Traffic Buyers Guide

Guide

Solo ads: what you are actually buying

You are renting someone else's attention, once, in a single email.

A solo ad is one email, sent to someone else's list, carrying only your offer. You do not get the list. You do not get the addresses. You get the clicks that email produces, and you pay per click at a price the seller sets.

The transaction, step by step

  1. You pick a seller and buy a number of clicks, usually in a lot rather than by contract.
  2. You give them the link you want traffic sent to. Most sellers will also write the email, or work from copy you supply.
  3. They send. Clicks arrive at your page over the following hours or days.
  4. The order closes when the count is delivered.

Note what is missing from that list: nothing anywhere says the clicks were people, or that the people were interested. That is the gap the rest of this section is about.

What "click" means here, and what it does not

A delivered click means a request reached your page. It does not mean a human read the email, and it does not mean the person wanted what you sell. Two orders of the same size from two sellers can differ by an order of magnitude in what they produce afterwards, at similar prices.

Measure on your side, always

Put your own counter on the landing page before the first order. Opt-in rate is the first number worth having. Sales come later and in smaller numbers, so a seller who produced no opt-ins at all has already told you enough.

Where the money goes wrong

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