Day 19 & 20 ~ Mary K

It's a wrap!!!

You may have noticed we did some juggling with our 'day' numbers. Early on in the 30 Day Marketing Experiment we had decided we would give it 30 days and we fell back on some thinking from our 'former' lives where we had developed a habit of thought that said, "work days are M-F so let's just count those".

Well, by midway through the Experiment we realized that was a bunch of nonsense! After all, one of the benefits of working from home creating income streams from your computer is that you have the flexibility to take action when inspired... which can be any time and any day! ;-) (I personally love that part *grins*)

So as Jackie and I talked about it we realized that what we were really up to was seeing what could be produced in a '30' day (or one month) time period, regardless of when any activities took place because as we looked at our actual pattern we quickly saw that Saturday and Sunday frequently come into the picture as well -- simply because we're inspired and free on those days too!

As to the Experiment itself? I have to confess that since we chose to start with Bum Marketing and I didn't adhere very closely to the Bum Marketing Method that I failed the experiment.

Which is NOT the same thing as the experiment failing!!! Frankly, I see the experiment being a HUGE success! Because for me, a successful experiment is one that leaves me with useful and valuable information that supports me in moving in the direction of personal success and fulfillment.

However, this does leave me not knowing (from personal experience) whether or not Travis' Bum Marketing Method actually does work and could bring in close to $1000 monthly once established. I still suspect it could AND I'm firmly convinced it's unlikely to happen during your first month at it! There's a learning curve and a rhythm that needs to be developed before you find yourself firmly engaged in the 'money generating' tasks. While it's true that research contributes greatly to the eventual generation of money, it's not what I would consider a 'money generating' task like the activities directly related to bringing traffic to your article, lens or any other website is.

As we move onto the next 30 Day Marketing Experiment segment, it's only fair that you realize much of what has been learned in the past month will impact our future efforts in positive ways. So if you've been watching... and doing yourself, I'll bet you'll find that to be true too! ;-)

To wind up the last two days I wrote two articles and submitted them and I started a new lens over at Squidoo.com.

What I've learned from these first 30 Days:

• I enjoy writing articles and intend to continue consistently doing so.

• Writing an article I'm satisfied with is rarely accomplished in less than 30 minutes

• Focus is not the challenge I thought it was... organization is a bigger challenge than I realized. ;-)

• I'm more successful following my inner-guidance than I am when trying to force myself into taking action 'that works'.

• I flow cash from sources I'm NOT 'efforting' about - I received an unexpected $505.24 during the course of this first 30 Day Marketing Experiment. $5.24 as a directly result of my 'efforts' around the experiment, $500 around a program I was simply in vibrational alignment with yet had taken no 'action' on.

• Confirmation that following my PASSION and staying in VIBRATIONAL ALIGNMENT works!!!

I'm very eager and excited to start PHASE 2 of the 30 Day Marketing Experiment in December!!! THANK YOU!!!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Jackie Lee ~ Day 20

Today is the end of the first 30 day Experiment.

I know it's only day 20, but we've actually been doing this project for 4 weeks and we've made the decision to move on to another experiment.

Stay Tuned Monday for what the next marketing experiment will be!!

Here's the wrap-up for the Bum Marketing Experiment.

1. I did not exactly do a bum marketing experiment. I did more of an article marketing experiment. I think if I had really stuck to Travis' method I probably would have made a little more money. Instead I chose to write articles that led to things I am already doing, instead of possibly more lucrative affiliate products.

As with everything in life I believe if it doesn't feel good to me, it's not going to do well for me. Searching for affiliate products and writing articles I had no personal experience with really just did not feel good for me.

2. Articles are a GREAT way to get traffic. I continue to get traffic to my blog from articles I published to ezine articles MONTHS ago.

3. If you are looking for a way to make some quick cash ~ not necessarily a ton of cash, but quick~ Associated Content is a great way to go. I made 10.22 this week just from a couple of articles I already had laying around. If I consistently continue to publish an article or two there a day that can probably add up to 50 dollars a week.

