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	<title>From Bummin&#039; to Ballin&#039; : My Journey with Affiliate Marketing</title>
	<link>http://www.bumblogs.com</link>
	<description>My journey in affiliate marketing.  Starting from nothing and documenting what it takes to be your own boss and make a good living</description>
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		<title>Affilate Related Movie : The Joneses</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Joneses and how it Relates to Affiliate Marketing Summary: A seemingly perfect family moves into a suburban neighborhood, but when it comes to the truth as to why they&#8217;re living there, they don&#8217;t exactly come clean with their neighbors. A Bummy Review of The Joneses: I want to say that this is an absolute must for everyone in our business. Going into the movie, I had no clue what it was actually about since I had &#8220;acquired it from a site&#8221; only because I saw a few actors I really like&#8230; *cough* Demi Moore *cough* Amber Heard *cough* David Duchovny&#8230; I meeeean .. Lets move on.  So, the movie is basically about a &#8220;family&#8221; living the grand life in a wealthy community. The twist is that they are really a group of sales people who pretend to be a family while showing off all their great stuff in order to make their neighbors envious of all the glitz and glam they have. In turn they are selling their neighbors on buying everything from frozen sushi plates to high end cars. It&#8217;s incredible to see how they are able to use everyday things and make them seem like must have items. As you can guess, there are obvious problems that lie within a &#8220;sale&#8221; like this and the movie definitely shows a worst case scenario of what a game like this can cause. I kind of want you to watch the movie, so I won&#8217;t go too much into the twist at the end and ruin the movie for those of you who haven&#8217;t seen it yet. All-in-all, this is a must see movie for us Affiliate Marketers. The acting was good, the plot kept you interest in the movie, it&#8217;s an interesting movie subject to start with, and Amanda Heard does what she does best in all her movies by giving us a few seconds of &#8220;fine viewing&#8221;. How it Relates to Affiliate Marketing: I am not going to be obvious and say &#8220;well they are salesmen and that&#8217;s what we basically are&#8221;. There was actually a more interesting lesson I got from this movie. Demi Moore&#8217;s character is the &#8220;head&#8221; of the family and wants to see more production out of her &#8220;husband&#8221;, David Duchovny. Before this gig he was a car salesman, so he was basically a direct seller. Now he was selling a life or a lifestyle. He had to reach a whole community which is sort of impossible to do one by one. He needed a new plan of attack, which is something all of us can say we have realized once or twice in our careers. Basically, what he came up with was to stop focusing on selling people and work on forming relationships with people of influence. He targeted a young golf course employee / pro and kind of made him a believer in what he was trying to sell. Now he new that through the day, this employee would talk to more...]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/random/04/affilate-related-movie-the-joneses/</link>
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		<title>Lazy Affiliate Marketers 12 Step Program</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Hello, My name is The Bum and I&#8217;m a Lazy Affiliate Marketer&#8230; We admit we are lazy and have our minds constantly thinking about the quick buck.  Our theology is making us poor and living with our mothers. We have come to believe there is a Power greater than ourselves that can put us in our place.  Lets just hope Mom will still make us dinner. We have made a decision to change our ways, to stop the endless night of e-whoring and other black hat methods that have no future promise. We have sat down and searched for the reasons we are lazy and have come up with answers besides &#8220;waking up at 2pm keeps me refreshed&#8221;. We have admitted aloud that we are lazy and have not done ENOUGH to reach our goals of being a successful Affiliate Marketer. We are entirely ready to have our mothers pick on us for being lazy and making us realize that these are all defects we can be rid of&#8230; by nagging us further. We humbly ask others for help and actually LISTEN to the answers instead of looking for the shortcut in their answer. We have made a list of all the things we have done incorrectly over the years and are taking the necessary steps to learn from them as well as fix them. We have correctly identified and fixed all shortcuts we have taken over the years. We never stop evaluating and  learning about ourselves so that we do not start to fall back into old lazy habits. We take the necessary trips to the golf course, casino, or bathroom to take a little time away from the computer to really think about what we are doing.  Using the time to really be creative without the answer right there in front of you and a few keystrokes away. We  receive our first honest check and realize that these steps have given use a base to start from.  Something solid and long lasting that you can build around&#8230;..and we also see our mother&#8217;s hand out to collect her monthly living fees :-/ I&#8217;m pretty sure I am at step 7.  Definitely had my mother give me enough &#8220;encouragement&#8221; to change the way I have been over the last 2 years.  Can&#8217;t wait to get my first real check so i can give her some cash from it&#8230;.. ugh]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/affiliate_marketing_tips/04/lazy-affiliate-marketers-12-step-program/</link>
