We're very excited to present our 48th interview with
Ryan Bukevicz of
Bevo Media.
Ryan Bukevicz is a full time entrepreneur and internet marketer most known for founding the popular marketing platform Bevo Media (http://bevomedia.com). Bevo Media is a central platform that acts a one stop shop internet marketing homebase. Within Bevo, users can login to one central platform to manage all of their affiliate networks including viewing their offers and retrieving offer URLs. Also included within the interface is a full keyword tracker to track PPC campaigns, media buys, and PPV campaigns. These features, combined with the ability to actually manage and edit campaigns within the platform, complete analytics management, utilize powerful research tools, and learn from their free classroom, Bevo Media is one of the most popular management hubs for online marketers!
You can create your free Bevo Media account at
http://bevomedia.com.
You can read Ryan's Blog at
http://ryanbuke.com or follow him on Twitter
@bevoryan.
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How old are you? Where do you live?
I am 24 years old and live in San Diego, California. I was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I graduated from Syracuse University where I received a degree in Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises. While at Syracuse, I also played football and ran track for the Orange. My experiences with athletics both during high school and during my collegiate years have definitely helped me with my business ventures.
Aside from managing Bevo Media, I also am an active partner and investor in 4 other online companies. All of which I use my marketing experience and connections to take to the next level.
2. How long have you been working in this industry and how did you get involved? What/Who inspired you to enter it?
I actually discovered internet marketing in 2001 when I was in 9th grade. I learned Visual Basic at an early age and built a program to help students improve their vocabulary. Instead of charging for the program, I gave users the option to fill out an email submit for access. The plan worked and the application was a hit. I was instantly obsessed with the possibilities of online marketing.
From there I started an eBay wholesale company selling popular electronics at a discounted rate. I did this until my freshman year in college. I then started an incentive site to bring in some extra cash during my summer workouts. The incentive site began to blow up, and I decided my efforts were much more beneficial in the long run if I dedicated my full time towards online marketing, and hung up the cleats on my athletic career.
During this time period, I found the need for industry transparency and consolidation. This is when we came up with the idea that became the eventual Bevo Media. My partner and I went on to sell our batch of incentive sites for a large sum of money, which acted as the seed funding for the Bevo Media project.
Also during this period, I fell hard into search marketing. I quickly began to start scaling up to more competitive niches and during my senior year in college, I hit my first 6 figure month and never looked back.
3. Prior to running your affiliate marketing business, do you have a 9-to-5 kind of job? How long was it before you realized you could live off your affiliate income?
I actually never worked for anyone in my life. I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I am extremely passionate about my projects, and I always figured out any obstacle in my way. In the early days, it was about money, now it's more about how to make the most use of my money putting myself and team in the best position for success. Your value is defined by your experiences, and the experiences I had during my early years definitely put me in a strong position for success today.
4. Tell us a bit more about Bevo Media and what you do over there?
I am the co-founder and president. I overlook the day to day activities of my development team, along with networking and plotting our growth.
5. There are several tracking tools out there. What makes Bevo Media different? Why should affiliates consider using Bevo Media?
Bevo Media has much more on its platform than just a keyword tracker. Infact, many of our users spend the majority of their time on Bevo utilizing our other powerful features . Affiliates can do everything on our interface. No need to use a separate company as a tracker, find offers, manage PPC Platforms, track analytics, research campaigns or learn about the industry, Bevo Media does this all on one interface. This is going to be more and more apparent to our users as we continue to launch our new features.
Additionally, the Bevo interface took over 3 years to develop. We have an entire full time programming team working constantly on growing and improving our interface.
6. Do you still do arbitrage these days? If so, what're your favorite traffic sources?
I have been finding myself more and more on the back end of marketing, especially with my other companies. I do a lot of lead brokering on the back end, which tends to be quite lucrative if you find the right buyers.
