Every day people use the internet to make money. They all do it in different ways. Many of them use paid advertising, mailing lists and other methods to generate traffic to their product or website. While others use free services such as forums and blogs.

Those who use these free services are using what is called “Bum Marketing”. It is the cheapest form of traffic you can manage to get for your product.

There are several ways to get “Bum Marketing” to work for you.

Forum Signatures:

Probably the least effective method of marketing you can use but you can actually get some links. Most forums allow you to add links to your signature. This allows you to place your Clickbank link or link to your product within your signature that is seen in each post you make.

Some forums will generate more traffic than others. It is best if you place your link in forums that go along with the niche you are trying to promote. The more you participate, the more your signature will permeate the forum.

Social Websites:

There are several social websites out there. Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Squidoo and more. All of them are free. It just takes a bit of time and a email address to get your own social page. If you already have one then it would be just a matter of writing a bulletin or blog post about your product with a link to the product itself and send it to all of your friends.

While most of the social websites are not designed to sell a product or direct people to another website, you can do this with Squidoo. They want you to make pages to sell your products. They want you to make pages to direct people to your own website. They even rate the pages you create. The higher the rating the more people you get to see your Squidoo page. Obviously this leads to more people either purchasing your product or visiting your site.

The other sites depend on how many friends you have and how many might click on your profile looking for something else entirely.

Blogs:

Two major blogs you can use are Google’s Blogger and Wordpress. Both give you the ability to create your own blog without having to come up with your own website or domain. Creation of an account and Blogs is quite easy. Both offer templates that you can use to customize the blog with or you can come up with your own template.

Just make a good strong post about your product. Try not to make too many links to your product. Both Blogger and Wordpress search for and shut down Blogs they deem blatant advertising(spam). Convince your readers that they need to click on the link to proceed to your Affiliate link or product and make a purchase.

Articles:

While it might sound easy to create an article it is not always so. Some articles take a bit of thought. Especially if you have specific rules that you need to adhere to in order to get it published. You want to stick to those rules so that it will meet the standards that are required and so that people who are searching for content on their websites will pick up your article and publish it on their website. Obviously the better the article the more people will use it for content.

Many article publishers would rather you do not place many, if any links to your product or affiliate site in your article. Some will allow you to place those links in your signature. Either way it is probably best to just place a link to one of your Bum Marketing sites instead of directly to your affiliate link.

There are several places you can submit your articles. EzineArticles and GoArticles are two of the better places to get your article published. There are also websites you can subscribe to in order to get your article published to literally hundreds of article websites.

An example of an approach to Bum Marketing would be to find your niche that you want to promote a product on. Something you might know quite a bit about. Visit Clickbank or your other Affiliate for a product to promote. Create a Squidoo lense for your product. Create a blog on either or both Blogger or Wordpress. Remember to make any links to your Squidoo lense site. Not your product.

Lastly, you would want to write a good strong article to promote your product and either point to your Squidoo lense or to your Blogs and publish it on EzineArticles first, GoArticles second then maybe your list of article directors third.

There is more to this article at:

Billie Kennedy

The Money Making Website

http://www.themoneymakingwebsite.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Billie_Kennedy

A recent craze in the internet marketing arena has been that of article marketing. Most recently known by its new name “bum marketing”, it is a very viable long term approach to quickly and easily generate hundreds of one-way quality back links to your sales site, content site or blog.

But knowing how to go about it correctly is what makes the difference between a winning article marketing campaign and a losing one. Here are five tips to help you get the most out of it.

1. Make it Simple and Concise: There is no need for you to write bulky articles with the intent of impressing your readers. Most people searching for information online are looking for simple guides to doing something, getting something done, etc. Make your points and put your message through without unneeded fluff and fillers.

2. Create a Catchy Bio Box: Whether you are writing articles to upload to your site or submit else where to get traffic, don’t underestimate the magic that a simple but catchy message with a relevant URL can do to your click through traffic and ultimately your sales and/or Adsense income. Don’t claim to be an expert (unless you are), just identify with your readers as “an enthusiast” of the subject matter you are writing about. That makes them trust you somehow.

3. Submit to Article Directories: The best article that did not get submitted to article directories to get you traffic is worth nothing but digital dust.

4. Submit to Article Distribution Services: While it is good to submit to free article directories, it is 100x better when you use article distribution services. These get your article picked up by thousands of marketers looking for high quality content. Can you imagine the potential traffic and backlinks that you will be getting from this? One caveat, though, is that these are paid services. But they are worth the price.

5. Bookmark them on Social Bookmarking Sites: Submitting the URL of your article to sites like StumbleUpon.com, technorati and others will almost guarantee that the submitted page gets indexed with 24-48 hours, which means it may start showing up in the search engines sooner than expected. Plus, you may get a lot of clickthroughs from the social bookmarking sites themselves.

If you follow the above steps religiously, you should start getting a good amount of one-way links pointing to your site and a flood of traffic that you can tap to build your lists, sell your products or promote your affiliate programs. What you do with it is up to you. Just don’t waste it.

Gary Fritts has been a fulltime internet business owner and online marketing trainer for 10 years and is the Senior Trainer at the Wealth Magnet System.