A Bum Rap For Bum Marketing?

I've read some disparaging and dismissing things about Bum Marketing here and there and this post is in response to those things.

As with nearly anything else available, there are ups, downs and sidewayses to any thing. There are also people who slide in get comfortable and make something of it and others who seem to be laying on a bed of the most uncomfortable nails ever. There are people who sing the praises a little too loudly, and others who dismiss without even knowing what they are dismissing.

I'm gonna lay it out like this. There are SOME PEOPLE for who "bum marketing" can be a nearly literal godsend. There are a number of reasons for this fact. The most important of which are these.

• It is complete.

  Many (hell we all know the truth is most) "systems" teach incomplete processes. As has been mentioned again and again, there is nothing new about article marketing in the sense of posting articles to article directories. What IS new with Bum Marketing is that it gives people the what to do with the articles once they are distributed. Most article marketing information tells them about distributing articles, but only vauge reference is made to the actual purpose and usefulness.

  Most often theoretical or transient goals are put forth. A new person to IM can not pay for better tools or hosting or a night out with the family with a higher PR. Higher PR is great, if you know how to use it and have something in place to use it on.

  Most people talking about their great success with Bum Marketing had nothing already in place to make their article marketing valuable. Now they do.

  If you really don't understand the appeal, read that again. That is powerful.

• It is simple.

  Very basic, very simple do this, do this, do that, repeat this, watch for this and then do this. If you don't see the value in that... well...

• It is easy.

  For someone willing to discipline themselves to the task, it is easy. This is different from simple. The principles involved in firing a mortar are easy, but may not be simple. The process of loading a mortar is simple, but may not be easy. The practice of consitantly nailing the target with a mortar is both simple and easy to the person who mastered the previous skills.

• It has a low entry threshold.

  People can literally start earning some money starting with nothing. They can leverage that money into tools that allow them to make more money with the same principles.

• It is adaptable.

  Once the basic principles have been learned it is an almost intuitive step to adapt the system to other similar devices, which has as much to do with the explanation of the explosion of really relatively minor works expanding on the system. Note that most of these offerings are by relative unknowns, not the usual suspects for fad driving. They have discovered something that works for them, found an adaptation to it, andrealized they could share that adaptation with their peers and earn a *small* revenue for doing so.

Also Bum Marketing incorporates the fundamentals of something I've been playing with for some time that I call deep well marketing. This reverses the common process of placing signposts to your business where people might go, and instead placing your business itself where they already are. It is not explicitly spelled out as such anywhere, but the system depends on this deep well marketing principle.

Yes. Bum Marketing is fundamentally article marketing. But it is more than that.

No. Bum Marketing is not automatically about using lower quality content, though I am sure there are Bum Marketing practisioners who attempt to play it that way, that is not a "feature" of the system itself.

Saying that Bum Marketing is bad because some people doing it use poor quality content is like saying splogs are a feature of blogging. Some Bum Marketers, no doubt need to be banned to the benefit of the article marketing community as a whole, to include other bum marketers.

The system is deceptively simple. But to dismiss it sumarily or curoraly does a diservice to those who would indeed benefit from such a system to start on, or suplement their current plans.

That's my 8 cents, what's yours? The comment form is open.