While it’s not exactly proven where the term “bum marketing” came from, one thing we know for sure is that tons of affiliate marketers – both new and experienced – use bum marketing methods to generate free, targeted traffic to their advertisers for hard, cold cash.

With regards to making money with affiliate marketing, bum marketing is essentially the technique of utilizing free resources to get organic search engine placement and backlinks pointing to the product you are promoting. Bum marketing is not as effective in high competition niches, but if you get a little bit more specific with your keywords it shouldn’t be too hard to gain that number one spot on Google for a handful of your primary keywords.

Article marketing is probably the most talked about method of bum marketing. Websites, such as EzineArticles.com, provide publishers with a 100% free platform to post niche articles. The real power comes in the ability to add links in what’s known as a resource or author box. This has two benefits to the everyday affiliate marketer:

1. Article directories tend to have a high page rank, which means that if your content is optimized correctly with keywords, your articles have a good chance of gaining top spot in the search engines. Top spot equals tons of free traffic to that page.
2. Because of the link in your resource box, article directories also provide a means to building high ranking, one-way links which point to your website or affiliate offer. This means a better ranking for your site, and a potential for it to have a first page ranking as well.

It’s definitely not unheard of for someone to have the top two spots on Google for a particular keyword, one being their website and the other being a related article which points to their website. Creating this occurrence across multiple targeted keywords is how successful affiliate marketers take full advantage of organic search engine placement and how it directly relates to bum marketing.

Bum marketing is not immediate, and despite popular belief, it requires a fair amount of planning and patience to effectively get the most out of it. Ask any affiliate marketer and they will tell you the same thing: it takes patience and versatility to survive in this business. Bum marketers know this first hand.