The history of the SOLO ad and Paid To Surf programs. What is a SOLO ad?

I started marketing online 10 years ago. I was 'offline' for a few years before coming back online 1 year ago. It is interesting to see how things have changed.

I started in an era now deemed as the "dot-bomb" era. Getting signups to programs back then was like fishing in a barrel. It was easy.

I am writing this article because in my coming back online I have seen many of what once was, have disappeared, and other things have evolved redefining what was once already defined.

In coming back online a year ago I found many sites promoting solo ads, some even capitalizing SOLO as if it was an acronym. I took on the mindset of a complete newbie and totally realized that most of what are now deemed as "text ad exchanges" had their wording on their sites written as if to assume that someone would know what the site offered. A solo ad versus what other kind of text ad? I even wondered to myself if some site owners even knew what a 'solo ad' really was. Something else that no newbie would never know is what 'JV' is.

We start 10 years ago, back in the dot-bomb era, also now known as the 'internet bubble,' when 'Get Paid To Surf' emerged, and it was a giant industry. The grandfather was AllAdvantage.com. Many other sites tried to copy the model such as Utopiad.com, GotoWorld.com, GetPaid4.com, mValue.com, all of which are now long since defunct. There were many other as well. In the Pacific NW there was even a dialup internet provider that offered free internet service in exchange for having ads in your face at all times. It barely made it a year before closing it's doors.

The model introduced what was really 'get paid to be online.' It consisted of downloading a small piece of software that was a little bar that showed 468x60 banner ads, cycling every 30 seconds. It was always on top of anything you had on your monitor so ads were in your face all the time as you did whatever you usually did online like checking your email. Back then, DoubleClick was not affiliated with Google. The stream of ads on the AllAdvantage bar came from DoubleClick.

AllAdvantage was an affiliate program that paid a few levels deep. You got paid for people you referred to be online as well. It was one of the very first 'viral' internet companies. AA had millions of users, and 10's of millions of ads were being seen every day. 100's of 1000's of people were getting regular checks and I had regular monthly checks from them as well.

As these companies died off, and traffic exchanges popped up, the grandfather being clickthru.net, Paid To Surf filtered into traffic exchanges, changing the definition of what getting paid to surf originally was. This model still exists today although not that prevalent.

AllAdvantage and all the others like them, soon failed as tools were quickly created to cheat these 'ad bars' resulting in doubleclick dropping the clients with this model.

So that was the origin of 'Get paid To Surf.'

Then a new revenue model came into existence. 'Get Paid To Read Email' the grandfather being e-mailpaysu.com, which is still live, but barely existing. This also became very popular very quickly.

Then Create-A-Click.com came along, one of the first to start 'out of the box' paid email scripts for purchase. They started out at $300 to buy and get setup. Many paid to read email sites started to emerge. People began to pirate the scripts and the price came down rapidly, some people even selling the paid email scripts for as little as $5. Paid email was everywhere!

The original paid email model actually paid real money, not points, to read the emails.

Now here is where the solo ad comes into existence. The original paid emails, to make the model work since people were being paid money to get these emails, would contain multiple links, all of which were purchased by individuals. You could see an email with sometimes up to 20 links in it, but you only got paid for receiving the one email. Results varied because not all links would get clicked. In fact, you didn't even have to click the links. You only had to click one particular link to verify that you got the email. And all you got as a purchaser was a link and maybe one line of text, not full ad copy. If you paid a premium, you could get a 'solo ad.'

This was a premium allowing you to choose full ad copy for your email and your email would go out by itself, no other links, resulting in a higher click through ratio.

So, in reality, a modern day 'solo ad' is nothing special anymore. I am honestly surprised that the term 'solo' is still being used these days among what are now deemed as 'text ad exchanges' since every email is a solo ad. The word used to have a real value compared to today.

Next came a competitor in the paid email, out of the box, script game. The scripts were known as iPaidEmail. This script set also got bastardized like the CAC scripts, originally costing $200 to purchase, but quickly became pirated and readily available all over for very cheap. These scripts were the first to introduce a 'credit based' paid email system, getting credits instead of cash for viewing an email. It is this script set that is now known as a 'text ad exchange' and is the backbone of 100's of sites today.

Paid email in it's original sense is a rarity in existence anymore. You do see some pop up, but they have ridiculous structures that make them obvious scams, sites that claim to pay $1000 per email and $5000 to join, and then have impossible payout limits on top of everything.

So that is where it all started.

In my opinion, if someone were to go back full circle and create a paid email site like they used to be run 10 years ago, which was a very successful model, somebody would have something that would definitely be worthwhile.