4. I did sell a few affiliate products from traffic driven from the articles. My squidoo pages worked quite well for this purpose. I sold a few Friend Blaster Pros, and a few Vision Boards, so all in all it was no where near 1000 dollars, but it is a start.

5. The time between when you submit and when your content gets published can be a few days up to a week. (but once it is published it's there forever, unless you take it down) 6. It can be difficult to understand all it takes to pick a good product and keyword. I personally think there is much more to it than is let on in the Bum Marketing Method pages.

7. If you keep getting emails from Travis he provides informative videos and articles to help you hone the process.

8. I had a pretty easy time writing articles daily. I felt really good that I managed to get in the habit of writing regularly. I plan to continue writing a quick article every day and submitting it somewhere, whether it's ezine articles for traffic or Associated Content for money. I just know every morning I need to write an article. In fact, most days I wake up with the article if not completely written, at least the topic in my head!

9. Overall, I'd give the Bum Marketing Method a big thumbs up. It's relatively easy. It's free. It's effective. It makes you money. It will continue to earn money as time goes on. If products are chosen properly, and you follow the method it will be a great way to make some money!!

Did you follow along? Did you practice Bum Marketing with us? If you did we'd love to hear how it worked out for you. Leave us a comment and tell us your experience with Bum Marketing. We'd love to hear.

Get ready for Monday. We will be unveiling a whole new experiment for the month of December. I'll give you a couple hints.

1. It's free
2. It's effective
3. It's fun
4. It employs web 2.0 strategies.

If you aren't familiar with Web 2.0 and why it's the wave of the future. I suggest you pick up a copy of The Attention Age Doctrine. It was just published this week and is a must read for everyone trying to make money online.

See ya Monday! I can't wait to hear what Mary K has to say about this month's experiment ~ I'll be tuning in . . . will you?

Jackie Lee :)

Jackie Lee ~ Day 19

Hidee Ho everyone!

Today has been a very scattered, completely lacking focus morning. However, I did manage to get my 30 Day Experiment work done. In between phone calls, chex being thrown at the dog, and 2 friends thinking about ending their marriages. whew!

I signed up for future emails from Travis ~ the big Bum of Bum Marketing ~ and I received a list of keywords from him the other day. I picked a topic off the keywords to write my article about today.

I wrote the article for Associated Content, and added an affiliate link in the extra area available. I led people to a free 6 day course provided through the website. I think it might get me some extra clicks that I'm offering something free, instead of just click here for more info. We shall see.

I debated doing a lens on Keeping your dog from barking, which was the topic of the article, but in the end decided against it. There are a lot of dog barking lenses, and there is one on the first page of google already.

I did look through my current lenses to see where I was getting some traffic and added to one of those.

This may be of interest to you. I was looking at my What is a Vision Board lens which I just made another sale from yesterday (yay! $15.60) and thought of another product I could add to this lens.


(if you'd like to become an affiliate, just scroll down to the bottom of the sales page)


I had seen a lot of Mind Movies on You Tube while I was looking for videos for this lens. I realized it was another piece of software and had an affiliate program. Here's where it gets really exciting. They are currently running a contest.

You can win 5000 dollars just for making a mind movie and putting it on YouTube. If you get the most views to your mind movie you will win the prize. I could even write a press release about this to get more traffic to my squidoo lens.

I am thinking it might be fun to build a Mind Movie and then use the traffic techniques from the free ebook The Best Traffic Money Can't Buy that I recommend and see if I can do it! You can try it too. If you do decide to join the contest make sure you stop by my Vision Board lens and leave me a comment with a link to your Mind Movie on YouTube. I will add it to the youtube module. :)

So for today's part of the experiment.

The article took about 40 minutes to research and write.
I spent another 30 minutes or so adding to the squidoo lens.

That's it!

Just a NOTE on the experiment.

We are changing some things. We will now be doing the experiments in monthly installments. 30 consecutive days. We can work weekends or not depending on how life goes. It seems a little more realistic to us.

On Monday we will be starting a whole new Experiment so make sure you stay tuned.

