Easy Solo Ads – Good or Bad?

If you’re like me and every other online marketer traffic to your website is job 1. No traffic no business. More traffic more business.

Simply math really not hard to figure out. So when it comes to generating traffic to a website how well does solo ad advertising work using a done for you service like easy solo ads for generating traffic?

Let’s find out shall we?​

Now I’m old school when it comes to doing solo ads. And this means I research the ezines I want to advertise in prior to spending a dime. But what about done for you services? How well do they work?

Done For You Services

Now I have never used a done for you solo ad service, until now. I’ve seen lots of companies advertising great results using their services. So I figured the best way to see if these services work is to give one a try.

Now 1 company owns 3 different done for you solo ad services.​ EasySoloAds.com, 10DollarSoloAds.com and Advertyze.com.

I’m going to try all 3 companies, and easy solo ads is first one I’m trying. In fact my ad campaign is going to start today, August 14th. So I’ll update this post in a week’s time to let you know how things are going. But I wanted to share with you what I’m doing and how walk you through this process with this compnay right from the get go.

Oh I guess I should have asked you. Do you know what solo ads are and where to use them? Well I did do a post all about solo ads and you can read that post here.

But to save you some time. Solo ads are ads that are sent out to a subscriber list of an ezine (newsletter). And unlike ads placed within the ezine a solo ad is sent out alone to the ezine owner’s subscribers.

Think of a solo ad like a small sales letter. A solo ad can be as long as 700 words. But you’ll find most ads are typically are under 300 words.

Easy Solo Ads

On the easy solo ad website they say:

“We obtain lists of highly qualified prospects in a variety of industries. We then match your website/product with a list of prospects that would be interested in learning more about you or your product. The result is a targeted ad that sends new qualified prospects to your website every week.”

Sounds pretty good so far but we’ll see; only time will tell.

They also tell you which offers (niches) convert best with solo ads.

• Work from home offers
• MLM programs
• Internet marketing products
• Video marketing programs
• Webinar software
• Web design services
• Search engine optimization services
• Binary options
• Forex
• Dating
• Weight loss
• And anything in the making money from home niche

So since my offer is the work from home niche this in theory should work well. And I’m of course promoting Wealthy Affiliate.

Now I’m going to walk through the complete process and show you the back office area. But I want to quickly mention the Targeting Categories and Geo Targeting features.​

Ok my offer is in the work from home niche and within the back office I can choose/change the Targeting Categories. They have over 80 categories to choose from. So I can not only have my offer sent to people looking to work from home I can target other categories.

And as you can see I’ve targeted not only work from home, but I’ve targeted WHAM (work at home moms) and Home Business. Now your campaign will be split evenly between all your chosen targets.

So for example if I just chose work from home, my campaign will 100% go to that category. And since I have 3 categories picked. My campaign will be divided equally between the 3 categories (33%)

So if you picked 10 categories 10% of your campaign would be sent to each category. So keep that in mind.

I can also pick the countries I want my campaign sent to. This is the Geo Targeting feature. So I can pick tier 1 countries or be more specific. And tier 1 countries would be countries such as U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand. As you can see I choose USA, UK and Canada.

​Ok Let’s Set Up My Campaign

Here’s a snapshot of the dashboard. As you can see it’s pretty straight forward.

Now to start you have a few options for submitting your ad. First you can submit an ad you’ve already created and this is what I did.

And as you can see this is just like any other word editor with all the features you would use in the back dashboard of your wordpress website.

Now if you don’t consider yourself an ad writer you can have them write your ad for you.

Here’s where I was not that impressed. I asked for them to write an ad for me because I wanted to see what you got for free. And to be honest it was not that great. In my case I found the ad to vague and salesy, and that’s not me. Plus it really didn’t read properly.

This also got me to thinking these are not super star writers. But hey it’s included in the service so you work with what they have.

Here’s the ad they wrote for me.

I could have asked for a re-write but I didn’t and maybe I should have. But the first shot out of the gate really did not inspire much confidence that the re-write would be better. But that’s me and I’ve been writing ad copy for a while now, so I am pretty picky.

Set It And Forget It – Sort Of

Now that I’ve created my ad and submitted it there’s nothing more for me to do. Once the campaign starts I will be given a tracking link.

They use a third party tracking service so I can see my stats in real time. I can also use my own tracking program if I want too​. I’m using their third party service for now.​

Pricing

So you have 3 different campaign options​. Considering what they say they offer these are pretty reasonable prices.

1) Bronze Campaign – $17 per month

This is the campaign option I went with for my test of their service. ​And if this service pans out, then I will try the other campaign levels.

• Your Ad Sent To 500 New Prospects Every Week
• 2000 Unique Prospects Reached Per Month
• Professional Ad Writing Included
• Targeting Categories
• Campaign Geotargeting
• Dedicated Customer Support

2) Silver Campaign – $47 per month

• Your Ad Sent To 1500 New Prospects Every Week
• 6000 Unique Prospects Reached Per Month
• Professional Ad Writing Included
• Targeting Categories
• Campaign Geotargeting
• Dedicated Customer Support

3) Gold Campaign – $97 per month

• Your Ad Sent To 4500 New Prospects Every Week
• 16,000 Unique Prospects Reached Per Month
• Professional Ad Writing Included
• Targeting Categories
• Campaign Geotargeting
• Dedicated Customer Support
• Support​

I have talked to support, and I have to say they are quick to reply (even on Saturday) and they have answered all my questions to date.​ And for me that is a real plus. There are a ton of companies online that want your business. And once they get it often times the support is just not there.

