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I do remember one campaign that worked quite well. But I had to pay $1k up front for the privilege. I made about $3,000 commission on that campaign, so my profit was $2,000. Not bad. But the profit was outweighed by the losses I on all the others.
By the way, if you’re unsure what solo ads are all about, here is a brief description.
When you buy a solo ad, you are essentially ‘renting’ someone’s list, or at least part of it. So you pay money upfront based on a cost per click basis. For instance, if you bought 200 clicks at 50 cents each you would pay the vendor $100. After he has received the payment, he will then do an email blast to part of his list until he has delivered the clicks. (A click refers to the action a subscriber takes – they click on your link in the email sent by the solo ad vendor.)
To be sure, you are buying clicks, not leads. When the subscriber clicks on the link, they’ll be directed to your lead capture page. At that point, the subscriber will decide to opt-in to your email list, or not. Most of the time not.
Anything above 20 percent is ok, and anything above 40 percent is excellent. If you have a great capture page, you should get a 30 percent opt-in rate or more.
Of course, a good optin rate is only part of the story. Ultimately you want sales, right? This is hard because most solo ad traffic converts very poorly. This is due to the following reasons:
Freebie Seekers. Most solo ad lists are full of people with out money looking for that next shiny object. If you’ve got offers priced in the upper range, forget about it. It’s not going to happen. Please note that there are a handful of vendors with high-quality lists. But they represent the exception, not the rule.
Jaded and Cynical. When you’ve been hit many times in a day or a week with offers, you’d be cynical too. That’s how it is with most solo traffic. The vendor has already emailed these subscribers multiple times with other offers before he sends yours. The fact that they opted into your list is neither here nor there. They’re probably still not going to buy.
Fraud. Sad to say that some solo ad traffic is fraudulent. Horror stories abound. Indeed there are link farms in third world countries that are paid to click on your link. So, make sure to check the IP address of your subscribers.
Stale Offer. If your offer has been around for more than 5 minutes chances are the solo ad crowd has seen it before. So, if you have a potent capture page, you will likely get people to opt in to your list. But when they see your stale offer, they’ll turn off faster than a horny gal with a drunken boyfriend.
Wrong Offer. Even if you have a brand new offer if it doesn’t fit with the solo ad audience, it won’t convert into a lead.
If you look at the above list, you’ll see that the top three reasons for failure are out of your control. The remaining two are in your control so only promote hot offers to the solo ad audience.
Enough of that. Let’s look at some better strategies:
Facebook is a fabulous potential source of leads. But avoid spamming people and generally acting like an idiot – it will bite you in the ass.
The strategy revolves around using your personal profile (not your fan page) to influence your friends.
Posting good content is part of it, and engaging with your interested friends is the other. If you currently don’t have many friends add people who are right for your niche every day.
Although the mechanics are a bit different to Facebook you can still win friends and influence people on Twitter. You do it by growing your followers, posting good content and then engaging with people who are leaning forward. Also, consider moving your best followers from Twitter to Facebook. In my experience, Facebook offers more potential to build relationships.
If you want quality traffic and leads, running some Facebook ads is one of the best ways to get them (other than using the free social strategy as discussed above). And if you play your cards right you won’t pay an arm and a leg to get them either. The downside is that you will need to invest time and money to learn it, and if you’re in the home business/affiliate marketing space, you need to be very careful. If you cross the line, the FB police will shut you down.
Bing PPC is like Facebook PPC (pay per click) because you pay when someone clicks on your ad. But there are significant differences between running ads on a search platform compared to running them on a social platform. As you probably know Bing is a search engine. So, when someone clicks on your ad it’s because they’ve been searching for the keywords you’ve been bidding for. I say this because search marketing offers access to people who are actively looking for a solution to their problem. This is quite different to running PPC ads on platforms like Facebook, which is more about interruption marketing than anything else.
Although Bing doesn’t have Google’s traffic volume, they are easier to work with. An important consideration if you’re a home biz marketer.
Video marketing is an organic strategy – no paid ads. Essentially you create keyword specific video content then load it onto YouTube. YouTube is a search engine in its own right. Thus, you can snaffle up some good quality traffic and leads from people who are looking for your kind of offer.
Blogging is my favorite strategy. Get some of your content ranked on the search engines, and they’ll send you free traffic. How cool is that? You can also promote your content on social media platforms. The other reason blogging is important is because it is one of the few online assets that you own and control.
A simple way to get traffic and build influence is to comment on other people’s blogs. I do it all the time, and it has produced traffic, leads, and sales. But more than this. If you do it long enough you’ll also build influence with a network of bloggers who can help you in the future. Very powerful. Here are some good people I’ve met from blog commenting:
Do you know anyone with a list of people who might be interested in your offer? Get on the phone and say you’ve got something you’d like them to look at. Then sit down with them and make an offer they can’t refuse. The offer could revolve around the idea that you will do all the work and then split the commissions from any sales made.
Be sure to TWEET THIS now. Appreciate it!
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What was your favorite takeout from this post about better alternatives to solo ads?
Have you used solo ads before and if so what were your results?
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