We will be doing a wrap up of the Bum Marketing Method tomorrow. Stop by and see how it all added up.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Jackie Lee :)

Day 18 ~ Mary K

Today has been a brilliant example of some of the benefits and challenges of working from home! You would think without the need to 'drive' to work I wouldn't be tied up for hours with CAR ISSUES!!!

Okay...so it wasn't quite as bad as that picture. (though I did have that very experience once years ago when I had taken my three little boys out to a local ice rink. We're were having a blast trying to stand on skates and suddenly noticed a commotion from the parking lot where there were flames leaping from under the hood of a car... MY CAR!!!! YIKES! :-)) However, I spent about three hours unexpectedly tied up with trying to get my car to start so that I could take it into the shop and have them figure out why my car won't start. Something is wacky with that whole scheme... ;-)

This experiment has afforded me with clarity about many things, from a keener awareness to the many interruptions that occur during my day to the clarity about my lack of discipline when I do have a block of uninterrupted time.

In all fairness I will say I am actually quite disciplined -- and sometimes I don't manage the chaos well! Perhaps it's simply that I never know when the 'uninterrupted' time will happen?

Okay...'nuff said. In addition to the tasks for this experiment I work as an Editor for a monthly magazine. The last week of the month is always booked tightly with a 'deadline' looming so while accomplished a significant amount related to that work despite the unexpected visitors and the car situation... I really didn't give the 30 Day Experiment the two hours today.

I DID make time to revise an article I had written previously and submitted it to Ezine articles. That all took me about 30 minutes.

So that's a wrap for today... we'll see what tomorrow brings.

I've gotta tell you... I HAVE made some money this month that I attribute directly to this experiment and it's no where close to $1000. But the 'learning' up to now is already worth a million bucks... so I'm quite excited! More on that when we wrap this up at the end of the week. ;-)

Prepare for success!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Jackie Lee ~ Day 18

Hello!

Wow the concert last night was AMAZING!!!! Jim Brickman was great, and he had a fiddle player that was OVER the TOP OutStanding!! His name is David Klinkenberg. I highly suggest you take 3 minutes and go listen to the video on his webpage right now! It will blow you away.

The concert was sooo good, the music brought me to tears a number of times. We waited around for a while to see Ryan's cousin who is the Vari*Lite Technician ~ which I'm still not sure what is. We hadn't seen Sean in a couple of years, so it was nice to see him if only for a couple of minutes. They are doing 9 shows in I think 9 or 10 days, so he was pretty busy getting the stage torn down and ready to move to the next state. Tonight the show is in South Dakota! That's a very long trip.

We watched them pack up Jim Brickman's piano. That was very interesting. Sean told us they have a piano tuner in every city who comes and tunes the piano twice before each and every show. Just a little tidbit. ;)

Anyway, we didn't get home until Midnight, and guess who was still wide awake? Yup, little miss Hanna. My mom was the babysitter and said she slept for an hour, but had thrown an hour and a half screaming fit at bedtime. She did not go gently into the night, and was still up at 1:30a. This kid never ceases to amaze me, no matter what time she finally gets to sleep she is always up at 6 AM. How is that? So I'm a little tired, and realized there is no milk for coffee. :( Oh well, I still have a bit of "concert buzz" from last night.

This morning I wrote a review of the concert for my article ~ 20 minutes.
I submitted it to Associated Content, and found a way to add links to the article today. I started a squidoo lens for David Klinkenberg, which I added to the article.

I am going to practice with my camtasia software today, so I have not done the lens yet. I'm going to do a tutorial so I will work on that later today (hopefully when someone is napping).

So that's it for my day so far. I'm going to try to keep my eyes open and muddle through.

See Ya tomorrow,

Jackie Lee :)

Day 16 and 17 ~ Mary K

I'll be you thought I exploded after Thanksgiving dinner!!!

Nah... it was a wonderful! And because I was up in the north woods right on the Wisconsin/Michigan border for five days... it was beautiful, refreshing and meant eating lots more every single day than I usually eat in a week! ;-)

Now I'm back and refreshed though have to confess I felt a bit exhausted yesterday which is why I failed to post to the blog. I spent the day watching my youngest granddaughter and didn't get much accomplished until today anyway so here's what I managed to complete today!