The One Thing I Don’t Like

Ok the one thing I don’t like about a solo ad done for you service is I have no idea which ezines or mailing lists my campaign is being sent to and whom I will be associated with because of where my ad is sent. So I’m not in total control of my advertising.

So I am working on faith. Plus the done for you solo ad ​niche is chalked full of scam companies. Now I’m not saying that about easy solo ads. But it’s still a fact, there are plenty of shit companies promising the moon.

Keep This In Mind

Let’s say these ezines (lists) are top notch and the targeting is spot on. I say that because I cannot see where my ad is being placed. Anyway, the success of solo advertising comes down to your ad.

So don’t be surprised if things don’t go as planned right out of the gate. You will have to change your ad and keep testing it. And this system does make testing easy.

I suggest running your ad for a week and see how it does. That’s what I’m going to do.

After that first week check the results. Now make a change and run it again. And your changes could be the title, the call to action, the P.S. or some of the body copy.​

But no matter what change it is make sure to just change 1 thing at a time. If change more than 1 thing you won’t know what change made things better or worse.

If it’s worse go back to the way it was and make a new change. If it was better, keep what you change but now change something else.

Keep doing this to get the highest click through rate you can. And remember this one thing about your ad:

All your ad is meant to do is get the click, that’s it!! ​

Don’t try and do any selling in your ad. Once people are at your sales page or landing page, that’s when you move to the next conversion step.​ Turning people into buyers.

Ok that’s it. ​At this point all I can do is see how things turn out.​ I’ll update this post a week from now and let you know how things are going.

One Week Update

It’s been 7 days since I started with easy solo ads. Below is a screenshot of the tracking of my ad.​

As you can see my click through rate is as low as 4% and as high as 26%. Now there are many factors for this. The obvious are the title and the ad copy. But some of the information I need to glean better information is not available to me.​

And that is:

** I have no idea how many emails have been sent out. But they do tell you that before hand.

** I have no idea what ezines my ad is going into. Even though they give you broad targeting choices my targeting is unknown to me. My targeting choices are, WAHM (work at home mom), Home Business and Work From Home.

I say broad because within these targeting choices the ezines may not be my target audience. For example Work At Home – these could include network marketing ezines which is not my target audience.

My goal for this advertising is to build my mailing list. People are clicking through, 300 people to date. With a total of 10 opt ins to date. This is not very encouraging and I say not very encouraging because my optin landing page converts just over 16%.

And with this advertising my optin conversion rate is only 3.33%. Well below my average.​ And out of these optins no one has converted. Which is not on point as my funnel converts at just over 12%. So I should have had at least 1 conversion.

Now keep in mind this is only after 1 week, so I’m just at the start of things. I will run things for 1 more week and see what happens. But at this moment I have to contribute the poor results to the targeting of my ad.

And I can say that the targeting is poor because I have run this exact ad in ezines I have personally researched and my optin conversions within those ezines have been in-line with my optin percentages.

So if we compare the percentages with other ezines I have researched and easy solo ads. I should have 48 opt ins not 10 . And 7 conversions not 0.

I’ll update you in another week.

Second Week Update

Ok this is my second week using easy solo ads. And well things aren’t getting any better. I have to say I’m not to suprised.

When testing an ad you only make one change and for this second week ad test I changed the headline. The headline is usally the best place to start.

According to the tracking I have had a total of 388 clicks for this week. A little more then last week. And just like last week I got 10 opt ins and 0 conversions.

My clickthru rate is a crazy low of 0.77% to a high of 33.25%. Of course a new headline will get more response at the begining when sent out to the ezines again.

Now remember this is an ad that I’ve used already with this alternate headline within targeted ezines I’ve researched. So I know the numbers I should be seeing.

It’s not looking good for easy solo ads. So I’m at a 2 week with a total of 805 clicks, 20 opt ins and 0 conversions. And remember this is a tested landing page converting over 16% for the optin and over 12% for the conversion.

Ok I’m going into week 3. This time I have a completly new ad. Again this ad is tested and proven. So let’s see what happens this time. I have to say I’m not expecting much to change. I’ll update you next week.

Third Week Update

Alright this is my third week update using easy solo ads and I have to say things have not gotten any better in fact they have gotten worse.

This week I tried a new tested and proven ad that I have used in ezines that I have researched. And like something new the first day was good in regards to clicks but as you can see from the graph things got a lot worse.

With a total of 224 clicks and a clickthru rate ranging from a first day 55.36% to as low as 3.13%. Oh and the math on this is easy. Zero conversions.

So at this point I’m going to calling it a day. This ad will run until Sept 7th, that’s when things stop. I’ve already canceled my subscription with easy solo ads. And from the numbers I bet you can see why.

I have never been a fan of done for you services. And for me these numbers show why. But it’s not just with this service it’s with all the other done for you services I’ve tried. Many don’t live up to the hype.

But I get why people use them. Why do something when you can hire someone to do it for you. Well that does work in some cases but not all cases. And fro me solo advertising is one of those cases that it’s something you need to invest the time in and do yourself.

So this has been my experience maybe yours may be different. But from these results using tested and proved solo ads I’ve used in the past I won’t be using any done for you solo advertising services in the future

I hope you found this helpful – feel free to share this post with your audience, and if you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

And as always anytime you need a hand you can Email Me or even better you can Chat Live one -on-one with me inside wealthy affiliate.

I believe in you
Leo