From 0 to 1000 Subscribers

Thanks for the warm welcome back Jason.

I had been, you are right. Initially I had been working with a business partner offering SEO services. Eventually we went our separate ways, and I continued solo. I ended up taking a job abroad and haven't looked at SEO for a number of years now. So while I have moved away from the UK, I haven't moved to the US.

Good spot on the pricing model being in USD though. The thinking behind that was that I think my target audience will be predominantly from the US, and a lot of International audiences feel comfortable spending in USD (and I hope my initial tests prove that to be true).

One is dragging ones feet (j/k) nice one keep it up

Jason

Hi EG,
(1.) I think you did not search well enough to choose the best of the solo ad vendors. $3 per click is way too expensive at this stage of your testing. I have lists of vendors who deliver good results for $0.4 per click and their opt-in rate is 80-95%. They even allow you to test with 200 clicks. Just PM me and I will send you the list.
(2.) OR: Could it be that you targeted the wrong category; might it be that that particular solo ad vendor doesn't have enough subscribers in the niche you are promoting?
(3.) Another concern of mine is your membership site's pricing. I think many people will not be enthusiastic in giving such amount unless you deliver high-end products and training on the site.
(4) Then coaching- One-hour coaching for $97! Well, I cannot judge as some 10 minutes coaching can be better than 6 months, so I withdraw my comment. When you contact the solo ad vendors, be lynx-eyed focus on your target audience.

Thanks for the updates and looking forward to reading and learning more from you.

You might also look at Siteground for cheap hosting and free SSL.

I paid for a year upfront and saved a small fortune over my previous supplier.

Cheers.

One you get a lead are redirecting them straight to the free gift or are you promoting a one time offer?

Hi Endgame, am really appreciating your posts - like many on this thread, I'm working to build my own list from zero. I'm curious: why did you decide to work with solo ads vs say something like Facebook ads ? is there an advantage with what you are doing? (Curious about that...I've only been using FB and have built my list up to 68 so far - just about 2 months in, and have spent about 60 bucks.) I've found something odd though...I've been scraping off inactive subscribers as I go along - if I hadn't, my list would have been over 100. I use a 5 week inactivity filter to clean my list. I mention this because a few weeks ago I heard an interview about how Twitter ads often deliver bots to those who pay for ads - was wondering if I've been somehow getting bots on my list. (Yes..have double optin....) Thanks for posting about your journey! I appreciate your transparency.

Hello,

As I mentioned in my previous update, no follow-up in place. And you're absolutely right, that is something I need to remedy, and that's exactly what my day has been focused on.

Today's activity

• Some back-and-forth with the affiliate management team of a product I want to promote.
• Created a high-level content plan for approximately 15 emails.
• Written 5 emails and loaded them into autoresponder (total of 6 emails in follow-up).
• Edited a couple of pages on site (including setting up a survey).
• Monetized all emails with affiliate links.

Next Steps

• Continue writing emails until 14 emails are in follow-up sequence.
• Improve monetization of thank-you page.
• Create a front-end product to sell early in my funnel.

My funnel is currently monetized and promoting quite an expensive product. This is less than ideal and is probably only going to increase the amount of time it takes for me to recoup my advertising investment.

So I need to create a lower-priced front-end offer. The problem here is the investment of time/money that might take. I am considering buying some PLR and editing (just for the sake of speed and momentum). I will then need to setup payment processors and delivery etc.

I don't have a bottomless put of money, so monetization needs to be at the forefront of my mind now. I am probably going to hold off from purchasing more clicks until that aspect of the funnel is significantly improved. I'll compensate for this delay by buying higher volumes of clicks in my next solo ad campaign.

On a personal note, this project/path has been one of ups and downs. I am really conscious there may be a couple of people following this who are a little newer to online marketing, and might be considering doing this challenge. I want to be upfront and say this is tough, and I had perhaps underestimated the time commitment and all of the different things I would have to deal with. I had hoped to convey all the challenges accurately in this thread, but I am finding it tough to put into words how draining it as at times.

Although the model is quite simple, if you don't outsource any tasks, you end up wearing quite a few hats:

• Content creator (for lead magnets and products)
• Copywriter
• Technical support (setting up website)
• Web designer (tweaking for conversions)
• Traffic expert (driving traffic)
• Analyst (tracking clicks, open rates, subscriptions)
• Book keeper (watch the money being spent)
• Negotiator (I have felt like this when dealing with a particular vendor I want to promote for)

Speaking of book keeping, my spend so far has been okay, but I have been on a two week free trial for Clickfunnels and Aweber. They come to an end soon, so my spend will almost double in the space of a day (with no return as of yet).


On the upside, when you are sat having lunch and you see almost 50 new subscriber notifications come in from Aweber because a solo ad is live, it's a great buzz.

It's that first sale. That's what I am hunting down now.

Hi, What's an OTO ? :::

Good grief. Great to see this thread generate so much discussion. Sincere apologies in advance if I miss anyone/don't reply to you all...I'll do my best.

Hi agmccall, I have about 6 emails in the follow-up sequence at the time of writing. I intend to add more by this weekend.

Hello leighleslie,

Thanks for your kind words, and great question. I had a couple of technical issues, that mostly stemmed from me not setting up an email account properly, or not properly setting up the Cname records for my domain.

I won't go into specifics about how I fixed these issues, but I can summarize the approach I use to fix any issue I run into:

• I Google the issue.
• If it calls for it, I will do a search on Youtube.
• I refer to the knowledgebase/FAQs or tutorials on the sites I am using.
• I contact live chat support, tell them the issue, ask them to walk me through the fix (if I can't work it out myself).

