RyanBuke.com

Check Out My Interview on JonathanVolk.com!

Check out my interview on JonathanVolk.com – I’ve met Jon at several marketing events throughout the years. He’s a an extremely knowledgeable, hardworking guy and has one of the most popular blogs in the industry! His featured post today is an interview with me. Check it out here: http://www.jonathanvolk.com/affiliate-marketers/interview-ryan-bukevicz.html

The Key to Starting A New Campaign

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!

How To Avoid Burn Out

Burned Out?

Remember how it was like back when you thought that making $100 or $200 per day online was next to impossible? Remember that “wow, making that much or more would motivate me to work and work… and work!” way of thinking which seemed logical at that point?

Well, as most of you will probably confirm, things definitely DON’T stand that way. We humans are an interesting bunch: you’d think that a person who has managed to reach a certain financial goal (let’s say making $200 per day online) would be willing to work like a maniac in order to continue earning $100 per day, $200 per day or whatever but that’s not how things stand. In fact:

Things Will End Up Seeming Boring… FAST!

Ok, you’ll feel all motivated and everything. Great, you’ll continue working like a maniac and making $200 per day for a week. Two weeks, maybe three. But after a certain point, things will definitely start seeming boring and making those 200 bucks per day will end up seeming like a chore. Here’s why:

****you start taking things for granted

****that initial excitement is no longer there

****the financial “shock factor” is behind you, $200 per day doesn’t seem all that impressive anymore

Reaching one goal or another is NOT enough, thinking that you’ll feel happy and just as motivated after reaching a goal and without setting higher ones is just plain wrong. If you don’t see the big picture, it’s just a matter of time until you’ll end up feeling burned out and the most important question arises:

What to Do?

First of all, you need to understand that you have to keep things fun and exciting. Always set higher short-term goals and always be guided by your long-term ones. It’s really not rocket science.

Being an affiliate marketer is tricky because on the one hand, it’s great that you have all of the freedom in the world but on the other hand, things will quickly get out of hand if you don’t organize your time accordingly. If being an affiliate marketer starts seeming like a job, you’re doing something wrong. Not a lot of people have the opportunities we take for granted, most of the people who are trapped by a 9 to 5 lifestyle can’t even understand how someone can make a lot of money yet still have as much freedom as we do.

Thinking About Pushing A New Product?

Pushing Your Own Product?

A lot of people think that pushing your own product is the best way to make serious cash. In theory, it all sounds great: you won’t have to worry about networks running away with the cash or otherwise acting shady, you won’t have to worry about merchants pulling a fast one and the list could go on and on.

But there’s more to being the merchant than meets the eye and, while it’s true that you’re eliminating a lot of problems, it’s just as true that those will quickly be replaced by others. Don’t just think that pushing your own product is a piece of cake because it isn’t. In fact, get ready to work harder than you’ve ever worked before.

Work Harder? Seriously?

As an affiliate marketer, you’ve probably built an image of the “average” merchant in your head: those cheap bastards who always want to screw you over. In some cases it’s true but that doesn’t mean that you should forget about the fact that it’s not all fun and games for them either.

Think about it: all you have to do is push traffic to and offer and get paid. In their case, things are a bit more complicated. They have to deal with customers, they have to answer calls and reply to emails, they have to ship the product, they have to manage their relationship with the networks and so on. Again: there’s more to being the merchant than meets the eye.

Is It Worth It?

Only the merchant has enough data to tell for sure. It all depends on your way of doing business. In most cases, the margins merchants have to work with are not as great as you think. Oh and one more thing: sure, you have to deal with a lot of shady networks and merchants but the merchants themselves have a lot of “obstacles” to overcome: leads which aren’t backing out, fraudulent traffic, networks which have never heard about the term “win-win” and so on.

Is being a merchant worth it? For most people, probably not! There’s a lot of work involved and since most affiliate marketers enjoy their lifestyle and wouldn’t be willing to say no to some/most of the things they currently have time for, they’re better off sticking with what they do best. Lots and lots of freedom: doesn’t sound all that bad, does it? Didn’t think so!

It’s All About FOCUS!

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.