What are solo ads, and why you need them to grow your business? Solo ads are email-based advertisements you buy from other email list owners. They work like this: You find a solo ad list you’re interested in. You contact the owner or buy access to the list from their site. You buy either by how many subscribers your email message will be sent to or by how many clicks your email will get. If all goes well, those subscribers will click, and those clicks will convert well.
How to get started with solo ads?
One place to not get started is with cheap ads. You can probably buy 10,000 emails for $5 on ClickBank or Udimi, but aren’t likely to see any return on your investment. Cheap solo ad providers have often built their “lists” by scraping emails. Audiences haven’t opted-in, have no buyer intent, and are likely to see your email as just another piece of spam crowding their inbox.
But if you are ready to spend a bit of money to get your offer in front of real traffic with buyer intent, the first step is obviously finding the right list to rent. One way to do this is to scour the internet for influencers in your niche and pitch the idea to them directly.
Udimi and Clickbank offer solo ads, but you should be really careful when picking the right list. Once you've picked someone's list, try to build a good relationship with the owner and learn from him/her.
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These are some questions that I recommend asking:
1- How many people are on your list?
This question will give you a quick overview of the number of people that will see your ad/email. A big email list doesn't necessarily mean a good sign. In fact, someone may have a list of 100000 subscribers but they no longer open their emails or the emails go straight to the people's junk folder. Thus, just because someone has a big list doesn't mean that you know that you're going to make a lot of money with it. Besides, if someone has a small list, it doesn't mean it's a bad thing if they've got a good relationship with that list.
2- How many clicks can you send?
If somebody is charging per click then that would be a great question to ask. If they're saying that they can deliver a hundred thousand clicks, well that's a good sign because you know because that tells me that this guy's got a big list and it's very responsive. Start small first. In fact, ask them for the smallest package, if all goes well and you made some cash, get back to them and ask for a bigger package, let's say 20000 clicks or 50000 or now let's just send an e-mail out to everybody on your list. So it's really easy to scale and get a lot more traffic.
3- What are your rates? (per email/click)
You may want to ask them what their rates are if they don't tell you upfront or if they don't have it on their sales page. If I'm contacting somebody out of the blue and they say that "yes they can do a solo ad", I could just ask them "what would you charge for that?". If I'm contacting random dog training product owners I can just hit up people that dog blogs and ask them to send an e-mail to their subscribers for X dollars.
4- How did you build your list?
One of my favorite questions! This is a big question that I do like to ask just about every person that has an email list, no matter how big or small their email list is. Because this can be a deal-breaker.
Some people might say: "I built my list from spamming people" or "I built my list from randomly grabbing people's e-mail addresses off of Craigslist without their permission" or "I built my list from a bunch of freebie coupon offers" or if they say something like "Well I built my list from people that have bought my products or people that have come into our store and that buy our products" or "I built my list from paid traffic". The answer gives you a great sign whether this will be is a good or a bad idea to ask them for solo ads.
5- What kind of offers work well in your list?
Here's another really great question that I would definitely ask people before signing up with them. These people know they send out lots of things to their list all the time so they know what works and what doesn't.
They might say that their list loves electronics and gadgets. Then, maybe I might want to go create another freebie just for them. That would be something that I do because I know that he said that works really well with his list.
6- Do you have any suggestions/tips on my squeeze page?
This can save you a lot of headaches. Ask him/her if he/she thinks that your offer will do well.
It's a good idea to always ask these guys for suggestions and tips on your page. If they're successful and they do a lot of mailings then they can sometimes offer really great tips and advice that can help you tweak your page and make it even better.
7- Any other people that you can recommend for doing solo ads/ newsletters with?
This question will guide you to another successful solo ad. Maybe after you buy a solo ad from them and if you have good experience with them or maybe even ask them before your call OK. Ask people in the niche who would they recommend, and they can tell you some of their best sources.
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Conclusion
For some businesses, solo ads work great. They’re an affordable way to build a list fast or to blast exposure for a product launch. But there are some stories of people getting burned.
My advice to you is start slow. Show your landing page to relatives and friends to check whether it needs to be modified or not. After doing the modifications, test it across 3-5 lists and track it to see the percentage of conversion.
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