how hard is it to break into IM niche?

Come out with something unique and most important......working !

Just wonder, you know IM niche is wide, then what niche (specific) you are into?
Is it just SEO?
If you are thinking about SEO, so many "gurus" have talking about it forever,
to be unique, maybe you can come out with the solution on how to get #1 spot for Bing, for example.

Yes it's a good niche ... competitive but good.

Ask anyone about the hottest niches and they'll probably call come back and say - make money online, health and relationships.

Good luck.

are there any downside to building a list solely from solo ads? I personally love IM so this is one niche I would love to break into.

no one has done it this way specifically?

The only problem with solo ads is that you'll build a list from other marketers' lists. Your messages might get a bit lost in the mix. I mean, yes, solo ads can add subscribers pretty fast, if you choose well. But the make-up of your list will include some people who get buried by marketing emails.

So you might lose out on quality to get more quantity.

I think if I had $3K to spend, I'd put a considerable amount of it into having good articles written. I'd submit them to EZA (primarily) for the traffic to my squeeze page. But you need to have them written in a certain way to maximize the click-through rate and to pre-sell your readers. That way, you get more traffic AND it's hungry traffic. That = a higher opt-in conversion rate and really good, targeted, hungry list members.

John

If you are going to spend your budget on ads to get leads, why not contact some of these "gurus" and see if you can broker a deal with them to pay them to send emails (composed by you of course) out to their list, sending them a link to your own opt-in list. Would be highly targeted. Just a suggestion.

Zeus66 is bang on the money. Targeted and pre-qualified traffic on your list from articles beats solo ad subscribers any day of the week.

Regards

Nigel

Well, I think when you do it in this way, you don't deal with having to pay for clicks from people that have no interest in your offers. Some people (fellow IMers), a lot in fact, click ads just to check out your site design and what kind of site you are developing. That is, in my opinion, a waste of money. People that are already on lists are proven to be susceptible to a good pitch and, if your email is good enough, will not hesitate to opt in to your newsletter or subscriptions.

The IM "market" is enormous... lots of niches inside, and the great part is that many of those niches are interested in the others (for example, affiliate marketers can be sold on getting into product creation with a good presell campaign... or could be pushed into CPA, list building, etc.)

Definitely a list building niche and I like your approach so far. The only things I'd tweak is:

A) Don't blow that 3K all at once (though I'm sure you wouldn't)... put a couple hundred leads into the funnel... wait to see what pops out a week later (see if that funnel is at least breaking even for you, or close enough where some tweaking could make it profitable.)

B) Write out at least a couple weeks worth of emails, relationship building material, and promotions. Paid traffic can be expensive in IM, so depending on your CPC it might take two weeks or more to get a break even campaign. Once you have that going, you got a ton of leads man and it's time to throw in a little launchy of your own for a big payoff .

Really map out your email campaign and, if you can, have a 1 week, 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, etc. plan for your list before you start paying for leads. It will most likely change as time goes on, but having that battle plan will make all the difference for you.

First of all, love the username!

If you've made money online and are willing to teach people how you've done it, it's not too tough to break in. The problem is that most people selling "make money" products haven't done much money-making...and if they have, it's usually because of those products.