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		<title>A Real Start&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ok ENOUGH screwing around. The whole point of this blog was to document a money making journey from start to finish. Have I done that? NO&#8230; I had the idea, but didn&#8217;t have a plan. Which is a good lesson for anyone who is reading this blog right now. All of us have a lot of ideas, god knows I have had a LOT of ideas which I have thought up and left on the back burner. The idea is not nearly enough. We all have ideas, but the only way to make an idea reality is to sit and plan out all the proper steps to complete your goal. I&#8217;ve just blown your mind with inspiration right? No? Well I am going to try a little harder. I was working at a job I didn&#8217;t like much and finally got away from it. Now, I find myself in a unique situation where I have a little freedom to take a little time and get things rolling for myself. I have some time, but not a lot of it and need to make sure that I use it wisely. See if I can&#8217;t figure out a way to make some money on my own, then I will have to go and find a job that I really don&#8217;t like&#8230;again lol. I spent the last week reading and came across a few helpful articles. One article I read in BlackHatWorld.com was extremely helpful to me because it mapped out a plan over the course of 2 months and answered a lot of questions people had about the plan he was attempting ( READ HERE ). He is a guy who already knows what he can do and knows what it would take to achieve his goal. Over the last couple weeks he has answered questions that other forum members asked and has given updates on his results. Seeing his plan got me to think about this whole idea that I have tried to get across to all you readers. This is a guy who is running a side project just to see how it goes. He isn&#8217;t doing this to make a living, so I know its not out of desperation. He knows what it takes to get going on the internet on his own. So, over the next few weeks I am going to follow his lead where I actually DO and not just talk. I promise you all that I am going to have a FEW different things going on over the next couple weeks and we are all going to experience them together. Stay Tuned]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/affiliate_marketing_tips/04/a-real-start/</link>
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		<title>It&#8217;s Coming Back To Me Now!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ive let my readers down. I gave up and I went on to more boring and lesser profitable ventures. Yea that&#8217;s right, I GOT A JOB&#8230; Yea one of those real things where they pay you a salary and you work a certain amount of hours during a specific part of the day. It&#8217;s been about 3 months now and I can honestly say&#8230;. I MISS YOU GUYS. Yea I can&#8217;t give this up and I promise you all that there will be more to come on this website from me. I have not made enough money to call the journey a success yet, but I am learning a little something about how business should and shouldn&#8217;t be handled. At the moment I am an Internet Marketing Consultant / Salesman. Mainly helping local businesses improve their visibility over the internet. I love talking to the people about what I know and why it is important for their businesses, but the sales part of it (hardcore cold-calling) is just a pain in my ass. Everyday calling people and having them listen to me talk and telling me they are not interested after letting me speak for 10 minutes. Shoot me. A good day is when I get to go to a clients place and break it down. Talking websites and marking makes me a happy boy. So what brought me back? Well 2 things really got me back into the marketing mood. First, the incredible amount of readers who have signed up to my blog over the passed 7 months. Seems like every day I am getting a new member to the site which makes me feel like a real ass since I have done nothing to earn it for the past few months. Second, I am looking for something else to do to make money. I&#8217;m not active on the net with the job I have now. I want to be the one designing or blogging. All I do is talk and I know I didn&#8217;t get into this to talk for a living. I belong on the computer and not the phone. This is why I am going to do my absolute best to bring you more and more content every week. I have some plans in the next few weeks where I will be doing some PPV advertising so that will be great and I&#8217;ll make sure to share everything I think will help. I cant write a blog and not share something with you, so I am going to give you a helpful link that I found tonight. I was looking at some jobs that were out there and I submitted a few resumes to SEO Expert listings. I know I have done a lot with SEO in my life, but what is considered an &#8220;Expert&#8221;. Well in my search for this answer, I looked up some tips pages where I could kind of brush up on the basics since I have been out of the game...]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/my_story/03/its-coming-back-to-me-now/</link>
