Are you looking to build a solo ads business from scratch?
You’re at the right place. In this complete guide, you can follow 12 simple steps and have a profitable solo ads agency of your own up and running.
Even if you’re new to the world of email marketing, this beginner-friendly guide should be of great help. It’s best to take it easy and take one step at a time.
Following are the steps. For best results, it’s recommended to proceed in a sequential manner and only when a step is complete.
1. Get an Autoresponder
In an order to build a solo ads business, you’ll need some tools. Autoresponder is one of the main ones that you’ll need.
It’s a software that you’ll use to collect emails and build an e-mail list. You can send promotional emails/broadcasts to these subscribers.
We use and recommend Aweber. It has one of the better inboxing rates in the industry. Add to the fact, except for them, not many email providers are a fan of the topic of online marketing, making money online and business opportunity.
Get started with AWeber here.
One reason is that there are marketers who abuse their privilege and promote unethical products/scams that fall in these categories.
2. Get a Link Tracker Software
Tracking your clicks is of utmost importance. You need to track all of your traffic to precision. With it, you’ll not only be able to track your results but also optimize when required.
One of the most widely used tracking software is ClickMagick, and it’s among the best ones in the market. We’ve tested over a dozen trackers over the last 5 years and nothing comes close to ClickMagick.
Get started with ClickMagick here.
ClickMagick can be used for:
• Link trackers
• A/B split testing (also known as bucket testing)
• Tracking engagement
• Measuring traffic’ quality
• Checking statistics (Tier 1 ratio, mobile/desktop ratio etc.)
It’s worth noting solo ads are not a magic pill to succeeding online. Building a list is step one and then you need to monetize your list effectively once you’ve built rapport with your audience.
3. Build a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel in layman’s terms is a sequence of pages built to get people to perform a desired action that should eventually lead to a sale/conversion. Unless you’re technically sound, building these pages can be a chore since you’ll need to build over 3 pages.
ClickFunnels is a decent funnel builder platform. It’s not only inexpensive, but the things you can do with them are limitless.
Apart from building funnels, you can also build and host websites with them, or run/manage webinars or sell anything online.
Achieving these tasks manually using HTML can be as tedious as it gets and if you don’t have prior designing experience, you’ll find yourself guessing.
To those who prefer to hand-code stuff manually, this stuff can work but making even the slightest of edits will take up time so it’s not recommended. Why not use a one-click software and save yourself some time?
Get a funnel built, and then connect your autoresponder account, and your funnel is ready to go.
4. Create a Lead Magnet
A lead magnet acts as a ‘magnet’ – it will get attention and people may enter their emails just to get the ‘free gift’. We all love gifts as they promote goodwill and if it’s something that offers value, people won’t hesitate in showing interest.
The gift is more of a bait that you’re using so people enter your funnel. It’s a win-win for everyone, you just got a subscriber who’s interested in something you’re offering and they got a free gift.
The gift can be as simple as a PDF that offers something interesting. Or it can be a WordPress plugin, training/course or a pre-recorded webinar. If you want to keep it simple, use a PDF as it will do the job.
Most people use a Private Label Rights (PLR) product and re-hash it. A PLR product is a product that contains generic information and you can acquire a license to sell/give away the product to anyone for a tiny fee (often as little as $5).
However, in an order to stand out, it’s best if you take some time and improve the product.
Instead of re-inventing the wheel, it’s best to start from a base. Take a product and add your own touch to it. You need to make sure it just doesn’t look like an afterthought and that some time went into creating it. It has to offer value to your subscribers.
If it lets you, you can try playing with the name, logo and maybe add some more content and make the product your own. Remember, those people aren’t just on your own email lists, since they’re interested in a topic, it’s likely they would be on multiple lists.
There are many websites out there that offer inexpensive PLR products. You can find everything – PDFs, videos and training courses to name a few (on any topic you can imagine of).
5. Create a Capture Page and Connect Your Autoresponder Account
You can build a squeeze page using a ClickFunnels landing page template. The process should be a breeze. Once you’re done with the edits, get it connected to your autoresponder account.
The most important thing is to catch the attention of the visitor and get them curious. You can try an A/B spilt test with different backgrounds and text to find to find the best converting capture page.
Aim for around 35% opt-in rate. So, for every 100 visitors, you’ll get roughly 35 subscribers.
Continuous testing is key, you need to continue to optimize your funnel. The more you work on it, more the numbers will improve.
Once you get the hang of it, you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. For funnels, you can try using terms like – fast, free and money. These are known to convert and should help improve your conversion rate.
Learning copywriting will take you far. You can also spy on your competitors by signing up for their newsletters. From them, you can also borrow an idea or two.
6. Build a Bridge page
The bridge page is a good place to promote an inexpensive offer upfront. You can, alternatively, give away your lead magnet here and let people know you’ll send them an email soon.
Some people prefer to showcase their product via the bridge page and some choose to record a video showing they’re a real person. You can do whatever works best for you depending on how you want to market your product.
You can also add testimonials and other social proof to build authority. You can also host a banner ad on this page and send people to the advertiser who had you post their banner(s).
