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Every issue of this newsletter gives you the exact systems, strategies, and principles I’ve used to generate 8 figures (almost entirely) with email marketing. So you can build your own systems that will carry you through the next algorithm change or recession. This is what actually works.

Every time someone asks me, “What’s the easiest way to start getting traffic when you’re brand new?”

I answer the same way.

Solo ads.

That answer tends to surprise people because solo ads are not particularly glamorous. They’re not the newest thing, they’re not some revolutionary growth hack, and they definitely don’t get the same kind of hype that platforms like Facebook ads, TikTok, or SEO tend to get.

But the reason I recommend them has nothing to do with hype.

It has everything to do with friction.

Most of the traffic sources people talk about today come with a long list of technical obstacles before you ever see your first click. The platforms themselves have become so complicated that simply getting something running can feel like an entire project.

Take Facebook or Google ads as an example.

Ten years ago, you could open a Facebook ad account and have an ad running in ten minutes. I’m not saying the ad would perform well. Most of the time, you’d get impressions but no clicks, or clicks without conversions. But at least you could launch something and see feedback almost immediately.

That world doesn’t really exist anymore.

Today, those advertising platforms have evolved into massive ecosystems. You have to understand campaign structures, ad sets, targeting rules, attribution windows, tracking pixels, compliance guidelines, and a dozen other moving pieces before you even get to the point where the ad is visible to anyone.

In fact, the infrastructure behind modern advertising has become so complicated that I now have a full-time person on staff whose job is essentially to manage tracking across different platforms. That’s an entire role inside the company dedicated to making sure the data we’re looking at actually makes sense.

There’s different software involved, different integrations, and quite a bit of web development just to keep everything working properly.

For someone who’s just getting started, that’s a steep hill to climb before you’ve even generated your first visitor.

Free traffic doesn’t necessarily make things easier either.

In theory, it sounds wonderful. You don’t have to spend money; you just create content and wait for the internet to discover you. In reality, it usually means committing to a massive amount of output and hoping that eventually some of it gets traction.

Blog posts, videos, social media content, guest articles, threads, podcasts — the idea is to put material everywhere and let the algorithms do their thing.

I used to do quite a bit of that many years ago.

Blogging, article marketing, guest posts, publishing content designed to rank for search keywords, and then funneling readers through an author bio box. Back then, it was a fairly common strategy, and for a while, it worked reasonably well.

But the internet has changed quite a bit since those days.

Social media today is far noisier than it used to be. Feeds are filled with automated content, AI-generated posts, bots, and accounts that may or may not belong to real people. Standing out in that environment requires an enormous amount of consistency and skill.

You have to learn video editing. You have to understand short-form content. You have to play the algorithm game, which changes constantly. And even if you do everything right, there’s no guarantee that six months or a year from now you’ll have much to show for it.

Social media can very easily turn into a treadmill.

You’re producing content constantly, running faster and faster, but never quite feeling like you’re moving forward.

Search engine optimization used to be the more stable alternative, but even that landscape has changed dramatically.

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Now, as I was saying…

I remember spending more than a year working on a website — publishing articles regularly, optimizing pages for keywords, building backlinks, installing plugins, tweaking headlines, basically doing everything the SEO playbook recommended.

Eventually, the site started getting traffic.

But the traffic wasn’t converting.

The reason was simple. I didn’t actually control what keywords the search engines decided to reward me for. I might optimize an article for a buyer keyword, but end up ranking for a loosely related informational keyword instead.

So the visitors would show up, but they weren’t really looking to buy anything.

And now the entire search environment is shifting again.

Search engines have started integrating artificial intelligence summaries directly into the results page. When someone searches for information today, they often get a full answer right there on the screen before they ever need to click into a website.

A few years ago, if someone wanted to know why they couldn’t fall asleep at night, they would search for it and then click through several articles trying to find the explanation.

Now the search engine simply summarizes the answer for them.

Which means fewer clicks.

Which means less traffic flowing to the websites that used to depend on those clicks.

Even sites that rank well today are often seeing far less traffic than they did just a few years ago because the information people are looking for is already summarized before they ever scroll down to the links.

So when someone asks me where a beginner should start, I tend to bring the conversation back to what is much simpler.

Solo ads.

The reason is not that solo ads are perfect or that they outperform every other traffic method. It’s simply that the barrier to entry is incredibly low compared to almost everything else.

You don’t have to master an ad platform.

You don’t have to produce endless content.

You don’t have to wait months for an algorithm or a search engine to decide whether you deserve visibility.

You place your link in front of an existing email audience, and if everything is set up correctly, you can see clicks almost immediately.

That kind of instant feedback is incredibly valuable when you’re just getting started. You quickly learn whether your page converts, whether people are opting in, and whether your offer resonates with the audience.

In other words, you get real signals very quickly instead of guessing for months.

Of course, there are exceptions. Some businesses simply don’t fit the solo ad model. Local services are a good example. If you’re running a neighborhood plumbing company or a local spa, blasting your offer to a broad email list probably isn’t the most efficient way to reach customers.

But for many online businesses, especially ones centered around email lists and digital products, solo ads remain one of the simplest and most practical ways to get early traction.

And when you’re at the beginning of the journey, practical solutions tend to beat complicated ones every time.

P.S. If you enjoy these ideas, you’ll love the deeper conversations we have on the List Building Lifestyle podcast.