I first got into solo ads back around 2003, advertising in what was popularly called ezines at the time. (Ezines are still around and function similarly as solo ads.) Over the years I played around with them here and there. I did have some success in getting website traffic to my sites, building my list and selling as an affiliate, but I didn’t take solo ads seriously until January of 2013.
Since then I have bought all kinds of solo ads from all kinds of solo ad providers culminating into tens of thousands of visitors from the website traffic, which has helped me add thousands and thousands of email subscribers to my email list. I only wish I would have taken solo advertising seriously sooner.
I am a big proponent of using solo ads and frequently talk about it with others. There are many in the internet marketing industry who think solo advertising is a thing of the past, but I believe it is here to stay. If you are looking for a way to increase your website traffic, your email list and your online sales then you should seriously consider email advertising with solo ads. Below I will walk you through several aspects of this form of online advertising.
What Is A Solo Ad?
I get asked all the time, “What are solo ads?” I’ll tell you. A solo ad is a form of online advertising where you pay an advertiser to send your ad to their email list. It is a form of email advertising. When you pay, the solo ad vendor will do a one time bulk email blast to their email list. To put it another way, some internet marketers will accept payment in exchange for sending an email that you have written (or that they write on your behalf) to their email list.
The reasons for using this kind of email ad are plenty. Some want to increase website traffic to their blog to get more exposure. Others are product owners who have created a training product, like a series of videos or some other thing, and they want their product to gain exposure. Some offer a service they want to get in front of people and others are looking to build an email subscriber list so they can promote affiliate offers through email advertising. There are other reasons as well.
Just remember if you are on the fence about paying for solo ads for sale and you are still wondering if they are valid, solo advertising is widely used. It has been a medium for traffic generation for many, many years and using them can be the easiest way to get traffic to your site or offer an build an email list, if used correctly.
What People Look For When It Comes To Solo Ads
There are so many things people look for when researching solo ads. Some are looking for no cost, free solo ads and others who are willing to buy solo ads end up looking for something cheap. Although there are sources of free solo ads out there, my suggestion to anyone who is serious is to realize that it costs money to build a real business and paying for a solo ad is better, even if you focus on finding cheap solo ads. In my opinion, the ads I’ve paid for are the solo ads that work.
Others will spend some time learning more about solo ads in general, like investigating what it means to use targeted solo ads. This is absolutely a must to succeed with solo ads because if you are not targeting the right ads then the people who get your email ad will more than likely not respond. What a lot of people don’t realize is that there are solo ads available in many different niches. So if you are into gardening and have a gardening website then you will want to find solos that are related to that target. It might seem like a simple thing, but I have heard many stories of people wasting their time and money on non targeted solo ads.
Another thing I see people research are ad reviews. They are simply trying to find the best solo ads out there and social proof goes a long way. I agree to a point about looking at reviews. You can learn about the scam artists out there and know who to definitely stay away from and you can see the solo ads that work for others, but in the end, you will need to jump in.
What works for some other guy might not work as great for you and visa versa. Not all solo ads will be a winner, but over time you will end up with a list of proven solo ads that work and you can go back to those solo ad providers again. So to be clear here, researching what others say are the best solo ads is a great starting point, but don’t drown in your research and end up not doing any email advertising.
The last thing people look for when researching solo ads I will mention that are solo ads with guaranteed clicks. Most people think these are the best solo ads, but they are very hard to find and have not always been the best performing solos out there. And they tend to NOT be cheap solo ads, which is how many of the solo ad vendors who do offer a guarantee make sure they get their pay even when someone ends up using the guarantee.
Where To Find Solo Ads?
As I mentioned before, solo ad providers (sometimes called solo ad vendors) can be found in many niches. The most popular niches seem to be internet marketing and biz opp (business opportunities), but they aren’t the only ones. And they are fairly easy to find.
You can simply do a search for the phrase “solo ads” and then your niche, so if your niche is internet marketing then you would search for “solo ads internet marketing”. or “solo ads gardening” if you were into gardening. Oh and you can do the search with our without the quotes.
