For people looking to promote a product, service or site on the internet, one of the simplest and least expensive ways to market is through article marketing. As the name suggests, article marketing involves writing an article that promotes whatever it is that you are trying to sell or generate an interest. Unlike other marketing methods, articles require little more outside of the writing and research time.

The phrase "BUM Marketing" is synonymous for article marketing, but adds a truth to the otherwise vague technique. The term accurately describes exactly what the marketing is doing -- he or she is "bumming" marketing exposure through article writing. Since there is no physical outlay of cash to the process, it makes sense for it to have taken on such a term. But what happens once the article has been written? How can marketers cast a net wide enough to reach as broad an audience as possible?

Typically, with article marketing, there are two options for reaching a broad audience. The first involves the marketer publishing the article on as many internet sites as possible. Internet magazines (like this one), blogs, databases, and other free advertising sites would be a great place to start. However, the second option would be to enlist the assistance of an article-posting program like the one listed in the resource box at the end of this article. These programs generally do all of the back-end posting for you, but more importantly, they will publish your article on hundreds of different sites.

Unfortunately, the largest problem with multiple submissions is that the campaign can backfire on you. Those who have labored through article marketing over the years realize that the key to a successful campaign is achieving a high natural search ranking by the big search engines (this is the where the free advertising comes into play). But with all of the big engines essentially monitoring the content on the internet, if they see that there are multiple submissions of the exact same article on, say a hundred or so sites, they will likely treat the article as the internet equivalent of SPAM and ignore it altogether.

To avoid this, most submitter programs tackle this problem by switching up paragraphs or substituting words. The best programs like the noted below will actually have the author re-write part or all of the article. Understandably, it is much easier to rewrite an article than to write three completely different articles. When you consider that a typical article will have roughly six paragraphs, these three versions result in 729 unique articles, meaning your article will have to reach the 730th version before any duplication is ever picked up by the search engines. With seven paragraphs, there will be 2,187 unique versions. However, the message itself remains the same, so reader of version 1 will walk away with the same message as a reader of version 576.

For the marketer looking to take advantage of the free benefits of article marketing, an article submitter program is an essential tool. While some will run as high as $250 per month, a good quality program need not cost more than $70 per month. You will want to investigate the depth of the program's directory as well as how it maintains the integrity of your articles. The program suggested here consistently distributes to over 1,000 directories and does an excellent job of keeping the article message intact.