7. In your experience, what are the Top 3 critical elements of running a profitable campaign?
When mentoring affiliates, I tend to focus on 3 core phases of the campaign creation process:
1 - Researching your niche
2 - Finding the proper traffic source
3 - Optimization and Scaling
Each phase is its own beast, and are equally important. But more than anything is trial and error. You can read for years, however the only way you truly understand something is when you do it over and over again. It's comparable to building an extra muscle in your brain. When you physically go through the motions of the 3 steps of a campaign, you begin to realize tendencies within your actions. These realizations turn into what we call "experience", and learn what "to", and "not to" do in future campaigns.
8. In your opinion, what are the best places for a newbie affiliate to learn affiliate marketing?
Starting off, spend a portion of your time reading blogs and forums. This isn't as much to teach you specific tactics (although you very well may) but more to familiarize yourself with the industry itself. However, do not get too wrapped up in what you read, because as mentioned above, the only way you are REALLY going to learn is to actually go through the trial and error process of a campaign yourself (see above).
9. What are the differences between a Super Affiliate and an Average Affiliate?
Scaling your campaigns. The super affiliates are ultra aggressive with their money, taking big swings and consequently having big hits. Scaling a campaign properly is huge. Super affiliates will successfully find a spark in a campaign and create a forest fire with it. They find multiple traffic sources, different countries and languages making sure they salvage every last penny in their campaign leaving nothing on the table.
10. How do you feel about the health of the Affiliate Industry overall? If you could change one thing about the affiliate industry, what would it be?
Like any industry, affiliate marketing is evolving constantly, but there is, and always will be a ton of value in affiliate marketing.
The affiliate industry has cleaned up quite a bit in the past 2 years. Many of the rebill offers are either already gone or on their last leg. I think the lead gen offers and backend brokering will become stronger than ever in the upcoming years.
One of the biggest downfalls of the industry is the lack of adequate technology. There are a ton of technology gaps in this industry, and one of the main motives behind Bevo Media is to fill as many of these gaps as possible.
11. What are your plans for the future? Where do you see Bevo Media going?
The whole goal of Bevo Media is to be the central hub for all online and affiliate marketing. We are going to be providing technology solutions beyond just the affiliates such as services for networks, merchants, webmasters and more. Within the next few weeks you will begin to see some of our additional platforms launch, and Bevo Media as you know it will effectively be renamed to The Bevo Media Exchange. The magnitude of the potential behind the business is absolutely massive, and it all stems from years of programming and planning.
12. What industry conferences do you usually attend, and which is your favorite?
I normally attend the Affiliate Summits, AdTechs and LeadsCon. I would have to say Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas is hands down the best conference because of the obvious atmosphere of Vegas mixed into the already energetic mood of the summit.
13. What Industry sites and blogs do you read regularly and why?
I tend to spend a few hours each week keeping up to date on industry news on the popular forums and blogs. Wickedfire and AffBuzz are great sources for obtaining information. Most of the information I do absorb actually comes to me from my connections I've made through the several years of working in this industry.
14. What are your hobbies/interests/passions?
I am extremely passionate about my business ventures and truly believe my passion and mindset gives me my competitive edge. Being said, working and learning new things are pretty much my main hobbies. Other than that, I like to go out and have a good time with my buddies in San Diego on the weekends. I enjoy working out and hanging out on the beach during my down time as well.
15. Give us a little glimpse into what a typical day in your life looks like.
I am definitely a night owl. I find that I get more creative ideas during the night and face far less distractions. I typically wake up around 10am, and from the hours of 11am-5pm I take care of operational stuff, such as managing my team and making phone calls. From there, I go workout for 2 hours, grab a meal, and get back from the computer around 9pm. From there, I start my night time mode, where I like to do my critical thinking tasks, plan for the upcoming weeks, and set my goals. I usually end up getting to bed around 5am.
16. Thanks Ryan, if there is anything else you would like to say to the readers of AffPaying.com now is the time!
In anything you do in life, a truly determined individual or business is extremely difficult to stop. Stay positive, have the right mindset, and it's only a matter of time before your vision becomes a reality...
Many thanks to Ryan for sharing your time with us and for sharing some great insight tips here! If you are an affiliate marketer, AM or Network owner and are interested in answering a few questions about you, your network and affiliate marketing, please drop us a message.
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