Sociable – You might see some little icons at the bottom of posts in WordPress for various sites such as Facebook, StumbleUpon, Technocrati, Digg and many others. These are all social websites where users participate in finding interesting things to share. What could be better than having them share your content? Can you say more traffic?

WordPress Download Monitor – Have an Ebook? Would you like to make a bit of extra cash with it? Want to know how many have downloaded it after they have paid you using the ArePayPal plugin? Just use this handy plugin to upload your ebook. Track the downloads and secure it to members only.

Google XML Sitemaps – This is probably the most absolute handy plugin you could install. It is a definite must have for any WordPress blog. Configure it once you install it and your pages and posts will be added to the Google directory search much faster than if you waited for Google to crawl your site. Sometimes only hours from the time you post to the time people find you through the search engine.

WP-Affiliate – Affiliate marketing is always a touchy thing. People can just copy the link and remove your id to deny you any commission. This can happen easily if someone uses an iframe to display your site and some software to just swap their affiliate id with yours. Users are also a bit more inclined to click on a link that doesn’t have an affiliate id. This plugin will allow you to add links that will redirect to the actual link without the user knowing until they are already there. It will also help you with your Google page ranking as Google looks for those affiliate id’s and off site linking. This works great with affiliate programs like Clickbank and Commission Junction.

With a little work you can have a healthy number of revenue streams with your WordPress Blog. All while providing great content for your readers.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? – Twitter

How will this help you?

Well, if you run a web service that has constant updates, you may want to check it out. It is a free service, and everyone knows I like the free ones over the paid ones. Have your members sign up and follow you. You can send out updates on things you find that they want to know.

Twitter goes great with blogging. Especially since there are plugins and API’s that can be used in the various services to make updating your Tweets easy and painless.

A great way to do this with WordPress is a plugin called Twitme.

You can configure the plugin to automatically update your Tweets anytime you make a post. It can also inform you of any new members following you.

So, how does this help? It drives traffic and it is free.

Everyone knows that traffic is the key to monetary success. The more you have the more you earn. Your Tweets to Twitter are very short. You have a limited amount of characters that can be used. Make the title to your post in WordPress catching and imbed a short url along with the post and you will end up with something that someone may want to know more about.

If you use WordPress at all, it would be to your benefit to go ahead and start up a Twitter account. You won’t need that email service that way.

Those who use these free services are using what is called “Bum Marketing”. It is the cheapest form of traffic you can manage to get for your product.

There are several ways to get “Bum Marketing” to work for you.

Forum Signatures:

Probably the least effective method of marketing you can use but you can actually get some links. Most forums allow you to add links to your signature. This allows you to place your Clickbank link or link to your product within your signature that is seen in each post you make.

Some forums will generate more traffic than others. It is best if you place your link in forums that go along with the niche you are trying to promote. The more you participate, the more your signature will permeate the forum.

Social Websites:

There are several social websites out there. Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Squidoo and more. All of them are free. It just takes a bit of time and a email address to get your own social page. If you already have one then it would be just a matter of writing a bulletin or blog post about your product with a link to the product itself and send it to all of your friends.

While most of the social websites are not designed to sell a product or direct people to another website, you can do this with Squidoo. They want you to make pages to sell your products. They want you to make pages to direct people to your own website. They even rate the pages you create. The higher the rating the more people you get to see your Squidoo page. Obviously this leads to more people either purchasing your product or visiting your site.

The other sites depend on how many friends you have and how many might click on your profile looking for something else entirely.

Blogs:

Two major blogs you can use are Google’s Blogger and WordPress. Both give you the ability to create your own blog without having to come up with your own website or domain. Creation of an account and Blogs is quite easy. Both offer templates that you can use to customize the blog with or you can come up with your own template.

Just make a good strong post about your product. Try not to make too many links to your product. Both Blogger and WordPress search for and shut down Blogs they deem blatant advertising(spam). Convince your readers that they need to click on the link to proceed to your Affiliate link or product and make a purchase.

Articles:

While it might sound easy to create an article it is not always so. Some articles take a bit of thought. Especially if you have specific rules that you need to adhere to in order to get it published. You want to stick to those rules so that it will meet the standards that are required and so that people who are searching for content on their websites will pick up your article and publish it on their website. Obviously the better the article the more people will use it for content.

Many article publishers would rather you do not place many, if any links to your product or affiliate site in your article. Some will allow you to place those links in your signature. Either way it is probably best to just place a link to one of your Bum Marketing sites instead of directly to your affiliate link.

There are several places you can submit your articles. EzineArticles and GoArticles are two of the better places to get your article published. There are also websites you can subscribe to in order to get your article published to literally hundreds of article websites.

An example of an approach to Bum Marketing would be to find your niche that you want to promote a product on. Something you might know quite a bit about. Visit Clickbank or your other Affiliate for a product to promote. Create a Squidoo lense for your product. Create a blog on either or both Blogger or WordPress. Remember to make any links to your Squidoo lense site. Not your product.

Lastly, you would want to write a good strong article to promote your product and either point to your Squidoo lense or to your Blogs and publish it on EzineArticles first, GoArticles second then maybe your list of article directors third.

If you would like to know more about Bum Marketing or how to use Squidoo Lenses to your advantage you can check out Sherry Han’s Bum Marketing Course and Squidoo Queen . Both are great resources.