1. Social Network - Are you on Facebook? If not, you need to sign up. Facebook is one of the fatest growing online Social Networking websites. It’s no longer just for “college kids”. A lot of companies are promoting their products and services on Facebook. You’d be surprised at how many different free marketing opportunities are available on Facebook. We suggest you set up a “Group” related to your business and you can start sending out invites to people to join your group. Once someone is in your group, you can easily send them emails, promotions, events, etc.

2. Blog About Your Business - Don’t have a blog? Get one! You can get a free blog at sites like WordPress.com and Blogger.com. Or for less than $5 you can get your own web hosting plan and  you can host your own blog.  Blogging is great because you can update customers with information about your company or products on a weekly, daily or even hourly basis. Many companies are making great use of blogs. Amazon uses a variety of blogs to cross market products. The CEO of Zappos keeps investors and customers up to date via his blog. Even Fortune 500 companies understand the value of engaging customers through blogs.

3. Target Old Customers - If they bought from you before, mostly likely they will buy from you again.  Give them a call, tell them you value them, ask what it will take to get them back. You might be surprised at how simple or low-cost it is. If they say no thanks, consider it a learning opportunity and wish them the best. Then call them back in a year and ask again.

4. Internal Promo – Promote your business or new product by putting your marketing message on your fax sheets, your invoices, your on-hold music, your store signage, etc. Every contact you have is a potential customer. Let them know what you have to offer. I even suggest putting business cards in with bills when you pay them—you never know who’s opening your bill who might need you.

5. Talk to Your Customers – Ask for referrals and testimonials. If a customer praises your product or service, ask them to refer you to their friends and associates. Ask them to write a testimonial and post it on your website, blog or brochures.

6. Get Free Publicity – Write press releases, and submit them to the local media and to online press sites. However, before writing a press release you should do some reseach. Press releases should be “newsworthy” and properly written. Do a Google search for similiar press releases related to your business or product.

7. Educate Your Customer - Tip sheets, fact sheets, helpful hints, etc., can do wonders for your business. We typically forget that not everyone knows what we know. Disregard conventional “wisdom” when it comes to marketing. Forget “K.I.S.S.” (Keep It Simple Stupid), ignore “less is more”, and throw out “short and sweet”. With sales and marketing, the more you tell, the more you sell.

8. Trade Links - If you have a website, you should contact other website owners and exchange links. It’s amazing how much traffic you can drive to your website from link exchanges. If you don’t have a website, offer incentives to your current customers if they refer people to your business.

9. Create Joint Ventures - Team up with other businesses that complement yours. For example, if you’re a real estate agent, team up with a cleaning service, an interior decorator, and a personal chef to offer a nice packaged deal to a new home buyer.

10. Believe in Your Business. Your own passion about what you are doing is infectious. If you believe that you are providing a product or service that people need, then people will listen to you.

From my conversations with a lot of new BUM Marketers, it appears that most of them feel too overwhelmed by the amount of affiliate prorgams. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of experienced marketers’ and all their websites and emails about how they can make you rich.

Well, I am here to tell you that you should stay focused on a single plan and stick with it! (Atleast until you get your feet wet) While this sounds basic, the truth is, many get sucked into different affiliate programs and end up distracted!

I tell all new marketers to start with ClickBank.  Signing up as a ClickBank affiliate is free.

Once you’ve signed up as an affiliate, you can choose products to promote in the Marketplace section of the website. You are automatically credited with a percentage of any sales you make. The system keeps track of your sales by creating a link which contains your affiliate ID and the name of the product. In ClickBank’s terminology, this is known as a ‘hoplink’, and it looks like this:

http://yourname.productname.hop.clickbank.net

With over 35,000 products to choose from on ClickBank, it’s important to pick profitable ones to promote. Every promotion you do has a cost – if not in money, then in time. You obviously want to avoid promoting products that people don’t buy (ask yourself..would I buy this product?). 

Overall, ClickBank makes it easy to find the best products to promote.  Make a list of about 3-5 of the best products in your chosen niche, and you are ready to start promoting! It’s as simple as that.

A key to being successful, is looking at the priorities of a successful BUM Article Marketing campaign:

1. Quality of content – if your content sucks, people won’t read your articles. No readers = no sales.
2. Increase the traffic to your affiliate links, sales pages, or AdSense pages - focus on ways to bring traffic to your product sales page.
3. Persistance and trial and error – don’t get discouraged if you don’t make money at first. Learn from your mistakes.

When you pick an affiliate, it is important that you determine which companies you will profit best from based on the frequency that the product is likely to sell.

There are several types of affiliates and some will offer you more money from a sale than others will. Before you get hazy-eyed by dollar signs, however, remember, it’s qaulity not the quantity of money that the affiliate program offers.

For instance, if you promote an unknown product from a company that gives you $75 per sale and you sell 2-3 products a year or you promote a well-known quality product that sells at 2-3 times a week at the rate of $10 per sale, then you will make much more money with the $10 per sale product.

Often times large well known companies will offer a very small profit per sale because they are established and they have high quality product that are more likely to sell. Small, unknown companies, on the other hand, need all of the promotion they can get so they offer a higher pay per sale. Also, because they are unknown, their products are likely to sell less frequently.

The most important rule when picking affiliates to promote on your site is to pick products that would be of interest to those who would likely visit your niche site. Otherwise you will be promoting a product to a group of people who do not even want nor need it.