Terminology Explanation

Not sure about anywhere else but swiping is rather like pinching, or stealing successfully performing content, ads, sales letters etc to give them ideas. Other less scrupulous marketers simply use it as there own. It's basically swiping other peoples ideas to get ideas of your own, or the idea of how to right a good sales letter, advert etc.

Solo ads are when you find someone in your niche with a nice, preferably large and targeted list. You then pay them to send your email to their list.

I'm assuming you've been told to "swipe" some good solo ads?

To say swiping is stealing depends on the usage of the swiped material. You might "swipe" material to study it, see how it works and utilize a similar process in your own work.

Sometimes people sell their own material as "swipe files," thus allowing the purchaser to use it how they see fit.

There are solo ads and then there are solo ads that have been bastarrdized by the MMO crowd. Real solos go something like this. Someone has a newsletter or ezine (same thing, actually) in a particular market. They have a healthy sized list they mail to regularly. They might offer a top level ad, (position in the publication) a mid level ad and an ad placed near the bottom of their publication.

Obviously, the top ad will get more views and consequently, it will cost more. The ezine owner will sometimes offer an advertiser a solo. This is a single ad within the publication. Then there's a solo that is sent to his/her list with no content other than the ad itself. There are no guaranteed clicks. There are no swipes. There is no "done for you" magic. The advertiser is responsible for writing everything. And there are no guarantees by the seller. The results you get are based on the relevancy of the ad YOU write.

Then there's the MMO/IM solo ad circus. You pay to have an ad (only an ad, no content other than the ad) sent to a list. You are guaranteed a certain number of clicks. In this case "swipes" are often provided by the list owner, supposedly because he/she knows what his list will go for.

MMO/IM solos are sometimes, if not often, fraudulent in that a list owner has plenty of ways to "manufacture" results. They do this with software along with networks of other solo ad hustlers with proxies and multiple email accounts, resulting in the sucker, er... buyer of the ad getting the promised clicks, signups and occasionally a "sale." When a crooked solo ad seller is taking in so much money, they can certainly spring for a purchase every so often to keep the clientele happy.

Hope this helps.

Don't worry about it Frank. The WF has a long history of creating Monsters. I was in the same boat as you when I got here - it was my first week or two online at all that I fell into this place. I had to figure it out for awhile before I was able to make my first post.

One thing I've seen over the years is that people here will bend over backward to help out people that are well grounded in reality and are able to talk intelligently about varied subjects even if they know nothing of the online world yet. There are millions of bits of information that have nothing to do with IM that people need to run their businesses or just are good to know to make life easier or to make good decisions. If you are helpful in your own way - or even are good for a well-needed grin sometimes, you provide your own value to this community.

Never feel bad for not knowing something to do with this particular game. I've been here almost a decade now and there's still a major amount of things I am clueless about. I do my own thing and contribute as I can or want to. That's why it's called a "community".

In the case of "swiping" context is everything. A swipe file is a collection of headlines, bullet points, sales letters and other copywriting content that a copywriter saves to use for inspiration and idea generation for writing his/her own sales copy. It's a long-accepted practice as long as you aren't plagiarizing the content, but instead using it as mentioned, for inspiration and to generate your own ideas.