The last few weeks I’ve been experimenting with a new traffic source. It’s not actually new, but it’s something I haven’t used much before.

It added an extra 893 subscribers to my list and produced a significant amount of revenue. Plus, now that I have these subscribers they will continue to produce more revenue for many months to come.

The method I used was: paid solo ads.

A solo ad is a full length email that is delivered to another person’s opt-in email list. It essentially enables you to “borrow” a fellow marketer’s mailing list for one email. The job of your solo ad is to get as many people to your offer as possible, and to get as many of them as possible to take your offer.

I’ve been using this marketing tactic fairly aggressively in the last few weeks. It’s given some great rewards, but also some massive failures.

In this blog post I’ll reveal how I did it, what I did right and what I did wrong – massively wrong!

Firstly, I found prospective partners through The Warrior Forum. The WF plays a massive part in my marketing. It’s where I learn the majority of the techniques I use in my business, it’s where I find joint venture partners who have generated tens of thousands of dollars for me and them selling my products and it’s where I found my solo ad partners.

I simply started a thread asking if anyone would sell me a solo email to their subscribers. I asked for only a few details:

1. Their list size.

2. Their typical response rates (number of click thrus) for an email.

3. The price they would charge for a solo email.

A lot of people sent me emails and I had a number of partners I could choose from.

Partner 1 had an email list of 50,000 and was charging $600.

Partner 2 had an email list of 17,000 and was charging $130.

Partner 3 had an email list of 17,000 and was charging $197.

Partner 4 had an email list of 16,000 and was charging $120.

Partner 5 had an email list of 11,000 and was charging $47.

Partner 6 had an email list of 5,000 and was charging $100 but was guaranteeing 250 clicks.

Partner 7 had a Facebook group with 1,100 members. Because I wasn’t sure how this would perform we agreed a fee of $0.50 per confirmed opt-in plus a $5 upfront fee.

I’ll reveal how each of these performed in a minute, but first I’ll let you know the mistakes I made.

Mistake #1
Not Tracking Properly

For the first solo ads that were delivered I didn’t track the number of clicks each marketer sent me. This meant I couldn’t measure the performance and work out whether a solo ad with this marketer was a good investment.

I learned my lesson eventually and set up a new page for each marketer I used with a new web form so that I could track the conversion rate and number of subscribers from each marketer.

Mistake #2
Not Trusting My Instinct

I had my doubts about the integrity of Partner 6. I should have trusted my gut as I’ll reveal in a minute.

Mistake #3
Get Proof

Partner 3 promised 600-1000 clicks from his email. I got 93. I should have asked each marketer for screenshot proof of their list size and their typical click through rate.

Those are the three main mistakes I made and it cost me a fair bit of money, but despite some of these emails performing so poorly, I assume I’ll profit from this venture (if I had tracked I’d know if it was profitable or not) – and I’ve learned a hell of a lot.

The Results

Like I’ve already said, a lot of the emails underperformed, but some did fantastically – here are my results. Some are only estimates due to lack of tracking!

Partner 1 – 300-350 new subscribers. That’s about $2 per subscriber, but I’m fairly confident that I’ve made my investment back already and any revenue these subscribers produce now will be pure profit.

Partner 2 – This resulted in at least 180-200 subscribers which is less than $1 per subscriber. It’s fair to say I’ll definitely be using this marketer again.

Partner 3 – Like I’ve already mentioned I only got 93 clicks from this email and 48 subscribers. I expect to make a loss here. This is one of the emails I tracked.

Partner 4 – This mailing produced about 120 subscribers which is just about $1 per subscriber. A definite profit has been made here.

Partner 5 – At only $47, this was perhaps the most profitable mailing resulting in 150 subscribers and a subscriber cost of $0.30.

Partner 6 – The mailing was due to be delivered on the 4th February. When it wasn’t delivered by the 5th I contacted her. I haven’t had any response and have therefore filed a Paypal dispute. I should have trusted my gut instinct on this woman.

Partner 7 – This was the most interesting of all the mailings. I knew I couldn’t lose out on much money because I was paying $0.50 per subscriber so it was performance related. This was a mailing to a Facebook group and produced 15 new subscribers. It may not sound like much but it’s educated me on the potential of mailings to Facebook groups.

In total I received about 893 subscribers based on my estimations for a cost of $1,114. < I worked that out in my head so I might be wrong.

I’ll definitely be doing this again but much more effectively next time.

It’s definitely a strategy I recommend, but first make sure you have a plan to monetize your subscribers. I know that each subscriber is worth a certain figure to me and can therefore pay accordingly.

Work out your numbers before you dive into this method of list building.

One more paid method of list building I strongly recommend is to pay other people to build your list for you. It’s not as risky and you can pay someone about $3 per hour to work nonstop on building your list for you.

They write and submit articles for you, they post in forums for you, and they leave blog comments for you. They do all the hard, boring and monotonous tasks that bring you steady traffic, subscribers and sales.

Think about this…

If you could pay someone $3 per hour and they made you $10 per hour – how many people would you employ?

A few months ago I purchased a DVD from Lee McIntyre called Automatic Traffic Blast. The DVD reveals 12 different processes that you can give to someone else to do for you to start driving massive amounts of traffic for you.

The DVD reveals where you can go to find these workers for cheap, and Lee even gives you proven adverts to place on outsourcing websites to recruit these workers.

Not only that, but Lee provides you with instructions that you can simply hand to your workers detailing EXACTLY what they have to do to start driving traffic for you.

You could employ one worker for 10 hours per week to drive a steady and consistent flow of new subscribers and sales. If that works out to be profitable, then you could employ that worker for 40 hours per week and ramp up your traffic. Then you can get a second, third, fourth and fifth member of staff all working for 40 hours driving traffic to your website.

How much traffic do you think you’d get per day with five full time employees?

Lee McIntyre’s Automatic Traffic Blast gives you a plug and play system so you can start outsourcing your traffic generation so you can sit back, relax and watch the subscribers and sales roll in.

Take a look at Automatic Traffic Blast here.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into my business. Give it a go yourself, and don’t forget to check out Automatic Traffic Blast.

Talk soon,
James Penn

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