The attention span of a visitor tends to be very short – often less than 5 seconds. Don’t waste time, and be spot on when it comes to the text and the images.
You want to have the maximum impact in the shortest possible time.
7. Determine Your Conversions
If you’re using a link tracking software like ClickMagick, you can find out your conversions – for every 100 visitors, how many people are subscribing to your list.
You definitely want to know your numbers if you’re using a paid traffic source for building an email list. If you overlook this, there’s a fair chance you’d blow money and not even know about it.
ClickMagick offers a tracking pixel that’s supposed to be added to your bridge page (also known as a thank you page).
This code should go directly in your page’s HTML:
<img src=”http://www.clkmg.com/api/a/pixel/?uid=****&att=1&ref=osa height=”1″ width=”1″ />
Adding the action tracking pixel is a one-time process. Once you’ve added that, it will track everything for you on autopilot.
8. Test Test Test!
If you didn’t realize it already, marketing is all about testing. You need to continue to tinker and experiment with things. This can help you improve your funnels, traffic sources and even your promo strategy.
Bear in mind, you’re never married to a product either. If you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing, it may be tempting to stick to a product, but you’ll never know what converts best if you only promote one product.
You want to maximize your per-click when you’re sending to offers as an affiliate. You may find something that works twice as well – you’ll thank yourself later!
9. Start Emailing Your List
We’re now building an email list. Why not start sending them emails and build a relationship?
You can opt to send automated follow-up emails. These get sent as soon as someone has joined your email list. Alternatively, send broadcasts, these are one-off emails that get sent to everyone who is in your email list (or in a particular segment).
If you have a follow-up sequence of 14 emails, try segmenting your list in such a way that your email broadcast is sent only to those who have received all your follow up emails. In other words, these people have been in your list for more than 14 days.
Types of emails you should send:
1. Generic emails
The goal of these emails is to produce as many clicks as possible. If you’re familiar with copywriting, you’ll know how this works.
With these emails, it’s more like a one size fits all thing. If you send emails about a business opportunity to people interested in hearing more about business opportunities, it will work very well.
2. Promotional emails
If interested in promoting an offer as an affiliate, you can try promotional emails. If you have borrowed an idea from some other marketer, use it as a model and don’t copy them.
If we all start sending the same emails over and over, it will confuse people and it will eventually hurt your email deliverability.
3. Value emails
These are the emails that you want to send to your list to build a strong relationship with your audience. The idea is to build authority and gain trust. If they don’t take you seriously, why will they even buy something off you or off your recommendations?
10. Sell Traffic as a Solo Ads Business
If you have followed everything step-by-step, you’re now ready to sell solo ads traffic. You have an email list of people interested in something and can help people with lead generation so it’s a good time to launch your business.
You can also generate free traffic and grow your email lists faster with SEO. Optimizing your website and other web properties of yours to get more traffic from the search engines is something that will serve you for a long time.
Your solo ad customers will also thank you for the exceptionally high traffic quality. You actually have traffic that converts and it isn’t just some junk traffic that’s acquired for cheap.
Here are a few more ways to generate quality traffic for your funnel:
1. Comment on forums
Find websites and forums similar to your niche because that’s where your targeted audience flocks. Join them, engage in meaningful conversations and get your funnel in your comment’s signature.
This will get you some free traffic for as long as you’re active in the community.
2. Buy Solo Ads
If you have a proper funnel ready to go, a solo ad campaign can bring in a flood of traffic. This traffic isn’t just inexpensive (at least compared to Google and Facebook ads) but also laser-targeted.
You can find some of the frequently asked questions about solo ads here.
3. YouTube
Aim to produce videos that offer value. Keep them short and to the point. Ranking YouTube videos is somewhat easier compared to websites as YouTube has a high domain authority.
If you’re comfortable in coming on camera, you should definitely give it a thought.
4. Slideshare
On Slideshare, you can upload your presentations. Create content that is sure to appeal to the masses and sneak in your funnel/landing page link where it’s appropriate.
Once uploaded, share it on various social media platforms to gain some exposure.
11. Time to Scale
Once you’ve build an email list of over 10,000 subscribers, you can scale your solo ads business to the next level.
If you already have access to some funds, you can try Google ads to find customers. Your target audience is people interested in affiliate marketing and MLM businesses.
They need your help with promoting their product(s) and you have an audience that’s primarily interested in business opportunity. You’re solving a problem and it’s essentially a win-win for everyone.
You’re getting regular sales as a solo ad provider, your customers are getting targeted prospects (and conversions/sales) and your subscribers are finding products that offer tremendous value.
Business works best when no one is losing.
12. Get a Mentor
As the quote says – “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
It’s best to find someone who has been at it for years and has results to back it up than try to do it all yourself. You can definitely do everything on your own without having a coach, but it will take a lot of resources and time.
Try to build a solo ads business on your own and solve the riddles on your own or learn from one of the best solo ad vendors in the space. What do you think is a better idea?
You will not only lose a lot of money testing to find out what works and what doesn’t. If you follow a proven blueprint, it will be like taking the shortest path to success.
Investing in yourself will surely give you a jump-start.