If you have spent time, money and effort developing a list of devoted subscribers, you deserve to be compensated for all that hard work. One way to profit from your list is to sell it to other online marketers by becoming a solo ad provider.
Size Matters
The two most important things to consider when offering to sell solo ads is the size of your list and the conversion rate.
For example, if you sell a solo ad list of 1,000 subscribers and your conversion rate is 2%, the buyer is going to make 20 sales from that solo ad purchase. But if you sell them a list with10,000 subscribers and your conversion rate is only 1%, you are going to make 100 sales.
Similarly, if your product niche is weight loss and your solo ad customers are into horseracing, they aren’t going to make as many sales as they would if they were to buy a solo ad from somebody whose subscribers are into health and fitness.
Make It Worth Their While
Before you sell any solo ad, make sure your list is large enough so that your buyers are going to achieve maximum exposure for their investment and that your subscribers are already highly targeted toward being predisposed to purchase products within your niche.
As a solo ad seller, it’s best to be upfront about what you are selling.
Remember: The solo ad market is still pretty young, so there is a lot of room for negotiation. For example, you can even ask for a guarantee that you will make back what you are investing from their list. The worst thing they can say is no.
Identifying Prospective Buyers
Finding the best people to work with for selling solo ads or for ad swaps depends on two major factors:
- How comfortable you are working with them
- How much potential traffic you can bring them and — in the case of ad swaps — they can bring you.
Most of the solo ad customers you get are going to come from referrals from other solo ad providers. That’s why it is so important to constantly be networking with other affiliate product marketers: You always want to keep these doorways of communication open.
You aren’t really competing directly for the same pool of customers … unlike most brick and mortar businesses … so there really is no reason not to maintain friendly and cooperative relations with others.
Enhancing Your Reputation
When people buy solo ads from you — especially if they don’t know you — they probably are only going to buy small lists from your first to see how they work out.
That’s fine. That gives you an opportunity to prove yourself to your solo ad customer. Once you do, you can make ever increasing sales to them.
Sell Your Services
Be prepared to answer your customers’ questions. Be prepared to answer such questions as:
- How big is your list?
- Where do you get most of your traffic? Ad swaps? Organic search rankings?
- How many clicks do you send on average per mailing?
- Where do the clicks come from? Social media?
- Do you have sub specialities or segments?
- How fresh are the leads? How many new leads do you bring on a regular basis?
- What is the cost?
- Feedback: Can you provide testimonials from other partners done solo ads for?
You also want to encourage your buyers to subscribe to your list so they can see the types of things you are sending out.
Building your list then selling it as solo ads is a great secondary income to your passive affiliate marketing streams and one you can’t afford to ignore.