Solo ads are a type of advertising where you pay someone with a mail order list to send an email swipe to their subscribers promoting your services or products. When you buy solo ads, you’re virtually buying clicks. If for instance, you buy 50 clicks, that’s the many times your email link will be clicked on by the seller’s subscribers.
Solo ads are an easy and quick way to attract traffic to your sales page/website.
So, how do they work?
Typically, you’ll first search for a reputable solo ad provider in your particular niche. Then, you’ll select the number of clicks you require for a single price. The solo ad provider will after that get an email swipe from you. Additionally, you could send the seller an email link that links back to your sales page.
The provider will give you a date when they will send it out to their subscribers. When they do, you’ll start to receive clicks/leads via your auto-responder, and you’ll be notified in your email every time a click comes in.
Since this is a full on business, there are few things you’d want to do and others you’d better avoid.
The Dos
Buy solo ads from a reputable source.
The main idea behind solo ads is always to find a respectable, estimable and well-established seller. Some sellers are scam artists willing to dupe you into getting a quick buck in exchange for fake email addresses or poor quality email lists. You ought to always scan for these disreputable vendors before committing your hard earned money to them.
Create a professional and targeted email swipe.
Writing a great email swipe is essential to determining the success of your investment in the solo ad business. You should always aim to create an exceptional email swipe that will drive people to click-through as well as make them opt in and buy what’s on offer on the other side of the squeeze page.
To boot, you’ll also want to avoid particularly too many complaints and unsubscribes. A great virtue that you need to uphold is honesty. Some people create swipes which guarantee excellent click-through rates, but the swipes don’t match their offer. Dishonesty in your dealings translates to no opt-ins and numerous unsubscribes and complaints. Justly, the email swipe should always match the offer.
Always ask questions. Lots of questions.
An excellent way to know the credibility of a solo ad seller is to ask questions about their list. Such questions include: How big is your list? Do you have a testimonial? Do you have a sales page? What is the niche of your subscriber list? What products do you offer? And many others. These questions give you a platform for detecting the “Red Flags”. If you sense dishonesty then its best to steer clear of them.
Know your numbers.
The solo ad business is a numbers business. The biggest mistake you can make is not knowing your numbers. Use a tracker to ensure you monitor the number of clicks you get. If you order 300 clicks, you want to make sure you get 300 clicks.
Additionally, you should get a calculator. The purpose of the calculator is to work out your costs, determine the number of clicks it generates, how much the returns are and it enables you to track your business progress so you can ensure it continues to grow.
Start small then grow.
Even though you may possess a large advertising budget, it’s prudent to start slowly. Instead of buying 1000 clicks at one go, you’d be better off buying 50 clicks per seller from different vendors. By doing this, you can detect which solo ads perform better than the others. Afterwards, you could commit more money to such sellers. You’ll also get to find out which vendor provides bargains for larger buys.
Cultivate trust.
The solo ad business is a relatively small community of internet marketers, where reputation is the key to success. Your aim should be to build trust and create friendly business relationships. Close business relationships transmute to numerous testimonials. You should also generate quality traffic and ensure the people you sell your traffic to are totally satisfied with the results. Trust is the only sure way to get and maintain long term customers.
Choose a convenient mode of payment for both parties.
There are many ways to pay for solo ads: Paypal, debit cards, credit cards and the like. Note that using a Paypal balance instead of credit card doesn’t provide buyer protection for digital products. A dispute on your purchase may go against you, however, when using a credit card, Paypal will tend to favor you in the case of a credit card dispute as they don’t like to deal with such conflicts.
The Don’ts
Never purchase solo ads without first looking at testimonials and reviews.
Reviews and testimonials help you know how other customers think of a particular seller. Note that some of the reviews and testimonials may be fake. Therefore, it’s imperative to test, test and test. You shouldn’t blow your budget on a seller before determining their credibility. Buy small and if the results are positive, then buy bigger. If not, on to the next one. In the solo ad business, spending a lot of money doesn’t necessarily translate to better results. Use common sense and always think long term.
Don’t buy big without requesting for a discount.
As discussed earlier, it’s important to communicate with the seller. Inquire if they offer discounts and let them know you’ll buy more from them if the solo performs great.
If the deal appears too good to be true, it probably is.
Never buy ridiculously priced solo ads. Solo ads are naturally expensive as people sacrifice immensely to accumulate the email lists. Cheap solo ads are most likely full of fake email addresses or no lists at all. Don’t fall into the trap. Get quality solo ads.
The bottom line is, the solo ad business is a numbers game. Play it to your advantage but exercise necessary caution.
About the Author
Steven Hobbs – has been working as PPC Marketing Consultant for over 10 years, advising multiple SMEs in their e-marketing efforts.
