The Hidden Cost of Solo Ads

Solo ads seem to be the flavor of the month for list builders which is strange because 9 times out of 10 they are a bad choice when it comes to building a list.

Solo ads used to be a really good way to build a list until someone realised that you could make more money from your list if you sold solo ads … Ohh OHH see whats happening there?

People are building lists with solo ads to sell solo ads.

Solo ad cannibalism I like to call it. The quality of the leads you get are quickly reducing as more and more people are getting onto solo ad sellers lists. Open rates of less than 1% are common on some lists. To put that into perpective I have a 4 year old list that get a 20% open rate

The problem is not just that the quality of the leads are poor and open rates atrocious it’s that the real cost of building a list with SA’s is much higher than people think

Here is how it’s portrayed.

You spend $50 and get 100 clicks, so you immediately think ok that’s only 50c a subscriber not bad.

Wrong

Of those 100 clicks you’ve paid for you might, if you are lucky, and have a great offer get 40 signups, a 40% conversion rate.

So now we are over $1 a click….it get’s worse.

Some of those signups won’t verify their email address and some will get the free report or give away and then unsubscribe.

For example last week I tested a solo ad supplier with 40 clicks for $20

For that $20 I got 49 clicks and that resulted in 21 subscribers.

Of those 21 7 didn’t verify their email address and 5 immediately unsubscribed.

In the end I got 9 subscribers the real cost is over $2 per subscriber.

That sucks.

Compare that to 4000 subscribers that I got for a few hours work or the 53 subscribers that we generated yesterday with 20 minutes work and zero cost

Which would you prefer?

The problem with solo ads is that people are building lists to sell solo ads by buying solo ads the result being a large number of people getting offers 3 or 4 times a day.

This leads to poor open rates and low quality leads.

I recently ran a small test, I joined the list of a well know solo ads seller.

What follows is not for the squeamish!

9am Joined List – Marketer 1

10.30am Received Solo ad for marketer 2 – signed up

11.10am received solo ad from marketer 2 sending me to marketer 3….. Plus links in the P.S. for marketer 4, 5 &6!! Signed up to them all

12.10 email from marketer 1 with link to Marketer 7

12.30 received email from marketer 5 with 4 links to different marketers

I could go on but in under 5 hours I was on 17 lists…..

Still think solo ads are a good idea?

Whats The Alternative Mark?

The Alternative is to be creative and build list quickly using methods that others are using.

After a bad experience with solo ads I spoke to a friend of mine and we put our heads together to see if we could build lists using different methods that were either free or very low cost (below 10 cents per subscriber)

The idea was the subscribers would be cheap top get & wouldn’t be based on solo ads or facebook..(too obvious!)

We came up with several methods. which we’ve tested, 149 signups in out first test..that works for me!

We’ve put them all together into a short report, if you want to build a list then just 1 of these methods each week with build you a big list in no time… a list leads to profit.

Check out NO BS Listbuilding

The methods we’ve covered are :

Method 1 The Shout Out

Method 2 The Triple Win 2013 Version

Method 3 Mutual Appreciation

Method 4 The Hunter

We’ve also added a bit of also secret sauce to tie it all together and make your list building really rock.

NO BS Listbuilding