Solo Ad Buying Tips

Welcome to The Solo Ads Directory. This site aims to be the #1 Internet resource for information about lucrative opportunities to make money advertising products and services through buying solo ads in other peoples' mailing lists.

I'm pretty new to the whole solo ads thing, so as I discover more about the industry I'll post any tips I have on this page.

Remember, Be Careful... And Don't End Up Like This Guy...

Animation of office worker smashing up his computer and rage quitting the office

Solo Ad Buying - Security and Fraud

First of all, if you're buying solo ads then make sure you use a legitimate seller. We cannot guarantee any of the sellers listed in our directory. However you can use the information provided on the site to help you make an informed choice about using a particular seller. Most of our listings show when the seller's website domain was first registered. This is not foolproof, but it's generally an indicator of how long the vendor has been around online. For example renowned solo ads seller Igor Kheifets's site igorsoloads.com was registered way back in 2013 (the same year I started findaforum.net).

When placing your solo ad order, it may be generally better to start with a lower sum of money, say $100 instead of $1000.

When paying for your order, always use the seller's contact links on their official website.

When you come to sending money to the vendor, PayPal is generally safer than using other payment methods. Be wary of using cryptocurrencies, especially is that is the only method of payment the vendor accepts. Also be a little wary of anyone who doesn't offer PayPal, or a legitimate payment processor such as Stripe.

If you must pay by credit card then it's generally safer to use a credit card rather than a debit card. However be extremely wary of setting up a recurring payment using a credit card since these can be difficult to cancel.

Where to Buy Solo Ads

You can buy solo ads from these sources:

  • Specialist online solo ad marketplaces like Udimi.
  • General online marketplaces like Fiverr.
  • Direct from specialist solo ad vendors (i.e. the vendors listed in our directory).
  • Direct from website and forum owners with big lists in specialist niches.

Let's look at each of these in turn...

First of all Udimi is highly recommended as it's a specialist marketplace for solo ads and has sophisticated anti-fraud mechanisms in place. There's also a great feedback system so you can see which vendors are worth bothering with. The downside to Udimi is that their vendors are essentially only interested in a narrow range of niches, namely: making money online, online business, health, weight loss, cryptocurrencies and multi-level marketing (MLM).

Next let's look at Fiverr. This marketplace is full of sellers promising to send solo ad clicks your way. However, Sam the Man from FiveStarFunnel has this to say about Fiverr's solo ads:

Let’s start off with Fiverr… DO NOT BUY SOLO ADS FROM Fiverr, they are majority fake bots and/or traffic from Asia.

By all means check out Fiverr, but if you're expecting 100 quality clicks for $5, then be prepared to be disappointed.

Another great source of solo ads is to work directly with the solo ads vendors listed in The Solo Ads Directory. While many of them have listings in Udimi, they may well be cheaper when you buy from them directly. Use the data on our site to help find the best solo ad vendor for you. For example, the listings on this site show how long the seller's website has been registered for.

Finally, as with Udimi, one of the drawbacks of The Solo Ads Directory (and specialist solo ad vendors in general) is that they tend to work in a narrow range of niches. Typically these are primarily related to making money online and business opportunities. Even major niches like health and dieting are poorly served with solo ads vendors. So where else can you buy solo ads in less well served niches?

A really great potential source of solo ads is to find a website or internet forum owner who has a large mailing list. For example food blog lists can be great places to run health, lifestyle or dieting offers. These opportunities may be more difficult to find. However, the upside is they're likely to offer much lower priced ad spots than from solo ad vendors. The other good thing is that it's relatively quick to email a load of blog owners and see if they will run an offer for you - bloggers will always tend to respond to you quickly if you wave money in their faces!

To find blogs who might want to run your offer in a particular niche you can use the search tools on our sister site, the blog directory FindABlog.

Another great source of potential traffic is to find discussion boards that have lists. We have a site for these too - FindAForum. Incidentally, if you want to diversify away from email list advertising, niche forums are often fantastic places to advertise on. My top tip is to see if you can negotiate to place ads within the text of the forum's discussions themselves. These links can convert like crazy because visitors who read text will be super hot prospects, and conversions are much higher than those that come from banner ad clicks.

Finally I'll add that if you want to buy traffic from various other sources, then it's probably best to run a few offers on Udimi first. Once your sales funnel is perfected you can then try buying traffic from other sources.

Miscellaneous Tips

A couple of very valuable tips I've found from ZamuraiBlogger:

ALWAYS check your squeeze page to make sure it’s working... I recently lost $50 and 100 clicks... because I did not check to make sure my squeeze page was working.

So BEFORE you run your solo ad offer, make sure your funnel's website is actually working. I've had a lot of web hosting issues over the years and I'll give you one example of something that can go wrong: SSL certificates can expire. This is something you DEFINITELY want to check for if you're using free SSL security certificates from Let's Encrypt. These certificates are generally only valid for 3 months, so there are potentially 4 times a year when something can go horribly wrong with your website!

Another tip he offers:

ALWAYS start small and work your way up. DO NOT buy the vendors biggest package if you have not first tested their traffic with a smaller buy.

So if you're interested in buying some solo ads from a particular source then start off maybe spending $100, and once you've seen some good results, maybe scale up to $250, then $1000+ once you know you'll make a good potential return on your investment.