Updated 2 of my Squidoo lenses - 30 minutes
Wrote an article yesterday that I submitted to directories today - 20 minutes
Wrote an article today that I will submit to one source this week and then submit to a variety of directories next week - 1 hour

TOTAL TIME: 1 hour 50 minutes

I suppose I really should round it up to at least two hours because I did accomplish some 'learning' today directly related to activities for the 30 Day Marketing Experiment --
And in some ways... that's my FAVORITE thing to do! ;-)

C'ya tomorrow!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!

Jackie Lee ~ Day 17

Good Morning everyone!

I tried something a little different today. Yesterday I was reading a post over at DayJobNuker called 4 Ways to Make Money Without a Website. In this article he talked about Associated Content. I was familiar with this site but saw it from a different angle.

Associated Content will pay you for your articles. Many articles only get 4 dollars each, but it can be up to 10 dollars. They also run contests which pay as well. It occurred to me that I could pay for my hosting fees for my blog by doing this. My hosting fees will only be 10 dollars a month. You can submit an article as non exclusive, which means you can publish it other places as well. So following DayJobNuker's advice I can write articles I plan to publish to my blog, once they are accepted I can rewrite them a little then post them to my blog. (you don't want duplicate content, so you change them up a little)

It will take a little forward thinking, which is not really how I do blog posts, I usually get some inspiration then write, but I think I can do it. I also have articles I have written throughout the years I can also submit.

The only problem with this plan is you can't submit the articles to ezinearticles.com. They won't accept articles that have already been posted there. However, I have been seeing associated content articles pop up on google quite a bit lately.

Another issue, you also don't get a resource box at the bottom, but you do have a link to your profile at the top of the article. You can add websites to your profile which allows people to get to your stuff.

I see this site being useful when used in a couple of ways.

1. Use articles off topic from marketing. Just get paid for them. (making 4 dollars/article I only need 3 articles per month to pay hosting fees, or OJeez upgrade fees)

2. Use articles I will later blog with. Get paid, get traffic via profile and blog

3. Use articles later to be used in Squidoo lenses ~ where I can add affiliate links.

I think it can be a consistent and reliable way to make money to cover the small costs I have each month. :) Yay I may get my hosted blog yet!!

So for today,

Wrote an article on Blog Carnivals ~ 20 minutes
Posted to Associated Content ~ 15 minutes (had to do some TOS reading and learning)

Wow it seems I have strayed pretty far from the original plan of this experiment. oops. But I have managed to write an article every day! That's good, and it feels good to know I have managed to do one thing consistently for the last 17 days.

Have a great day!

Jackie Lee :)

Jackie Lee ~ Day 16

It was a very exciting weekend. I was accepted as a guest writer at DayJobNuker, which is one of my favorite blogs. He said my post should be up Sat, or maybe Sun or Mon, so check it out. I sold a couple more books over the holiday. I sold another Vision Board. Had some inquiries to a program that's had no movement in months. I got free tickets to see Jim Brickman tomorrow night. My mom agreed to babysit Hanna, so I get to go on a date with my hubby!!
Things are hoppin' and each thing just amps my energy even more.

Today I wrote an article about breaking through writer's block to blog another day. It was fun and quick. I posted it an ezinearticles.com. I linked it back to my blog so not much time in that. I will post to my blog later today. (That's afternoon work) :)

So all in all it took about 30 minutes today to get my experiment work done.

I hope you all took some time to look at the resources I posted over the weekend. They are great and will give you a lot more insight into the Bum Marketing Method.

That's it for me today. Have an awesome Monday everyone!

Jackie Lee :)

Finding Your Niche

I ran across this video that Travis did on how to look at Trends and choose your niche for Bum Marketing. It is an excellent video. I did not know about the tool he uses, so I learned something today too. (I'll be blogging on my own blog about this later) ;)

Here's the video:



Have a Super Sunday, and Mary K and I will be back at it tomorrow!!!

Jackie Lee :)

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