The Fastest Way to See Your First Clicks

I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is The List Building Lifestyle, the podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world, and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best-selling book, The List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now, it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

[0:53]

Generally speaking, solo ads is the recommended way to go is because there’s just a minimal learning curve in terms of the technicalities you need to know to use it successfully as well as to actually see clicks hitting your link.

With every other traffic source, you’re going to bump into a bunch of obstacles. For instance, with Google and Facebook, you’re going to bump into the technical obstacle of setting up your ad account and not getting it shut down into understanding what are ads, what are ad sets, what are campaigns, how the tracking works in these platforms is very complicated.

In fact, 10 years ago, you could have gotten on Facebook, you could have started a Facebook ads account and get the ads running within like 10 minutes. Now, I’m not going to talk about the effectiveness of those ads, but you could have gotten ads running in 10 minutes. And then you would have had to optimize them.

So most likely, you would have gotten impressions, maybe not clicks. Or if you’ve gotten clicks, then not really conversions, but that’s a whole different story. At least you would have gotten some kind of instant feedback about what you’re setting up. But that was like a long, long time ago when you could still do that.

[2:17]

These days, I’m actually having to hire a full-time person on staff just to make sure that I’ve got tracking on all of these platforms. It’s a whole other department on its own, a different set of software required for it, a different set of web development required. It’s quite incredible how much effort it takes to advertise on these platforms these days.

So as a beginner, yes, Solo Ads is my recommended go-to because there’s very little technical barrier. It’s almost non-existent there. As long as you know how to close your link with click magic, you’re good to go.

With free traffic sources, on the other hand, the learning curve is probably even longer because it’s going to take you a long, long time to generate enough content and plaster it all over the internet to get any kind of clicks or any sort of eyeballs onto your links at all.

[3:24]

To be honest, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve done any free content, unless, I guess, if you don’t count getting organic book sales and getting interviewed on podcasts and whatnot as a free source of traffic.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve done blogging or article marketing where I would post articles on the internet and hoping that the articles would rank for certain keywords and then pull people through my author bio box. Right, it’s been a long time since I’ve done guest posts. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on social media for the purposes of getting traffic.

All of these things take forever, forever. Social media is noisier than ever before. The feed is filled with AI slop. You can no longer tell what’s real, what’s not. There are too many robot accounts. There are too many bot accounts.

At this point, there’s like click farms to click on your stuff that aren’t even real people.

[4:48]

So social media can be a treadmill, could be a trap where you’re going to spend a lot of time. You’re going to do a lot of work. You’ll have to master video editing. You’ll have to master content creation. And then there’s no guarantee that in a year’s time, you won’t have anything to show for it.

With regards to building websites and search engine optimization, that might still work. I honestly, I haven’t done it in years. I just, at one point, I just said, I’m not going to do it because I spent a year and change optimizing a website, putting up content on it every day, optimizing for keywords, plugins, backlinks, buying backlinks, you know, from authority sites and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Only to end up with a site that’s getting visitors, but not getting conversions.

[5:41]

Because unfortunately, I don’t control how the search engines or whatever are going to reward me with clicks. So I would optimize for a certain keyword, but only end up ranking for a similar keyword that isn’t really a buyer keyword. So all of a sudden the traffic that’s coming in is not really, you know, buyer traffic with any intent to buy stuff.

Not to mention that today there’s a big trend that is, that’s really disturbing the whole SEO community. And the trend is that Google, because of the AI that they’ve now installed on the search engine, is basically making searches clickless.

[6:59]

So let’s say five years ago, three years ago, people used to get on Google, right? Or similar search engine, and they would run a keyword search, and then they would have to go click into websites.

And so to get the information they wanted, like, let’s say they were searching for, I don’t know, something like sleepy, like, why can’t I fall asleep even though I feel tired? You know what I mean? Something like that.

And so they would go and search for that. And then a bunch of websites and a bunch of articles would come up. And there would be headlines like seven common reasons why I can’t fall asleep even though you’re tired. The three things you should never do before bed to avoid, you know, not being able to fall asleep. You know, five ways to fight insomnia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, we’ve all been there. We’ve all searched for stuff like that. We’ve all bumped into these articles.

But, and so back in the day, you would click into these, and you would start reading the articles, right?

[7:59]

But not anymore. Because today, the AI that’s behind Google and behind everything else and ChatGPT has already read all those articles. The AI indexed all the content, read the first page of Google, the second page of Google, the 1,000th, you know, page of Google.

And, you know, thousands of pages of every other search engine. It has a really big database of knowledge. And now when you search for why can’t I fall asleep, what happens is you get a summary.

Right under your search box, right, it will be something like, you know, most common reasons why people can’t fall asleep, common remedies. And then you can talk to AI about the information.

Now, what this means is that you have no reason, you have no agenda, right, going, clicking on links.

[9:07]

And therefore, a lot, you know, many of these websites that are being optimized by people and companies for ranking on the search engines, many of these websites are now, you know, getting like half the traffic they used to, if they’re lucky.

So, you know, back in the day, if you were on the first page of Google in the first, you know, top ranking, like the first place, the first spot in the first page of Google, you would be getting 80% of traffic for that keyword.

If you were, you know, between second and fifth position on the first page, you’re getting the rest of that traffic. If you’re on page two of Google, you’re not getting traffic at all.

These days, if you’re on page one of Google, whatever traffic you could have gotten three years ago, that now you’re getting 80% less or 50% less traffic because there’s, you know, there’s no point for the consumer to even scroll below the AI summary box.

[10:43]

So the whole search engine game, that’s like a different beast entirely. And I really don’t know which niche markets are still good for it. But certainly most niches are not because AI has taken over.

Not to mention that now there’s like a whole trend, of course, the whole industry of people claiming that they will optimize chat GPT to mention you when people search for certain things, right?

So that’s like, again, now there’s like a whole subculture of search engine optimization to do that, which is basically in a nutshell, the way it’s done is you gotta go and get talked about on the internet.

So the way the whole optimizing chat GPT to mention you when people search for certain keywords is to get articles written about you and posted about you or your service by websites like LinkedIn, Reddit, and the likes.

Where people go talking about things, right?

[11:49]

So now there’s like a whole Reddit renaissance happening where people are using AI tools to have the AI tools go post and promote their products and services within Reddit threads actively to become associated with that topic.

So when people search within chat GPT or within Google, the AI summaries would bring them up. Now, of course, AI is not dumb. I mean, it’s dumb, but not too dumb.

And so AI will catch up to that very quickly. And as usual, marketers ruin everything. So that’s gonna become ineffective very, very fast.

So my point about, you know, which way should a beginner go? I’ve just circled back to what I said in the beginning.

[12:39]

Solo ads has just the lowest barrier, the lowest technical barrier, the lowest financial barrier from all the paid traffic sources. It’s just extremely effective. You can see results and feedback immediately. There’s still no easier way for a beginner to start building their email list.

So that’s my answer to do I recommend solo ads or other means of advertising? Okay.

Now, I will say this, there’s a caveat, some industries or some niches or some types of services, some types of products just don’t fit into the model of being promoted through solo ads simply because there’s not enough email lists with the right type of audiences for them.

Well, for example, if you’ve got a local service, right, I wouldn’t recommend solo ads. It’s just, it’s not gonna make sense unless you get solo ads from like people who are locally connected and somehow have a big email list, like a local realtor or a spa or whatever, you know, like that can work.

But it’s rare and probably not the best use of it.

[12:39]

Thank you for listening to the List Building Lifestyle. Get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to claim your free copy of my best-selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package.