What's Your #1 Traffic Source? (here's mine...)

[Kim Roach]

Hey guys,

This year I've been staying laser-focused on the high-leverage
tasks that GROW my business. The 3 main things that grow your
business are increasing traffic, creating more products, and
increasing conversion. So today I thought I'd share my #1
traffic source.

* Solo Ads

This is one of the BIGGEST traffic sources in our business.
So many people who start a business online shy away from
actually spending any money on BUILDING their business.

Sure, they’ll pay thousands of dollars for training – but VERY few
will spend any money on traffic. Which is really sad because you
can buy a $50 solo ad and start generating subscribers and sales.

I do these every week. One of our solo ads that went out this week
cost $50, sent me 249 unique visitors and generated 134 subscribers.

That’s 20 cents per click and a little under 40 cents per lead. And the
ad was profitable within 48 hours. It doesn’t get much better than that

And that why I LOVE solo ads. Consistent, predictable traffic.
And that’s what your business should be – consistent and predictable.

You could literally use this ONE strategy alone to build your entire business.

So what's your favorite traffic source?

[WizIMS]

Hello Kim,

For me, it varies, it all depends on the website and my goals for the specific website. For example, on WizIMS.com (Now my #1 website), my #1 traffic source is word-of-mouth marketing, which is the best type

I've watched your video about predictions for 2012, and it's just incredible, it got me thinking about few serious stuff that I didn't even consider before.

Can you please add my Skype @ Wiz.IMS (I need to talk to you about something)

[WriterWahm]

I have been thinking about trying solo ads for some time; as a matter of fact I even did once but that didn't yield much. I wasn't sure if they really worked so I appreciate this post. Right now my greatest form of traffic is blog commenting. But I intend to scale up my business so I will need a lot more traffic than blog commenting can offer.

I know that where you place your solo Ads will depend on the niche you're in. But how does one find great places to place ads?

[JohnieT]

Newb Question: What's a solo ad?

[Nickolie0990]

My top five traffic sources are the follow:

1. My own email list (to me the BEST traffic source on Earth).
2. Integration Swaps
3. Solo Ads
4. Ad Swaps
5. Affiliates Traffic

There are a ton more, but those are my top five.

[Nickolie0990]

Originally Posted by JohnieT

Newb Question: What's a solo ad?

A solo ad is where you pay someone to send out an email that you've pre-written to their email subscribers.

Basically getting other email list owners to mail your stuff.

Mark

[high_plains_drifter]

so solo ads are just related to email marketing?

is buying a banner on a website a solo ad?

[carrot]

This is relevant to my interests!

Im a big SEO guy, have been for years.
Also handle PPC ads quite often, but never tried a solo ad.

Like others have said, where do you find good solo ad sellers?

[Kim Roach]

Originally Posted by high_plains_drifter

so solo ads are just related to email marketing?

is buying a banner on a website a solo ad?

No, a solo ad is an email that goes out to someone ELSE'S list of subscribers
on your behalf.

[Landoy]

Where do you buy solo ads?

[TBInternetMarketing]

Most of my traffic comes from SEO, but I'm looking into the paid thing in 2012. PPC and solo ads sound like a great way to generate targeted traffic.

[freaky316]

Search Engines are the best source for traffic in my case

[Rod Cortez]

So what's your favorite traffic source?

Paid advertising. It's fast. It's measurable. It's scalable. While I get traffic from a myriad of sources, in terms of pure efficiency and ROI, it's my favorite. And the good news is it's growing and has projected growth for years to come.

RoD

[myob]

Being a simple kind of guy, nearly all of my traffic just comes from the millions of people who read my articles.

[Kim Roach]

Originally Posted by Landoy

Where do you buy solo ads?

One good place to find solo ads is SoloAdDirectory.com. This is a site by Reed Floren and he posts reviews on a lot of the different solo ads that he's tried out himself.

- Kim

[nik0]

Thanks for explaining, I also thought a solo ad was a banner at someone's site.

I would like to ask you, do you think we can have success with solo ads when doing affiliate marketing or do we really need our own product to make profit with it?

In addition, the list on that website, is that all IM related subscribers?

Personally I'm thinking about offering a linkbuilding service that I also use for my own websites, do you think that would work by buying solo-ads?

[MrOfferz]

If anybody is looking for offers to test their lists on, lets talk.

[carrot]

Originally Posted by Kim Roach

One good place to find solo ads is SoloAdDirectory.com. This is a site by Reed Floren and he posts reviews on a lot of the different solo ads that he's tried out himself.

- Kim

Thanks, checking it out now

[GuerrillaIM]

Do they work outside of the "make money" niche?

[Kim Roach]

Yes, there are solo ads available in nearly every market. And even if you don't see them advertised publicly - contact the owner and work out a custom deal.

[Theeban]

My votes goes to traffic from our big G, I mean Google, then from social networks like twitter and facebook. I never tried solo ads types.