Once you get the search results you then need to start going through them and look for providers. Sometimes you will find individuals with their own search engine results and sometimes you will find listings, or solo ads directories. One of the bigger internet marketing / biz opp providers out there is Igor Kheifets. He is bound to show up with a generic search or you could search for “igor solo ads”. He is a veteran in this field and has been serving solo ad buyers for a long time and has built up a rock-solid reputation of being trustworthy and honest. He also offers solo ads with guaranteed clicks, but he does charge on the higher end for this service.
You will also find a solo ad directory or two, maybe more. This can be a good way to find a lot of providers at one time, but you will need to weed through them to find good solo ad providers. Just do a search online and you are bound to turn up something. Be sure to make sure a directory is current before diving in. You don’t want to waste your time when the listings haven’t been updated in a long time.
One solo ad directory option is solochecker.com, which is a website that features the first “Real Time” solo ad marketplace on the Internet. This website offers you complete visibility of all available solo ad offers. Remember, using a site like this can speed your time searching for your perfect solo ad, but you still need to do some research to find great solo ad providers.
The Directory of Ezines is one place you can check out that has been around for years and years. I used it, but not in a while. It was good then and it seems to still be, but it does cost to be a member. I won’t go into too much detail about ezines, except to say that you are paying to get your ad advertised in electronic magazines or newsletters. You are not paying per click, like with solos, but for ads, like in newspapers. And you can advertise in 1 ezine at a time or do bulk advertising too.
The Warrior Forum solo ads have also gotten good reviews. The Warrior Forum isn’t technically a solo ads agency. It’s a massive forum related to internet marketing, but there are many good solo ad vendors who advertise on there. So, in this respect, it does have sort of an internal solo ads directory. You just have to go there and do a search for “solo ads”.
There are other ways to find solo and ezine advertising online, you just need to be creative and do some research. But start with the solo ad providers I have talked about here and only spend your valuable time doing research if you need to.
Solo Ad Tracking Tools
One thing you really need to do when you get started with solo advertising (or even with your email advertising) is to track your results. It’s too easy (and tempting) to just run solo ads and never pay much attention to how they go. Just remember that your success with solo ads will be directly connected to your ability to track your results.
Quality Click Control is one of the popular tool out there. It is a fully supported online software suite that gives you several tools. Among them are link cloaking, conversion tracking, bot protection, geo targeting and traffic blocking. QualityClickControl.com also offers you good downloadable reporting and even gives you the ability to share your stats. Finally, Quality Click Control gives you different payment options and has a demo you can try out.
ClickMagick is another popular tool you can use to track your solo ad results, and is the tool I use. This is also an online software suite with great support. It offers a bunch of different tools like click fraud monitoring, split testing, Facebook sharing, link rotators and 24/7 link uptime monitoring. ClickMagick also gives you good reporting and multiple payment options with a free 14-day trial and an option for annual billing for a discount.
There are other tools out there that you can research if you want. I can only give my personal recommendation to ClickMagick though. However, it is not the only tool that has been around for a long time and has good feedback. In the end you will have to decide which solo ad tracking tool is best for you, but pick something. Remember, it’s so important for you to track your solo ad results.
Solo Ads Conclusion
Solo advertising is a proven medium of email advertising that has been used for years. People have built huge email lists and made great money using solo ads only as their way of getting website traffic. Remember that all forms of advertising cost money, so if you are going to spend your money on something then don’t go with some fly by night advertising method. Seriously consider solos!
There are tons of solo ad providers selling solo ads and you can find solos available in many different niches. If you do decide to buy solo ads then do your research to find the best solo ads and remember that cheap solo ads (or free) are not always the best. Do your research so you understand what are solo ads, and take a look at ad reviews to see what others are saying.
Once you are ready to look for actual solo ad providers then you can look at individual solo ad vendors or solo ad directories. You can check out a service like The Directory of Ezines or search at the Warrior Forum for solo ads. There are lots of places to find good providers.
Finally, remember that you need to track your solo ad results using a good high quality tracking tool, like Quality Click Control, ClickMagick or similar. If you are not tracking your solo ad stats then you success with solo ads will be very limited.
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About The Author:
Clint Herman has been marketing online for most of the last 17 years and has been using solo ads successfully for over 3 years. He has built a list of over 14,000 subscribers mostly by using solo ads. You can learn all you need to know about how to use solo ads in your business by clicking here.