In the case of the SSL certificate, Clickfunnels support walked me through the fix and were very supportive.

Broadly speaking, I search for a solution, and if I really hit a roadblock where I can't fix it myself, I then contact support.


Hi Alessandro Di Ruscio,

Thanks very much for adding to the discussion and I don't take the criticism negatively at all. I really appreciate your input, but respectfully, I have to completely disagree with you on this (and likewise, I hope you don't take this the wrong way).

In terms of the free methods you recommend, I have used most of those platforms before. In this project, I want to prioritize speed of results over free methods. What I like about paid traffic is that it gives me data and insights faster than waiting for free methods to succeed.

Having used some of the strategies you recommend, my feeling is you have to be pretty skilled at using those various platforms to extract any meaningful benefit from them. It works for a lot of people, but it doesn't for me.

I don't want to go too far into my personal situation, but I realize to properly explain why I am taking this approach, I should probably cover it briefly...

Financially, the money I have is limited. However, I have enough monthly income to sustain the costs of this (Clickfunnels and Aweber etc) indefinitely. I also have savings, and I have put a percentage of those savings aside to invest in an online business. I took this decision very carefully.

This means when I figure out the metrics, and the funnel that gets me the best response, I will be able to scale quite fast.

Finally, in terms of focusing on too many things, I feel a little differently. I am sticking to one site, one offer, one funnel, one business model and one traffic source. With that said, there is a lot to learn, and I am enjoying the process.

So while I appreciate the input and advice, I think different things work for different people. Unfortunately, the suggestions you make don't work for me, and I undertook this challenge after giving it a lot of thought and proper planning.


Hi Aaron Nelson, thanks for your kind words and your question.

I have used Facebook ads before. The process was too involved for me. What I want to do is to perfect a solo/offer using Solo Ads, with the longer term goal of moving that to Facebook ads.

Another factor in my thinking is that the cost per subscriber on FB ads was a lot higher than what I can get using Solo Ads.

So while I am not using FB Ads before, once I hit this milestone using Solo Ads, my intention is very much to use that platform again (as well as one or two new ones).

Hi Kendido, thanks very much for your advice and also the offer to send the list.
Just to be clear, I am not being charged 3 USD per subscriber by the Solo Ad vendor. The cost per click varies from 0.30 up to 0.75. However, because my conversion was initially so low on the first campaign, when I calculated how much it cost to acquire a new subscriber, it was coming out at 3 USD.

I calculated that cost by dividing the cost of the campaign by the amount of subscribers that campaign generated.

On the 2nd campaign, my numbers improved significantly. It was my terrible copy and landing page that was causing the problems.

You are absolutely right, focused targeting will be the key to success here.

Hi IGotMine, I completely agree, and I recognize running 2 campaigns without a proper offer or back-end setup is madness. However, there was some method to my madness.

I had no experience promoting in this particular niche.
I had no idea if the front-end offer would even entice people to subscribe.
So I took the hit and sent the traffic knowing I wouldn't make money, but to gauge the interest of the audience in the topic.

Gary Halbert once said, "most people try selling what they can't even give away".

I was giving away my content to establish market demand. Now I am going to build a proper funnel, complete with an offer before I spend a penny more on any more advertising or campaigns.

Thank you again for the inputs.

Hi M Thompson, great use of "Ay Caramba". I would thank you twice if I could based on that alone!

I am really pleased the post prompted you to make a return here, and thank you very much indeed for your input. I have read your post back about 5 or 6 times now. I really appreciate the constructive advice.

On ClickFunnels (my use of it seems to be more controversial than I expected), all I would say is that it's fast, easy and I love the interface. The customer support has been great, and I prefer it far more than Thrive Themes (which I am also a customer of).

I found Thrive Themes difficult to use by comparison, especially when I had certain plugins loaded on my Wordpress site. Trying to trouble-shoot which plugin was causing the glitches was always a nightmare for me.

Once I perfect the funnel, and don't have to run so many split-tests and try so many different angles, I will likely transfer all hosting to my Wordpress site as you suggest.

A couple of questions for you (if you don't mind me asking).

1) For building a list, outside of Solo ads, are there any traffic sources you recommend?

2) When you say test a "pay what you want" offer on the front-end, I assume that means sending traffic to a sales page? I am wondering if I will struggle with this, because from what I have read, quite a few solo ads vendors are very reluctant to send traffic to anything other than a squeeze page (hence my question in point 1).

Warm welcome back to the forum, and thanks very much again for your guidance.




Thanks all for the questions, advice and suggestions. I read it all and take it all in. It's the exact reason I started the thread, to gain some advice from more experienced members, and hopefully the advice will help others undertaking a similar project as well.

I'm glad you are back in the saddle, there are always going to be things that try to get in our way, glad to see you are pushing past them.


Looking forward to more updates (keep at it, you can do it!), though I do have to say that I don't, and don't suggest, hiding anything from your significant other. I don't always tell my wife every little thing that I'm doing of course, but if I decided to do something (which I just did today actually) that is going to take a significant financial/time investment...I go over it with her first. Hiding stuff just makes life harder...and you never know, you might get a few good pointers that you didn't even think about!

Hiding things from you SO usually doesn't end well. I have found that I am better off telling her about my side project(s) so there is an awareness around it. And if I can help her in some sort of way with her business and ideas, even better.

I have enjoyed this thread and I hope you keep coming back to post. When you think about it, 100 subscribers is great! It's more than most people get before they give up.