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The Difference Between A Super Affiliate and a Newbie…

The Difference between now and then…

When mentoring publishers, I am often asked what is the biggest difference between when I started, and where I am at now. The answer, although seems quite simple, is actually what I believe is the key to success in this industry. I’ve been doing online marketing for quite some time (started in 2001) in all the different aspects of internet marketing and became really serious about search marketing specifically about 4 years ago. Below are some points based on my personal reflection between me now and then:

1.) Start campaigns with $1000 to spend, not $100! When I was starting off, I did the common mistake of depositing $100 into my Adwords account, and seeing where that got me. After I blew through the money in an hour, I would freak out and call my campaign a failure. This is HARDLY the case. There is a TON of trial and error in campaigns, especially when starting off. One ad group may get creamed and lose $80, while your other ad group may get a ton of leads for $20. The important thing to realize is that your statistics are worthless unless you have enough data to prove they do or do not work. 20 clicks and no conversions on an offer that pays $50 a lead does NOT mean it’s a failure. What happens if 2 clicks in a row convert? All the sudden your “failed” campaign is a huge success. It is important to make sure your keywords have atleast 70-100 clicks each before you make any decisions. In most cases, this will require more than $100 for your campaign to figure out. I’d say closer to $1000. Once I started depositing more money into my Adwords accounts, I started finding that MOST of my campaigns were actually having some sort of avenue to profitability. I found my converting keywords/ad variation combinations and scaled my traffic. This was only possible because I had put the proper amount of money into trial and error.

2.) If you’re not a designer, don’t create your own landing pages! There’s nothing wrong with admitting that a professional landing page designer is better at designing landing pages than you. Realize this, and accept it. A solid landing page increases your chances at success substantially. If you are truly serious about trying to succeed at online marketing, do it the right way. Spend the $100 and get your page done by someone who knows what they are doing. It could be the difference between your campaign hitting, or missing.

3.) Develop a healthy disregard for money. Don’t stress over a loss. Look at the situation similar to a college education. You are paying to learn. Be sure to reflect on every swing at a campaign, and develop a conclusion from your attempt. Document what you learn. The only way you really lose money, is if you don’t learn something new.

4.) Scale like CRAZY!!! If you find a particular keyword or niche that is working, SCALE! Do not hold anything back. Go after every single engine, every single language possible. Examine new traffic sources. You need to milk every cent of profit from you findings. You will find yourself in regret for not doing this when your niche dies down. Don’t leave a cent left on the table!

5.) Track your results thoroughly! This is the main reason why I made Bevo Media. I always found it a pain to track my results thoroughly, however it is of the utmost importance. I mean much more than tracking your keywords too. You should track your landing page and ad variations thoroughly. I built Bevo Media based on my needs as an affiliate marketer, and once I started tracking my results thoroughly with it, I found it much easier to draw conclusions about the aspects of my campaign that were successful, and optimized from there.

6.) DO NOT GIVE UP! A full time affiliate marketer, may as well be considered a full time ‘trial and error’ expert. 90% of the game is trial and error. Just keep trying different combination of keywords, landing pages, offers and ad variations. You are bound to hit eventually. Use your resources, such as your affiliate managers to let you know what niche is hot at the time. If you have a niche that is proven to be converting extremely well at the moment, then you know it’s working for somebody. It’s just the matter of figuring out the right combination within you campaign!

These are all points that have cost me both time and money to realize, and feel all newbies can get a jump start to success from my sharing. Do yourself a favor and take these points seriously. Don’t cut corners. Affiliate marketing is a dream job, but it’s still a job. Strive to be the best, but you need to earn it first. Lazy people do NOT succeed in life, no matter what the situation is. So work hard and celebrate after!

-RB

Tour of the Bevo Media Offices in Del Mar, California

Here’s a tour of the Bevo Media Office in Del Mar, CA. For those of you who don’t know, we just relocated to the Southern California area. Del Mar which is where our office is located, is in north San Diego. My apartment is down the street on the beach of the beautiful town of La Jolla.

