You know that bum from Bum Marketing? You know the one I mean?

He's the fictional character who supposedly could make money by article marketing without spending a penny and using a free Internt enabled computer at a library. The implication was that even a homeless bum could make money with this method. It was that simple!

Therefore, bum marketing should be a slam dunk for the rest of us who supposedly have a few sheckles to spend and undoubtedly have a computer.

So what do you suppose actually happened to this guy? Is he living on Easy Street now? Did Bum Marketing work so well for him that he's now sitting in his penhouse suite paying his minions to do his article marketing for him?

And what about you and me? Are we rolling in the dough ourselves from this approach to article marketing?

I suspect that for many of us, article marketing is bringing in some traffic which may be converting into a few sales - but not the huge gusher of traffic and sales that we had hoped for.

Here are some of the challenges we face:

1. Article marketing requires a very big commitment to writing articles. The gurus advise writing dozens and hundreds of articles for each niche, and this must be done on an ongoing basis. Article spinners and PLR articles offer some help, but articles created by spinners are seldom of much interest to humans, and the search engines are becoming increasingly good at sniffing them out.

PLR articles are better choices, but they must be rewritten sufficiently that the search engines consider them fresh content. This can take almost as long as writing from scratch.

One solution is to hire freelance writers to write the articles for you. You can often find writers at places like Elance who will write for five or ten dollars an article. However, English may not be their first languages and you may need to do revisions.You will also need to use a service like Copyscape to ensure the writer has given you fresh content and not simply copied from a website or blog.

2. In most niches, the competition is fierce. Article directories like EzineArticles receive hundreds of thousands of submissions of articles. Unless you are extremely skilled at keyword optimization, your articles are unlikely to receive the amount of traffic that you want and need.

3. You must motivate your traffic to act. When you do attract traffic, you must be able to write your article and your signature in such a way that you compel the viewer to click on the link to your web site, or to sign up for your newsletter, if that's your intent. This is a skill in and of itself.

Despite the aforementioned hiccups along the road to bum marketing riches, there are those who do succeed. The "bum marketers" who master the fine art of combining keyword optimization with writing content that seduces the viewer to read and click, while simultaneously observing the article directoriy's Terms of Use do indeed flourish and prosper.

Doing article marketing the right way requires acquiring the skills you need, and then makeing a substantial investment of either time or money.

There are article marketers who are succeeding big time. Get it right and the rewards are many.