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		<title>PPV Training Wheels</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;So, as my subscribers know, I am currently testing the PPV waters. I got to say its pretty frustrating so far, but that was to be expected since I know that most people quit it before they make any money. I would like to say that I am having much better results than I did with CPC advertising. I think this is because I was trying to use Adwords when it was somewhat saturated. Plus the fact that they filter so many things makes it almost impossible to create a successful campaign with Adwords and affiliate offers. PPV is a breath of fresh air when it comes to setting up an actual campaign. Bidding directly on keywords and URLs without a quality score to worry about is wonderful. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Most of you know that I am not a fan of Adwords since I previously wrote a weekly rant about it. PPV allows me to go out and use any URLS or Keywords than I feel relate to my niche. Now saying that I realize that its a double edge sword and that it may seem like a blessing, but could ultimately be the cause for a campaign not being successful. It&#8217;s nice to be able to go after anything you want, but you need to beware of words and URLs that do not convert. You get a little &#8220;Target Happy&#8221; when you get automatic approval and you end up with 1000 targets for a campaign that you can get away with using only one. This is where you are tested. You might have found a crazy keyword that brings you 300 hits in a day, but converts maybe 1 or 2 leads. Now that&#8217;s ok if you are running a big payout lead, but if you are running a submit then you might have to look elsewhere for traffic. A solution might be to bid lower on that target which may keep you from getting rid of a converting target, but limit the cost. You can go 1 of 2 ways with your campaign: First you can have many targets all at minimum bids and weed out the big traffic earners that don&#8217;t convert well. There you will get limited traffic from each keyword, but it will be a lot of traffic combined at a low cost. Secondly you can try to bid on 1-10 targets that are high converting, but a little more expensive to bid on. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; It&#8217;s a preference thing and really depends on what you are advertising. A key thing is to remember you dont always need to be top bid. Everyone gets their traffic and more popular links still give decent traffic with lower bids. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Blah, blah, blah right? Yea a lil slow and boring, but really it has been the biggest thing that I have learned in 2 weeks of doing this. I guess the whole point is to test. If you test then you will be able to find out what strategy you need...]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/affiliate_marketing_tips/07/ppv-training-wheels/</link>
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		<title>A Good Read for My Readers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;So a man by the name of Josh Todd did all of his readers a big favor and wrote this PPV guide. Since this whole journey is about be learning and starting from the basics, I thought this would be a nice read for me. Turns out that this was the most useful thing I have read online about affiliate marketing that was free. Please understand, I say this knowing that what he is talking about is for the beginner looking to start with no basic grasp on PPV advertising. I have very little experience with PPV and I feel like I got a lot out of the targeting and bidding sections of this pdf. He explains in the introduction that you cant make millions from this alone. He simply wrote this to give you a platform to think for yourself and become an innovator. I really did get that feeling when i was reading this book. As i went through the steps, my mind was thinking of the twists and that was exactly what he meant for this to do. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Like I said, this is a free pdf. All you have to do is give your name and email address and the site will send you an activation link, then an e-mail with the pdf link. I would just directly link you to the pdf, but He did a lot of work and should get some credit for it. I hope you guys benefit from it like I think I will. I am going to set up some campaigns later today, so watch out for a V-Log later for an update. Insideaffiliate.net &#8211; PPV 101 – Everything You Need By: Josh Todd]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/affiliate_marketing_tips/07/a-good-read-for-my-readers/</link>
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		<title>How Nice It Is To Be Free : V-Blog #8</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Q9KsSmKWs &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/my_story/06/how-nice-it-is-to-be-free-v-blog-8/</link>
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		<title>Finally&#8230; Some Potential &#8211; CPALead.com</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Well it has been a while since I have written about something you can actually use and make money with. I been mainly just complaining and blabbing about lessons learned. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, i believe everything I have told you so far has needed to be said. Not only for you own good, but also for me personally because its important for me to have the reminder. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Something I found to work and actually make a little cash with are gateways. For those of you who don&#8217;t know what gateways are I&#8217;ll tell you. A gateway is basically a form of CPA advertising that floats over website content. In order to view the content on the page, you must fill out a CPA lead. Once this has been completed then the user is allowed to view the content behind the gateway. