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

Enjoy!

As many of you know, there are many unexplained aspects within Google Adwords. Google, makes it a point, to leave specific aspects of the system mysterious, leaving their advertisers to figure things out on their own. This is especially the case for affiliates. I have been using Google Adwords since 2001, and throughout my years, I have seen the Adwords program evolve drastically. Specifically, within the past 3 years, since the emergence of the almighty Quality Score, there are some specific aspects of Adwords that are still unexplainable. I have formed strong assumptions based on “What I think”, or “How exactly it works”. These assumptions were based off of my experience and countless hours of trial and error to form my conclusions. Still, there was always that random slap, quality score decrease, or ad variation denial that never made sense to me…. Until now….

I recently had a extremely indepth conversation with an Adwords representative about the Adwords program, and exactly how it works. This was a face to face conversation, during non work hours. I can confirm that many of my assumptions were dead on the money, while others were surprisingly off. The conversation lasted for well over an hour, and I can truly say, that I feel I learned more from that single conversation, then anyone in the industry could from years of trial and error. Below is some information provided to me directly from the rep. These are answers that many affiliates have been seeking for years, and can make all the difference for those of you who are not already banned or given up on Adwords.

1.) Google slaps are entirely automatic. I always assumed that there was automatic slaps and manual slaps. A manual slap is EXTREMELY rare. There are tens of thousands of publishers using Adwords daily, and hundreds of thousands ad variations. This makes it extremely hard for manual monitoring of campaigns, which is why it’s an automated process.

2.) So what are the main reasons a site gets slapped if it’s done automatically? A slap, is a complex equation that takes a variety of campaign and account variables into consideration. Some of the main variables are:
a.) Duplicate content – This is the reason most affiliates get slapped. This is because there are so many other affiliates copying landing pages from each other. Duplicate content is not just limited to sites using Adwords, rather, it includes ALL websites indexed in Google search. Even when someone copies your own landing page, both parties are penalized. Content exceeding over a certain percentage of duplicate material is almost always an instant slap.
b.) Account History – This includes account age, and account spend. $50,000+ spend has extra weight.
c.) Rebill offers – Slaps weight more heavily on specific niches notorious for consumer complaints. Specifically weight loss and teeth whitening. Google will monitor for keywords and weigh against your campaign for rebill type words, such as “Free Trial” and “Acai berry”
d.) Severity of previous slaps – Google does not only take into account how many times your account has been slapped before, but also the severity of each slap. For instance, a slap from duplicate content does not weigh as heavily as a slap from a rebill teeth whitening campaign that has been reposted and slapped 5 times already.
e.) Content is king! The more content you have, the more it waters down the algorithm. Meaning, if they are looking for specific faulty words, and then placing a value to that word based on the comparison of total words on the site, the more words the better! This is why I always recommend to the people I mentor to get 20-30 unique articles minimum for your landing pages.

3.) How often does Google do these automatic checks? Every single time Google updates their algorithm, it automatically recrawls ALL of the sites on the Adwords system, whether they are paused or active. So this means that between the time of the last algorithm crawl, if there was another affiliate who copied your landing page, you will get slapped. Additionally, their updated variable could spin your site’s slap score in an entirely different direction, for better or worse.

4.) So how often does Google update their algorithm? Basically, it is unpredictable. It could be 2 months, it could be 2 days. It’s sporadic based on when the guys in charge change the algorithm. I will say from experience, it seems to be around every 2 weeks.

5.) Having the keyword in your domain name is huge! This is especially the case for assigning a high quality score. It’s good practice to have your targeted niche keyword once in the ad variation title, once in the ad variation body, and once in the ad variation display URL.

6.) Always keep your ad groups under 25 keywords. Over 25 keywords in an ad group can KILL your quality score. The quality score is as much about how you group your keywords as it is with the content of your page.

7.) And Finally…. what’s the deal on all the random bans? The mass amounts of Google Bans that occurred during November and December were automated. These bans looked at severity of prior slaps, duplicate content frequency, and if your promoted a questionable offer. Being said, the automated banning method completely screwed some undeserving advertisers over. Google will not give out much info as to why a specific account has been banned, and if you are one of the unfortunate ones, there is nothing you can really do. Moral of the story – don’t promote rebills on Google!

I have much more info that I plan to write in the Bevo Classroom, however that’s all I’ll blog about for now. I hope this cleared up some confusion from the affiliate side of things. If you guys need any further explaining about what was wrote, let me know and I’ll try to explain the best I can!

-RB

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:

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.

To all people who have emailed me or called: I will be sorting through my emails and replying this weekend/Monday. I have over 400 new emails, and my voice-mail is full,  but promise I will respond personally to each.

To pending beta testers: I will have someone get in touch with you sometime this upcoming week.

I will be posting much more information, along with tons of pictures, and stories about the weekend. Tons of info upcoming!

-RB

I am pleased to announce, that after 2 full years of development, Bevo Media is launching January 17th, 2010, during Affiliate Summit West at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. Haven’t heard of Bevo Media yet? Good! That means I’ve accomplished my goals! We have been keeping this project on the down low from day 1, with plans to come out with a boom when it’s ready. Well that day has finally arrived, and since November of 2007, I’ve had every aspect of this weekend envisioned. Now, to the good stuff!

So what is Bevo Media?

The video just about says it all:

Bevo Media can be best described as a “Full Scale Affiliate Marketing Platform”, that works to consolidate literally every aspect of affiliate marketing.  This includes:

1.)  Installing your all of your affiliate networks in their entirety on our interface (including individual offer stats, subIDs and Offers)

2.)Installing your Pay Per Click accounts in their entirety. You can drill down your PPC accounts from the campaign to the keyword/ad variation level. Edit your campaigns on the fly, and create entire new campaigns right from our interface with the BevoEditor. The BevoEditor features several time saving features including the Cross Post function allowing users to create a campaign and post it to multiple PPC accounts with just one click.

