24 Hours until the Official Bevo Media Launch! One last day of getting everything in place and prepped for an absolutely epic and crazy launch week.
Years of an unbelievable amount of work, including stressful days leading into nights and all nighters. At times of what looked like endless amounts of work, worrying of things outside of a single persons control, we are finally ready to take the next step in the Bevo Media journey. At the end of the day, if nothing else, I feel like after all I have gone through the past 3 years, building this project from the ground up, I have learned an incredible amount of life lessons. Whether it’s learning how to deal with all sorts of people, networking, managing massive workloads, dealing with stress, coping with the lows and capping out the highs, I think I have seen almost every unpredictable issue thrown my way. This project, in particularly, I feel brings the already incredible amount of stress that goes into a startup to a whole new level.
From day 1, the knock on our business plan was that the project was too massive for anyone, let alone a 20 year old to pull off. Well 3 years later, not only did I do it, but I figured it out entirely on my own. I had a vision, no idea how I was going to pull it off, and grinded through the thick and thin. Sure I made some mistakes, but I feel like I have grown as person because of them. Building Bevo Media was, point blank, the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. The experience I’ve had building has made me a better person today. The best part is, that the real journey, has just began…
More soon, really soon 
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Just writing a quick note to let everyone know a quick update on Bevo Media Beta.
I want to thank you all for your amazing feedback and bug finding. We are actively fixing every single bug we find as they come in. We are also in the process of developing a HUGE feature list that we have yet to make public. These are all the most requested features suggested by our users. I think that they will take our interface to an entirely new level.
Note to pending users: We are letting people in as we feel would be most beneficial to the userbase. I’ve been trying to respond to each individual email, however this weekend I received 172 emails requesting account approval, so I figured I’d throw up a quick note on the blog just in case I couldn’t get back to you all. I will be enabling a few hundred more accounts early this week.
To create an account and take part in the Bevo Media Beta check out http://beta.bevomedia.com. We are looking to have the interface in an open beta stage within the very immediate future!
Click here to find out more information regarding Bevo Media.
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A Word of Advice To Graduating Seniors:
Thanks to good old Facebook, I couldn’t help but realize that the Syracuse graduation was this past week (my undergrad). This caused me to reflect a bit, based on my time from when I graduated school to where I am now. I will say that my life now is probably the polar opposite from college… for better or for worse. As a disclaimer, this post is based off my own experiences in both the business and social worlds, which may have been very different than other people’s experiences…based on how I see the world.
Point #1: DON’T FALL INTO THE AMERICAN TRAP! American society, as we know it, instills this SICK trap into the education system making 99% of the world destined for mediocrity. When you were growing up, everyone always said to you, ”You can do whatever you want with your life! The sky is the limit etc. etc.” Then, suddenly, you get to college and all you think about, and general advice you receive, revolve around, “being good enough to get an entry level job.” Or worse, “Just find SOMETHING, some job….anything!” Whatever happened to those hopes and dreams?
So often in college, students stress about grades so they can “get a good job with a high paying salary”. Unfortunately, anyway you look at it, 99.999% of undergrads are going to have a horrible paying, entry level job coming out of college. The mindset: “I just need a few years and I’ll have enough money to do my own thing, to pursue my DREAM.” Well, guess what? In a few years, you will be getting a raise, and your mindset will then shift to, “I can’t quit now, I’ve worked my ass off to get this promotion, I’ll keep going for just another 2 year or so.” By this time, you’re already 27-28 years of age, likely have a whole life setup, with friends, family, girlfriend/boyfriend, and dare I say a child?… Yes, actual responsibility. The problem with these responsibilities is that they require monetary support. At this point, it makes NO sense to quit your job, as you are risking ruining people’s lives. You keep moving up the “corporate chain” and next thing you know, you’re 50 years old, your life is 70% over, and you’ve been bossed around pretty much your entire life. Another DISCLAIMER: Your goal might very well be to “climb the corporate ladder and be a ‘big boss” someday. This post still applies to you because to actually stand out in your profession, you will have to make an aggressive move sooner or later. You’ll have to do something that veers off the “path of mediocrity.”
Anyway, this, my friends, is the American Trap. I worked very hard (maybe “I worked very smart” is a more appropriate phrase) to ensure that I do not fall into this trap. Once you fall into it, it requires an extremely risky move to get out of. So do yourself a favor, recognize it, and avoid as much as humanly possible. This brings me to my next point, which is KEY to avoiding ‘it.”
