How To Use Solo Ads For Affiliate Marketing

Solo Ads For Affiliate Marketing – A Home Run Or Just Another Way To Lose Your Shirt?

Today we’re going to take a look on how to use solo ads for affiliate marketing, and more specificly if they are a viable option to build your list.

If you’ve been in the affiliate marketing business for a while you’ve probably heard it a million times before – the money is in the list. The bigger your list the more money you can make with less effort.

But that statement is only partially true. Having a big list is essential, but if your big list is not buying anything then it’s pretty much worthless.

The size of your list doesn’t matter, what really matters is that you have people on your list who are willing to whip out their credit cards. But how do you build a list?

Well essentially, you only need a simple opt-in funnel, a paid offer and traffic…lots of traffic.

And this is where most new marketers get stuck. They are completely clueless when it comes to driving traffic. But here’s the thing, driving traffic is NOT rocket science.

There’s only 2 ways to do it – free organic traffic or paid traffic.

Whichever way you choose to go, they both work very well but they are very different in nature.

While paid traffic can get you results fast…It can take ages to get just a trickle of traffic if you go the free route.

Another form of paid traffic that is hugely popular is solo ad traffic.

A solo ad is literally an email marketing advertisement where you use someone else’s email list to promote your own (affiliate) offer.

Because your email is the only promotion that will be sent to that email list, it is known as a solo ad.

The process is pretty straightforward – you prepare an email that will be sent to the solo ad vendor’s list, and you pay him to deliver it.

Some solo ad sellers may even write the email ad on your behalf to get the highest conversions.

If they offer this service and you’re planning to buy clicks, I’d say let them write the ad because they know what gets people to click.

You can buy anything from 100 to probably 10 000 clicks if you want, and you’d pay around $0.40 up to $1.00 per click.

Although it is quite expensive, it is probably the fastest way to send traffic to your offers…

>> Click Here To Find One Of The Best Courses On Running Solo Ads

But are solo ads a reliable traffic source to build your email list?

Some marketers swear by them, while other marketers wouldn’t even touch them if you held them at gunpoint.

However, in this case the truth lays somewhere in the middle. Yes you can use solo ads to build a list and make money from that list.

But it is NOT going to work for everyone. When you want to build a list using solo ads you need an entirely different approach.

By that I mean, you most likely need another offer, your funnel structure needs to be different, and your follow up sequence needs to be more aggresive.

A Normal And Most Commonly Used Opt-In Funnel Would Look Something Like This

Well, this kind of funnel is NOT going to convert very well with people on email lists from solo ad vendors.

They will opt-in, but by the time they’ve landed on your bridge page they just think – Here’s another dude telling me how to make a thousand dollars for free. Yeah right, and they’ll just click away.

Now you might be thinking what does it matter, I have their email address and my email follow up sequence will do the trick. Well it won’t, unless you’re going to mail them up to 6 times per day.

Never forget, these people are on literally hundreds of lists and receive hundreds of emails per day. Your one email a day will be drowning in a sea of unopened emails.

To really get the most out of your solo ads you need to follow these rules

1.Your paid offer must scream Quick and Easy. The more hype on the sales page the better.

Plus your offer should have a low entry barrier, preferably around $12 or less, and a sales funnel with at least 3 up-sells which could potentially cover your ad spend.

2.Get rid of your freebie. These people have seen them all and they couldn’t give a rats arse about your freebie.

3.Ditch your bridge page. You don’t have to inform people that the freebie is on it’s way because you have none, and they have zero interest in another rags to riches story.

4.Send them straight from your squeeze page to your paid offer. And remember, the more hype the better.

5.Send them at least 4 to 6 SHORT hyped up emails a day. NO storytelling, NO let me show you how to do something…Just SHORT emails that SELLS them an offer.

6.Keep sending them emails until they buy your stuff, unsubscribe, or you get rid of them by removing unresponsive subscribers from your lists.

7.Rinse and repeat…CONSISTENTLY!

An Effective Opt-In Funnel To Use With Solo Ads MUST Look Something Like This

A list build with solo ads should really be treated as a churn and burn model and that’s why so many marketers dislike using solo ads.

They want to build trust and rapport with their subscribers by offering value first and then promote relevant offers along the way.

If you go for the know, like & trust model then solo ads are not for you. Unless you build an entirely separate list just for solo ads, which is exactly what I did – one list for solo ads and another one for all other traffic sources.

>> Click Here To Find One Of The Best Courses On Running Solo Ads

If You Want To Use Solo Ads Then I’ve Got Some Tips That You Should Consider Before Spending Any Money

1.Always buy your solo ads straight from the vendor’s website and not from market places such as Udimi.

While these are great places to do some research on the vendors, you should be aware that these market places have their own additional fees that must be paid.

The solo ad vendor will include those fees in his price per click, and therefore it’s way cheaper to buy the clicks directly from the solo ad vendors website.

Every vendor worth his salt will have a website of his own. If they can’t be bothered to set up a simple website I would be very wary of the quality of traffic they provide.

2.Always ask the vendor how he build his list. You want to buy clicks from a vendor who build his list either through organic traffic, Facebook ads, Google Ads, etc

Stay away from vendors who bought their lists from other solo ad vendors because you might end up paying for clicks that come from burned out lists.

Also ask if the list was built using double opt-ins? Did he use freebies to built the list? Are there real buyers on his list?

You really want to look for double opt-in lists that were created with sales funnels, and verify that they have successfully sold to that list in the past.

3.Always track your clicks. Sometimes solo ad vendors will do this for you, but this is a courtesy. You need to measure how many clicks you get to protect yourself from getting scammed.

Plus you definitely want to know which one of your pages converts the best.

You can do a Google search for popular tracking tools such as ClickMagick or ClickMeter.

4.And last but not least always split test your emails. Ask the solo ad seller if you can split test your emails.

You should use two different subject lines in one test and than use two different emails in another test. See which one converts better. Keep the winners and ditch the losers.

Alright then, I hope you enjoyed this little guide on how to use solo ads for affiliate marketing and grow your email list.

I’ll level with you, I don’t use solo ads quite as often as I used to, but when I do buy solo ads this is what I do and it always brings in awesome results.

Hopefully, when you put it into action, you’ll get equally awesome results too. The key factor is to change your mind-set when it comes to using solo ads…

And always remember that a list build purely with solo ads is a completely different animal than a list build with any other traffic source.

>> Click Here To Find One Of The Best Courses On Running Solo Ads

If you’ve got any questions, drop them in the comments section below and I’ll try my best to help you out.