Enjoy!

Bevo Media Relocating To La Jolla, California!

I am pleased to announce that Bevo Media is relocating to La Jolla, California! During the week of February 14-20, the entire team will be flying out and moving their things over to the new office in La Jolla. This has been the plan for a long time, it was just a matter of getting the whole team on board.

So why did I chose La Jolla? La Jolla is one of the most beautiful, wealthiest areas in the world, on the Beach, perfect weather year round, in sunny Southern California. I am a firm believer that if you truly want to achieve your goals in life, everything you do needs to revolve around them. My goal is to build a top quality, head over heals, internet marketing powerhouse. In everything I do in my life, I strive to be the best, and do so by challenging the best, building the best interface, having the best design, associating myself with the best personnel, and hiring the best team humanly possible. I am a positive thinker to the max, who is satisfied with nothing else but the highest of quality, and I feel that La Jolla represents my mindset perfectly. The best part of it all is, that my teams vision is just as strong, each and every person…

I will leave you with the most beautiful sunset I can possibly find, from this new place I can now call home, La Jolla, CA:

Why I Chose To Bootstrap Bevo Media

Why I Chose To Bootstrap Bevo Media

As many of you know, Bevo Media has taken me 2 entire years to develop, without a cent of outside funding to finance the project (also referred to as “bootstrapped”). As you could imagine, with 4 full time, inhouse American programmers, the cost of this is substantial. A ton of people have asked me why I have done such a thing. Well I am here today to fully explain my logic and reasoning behind this, and although some people think it is crazy that a person would take on this type of investment at my age,  I think bootstrapping can be the key factor of achieving my ultimate vision of Bevo Media. My goal to this project was to create an extremely efficient and time saving tool that would be widely used by the industry, for free, and become established in the market.

To date, Bevo Media has cost me a substantial amount of money to build. The entire project has been funded entirely from my affiliate marketing earnings. I had several opportunities to accept venture capitalist funding even before development has started, but after much advice from several successful entrepreneurs,  I would never have been able to provide a high quality product for free with someone else in charge. I know the industry inside and out, I am fully aware of the concerns and desires of affiliate marketers, as well as the potential competitors to our idea. I do not want someone forcing me to do something that inhibits the chances of the Bevo interface from being the most popular tool in the industry.

However, my main reason for bootstrapping is not for control of the product. Simply put – you cannot hit it big if you take major funding. Mark Cuban says it perfectly, when he said the best thing that happened to him was the sale of his first company that allowed him to self-fund Broadcast.com, which he then sold for $5.2billion. I have adapted a similar mindset for this project. After Affiliate Summit West, I have been getting phone calls from investors almost every day, and although these offers do sound enticing at times, I know that these 18 hour days can make all the difference in the long run.

With this project, I am going for the absolute homerun. This project is just the first of several major projects that are going to stem from the initial success of Bevo Media. Bevo Media, is in a sense, a mere way of getting into the market. I could care less about the actual revenue earned from Bevo. I am pleased to say that we have a much, much, much bigger project in the making that will benefit from the success of Bevo Media. Although the size of the market may only allow Bevo Media’s max potential to cap out at a few million valuation, these other projects apply to a much broader range of publishers, and all of the Bevo projects together can be that 8,9, or even 10 figure company that I envision. If I achieve my goal of bootstrapping this entire project, then the reward would be substantial.

With all being said, I have nothing holding me back. I am going to be extremely aggressive to achieve my goals. With 6 figures allocated to marketing , and really no reason to charge users for the service, I am determined to make the most beneficial advertising platform in the industry.

Pictures from Affiliate Summit West and Bevo Media Launch

Here are the pictures from the Bevo Media Launch at Affiliate Summit West this past week. Lots from the summit, meet market, and the crazy nights after the event. You can get an idea of how great the market response was. There was times when I was giving presentations to 15-20 people at a time. We have over 2 hours of video from the event as well. Will be posting some soon! Enjoy