Point #2: WORK ON BUILDING YOUR VALUE DURING YOUR FREE TIME: This where I feel I had my biggest realization. All throughout high school and college, I used my free time perfecting an internet marketing hobby. This hobby lead to me being pretty damn good at search marketing, which lead into money, and ultimately led into bootstrapping Bevo Media, which is now my life. Keyword: [MY LIFE]. Not answering to anybody but myself. In the meantime, everyone in college who used their free time to play video games, play the guitar, and do whatever else college kids with too much time on their hands do, are now pissed off at the world because they have to start at the bottom of totem pole. If those students would have just used that free time to develop a skill extremely well, they could have used that skill as leverage and experience going into the work force. This leads into point #3.
Point #3: YOUR VALUE IS DEFINED BY YOUR EXPERIENCE. The reason why first year graduates get paid such a low salary is because, as bad as it sounds, that’s basically what you are worth in the profession. 90% of what you need to know, you learn on the actual job. College is beneficial for the most basic aspects of your job, however, the true value of college is throwing a kid out there on their own and seeing if they can *make it through alive* with all sorts of obstacles thrown their way. Anyone who’s been through college knows that the vast majority of students study the day before the exam, take the test from mere memorization, then forget everything the next day. The only way you truly understand the concepts of your profession is to experience it firsthand. Obviously, someone who has been doing the same job for 9 years is more valuable to a company than some new college graduate who has only proven that they have good interview skills. This is why developing a useful skill during your free time can be so powerful (Point #2).
Point #4: YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO ANYTHING. As horrible as it may sound, aside from your family and really close friends, nobody really cares about you or your feelings until you’ve accomplished something in life. There are 7 BILLION people in this world. Yes, BILLION, and you are just a single one of them. Realize this, and see it as a challenge. Make it a point to be better than everyone else. Don’t accept mediocrity. So many kids these days think that they are magically going to become rich but don’t even take the time to map out how these “dreams” of theirs can become a reality. NEWSFLASH: You need a game plan and unbelievable determination to achieve your goals. It’s easy to just “keep going” in life, but if you really want to make something of yourself, explode forward, get off your ass, stop complaining and actually DO SOMETHING to make people care.
Point #5: REFLECTION IS KEY: The only experience in life that is truly harmful is one that you haven’t learned something from. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good or bad experience; make it a point to reflect on how you felt during the experience and what you learned from it. You will begin to correlate those experiences with a similar situation in the future. You will find that this will give you a much better idea of how to handle yourself. This is called maturity, and in the long run, you will find yourself much better off because of it.
I am adamant in my belief that your life is a culmination of a few vital, life defining moments that ultimately leads to your destiny (destiny, by the way, is self-constructed.) Everything leads to your goals and your dreams. Each day is just a step forward. Graduation is one of those life defining moments. Do NOT just go with the flow. Take the time and develop your goals. After you have these goals, develop your plan. Finally, revolve your WHOLE LIFE around this plan, and strive for that euphoric moment of achievement.
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The key to starting a campaign
The biggest problem newbies experience, is that after spending hours developing a solid landing page, getting a keyword list, finding the best offers, and coming up with a solid ad variation – they run their campaign, blow through their money without a single lead to show for it. They then quit on their campaign as they haven’t even sniffed a positive result from hours of effort. This happens to almost everyone – so don’t worry! The following is a list of key points that all newbies should strive to attain, and to know when their campaign really wasn’t a waste of time:
1.) Make sure you have a good niche! How can you expect to get hundreds of leads a day when you don’t even know if there is that many people looking to buy your product? Sure you can be the first to exploit a niche, but leave that to the big guys. If you are just starting out, you don’t need to make things any harder than they have to be.
2.) Find the leads! Regardless if you spent $100 or $1000 on your campaign, if you haven’t generated any leads – then all you know is that atleast ONE variable within your keywords, landing page, offers, ad variations, bid price, and ad position combination does NOT work. You need to distinguish what variables need adjustments and which doesn’t, and the only way to do this is to compare results between what is working. The problem is that if you don’t have any leads to use with your data – it’ll be very hard to make adjustments because in essence – you have no idea what is working. The first step in the right direction is to FIND as many leads as you can, and try to optimize your efforts to more leads in that realm. This is why it’s important to make sure you are promoting a hot niche. You KNOW the leads are out there… Go find them!
3.) Don’t give up – I can’t stress this enough. The only real money you lose is when you don’t learn from your mistakes. Keep grinding until you’ve tried every combination of keywords, ad variations, landing page, offers, position and bid price as you can.
The big thing ALL newbies should know, is that if you just keep at it, you will hit your campaign! Even if it takes 20 swings until you hit, that hit will be ever so sweet. Once you hit your first campaign, everything starts to make alot more sense in your mind, and your experience starts to kick in. Affiliate marketing is like developing an extra muscle in your brain. It’s tough at first, but once you get the hang of it – it becomes much easier to hit more campaigns. Enjoy the ride!
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