3.) A complete API Induced KW Tracker. This means that ALL of your affiliate network and PPC Account stats, automatically sync to your account, ensuring all numbers are as EXACT as possible. Not only does this help you improve your ROI, but it also is the easiest keyword tracking system to setup humanly possible.  And don’t worry, we have a full media buy tracker built into the system with its own special section. Pixel and Postback methods also available.

4.) Consolidate ALL of your analytics accounts. Find the traffic details and demographics of your users without leaving the Bevo Interface.

5.) A FULL Marketplace made up of trusted vendors with solid internet marketing experience in their designated field of work. You will never need to scramble to find a landing page designer or content writer. Every vendor on our interface is 100% proven reliable.

6.) A complete publisher classroom. Two years of work put into the classroom. Tons of great reads. I made it a point, to be direct in the content, and only mention the stuff that REALLY matters in affiliate marketing. Definitely valuable content here.

Probably the most asked question I get is about the cost and security. Simply put, this project was made to be free of charge to our userbase. Additionally, I know everyone is concerned about their security using this type of system, which is why I decided to have an entire self hosted version of the project as well.  About a year ago, I had the option to raise funding for this project, and  I ultimately declined for this very reason. I did this so I had the freedom to offer it for free and to make it self hosted.. So why exactly are we free, and how do we make money?

The answer is quite simple – The best way to build a popular, highly regarded online company is to mold a revenue model that is based off of providing your product to the userbase for free (ie: Google). Being said, we have developed a revenue model that can sustain our costs from other areas not at the expense of our userbase.

So what is our revenue model exactly? Well for starters, our self hosted version is the premium version of our product that we eventually plan to charge for. The reason we give it away for free now is because our product is still in beta, and we would never want to charge for a product that we do not know with 100% certainty that it is everything we promise and more. When will we start charging for the self hosted version? Honestly there is no timeline for this, it could be a few weeks to a few months. Basically, whenever we feel our product is ready for it. However one thing is for certain, our regular hosted product, is, and always will be, 100% free of charge to our users.

Secondly, we have developed specific business relationships with affiliate networks to help sustain the costs of operation. As you could imagine, with a super tool like Bevo Media, there is great opportunity for affiliate networks to promote their company to our userbase.

We also have our subsidiary company, Bevo Search, a local marketing and web development firm, in which we can use our publisher base to grow. This along with another paid “super tool” type platform coming in the near feature, will benefit greatly from the success of our initial company.

Lastly, there are several mini revenue streams within the Bevo Media interface that often goes unnoticed by our users. These mini revenue streams include:
1.) Referral Bonuses
2.) Bevo Marketplace Commission
3.) Ad Space
4.) Donations

At the end of the day, the only thing that really matters to us is providing a solid product to the industry with a large userbase. Even if we never make a dime in profit, if our product is widely used throughout the industry, we have achieved our goals, and we are willing to go above and beyond to make sure that happens.

Now that project development is completed, the most important thing to me is making sure the interface is absolutely perfect. No bugs left behind! The initial 1-2 weeks directly after Affiliate Summit West, we are going to keep our product in beta.  The main reason I am doing this is not just to ensure we ironed out as many issues as possible,  but also due to the fact that I will be busy that entire week in Vegas at the show, and I want to make sure that when we do have the interface open to the public, I can be there for the satisfaction of our customers. I will do everything it takes to make sure as many people are satisfied as possible. I put everything I got into this project, and I can guarantee that if we all work together, we can accomplish my goal of creating the most efficient, and beneficial marketing platform ever created.

-RB

To add to the excitement, Bevo Media officially launches at the event. You can find us at Booth 433 and at Meet Market table 85. This upcoming week, I will be “letting the cat of the bag”… Finally introducing this huge 2 year project that I feel will change the industry landscape quite a bit. I will break down exactly what it is Bevo Media does, and how this massive project works. Interested Beta testers, shoot me an e-mail and ill get you on the list. Stay Tuned!

He is auctioning one-word domains like Offended.com, Dullard.com, Armchair.net, Casserole.net, Epilator.net and Necklace.net and none of them is priced above $10,000! I would have priced them well into the 5 figures if I were him but it’s his auction, so his risk of letting them get snagged at insanely low prices.

Aside from one-word domains, he also owns some of the best product name domains I’ve ever seen: HydronicHeating.com (it’s considered the most “green” type of heating, and we all know what this means – its value can only go up), FleetInsurance.com (the category killer domain for a very expensive type of insurance, big bucks right there), RockDrums.com, ComputerChair.com and a lot of others.

Category killer domains registered in 1998 or 1999 such as the ones I’ve picked as my favorites are not easy to come by, he’s taking a big risk with these low reserves. I would have tried to sell them one by one with a far bigger price tag but he told me that he needs 6 figs for his upcoming project, so in a way I guess waiting would have not been an option either.

He’s also selling his portfolio of Mexican domains (the #10 economy worldwide). On the one hand, he has international words like Management.mx, Tuning.mx, Spyware and AntiSpyware.mx, PingPong.mx or MiniGolf.mx (mini golf is called “mini golf” no matter where you live and the same thing goes for the other words) and on the other hand he has domains like apartments, beds, tables etc. in Spanish (the official language in Mexico in case you didn’t know lol).

Here’s a link to the auction (a total of 110 domains), act fast if you want a piece of the action (the auction started today and will end on Monday):

http://www.snapnames.com/store/event.action?ig=384