Can You Make Money With Solo Ads?
I have seen this question pop up more times than I can remember on public forums. While the views of the posters differ, much of it is just based on hear says with no credible evidence to support the claims.
As if that isn’t enough, the quacks peddling the solo ads business are forcing half-truths down people’s throat just so I can make some money off their ‘newbieic’ naivetés (hope my choice of word is permitted?!)
So, let’s debunk this myth right now, without mincing words. Does Solo Ads work? Yes. Does every Solo Ad work? No! Confused? There is no need to. It’s not rocket science, if it were, I wouldn’t be here teaching it.
Solo ads business thrived on the understanding that email marketing is the best and least expensive means of getting your message across to potential customers or buyers if you want. There is no telling how important this means of communication is.
In true marketer’s thinking, the gurus thought, if email marketing is godsend, ‘why don’t we rent email lists and use the ‘relationship’ already established with the list by the owner to push our products out there to hungry buyers?’ Notice the word ‘relationship’. That’s the key thing when considering solo ads. It’s the relationship, no more, no less.
Not too long ago, Leon ran a post here on the result of his Fiverr solo ads experiment. He went out there and placed order for thousands of clicks and what did he get in return? Garbage! You know why? There is nothing like email marketing or solo ads success if the relationship with the list is ‘not there’ or ‘lost’.
Fiverr sellers can sell thousands of click for a mere $4 (remove $1 for Fiverr’s commission) because these emails are often scrapped with no real value and zero relationship. They are just what they are, ’emails’. No more, no less.
Knowing this, will Solo Ads work for you? Sure! But only if you buy from credible sources who have relationship with their list not from people who have sold the life out of their email subscribers. Since the popularity of Solo Ads got on the rise last year, we have heard a lot of success stories and of course, equal amount of horror stories. Sometimes, it seems the success stories come from a side of the coin and the horror stories from another side of the coin. Your guess is as good as mine.
That said, when you buy from people who understand how valuable relationship is with their list, you will smile to the bank. In fact, if you hit a home run, just scale it, yes! It can be that profitable. Although, quality Solo ads is much more expensive than penny click that Leon preaches about, it can be as profitable if you know what you’re doing.
In addition, here is my recommendation. I have noticed that people with ‘smaller’ list have better relationship with their list compared to mainstream solo ads seller. Therefore, if I was starting out, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll approach potential sellers in my niche who I know are credible and give them a proposal to run a solo ad through their list. Many of them will gladly allow you in exchange for money of course. The dollar sign is a big motivator for many people, myself inclusive. Once you find a few good people to work with, get the ball rolling. Schedule your campaign and wait for result.
If you want faster approach and a bigger pond to swim in, check out the classified section of the WarriorForum. There are a lot of sellers there. Look through the threads and see people’s comment, this is very, very important.
You can also search for Facebook groups. Join a community, watch the active users and closely follow the comments. Generally, when people are angry, it’s easier to make a bad comment than make a good comment, too many complaints from a seller and you should know he/she isn’t worth your time or money.
I have also found Skype groups to be effective. You can always find the seller, call the person and discuss extensively. Although, it is difficult to cross the person’s history and reliability. One good advantage is, you can ask other group members about the reputation of the person in question.
On a general note, the going rate is about 30-50 cents a click depending on the quality. If you find someone offering you a buyer’s list and he’s genuine, jump at the opportunity. We all know how much a buyer’s list is worth!
This is just the preliminary of the process. There’s a lot to solo ads like tracking, monitoring the campaign, tweaking your landing page etc. If you love this post and will like more explanation under this topic, please comment below. Who knows, we might start a whole series on this business model.
-Tim
————————-Recommended Solo Ad Guide-————————
Solo Dynamite. Step-by-step course showing you how to make $300 – $900+ per day using solo ads. No unproven theory, this is the exact system I personally use on a daily basis.
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Yes Leon, I totally agree with you about how good solo ads ARE…… and they have to be High Quality solo ad clicks, eh Leon…. quality!
Hi Leon, I just bought the solo dynamite ebook, not the oto…, will report back back after implementing everything he said. Thanks to Timothy for this great article.
Thanks for purchasing! This is not my product.
But I’ve made sure I only promote the best products on this site. I’m sure you will enjoy this guide. Thanks again!
