Solo ads and placing banners inside email newsletters (3)
Is anyone doing solo ads/email buys and also anyone tried putting their banners inside targeted email newsletters?
Hey ericny,
My 2 cents for what it's worth ...
I used to do email marketing and my personal experience of solo's in the early days of my emailing career was awful and I'd advise people to stay well clear of it. You have to realize that if someone has a huge list of subscribers and the only way they can monetize a large section their list is to sell solos, then that's a really bad sign. Subscribers on solo lists are usually freebie seekers who happily spend all day downloading free PDF's and free content. They're not usually buyers, or it would probably be more correct to say that only a tiny fraction could be. If an email list owner has genuine proven buyers on their lists, you can bet your bottom dollar that these people are partitioned off into separate lists well away from the solo lists and get sent offers instead.
Why ? Because the value of a proven buyer is far greater than the list owner can ever get from selling them off in a solo. Most list builders have email sequences that include the odd CTA for an offer, and automatically move the buyers off their main list into a known buyers list. But if a new subscriber gets to the end of the sequence and hasn't bought anything, they get sent off into "solo land" to be sold off to anyone and everyone willing to pay. It's the equivalent of crap traffic from traffic networks that nobody wants. Freebie seekers are no good to them but it doesn't mean they delete them off their lists. They're just monetized in another way.
So do solos never convert ? Yes then can convert into profit, but I've only seen very skilled and experienced email marketers manage that. For the average Joe you'd likely be throwing money down the toilet.
As an example, once I heard a Lady complaining that she'd spent over $8000 on solos and made no more than $50 per month (often less) with a pretty big list of many thousands built purely from solos. On the other hand, the first info product I ever released only sold around 160 copies, which isn't much I know. I caught all the buyers on my list and sent them informative mails for a week or two before I started selling. I build trust. They knew who I was and had read my info product that was pretty good (even if I say so myself). I had proven buyers who knew me, I sent them good info, and in my first and second month I earned about $800 per month off of just 160 subscribers. Compare that to the lady above who had over 10,000 subs that cost her more than $8000 ! And that's usually how it goes I'm afraid. It is a quick and dirty way to build a list but rarely proves profitable unless you want to sell solos yourself. I sometimes think most people who buy solos only do it because they sell solos themselves and want to top-up or refresh their lists.
So.Your average solo subscriber is usually on more crappy lists than you can imagine, and they're bombarded with multiple new freebies each and every week when the solo blasts go out. So when you come along, what chance do you think you have of suddenly turning them into a paying customer ? As I said, I've only seen highly skilled email marketers manage it to the point of making very good profits. It requires skill and know-how in essentially converting stone cold traffic with no initial buying intent, who also haven't got a clue who you are or why they should listen to you above the other 10,000 lists they're on.
You're far better off using just about any other form of traffic to your squeeze page than solos or paid "blasts" from online newsletters.
Hope that helps. Sorry I rambled on a bit 
Also sorry that I didn't actually answer your question. I guess I feel strongly against people buying solos.
Thank you for detail reply.
What if they are willing to mail solo ads on revenue sharing basis?
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