it on the front page of its site. By having a link you will get a backlink to that page eventhough the robot had no intention of siting its source.

When writing the backlink, be sure to give it some good SEO quality, so add alt text, use text instead of the link's url, etc. If your site starts to grow and other people look for content to write about, there is a good chance that they will steal your content and paste it on their own site. Even if your content is very old it can still be found and ripped, so always try to leave atleast one link in your articles to another part of your site, blog, forum, other articles, etc.

Did you know?

2009-12-17T09:59:00.000-08:00

Interesting youtube video about the growth of the internet.

Posting Tip - Quality vs Quantity

2009-12-05T13:51:00.000-08:00

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. That phrase applies to blogging too! If you don't have anything of value to add to your blog then don't post crap! Now, if you have a schedule for your blog then you are going to want to work ahead and post items in advance (blogger and wordpress both have features which allow you to automatically post from a queue).

Quality is the biggest part of both attracting an audience and making google like your site. By 'like' I mean index it for the keywords you include in your title and in most paragraphs of your article. For instance, my keywords are quality, quantity, and posting tip. Quanitity does not mean google will like you and if you use your keywords too much in any one paragraph (this one is pushing it) then you will get flagged as spamming and it will hurt your google seo.

So when I say post quality and not quantity that refers to good google seo as well! Apply this posting tip to your own blog and if you have free reign on when you post (like this blog) don't post crap when you have nothing of quality to say.

Become a Ghost Writer

2009-12-03T19:18:00.001-08:00

A great way to make money is to write for other people trying to get their sites picked up by google. If you take some time to pick their brains while you ghost write for them maybe you will learn a thing or two about google seo as well as internet marketing. If nothing more look at the sites they are asking you to write for and how they tell you to write your articles.

There's a lot of information in the instructions for ghost writers and it's definately worth the time to think about why writers write the way they do online.

For instance, you should break up your keywords into a main key phrase of 2-5 words and several supporting phrases of 1-3 words. The main phrase should be present once in every paragraph atleast but no more than three times. The secondary key words should appear about 2-3 times total in any one paragraph.

The reasoning behind this is to keep your google SEO high but avoid getting labeled as a spammer by google robots.

Go find some ghost writing oppurtunities and see what you can learn from the experience. Have to walk before you run!

Spelling Things Wrogn

2009-11-22T14:37:00.000-08:00

Spelling words incorrectly has been a trick used by marketing gurus for years. With the advent of the google built in spell checker this practice has slowly been diminishing in effectiveness. Certain words, however, are spelled incorrectly by the public: Cell Phones or Cellphones? And then there are different languages such as british english: Color or Colour? By writing articles which associate themselves with the less common spelling you essentially are creating a niche with a topic which could be very difficult to enter in under normal circumstances.

The weight loss niche is a very difficult area to get in the top 10 on a google results page. However, by spelling the word weight as weigth I managed to get #2 on google with one of my key phrases in the weight loss category. This of course was dependent on the user typing the word weight incorrectly.

If you are trying to figure out the best way to mispell a word, aim for letters which are on opposite sides of the keyboard. This way the user has a better chance of hitting the wrong sequence of keys because they need to coordinate both hands at once and this is why many people will accidentally reverse letters that fall opposite of each other on the keyboard. Probably the most mispelled word in the english language online is "teh." See how the t is on the left hand, h is on the right and e is on the left again?

Another neat trick is reversing keys on the keyboard. For instance, you could type k instead of d in a word. Your goal here is obviously to catch someone not paying attention and lazily typing in the word.

Affiliate Options - What price to pick?

2009-11-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

Does price determine which affiliate you choose? If you do a good job researching affiliate products and speaking with the authors/creators of said projects then figuring out the right one will be based on quality, not price.

So what if the 'learn to speak spanish' booklet is $66, if it's a quality product then it's better to sell that book than a spanish cheat sheet worth $4.

Keep this in mind when looking for affiliate products on your site and be sure to never assume that the first one you see is the best one available.

The Color of AdSense

2009-11-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

Sticking with the AdSense theme, I'd like to talk about another way to change up your ads and avoid the dreaded 'ad blindness' syndrome with your readers.

Simply changing the colors on your ads will greatly improve their visibility, just don't do it too much. It's not quite as bad as moving them around but it can give your readers a startle (which also causes them to read your ads that first time they see the new colors) but you'll want to be careful of how many times you do this.

