Things To Consider Before You Get Into Bum Marketing

Bum marketing, or to give it its proper name, article marketing is a great way to provide fresh content for both your site and others and to get your name out there and traffic back to your product or service by way of links in your resource box.

There are however some things which you should consider before launching your career as a bum marketer.

1. Focussing on the promotion instead of the information

As we have seen, articles are an excellent method of advertising your product, promoting your "brand" name and getting free traffic back to your site. However the main reason for writing an article should be to give the reader something of value, information which adds to their knowledge or solves their problem. You want the reader to take an interest in what you have to say, enough interest to click on the link in your resource box in order to find out what else you have to say or offer. If you submit your articles to reputable article directories and forums, diligent editors and forum moderators will soon detect if you are just doing a blatant promotion and will delete your article.

2. Not recognising the full advertising promotion aspects of your article

By now you know that you can generate traffic by means of the links in your resource box, but that is only one part of the promotional potential of articles. If your article is good enough, it will be picked up by other site owners, as they continually need fresh content for their sites or blogs. Google loves sites which are continually being updated, but it's just too big a job to maintain an ever changing site or blog Owners need fillers for their sites, and if they feel that your article will be useful to their readers they will use it themselves, and of course they must leave your resource box intact. Depending on the size of their readership, this could greatly increase your exposure.

Another promotional aspect to consider is the use of strategic keyword placement. If this is done correctly, your article will be picked up by the search engines and occupy a prime position on their results page for that particular keyword or phrase. Just remember not to overdo it, or your article will appear stilted, and will not read well. Try scattering other keyword phrases throughout your article, again making sure that they fit in with the other sentences and do not stand out as "keyword stuffing".

3. Publishing articles which are of no use, too specific or poorly written

Article directories will generally not accept your work automatically. They will check that it follows their guidelines, that it has some informational merit, and contains good grammar and spelling. There should be no excuse for the last two, which will be highlighted in your word processor as you type.

If you write an article that no one else is interested in, you will probably not get anyone clicking on your link, and all your effort has been a waste of time. Remember that article directories cater to a general audience, so don't make your article too specific, or it won't get picked up by other site owners. By all means write about poodles instead of just dogs, because while poodles is a specific breed of dog and appeals to a large body of dog lovers, it's not that specific that people who like other breeds won't read it. On the other hand, don't write about your latest discovery in the world of nuclear physics - the general public are just not interested. Those articles should be submitted to the highly specialised academic magazines. Get to know the difference between the two, get your topics appealing to a large audience, and you should start seeing some financial return for your bum marketing efforts.

About the author Peter Phillips is an accountant and writer living in Canberra, Australia http://www.money-makingopportunities.com

For free site building software go to: http://peteract.notlong.com