I look forward to reading your case study.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for sharing such a fruitful article about the solo ads business. I wish I got myself enough education in this area when I first started out. I’d like to share some mistakes that I made so that I can help people on this blog to avoid such a costly mistakes.
First, I didn’t have my own tracking and this mistake caused me to have hundreds of subscribers on my list who are never responsive. I don’t have any idea where they come from and how they ended up on my list.
Second, I didn’t take enough time to validate those sellers only to find out that they don’t even have their own list. They are just solo Resellers who sell me clicks from site like SoloMasterPro.com.
Once again, thank you Tim for sharing with us this valuable information!
Thanks for sharing your solo ads experience with us.
What really is Solo Ads? I didn’t get the understanding from this post. Is it the same as paid advertisement? This post did not seem to reveal the meaning of solo ads for the benefits of those who have not heard about it in the first place!
I shared this comment in kingged.com – the content syndication and social marketing website where this post was found.
Sunday – kingged.com contributor
http://kingged.com/money-solo-ads/
Hi Sunday,
I hope I can be of any help to your question about solo ads. Basically, solo ads is a form of advertising, whereby you pay someone who has a list of subscribers to send your offer to his or her own list.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say Mr. Bob has a list of 10,000 subscribers. And you make a deal with Mr. Bob say you pay him $90 to for a solo ad purchase of 200 Clicks. Once Mr. Bob receive your money, he’ll send an email to his subscribers promoting your offer (normally it’s a link to your squeeze page).
Since your deal with Mr. Bob is 200 clicks, then he has the responsibility to ensure that at least more than 200 of his subscibers click on the link inside the email he send them to your squeeze page. Let me know if you need any further explanation. Have a nice day!
Thanks for this article post but when we talk about solo ad service you can hardly see real people to help in delivering solo ads..
I doubt if this solo ad guide of yours will work out cos of the complain i read about solo ad on warrior forum. Most members complain bitterly cos some software recommended are not really blasting message to targeted audience and the clicks received are from robot.
How i wish this solo ad guide is free but best of luck to those who will be interested in buying the guide.
I found the link to this post on Kingged and i have also kingged it on kingged.com
Hi Olamosh,
Allow me to share with you how to avoid from being cheated by solo ad scammers. A lot of people when first starting out buying solo ads have been scammed (Myself Included).
You will find a lot of Solo Ad Sellers telling you how good or responsive their traffic is and so on. Once you have paid them money, they either don’t deliver you real human traffic or they just go to site like MicroWorkers.com and pay people from India $0.01 cent to just put in fake email address and subscribe to your squeeze page.
Since, you pay that seller $0.40 a click and the seller pay someone else from MicroWorker $0.01 to subscribe to your squeeze page. So, $0.40 – $0.01 = $0.39 and if you buy 100 clicks from that seller, he already make $39 in profit.
Don’t take my word for it, just sign up an account at MicroWorker and you’ll find those Scammers buy fake emails sign ups over there. So, in order to avoid this kind of scam, this is when “TRACKING” comes into play.
The tracking software used by 90% of people who have good experience in buying solo ads are either AdTracks.com (Not My Affiliate Link) or QualityClickControl.com (Not My Affiliate Link). These two software are expensive but it’s well worth it.
Here is how it works. Whenever you buy solo ads from a seller, you don’t give him or her your squeeze page link straight away. Instead you should give the seller a special tracking link that you generate with the software. This way, you can track where your traffic come from (which countries), their IP address, and unique clicks.
So, if you realize that all the clicks come from india or bangladesh, you can always file a dispute to Paypal and have your money refunded back to you. I Hope this helps! Have a nice day!
Thanks Tommy for your detailed input. Much appreciated.
Tracking is critical when running just about any IM campaigns nowadays.
Anyhow,for those that use Ganalytics, you can always just setup a new squeezepage URL. Add google analytics to it, and you’ll be able to see where the visitors come from to this particular squeezepage.
But still, you still need to be careful, as maybe some sellers use VPN or proxies for usa traffic and sign ups.
I have a question that I cannot seem to find the answer for. Here it is…do I (as a newbie) try and write the swipe or just ask/let the list owner write it?
So here is my quandary…
I would think the list owner knows what their list responses to better than I would. So let them write the swipe. However the list owner wants to drive clicks and I want to drive conversion to long-term subscribers.
I would appreciate comments about the balance between our two similar but different goals.