Myself I change my ads maybe once a month if that to a very strong color that compliments the blog. This is why it's a good idea to have color themes of 3-4 colors running through your blog. It allows you the options of changing ad colors at any time and still having them make sense for new users.

Don't Just Advertise with Adsense - Go all out!

2009-11-16T11:51:00.000-08:00

Many blogs and websites try to hide their advertisements in corners or down at the bottom of the page. Let's think for a second, how does this help you? How is that any different from just not putting up ads in the first place? If readers aren't going to see your ads, how will you make money?

Your adsense ads should be part of your page, and in areas that will cause people to read them in search of whatever they happen to be looking for in the first place when they came to your site.

When you do move beyond adsense and put up links for specific products, go all out and make a short description page for the product or make a post or write a description beneath the ad or contact the product owner for graphics or do whatever you can think of to make the ad more visible for your audience. Don't just slap the ad in front of their faces, but actually give them a reason to click in the first place!

That being said, your ad should never interfere with readers getting to your content. I highly disagree with using in text ads that are automatically generated or pop ups that appear when mousing over a section of the site because they ruin the surfing experience of your users.

The Importance of Moving Adsense Ads Around - Avoid Ad Blindness

2009-11-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

There are several areas of your website which are considered 'hot spots' for advertisements such as affiliate programs or google adsense. These spots include the top left of your site, just under your title, the left hand side of your page, and between posts. Unfortuneately, users frequently develop ad blindless when viewing a website: they learn to ignore your ads because they know the location has no relevant information to them.

How to you avoid ad blindness? Move your ads around! That's right, change it up a bit and watch the increase in hits that you get on your google adsense or other ads. You should notice a sudden spike from users who normally would not view your ads but now are taking a glance at them since they are in a new location.

This has worked like a charm on my websites and I tend to do this about once a month to avoid causing a headache for my more frequent users.

What to write about?

2009-11-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite topics to write about is weight loss. Although it is difficult to find key words which work well in such a cluttered niche there are always a few gems hanging around for the diligent researchers. The phrases "How to make the XX diet work" or "Why am I failing on the XX diet" are good starting places to search on google.

Folow these easy steps:

Pick a phrase
Google it exactly with quotes
Tweek the phrase
Google without quotes
Write an article about the site with the title being your google phrase
Include hoplink at the end of the article

That's how easy it is. You could write probably 2-3 different diet articles every day on a different one and you'd still have something to write about after a month. So dive into those dieting websites and find a niche for yourself!

How can Ehow.com make you money?

2009-11-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

EHow is my favorite free article site currently because not only does it drive traffic to my website, but it also allows me to make a small amount of money on the side! That's right, if someone clicks an ad on their site while he/she is viewing your article then you get a small payment in return. The very first day I tried Ehow I was making money from articles and I know that anyone can repeat my success.

So how do you write on ehow? It's simple, first you make an account like any free article site. Next, you write a title, keywords, and introduction to your ehow article, as well as a difficulty for repeating whatever it is you are going to instruct someone on how to do. You see, ehow is about lists, and after you finish writing the beginning of your article you then have to write a detailed to-do list for your reader to accomplish whatever task you are discussing. After this list is done you can then add links in a resource box at the bottom.

Other custom features include adding images, videos, and what stuff the reader needs before they start.

This site rules! Go check out Ehow.com and start writing some to-do list articles.

Create Unique Articles for your Bum Marketing Business

2009-11-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

One of the misconceptions about bum marketing is that you need to take posts from your blog and just paste them into as many free article sites as possible. This couldn't be further from the truth! What you need to do is write an article on your blog and then write ABOUT that article with unique articles then placed on the free article site. It is far better to write new, uncopied information on each free article site than to just copy and paste. Google is pretty smart and it will pick up what you're doing thus hurting your search results in the long run.

Think of it as an excercise in your writing prowress. Can you write about something till there's nothing left to be said? Then you can probably compose articles about a subject for your blog or website and then write more on articles, perhaps with catch phrases at the end like: "Learn more at my blog with this post" or "There's much more information pertaining to this article here."

So next time you read an article or blogpost telling you to just copy and paste information onto free article sites... order them to come here and read this post!

