One thing I noticed no one mentioned was paying for advertising then using it to build your list. I am testing it right now and so far I think it’s really worth the money I paid. Basically I found a really targeted site to an email list I have and then I paid $85 for 100,000 impressions. So far I’ve used up about 20,000 impressions, gotten a little over 200 clicks and got about 36 new signups to my list. At this rate I’ll be paying about $0.50 per email which is well worth it to me.

I’m doing this because I know how valuable my list is. I’ve got people on my list who’ve been with me for years. They’ve followed me as I switched autoresponders and they’ve literally allowed me to earn a living online. BUT my list is very small and I figure instead of trying to make an ad convert to a sale I’m willing to invest in the LIST part of it now so I can build that relationship with them which I know will eventually turn into sales.

To me it’s well worth it as I’m now speeding up the process I already have going with my other ‘natural’ list-building techniques.

Anyway – I think I just wrote myself a blog post, lol. This post really got me thinking though and I may also test straight sales, too.

Oh – and with my opt-in I”m also testing out a one time offer so if I can get that to work it might end up costing me nothing to rapidly build my list. Will let ya know how it goes 🙂

Sadly I’m guilty of spending a ton of money on PPC, banner ads and classified ads. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes, but I do kick myself once in a while when I think about it.

However several years ago I used pay per click which works excellent for getting target traffic. Back then the clicks were cheap enough and I could test headlines, sub-heads, diffrent templets etc, cheaply.
One thing I learned from using pay per click with Google is not to let your ad appear in the content network. If your testing it will kill your conversion rate. Google may not like it and could shut down your ad if it isn’t getting enough traffic.
They need money too;).

With pay per click ads skyrocketing in price, I prefer the free methods.

Either way there really isn’t any such thing as free traffic. Your going to pay for it with time or money.

I rather pay with time because it really converts at a higher conversion than pay per click in the long run.
Articles, blog post, etc, if they are ever-green, will get you traffic five, ten years from now.

If you have a website or blog, ad swaps are possible and free if you could find someone willing to swap ads with.

Thanks for your time everyone.

I haven’t purchased advertising for my online business. I guess that has been out of fear. Two of my colleagues who are kicking butt in the fitness niche have gotten where they are because they’ve mastered the art of buying traffic. This may sound a little evil, but I like to let them do all the hard work of buying traffic since they are so good at it and then have them recommend my programs 😉

What I don’t understand about buying solo ads to an email list is that that person would make more money if they would just use their affiliate link for my program and share the article, instead of charging me a flat fee. Nik, have you ever presented someone with the alternative… (I will pay a flat fee for a solo ad or not pay anything and they earn commissions.)?

I guess I do payed advertising, but it’s not paid upfront. I pay affiliates when they make a sale 🙂 That’s paid traffic right… converted paid traffic.

When I had an offline business I paid close to $100,000 in advertising… which translated into a whopping two customers worth $3000. That hard knock lesson is what took my decently successful business and sent it down the tubes. But that’s also what got me to explore online marketing and the rest is history 😉

Thanks, Loretta!

I much prefer using content in various ways for exposure and used to swear that I’d never pay for advertising. 🙂

However, of course, if I get the opportunity to mail to a list of hungry buyers (or active affiliates) and build a relationship with them – I’m all over that, too.