Thanks. Justin
Ps I know my funnel converts very well. I am currently building a new list (a little over 2000 currently) with PPC but want to branch out into using Solo Ads also. I have no interest in becoming a Solo Ad seller at this time (which seems to be what all the “guides” are geared toward). I am only interested in developing a long-term relationship with my subscribers at this point.
Justin, you want to build a quality list and build long-term relationship with this list? Then you should definitely write your own swipes. You never know, this seller may use the same swipes, or similar swipes to his previous email blasts, and it may not give you good quality results.
So it’s best to write your own 100% unique email swipes with your own voice tailored to his audience. And you can ask him for tips to include certain keywords and subject lines that drives more clicks.
Hi ,
I agree with you, Solo Ads can work great if you focus the right subscribers. It enable us to target any audience in specific and that’s a BIG plus point. But, I’ve heard that people do buy email list from other for their online business. Well, if there is any option like that , then it would be better to do that right ? You can promote anything , it’s completely yours. The only thing is you’ve to spend a bit more cash. I think that is a better idea rather than going for Solo ads.
Thanks. Informative post. Good read 🙂
Keep writing 😀
– Sourav
Hello,
Just got here from kingged! First of all I’d like to thank “Tommy Koo” for you easy explanation to the comment of “Sunday” for the basic of solo ads. As I’m also the list of persons who really don’t know about it.
I’d surely consider buying the solo ads from warrior forums.
Thanks
Hi,
You get what you pay for on the solo ad front.If you pay big, you’ll generally get a higher quality lead and convert more quickly. $5 solo ads are yielding people who are paid on the penny, if that. Not exactly people who want to spend money to buy something.
RB
Hi Leon thanks for the article
Olamosh if you want to dabble in solo ads I have a few thught on that subject, that might help.
If you are considering email marketing then solo ads is the way to grow your income quickly, I would advise picking up Solo Dynamite from the link above, it will help you get started on the right track and avoid many normal mistakes, he will also give you some sources. (dont ever buy solos fro Fiverr.com..its all trash) some sources to buy ads from are
warrior forum,
safe swaps (25 per month but you are well protected from scammers there)
http://www.soloadsx.com/
http://www.soloadmarketplace.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/trafficmasters/
most all solosellers have their own site on the web but are usually connected to one of these groups or are in other groups I dont frequent.
Matt Bacak’s solo ad blackbook also is an excellent resource for the top rated solo ad sellers he buys from on a regular basis.
Only buy solos from buys with good reputations and reviews
I use safe swaps because its a good market place to swap lists to build your list and make lots of money selling your ads in their system, if you build a good top tier list you can make tons of cash selling solos on the web.
great success in solos….George
Thanks George for your detailed tips. These are good sources to find legitimate solo ads vendors.
Absolutely, stay away from fiverr solo ads, 97 out of 100 solo gigs are trash (I made up this number, but it sounds about right). For anyone interested, here is my fiverr solo ads case study: http://howtowebmaster.com/case-study-can-you-make-money-with-fiverr-solo-ads/
Solo Ads are foreign to me, but I’ve asked Google about what Solo Ads really mean.
Google answered that Solo Ads means ‘advertise your promotions by emailing VMC members…’
Well, I got to do this because I’ve noticed that the author failed explain well the meaning of Solo Ads.
This matter is important, especially for readers to understand deeply what you are talking about.
Thanks for the post! 🙂
Best,
Ann07
By the way, I found this post shared on Kingged.com
Thanks for letting us know. Solo ads is when you pay someone to email out your advertisement to their email list. For example, you pay me $50, and I’ll email my subscribers about your products or services or whatever your want to promote. Hope that clears it up.
Hello Tim,
I see ads for solo ads all the time as I use many sources to get traffic. I do agree with what you are saying about the credibility of the list and the list seller. Those are very important. I do think they are worth trying. Just do your research as you would do with anything before you buy. Thanks for sharing this with us!
I found this blog post on Kiinged.com and Kiinged it!
Solo ad traffic source is just like other traffic sources, you can’t expect to become rich overnight just by buying a solo ad, you need a strong followup sequence to make the most out of your money.
yeah solo ads are great but you have to put on great effort to make them work. like follow up are good for everything.
I need to try out solo ads soon, do you have a list of vendors you’d recommend for buying traffic?
Udimi is the best place to buy traffic from. You can look at their ratings and history before making a purchase. Thanks