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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Are Sales Letters Effective?
If you’re an experienced Internet marketer and someone tries to sell you a certain product through a newsletter, you will probably not take that person/product seriously. But the average Internet user is NOT a marketer and that’s definitely something worth keeping in mind.
Most of the people who are selling ebooks, for example, are huge fans of long sales copy. Are all of them idiots? Do they like losing money over and over again? Think about it: the fact that sales letters have been used for a very long time says a lot and it should be obvious that they at least represent:
An Alternative Worth Keeping in Mind
There are lots of examples of extremely successful products which have been promoted exclusively via long sales copy. The world’s most popular copywriters charge tens of thousands of dollars for a lander and yes, there are always people who are willing to pay that much.
As experienced marketers, we might think that those sales letters we come across a lot are pathetic (most of them are) but maybe others don’t consider them pathetic at all. Maybe a lot of people are not willing to buy a certain product unless the landing page contains lots of details about it (something along the lines of “What? You want to convince me to buy your product but are only willing to write a few paragraphs about it?”) and that brings us to the most important questions we, as marketers, need to ask ourselves:
Should I Promote My Product Through a Sales Letter?
It really depends on your niche, on what makes your potential customers tick and at the end of the day, split testing is the only way to know for sure. After you come up with a series of concepts for your landing pages, throw some traffic at them and see what sticks. A lot of times, the results are surprising to say the least.
Just remember to always focus on quality, not quantity. If you have 30 crappy landing pages, all of the split testing in the world won’t help. Always choose copywriters and designers who know what they’re doing (you can definitely tell based on their portfolio or “street cred”) because otherwise, you’ll end up wasting valuable time. After all, is trying to save a buck really worth it if you’d be wasting time which is worth tens or hundreds of times more than what you’d end up saving?
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Focus, Focus, Focus
If you’re a person with an above average IQ, you probably have several amazing ideas each day. On the one hand, it’s a huge advantage but on the other hand, it’s also something that can work against you if you’re not careful.
No matter how successful or well organized you are, a day still won’t have more than 24 hours and your budget will probably never be limitless either. Yes, it’s true that you need to diversify but that doesn’t mean that you should go overboard. Spreading yourself too thin is just as bad as keeping all of your eggs in one basket.
In Case You Forgot: Focus, Focus, Focus
Most people get really excited about a project at the beginning but end up being distracted at one point or another. The brainstorming process is almost always a lot of fun but when you start implementing everything, things tend to get a bit boring. It’s like that for everyone and it’s perfectly understandable.
While it is understandable, that doesn’t mean that you have to start finding excuses. So you have great ideas? Well, what good will it do if they don’t materialize? Writing stuff on a board or on a piece of paper is great and everything but making money would be kinda-sorta nice too, wouldn’t it? If you always jump from one idea to another, you’ll end up with a lot of “concepts” but no money in the bank. So, what’s the solution?
You’ve Guessed It: Focus, Focus, Focus
Keep your eyes on the prize and be sure to set goals. Reaching a goal always gives you a nice little boost, probably more than enough in order to make it to the next one and so on. Don’t forget to reward yourself, keep it fun!
Ok, so focusing is important. But does this mean that you should let ideas with a lot of potential go to waste? Of course not, be ready to always write a great idea down. Be organized, you’ll thank yourself later on. Notepad is your friend, seriously! Why complicate things? Create a folder, call it “ideas” or something and whenever you think that you’ve discovered the best thing since sliced bread, open notepad or an editor of choice for a moment and let your imagination run wild. Then get back to work, rinse and repeat. That’s really all there is to it.
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The Comfort Zone = One of Your Biggest Enemies
Here’s the thing: you don’t have to be a rocket scientist in order to make $200 – $300 per day online. Anyone with half a brain can pull it off and even if you’re a complete beginner, you’ll probably be able to start making $6k – $9k monthly without working all that hard fairly soon.
Starting out is always hard but once things are on the right track, you’ll have your first “hey, I’m making some decent cash by only working a couple of hours/day” moment. You’ll be able to start taking advantage of all the free time you have at your disposal and that can be extremely dangerous.
Oh Really? Why?
Three words: the comfort zone, the place which keeps most people from tapping their true potential. Human nature at its best! After all, why hustle and hustle and hustle when you can make enough money to live a comfortable life without working all that hard? Time to take your foot off the pedal, right? Wrong!
While it may be true that you’ll feel “content” at the beginning, it’s only a matter of time until regret starts kicking in. Sure, your life is fairly comfortable but what will happen when you find out that the guy you’ve been talking to on AIM back when both of you were beginners is now banking $3,000 per day while you’re still stuck at the $250 level?
Why Sacrifice the Future for a Comfortable Present?
The opportunities you have now will not stay around forever. Maybe you’ll come across better ones but you probably won’t. That’s why the ability to make the most of what you have is ultimately what separates winners from losers. If you can make $500 per day, make $500 per day. Even if it means not hanging out with friends as often watching less TV! Guess what: your friends will never pay your bills and neither will your favorite TV host.
Never make the mistake of letting the comfort zone hold you back. It’s easy to let the thought of making money without working all that much seduce you, especially after you’ve invested a lot of time in a certain project and think that you’ve had enough. Once you make one compromise, others will follow and it’s only a matter of time until things get out of hand. Is being content really enough for you? It definitely shouldn’t be!
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