If you are interested in getting a book on article marketing then please check out Mass Article Control.

The Power of How

2009-11-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

Google loves the word "How." For whatever reason, articles I place on free websites that include phrases like "How to" or "How I made" or "How come" are almost instantly indexed by google. This has allowed me to come to the conclusion that the word "How" is highly valued by google's SEO index.

So How can you allow the power of how to help with your bum marketing business? Just like I'm doing now! I'm writing a post that answers the question how you can use the word "How" as well as including it in my title. How is a very powerful tool for the savy bum marketer, and it's something you will definately want to include in atleast a handful of your articles.

Another great part about using "How" in your title is that you are basically telling the person clicking that an answer will be found on the following page. If you answer that "How" then you will most likely have someone willing to click on your link within the article and visit your site.

The power of how within google is awe inspiring, try it out for yourself!

10 Ways to Market Your Affiliate Products

2009-11-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

Use the following sites or methods to provide information for prospective buyers and better sell your affiliate products.

1. Create a Blog on http://blogspot.com/
2. Create articles on http://ezinearticles.com/
3. Use http://www.articlesbase.com/ to create articles that help bolster the SEO of your other websites. This site does not allow direct hoplinks so you will need to get creative and make your own webpages which redirect users to where you actually want them to go.
4. Submit articles on http://www.articlecircle.com/
5. Submit articles on http://www.amazines.com/
6. Post on forums related to your niche and leave a link to your hop linked product in your signature. Be sure to create a name for yourself as a helpful member of the community.
7. Use http://twitter.com/ to advertise your websites and leave links to hoplinked products in your tweets every once in a while.
8. Use http://youtube.com/ to create a video on your niche and leave a hoplink in the sidebar to the product.
9. Use http://facebook.com/ to advertise your websites and leave links to your hoplinked products.
10. Never ever stop writing. If you want to influence people to buy your products then you will need to become a stellar writer. The keyboard is your greatest tool in Bum Marketing arsenal.

How to Start a Bum Marketing Campaign

2009-11-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

First off, you need to pick a topic that you know something about. Try to find an area of expertise where you know the products, the buyers, and the sellers rather well. You will need to understand the How, What, Why, When, and Where behind buyers selecting products. You will need to have enough knowledge of the products to write decent articles and give quality advice to inquiring buyers.

So you select product niche X and now you need to decide how you will make money with this product. Here are two websites you can start off with for your bum marketing campaign:

Clickbank
Commision Junction

These websites will allow you to become an affiliate for their products and attempt to sell them online. How does this work you ask?

Well first off, you need to understand how a hop link works. Every product on clickbank and commission junction requires you to create a link to help them track when a user clicks your link and then buys a corresponding product. To create the link, view the tutorials present on clickbank and commision junction, and follow their instrucitons very carefully.

The jist of it is that you will have an id for your account as well as the vendor you are selling a product for. You then link to their product and include in the link both their id and your id. This allows their systems to track when you have directed a user to someone's product and then whether or not they bought the product.

Before you can even start a Bum Marketing Campaign you will need to understand how hop links work. Hop links are in fact the life blood of Bum Marketing, allowing you to build links to websites and allow them to forever make money for you as long as the product continues to sell.

Bum Marketing System

2009-11-10T10:56:00.001-08:00

Bum Marketing, or as I like to call it: Badass Underestimated Marketing, is an excellent way to bring in supplimental income for yourself and your family. Whether you are a college student, stay at home mom, successful businessman, or just a bum visiting your local library, you too can make money online via a bum marketing strategy.

What is Bum Marketing?

Most people assume that bum marketing means lazy marketing. This couldn't be further from the truth! Successful bum marketers are driven, web savy, intelligent individuals who find creative methods to sell other people's products. That is in essence, the core to bum marketing: selling products you neither own nor provide support for.

How does Bum Marketing benefit me?

Bum Marketing has provided me with a handsome supplimental income ever since I graduated from college and looked for extra forms of getting money besides my 9-5 programming job. My success can quickly become the key to your success if you follow this blog and learn from my experiences.

Where can I learn more about Bum Marketing?

Right here! Go to the home page and view the latest articles on bum marketing as well as check the archive section for even more posts. Read, learn, and comment!

Feel free to email me at freebeertomorrowonyxia AT gmail DOT com