Have you ever purchased a solo ad? If you aren’t at least breaking even on every solo ad that you purchase, you’re doing it wrong!

In many cases, solo ad buyers aren’t doing enough to ensure they can recoup all of the money they plan to spend on a solo ad before they purchase it.

They simply buy the solo ad from sites like Udimi and then hope that they’ll make the money back through sales of a single offer. Solo ads are profitable but you can’t cover your costs or make a profit without some planning first.

Here’s 7 profit killing mistakes that solo ad buyers make and how to avoid them.

1. No Upsells or High Ticket Offers

Your opt-ins have shown you that they’re willing to buy a $2 or $7 introductory offer, but what else have you offered them in your sales funnel? If all you’re selling is $7 products, don’t expect to recoup your solo ad costs.

Think of it this way, you paid $50 for 100 clicks. That means you still need to recoup $50 if you want to be able to purchase another solo ad without having to come up with additional funds.

If only 4 of the 40 subscribers you got from that solo ad run buy your $7 product, that means you will have only made $28 so you wouldn’t have broken even at all.

However, if you sold four $7 products but one customer opted to also buy an upsell that costs $47, you will have now made $75 which leaves you with a $25 profit if you decide to spend another $50 on another solo ad.

Furthermore, your goal shouldn’t just be to break even. In fact, breaking even is really just the bare minimum.

Since you’re here to make a profit from solo ads, you need high ticket offers which will earn you $197, $497, $997 or more from a single sale!

High ticket offers are what will keep you in business and allow you to experiment with traffic sources that require a larger investment, such as Google AdWords or Facebook. So make sure that both upsells and high ticket offers appear in your funnel.

Also Read: How to Sell High Ticket Affiliate Products to Earn Over $1,000 per Sale

2. Choosing the Wrong Solo Ad Vendor

This is a solo ad mistake that I can say that I was also guilty of when I first started out. I thought that reading the solo ad vendor’s reviews should be good enough, right?

Wrong!

In fact, when it comes to choosing solo ad vendors, high reviews aren’t everything. They simply mean that the vendor is really good at making sales.

Here’s what you should be looking for instead in a solo ad vendor:

Repeat buyers. If a solo ad vendor has repeat buyers, that means that buyers are getting results. If the majority of their reviews consist of buyers placing orders for the first time, then proceed with caution.

Open to answering your questions. If the solo ad vendor seems to be reluctant about answering questions that you have before you buy, don’t go through with the sale unless you feel comfortable.

Their customers are NOT mostly other solo ad vendors. If their customers are mostly other solo ad vendors, these customers are buying to sell not to earn money like you plan to. Look for other well-known internet marketers in their feedback for a vendor that actually delivers converting traffic.

There are definitely scammers out there but with a lot of due diligence, you can avoid making the wrong decisions when it comes to buying solo ads.

Join using the link above and I’ll send you a list of vendors who deliver the highest converting solos (HINT: they’re not the solo ad vendors with the highest ratings) via PM inside your Udimi account.

3. Not Having Enough Follow Up Content for Your Email List

If you’re expecting the signups that you get from a solo ad to just buy right away, you’re in for a surprise. Some subscribers may take several months before they decide to do business with you.

This is why you need to make sure that you have enough follow up content available to build a solid relationship that will lead to sales.

I recommend that you have at least 30 days of email content ready to go to send to your subscribers when you run a solo ad.

You should always be adding fresh content to your autoresponder so that you can keep your subscribers for years to come. Subscribers cost money so you should never lose subscribers simply because you failed to keep up with them.

They’ll forget about you especially if you aren’t making an effort to email them on a regular basis.

Also you should get discouraged if your subscribers don’t open some of your emails. Just like you only open some of own emails, your signups will do the same which is why it is so important that there is plenty of email content available for them to choose from.

4. Not Creating a Buyers List

If you buy solo ads on a regular basis, you need to maintain two lists: one with all of your signups and a second email list with just buyers. The difference is that the buyers list should contain the email addresses that the buyers used to purchase your product. In most cases, these email address will be their PayPal email addresses.

Why does this matter?

First, when your signups subscribe to the opt-in page you used for your solo ad, they often do so using throw away email addresses that they only use for junk mail and spam. That’s because they want the offer that is available on the other side of your opt-in page but they’re not quite sure about receiving your follow up emails.

By creating a buyers list from their PayPal email addresses, you can make sure that you reach your signups at the email addresses that they actually check.

As a result, a buyers list will allow you to identify those signups who purchased something from you so that you can send them additional offers.

Secondly, it will also improve the deliverability of your emails because you have your autoresponder emails going to the email addresses that they actually check.

5. Not Testing Solo Ad Vendors

A lot of people buy solo ads from one or two solo ad vendors and then decide that it doesn’t work, mostly for the reasons given above. However, another reason why solo ads don’t work out for some marketers is because they don’t test enough solo ad vendors.

Make sure that you try new solo ad vendors regularly. Your results can vary dramatically from vendor to vendor.

If you’re worried about your budget, simply purchase the smallest package available (typically 50 or 100 clicks) before you purchase a larger number of clicks from a vendor. While this may not be enough clicks to tell if a solo ad vendor can produce regular sales for you, it will be enough to determine whether or not you’re receiving high quality signups.

6. Not Recycling the Traffic

If you’re buying solo ads, you have to keep in mind that the signups that you purchased are subscribed to at least one other person’s list. As a result, you need to recycle the leads that you receive so that you can still make money from the signups on your list that aren’t interested in buying from you directly or staying on your list for the long term.

There are two ways to do this. You can:

Sell solo ads yourself. Once you get a huge list of email subscribers (around 10,000 or more) take a stab at selling solo ads yourself if your list is fairly responsive.

Sell the leads to companies that pay for signups. There are a number of companies that will pay per lead for email signups. One such company is CashSuperStar which pays $2 per leads for double opt-in Tier 1 solo ad leads. You can sign up for the program here.

7. Not Testing and Tracking

If you want the best results from solo ads, you need the highest converting opt-in page and offers. To figure out what those are, you must track and test everything that you do.

Also Read: Getting Started With Conversion Tracking for Affiliate Marketing

To lessen your chances of failure, I recommend that you look at what other top marketers in your niche are doing. What kind of opt-in pages do they have to get you to sign up for their email lists? What do they try and sell you after you join?

These are the answers to your questions when it comes to finding high converting opt-in pages and offers for your niche to promote with a solo ad.

Like everything else in your online business, success with solo ads comes down to having a system. You won’t get rich at the click of a button, unless you already have a solid sales funnel in place, some hot offers, a proven high converting opt-in page, and a solid solo ad vendor that delivers quality traffic.

What has been your experience with solo ads? Leave your feedback and questions in the comments below!