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;I signed up to CPALead.com a few months ago, but really didn&#8217;t mess with it too much. When I did mess with it, I honestly didn&#8217;t use it correctly. The funny thing about all that is that I knew how to use it correctly, I just didn&#8217;t realize I had the right tools to make it profitable to me. The important thing to remember when you use a gateway type of ad is to put it over content that the users want to see. Quality content is key. I first tried to put it over &#8220;sexy&#8221; videos, but this turned out to be pointless because you can go anywhere for those kinds of videos. People don&#8217;t want to sit there and waste their time by filling out a survey to watch a 2 minute video. When that failed for me I kind of put the gateway thing off to the side and went with other ideas. I totally forgot that I owned a website with original content that got about 500 views a day. I was the only person with this content and If they didn&#8217;t fill out my lead then they would not be able to use the content I provide for them. This is a key factor in my recent success. Now I am not telling you that I&#8217;m now making good money, but I am telling you that if you have a website with quality content then you might want to check this form of advertising out. I was actually pretty happy with the conversions I have been seeing over the last couple days and am currently looking for more ways to take advantage of this. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;I read some stuff online and they did give a method that kind of ran with this same idea. Personally I am not going to run it myself, but I am going to try to expand on it somehow. Basically you make a WordPress website with the theme of TV shows. You want to find embed codes of television shows that are popular at the current time. Try to send some traffic to it via link exchange, SEO, or...]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/affiliate_marketing_companies/05/finally-some-potential/</link>
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		<title>My Realization&#8230; Batter Up!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I been really bored the last few weeks. I mean the kind of bored where you find yourself talking to people you don&#8217;t even like to talk to just because they are the only people online at the time. I hope you know what I am talking about and it is not a feeling the The Bum is privy to. I been up and thinking about why I am still trying so hard to make it big on my own. I have about $100 bucks to my name at the moment and big things look like they are on the horizon. Yea I said big things, but how big? I don&#8217;t know to be honest. I personally don&#8217;t even know if It will turn into anything big at all. That&#8217;s the thing though. I have heard myself say that sort of thing before and then nothing came of it. Things that I thought i planned out perfectly and had all intentions of going through with, but just never had pan out the way I thought they would. So, why is it that I am continuing to do this to myself when I know that in 2 months I will have to find a real job and become a working adult? Well I am a little crazy for one thing. Besides a little bit of lunacy, I think I am conditioned better than others for this type of disappointment. I played baseball for 17 years of my life and if there is anything baseball players are exceptional at is failing. Who do you know is happy with succeeding 30% of the time. We feel one day and we get back up the next and try again. I think that&#8217;s why I know I am right for this field of work. Affiliate marketing is exactly like baseball. First of all, it takes a lot of practice and attention to detail to be successful. Secondly, You will never bat 1.000. You will fail a lot trying new stances and new techniques, but when it all comes together you will be able to see the ball coming at you like a huge watermelon. I have failed so fair in my journey to becoming a self made marketing superstar. My coach has sat me on the pine, but I know that my time is better spent thinking about the next adjustment I need to make rather than picking splinters out of my ass and feeling sorry for myself. All it takes is one idea and one solid method to get back into the lineup. Find that grove&#8230; get into that zone&#8230; and see a watermelon sized wad of cash flying towards your wallet. I guess the lesson here is to figure out if you can handle the stress and the failure. It can last for a week or years, but you will get to a point where everything comes together and you just click. It&#8217;s all green from there baby!!]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/affiliate_marketing_tips/05/my-realization-batter-up/</link>
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		<title>Happy Easter!!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[OK so For Easter I thought I&#8217;d give you all a little money making advice. This is not really an online marketing solution, so you will have to walk out into the sunlight this one time. First thing you have to do is drive around and scout places that seem to be hosting Easter Egg Hunts for children. I would suggest parks and churches for the best and biggest Egg Hunts. Once you have scouted them out a little bit, pick one out and try to blend into the crowd a little bit. Yep this means you will be around PEOPLE and you have to do your best not to come off as a pedophile or else this method is pointless. Start helping some of the children find the tougher eggs. Now here is the trick&#8230; Once you find an egg, DON&#8217;T GIVE IT AWAY JUST YET. Look around and point the child in the opposite direction in order to be alone for a minute. Pocket the egg and it&#8217;s contents. Repeat these steps about 10-15 times and you should come out with some gas money. Either that or you come out with some good chocolate to shove down your throat while you sit in front of the computer tricking horny guys into filling out E-Mail submits all night. WHAT!? I&#8217;m the only one??? HAHA Hope you enjoyed&#8230; Happy Easter Everyone!]]></description>
		<link>http://www.bumblogs.com/affiliate_marketing_tips/04/happy-easter/</link>
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