[DeskCoder]

Originally Posted by Nickolie0990

My top five traffic sources are the follow:

1. My own email list (to me the BEST traffic source on Earth).
2. Integration Swaps
3. Solo Ads
4. Ad Swaps
5. Affiliates Traffic

There are a ton more, but those are my top five.

What's an integration swap?


I have been getting some good traffic lately from viral YouTube videos.

[Arav]

Once I saw a post at Hubpages stated that He'd gained thousands of traffiq only be Bookmarking and re-bookmarking the post and earned handsome Adsense bucks.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by Kim Roach

Hey guys,

This year I've been staying laser-focused on the high-leverage
tasks that GROW my business. The 3 main things that grow your
business are increasing traffic, creating more products, and
increasing conversion. So today I thought I'd share my #1
traffic source.

* Solo Ads

This is one of the BIGGEST traffic sources in our business.
So many people who start a business online shy away from
actually spending any money on BUILDING their business.

Sure, they’ll pay thousands of dollars for training – but VERY few
will spend any money on traffic. Which is really sad because you
can buy a $50 solo ad and start generating subscribers and sales.

I do these every week. One of our solo ads that went out this week
cost $50, sent me 249 unique visitors and generated 134 subscribers.

That’s 20 cents per click and a little under 40 cents per lead. And the
ad was profitable within 48 hours. It doesn’t get much better than that

And that why I LOVE solo ads. Consistent, predictable traffic.
And that’s what your business should be – consistent and predictable.

You could literally use this ONE strategy alone to build your entire business.

So what's your favorite traffic source?

when you say subscribers, subscribers to what?
when you say profitable, how much revenue does 50 dollars ad typically generate

[solado]

I have been having some great results from Youtube, creating 10+ short 3 minute videos per week

[Zacharey]

Originally Posted by JohnieT

Newb Question: What's a solo ad?

A solo ad is a potentially high yielding marketing strategy. If done correctly amazing results are possible.

[sizzlemediauk]

Kim,

Thanks for the sharing! I really never tried this as mostly I used to do and get traffic from
Email Marketing, Social Medias and Search Engines. I am definitely going to try out solo ads, pretty excited and hoping for the best.

[comixdvd]

Kim which ad person did you go with for $50? Would love to try the same person since they seem reputable First time doing a solo ad so would like someone to follow
Oh and what niche was it? thanks

[Genycis]

My primary sources would have to be organic first via search engines, then through Twitter blasts I tweet to my 5500+ followers, and then email probably.

I couldn't try solo ads based on my niche (I've yet to even find or know where a solo ad blast would be related to hip hop artists). I think I MAY have only found one, but was skeptical of using it as the site had been in service for some years, and the cost of it was rather high to take that gamble and not make any sales off of it.

This is the only example of what I found that I believe resembles "solo ad" in the hip hop niche:

Email Marketing
We have very dedicated fans in our network therefore we have a very dedicated mailing list. We have our message board email list with over 80,000 members along with our other email list with over 400,000 email addresses in it. Our email marketing campaigns are very effective.

Researchers estimate that US firms alone spent $400 million on email marketing in 2006.

Email marketing (on the Internet) is popular with companies because:

• The advantage of a mailing list is clearly the ability to distribute information to a wide range of specific, potential customers at a relatively low cost.
• Compared to other media investments such as direct mail or printed newsletters, it is less expensive.
• An exact Return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket") and has proven to be high when done properly. Email marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.
• It is instant, as opposed to a mailed advertisement, an email arrives in a few seconds or minutes.
• It lets the advertiser "push" the message to its audience, as opposed to a website that waits for customers to come in.
• It is easy to track. An advertiser can track users via web bugs, bounce messages, un-subscribes, read-receipts, click-throughs, etc. These can be used to measure open rates, positive or negative responses, correlate sales with marketing.
• Advertisers can generate repeat business affordably and automatically
• Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of email subscribers who have opted in (consented) to receive email communications on subjects of interest to them
• Over half of Internet users check or send email on a typical day.
• Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger other messages to be automatically delivered.
• Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger other events such as updating the profile of the recipient to indicate a specific interest category.

The cost for this: $500

Not sure of the value I'd receive given that this site has been active since 2007, and a large portion of their email base probably doesn't really check their emails any further. So it's really hard to gauge how effective this would be.

The site is a PR4 with an Alexa rating of under 83,000. Looking the site up in Compete, it states that in June 2011, it had 233k Uniques, but that has since declined in Dec 2011 to 137k Uniques. Checking it in Quantcast, the numbers are a lot worse (do these sites really even work for real? Always a major difference in them versus Google Analytics versus AWStats, etc.). If I spent $500 on this email blast, I'd have to sell at least 36 instrumentals to break even with it.

Curious as to your thoughts on this and if it would be a wise investment? Hard to find certain things such as Solo Ads or Ad Swaps, etc. that are typically easier to find in other niches like weight loss, money making, self-help, etc.

[narindersingh]

Social networking websites are my favorite source for traffic.