Hello July!

Yes, I should have posted this yesterday but things got a little bit crazy with my relaunch of Safelist Marketing Tactics.  It calmed down a bit last night but at that point I decided it would be a better idea to shut down the computer and watch Star Wars instead (it had been a really long time since I last watched Star Wars or shut down my computer).

Last month I mentioned that I would be testing out a bunch of new safelists.  I’ve got the results from those but I decided that I would do some individual safelist reviews to give me something else to post about later this month.  So keep your eyes peeled for those.

If the new safelists were good enough you will find their stats below.

I had a comment last month from someone asking for reviews of safelist solo ads.  Now that the new Safelist Marketing Tactics site is up and running I will try and spend a little extra money this month on advertising and let you all know the results.

Ok, here’s the stats for June.  These numbers are the results of me promoting three different splash pages for my Safelist Marketing Tactics website.

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

I guess this kinda ruins my surprise but one of the new sites I was testing, State of the Art Mailing System, has jumped right to the top of my list safelists.  I won’t say any more about it until I do my full review but obviously this is a site worth joining.

Not much else has changes except I would like to welcome AdTactics back into the top list.  It’s not as high as it used to be but I sure won’t turn down 5 new sign-ups.

I guess that’s about it.  Keep your eyes peeled for the new safelist reviews and some safelist solo ad reivews coming up later this month.  In the mean time, make sure you are tracking all of your results.  Those stats you see on this page are the results of my efforts promoting my pages.  What works best for me might not work for you.  The only way to know for sure is to track your results.  You can get a free link tracking from from TEToolbox.

Welcome to June!  It’s a new month and that means it’s time for me to dig out my safelist stats from last month and see what are the top safelists right now based on my current advertising campaigns.

Not a lot of news to report for last month.  I did weed out about half a dozen smaller safelists that I had been using which were not producing a lot of sign-ups.  It was hard because most of these safelists were still bringing in a few sign-ups every month but as my list of safelists that I use daily continues to grow I find myself having less time to focus on the sites that are bringing me the best results.

That means I now have some free time to test out some newer sites and to retest some sites that I haven’t used in a very long time.  While I don’t have stats for them yet you can expect to find List Zillion, State of the Art Mailer System, and Reactive Ads in here next month.

Speaking of newer sites…  There are a lot of good programs out there that go right over my head because I can’t always distinguish them from all of the junk.  If you know of any safelists or viral list builders that are working for you but you haven’t seen me mention here feel free to post your referral link in the comments.

Ok, time for the stats.  Over the last few weeks I have been promoting my splash pages in Sweeva and have gotten some really interesting feedback.  I decided that instead of just advertising one splash page in my safelist ads I would put three of them into a rotator and advertise that instead.  I’ve been doing this for the last two weeks.  So far so good.  All of the splash pages that I am promoting on these safelists are being used to promote my site Safelist Marketing Tactics.

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

Not a great month, actually.  List Effects managed to hang on to the top spot again but just barely.  Everything else seems to have either stayed the same or dropped slightly.

As usual I should point out that these are my own personal stats from  promoting my own personal splash pages.  These numbers are only meant to be a guide to help you decide which safelists and viral listbuilders are worth trying.  Your results will probably be different from my own so the only way to know for sure which sites work best for you is to track your own results.  You can get a free link tracker from TEToolbox.

Hello and welcome to my latest posting where I attempt to rank the top safelists and viral listbuilders based on my own stats from the previous month.

Before getting into the rankings I like to go over some of the major events in the safelist world which happened during the last month.  Unfortunately, there aren’t any.  No major launches to speak of.  No big changes.  ViralAdStore changed their graphics to make them a little brighter but that’s about it.

I did cut back a little bit last month from some of the smaller exchanges that haven’t been producing well enough for me.  I also either canceled my upgraded memberships or downgraded to a less expensive membership on some of the safelists that weren’t bringing me enough sign-ups to justify the price of an upgrade.  I usually estimate that each sign-up I get to my list is worth about $1.00 so if I am spending $20/month on an upgrade and only getting 4 or 5 sign-ups, it’s probably not worth it.

One thing I started doing last month that I hadn’t been doing much before is taking advantage of safelists that allow you to send more than 1 ad per day.  This usually requires being an upgraded member and spending more time clicking for credits but it has allowed me to diversify a bit and send out a wider variety of ads.  So far the two best I have found for sending multiple ads are Elite Safelist and European Safelist.  Both of these sites are well worth the price for the upgrade.

I also tried out a few newer safelists that launched over the last few months.  The results were poor at best.  Maybe I will try them again in a few months if they are able to attract a few new members.  For now it’s better to stick with the safelists that have been around for awhile and are proven to work.

Ok, stats time!  All of these numbers are a result of advertising my video splash page for Safelist Marketing Tactics.

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

As we can see List Effects continues to stay on top however it’s not dominating quite as much as it had been over the last few months.  It will be interesting to see if it can continue to stay on top next month.

ViralAdStore has climbed back to the top of the list after having dropped quite a few places over the last few months.  Maybe those new graphics are working for them after all.

No other real big surprises but it is nice to see Adsolutionline and Global Safelist back on the list again.

Once again I want to remind everyone that these are my own personal stats from promoting my own personal splash pages.  These stats are only meant to be a guide to help you choose which safelists and viral listbuilders to use.  Your results will probably be different from my own but the only way to know for sure which sites work best for you is to track your own results.  You can get a free link tracker from TEToolbox.

This just in… Safelist marketing DOES NOT WORK!

Ok, now that i’ve gotten my April Fools joke out of the way… Happy April!

It seems that there is not much news to talk about in the world of safelist marketing this month.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  Global Safelist just hit 10,000 members.  That’s a pretty big milestone in anybody’s book.  Congratulations Doug!

List Building Maximizer just announced that they are giving away $1,000 in their referral contest which is running through May 31.  I’m pretty sure they are still giving away $1.00 per referral as well.  I can’t find any info about that on the site but I do keep finding random $1.00 payments in my account so it must be true.

Ok, That’s it for the news… let get to the stats!  These stats come from advertising my video splash page for Safelist Marketing Tactics.

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

Once again List Effects is killing it!  I just wish understood why.  The site is brand new and to be honest it’s not very pretty but somehow it is managing to blow away all of the competition.  I guess I gotta give props to Frank Salinas & Jon Atwood for releasing one very responsive site.

List Building Maximizer also continues to impress me.  For just being a regular credit based safelist it has managed to hang with the big viral list building two months in a row.  Same goes for Elite Safelist which seems to get better and better every month.

It’s great to see List Auction and List Joe back on top again.  I was getting a little worried last month when they started to slip in the rankings.  Both of these sites have been consistent performers for me and I would have hated to lose them.

I guess that’s gonna do it for this month.

Of course I always need to point out these are my own personal stats and depending on what you are promoting your results may vary.  I provide this information as a guide for trying out new safelists that you might not already be a member of.  It is important that you track your ads to find out which safelists work best for you.  You can get a free link tracker from TEToolbox.

Welcome to March and a whole new month of safelist marketing.  Lots of good stuff to talk about this month so let’s jump right in…

First, the big news last month was all about the rise in popularity of safelist cheat software and the safelists owners efforts to fight it.  Well, I am happy to report that the war is over… and WE WON!  Mostly.  Andrew Baxter, the creator of the most popular software made an appearance at Net Marketing Forum and agreed to stop selling and supporting his software.  You can read the whole thread here.

Andrew also states that the developers of several other safelist cheat programs had sent him very angry emails because he had made his software so public resulting in the safelists adding anti-cheat devices.  I guess that confirms that there are still other cheaters out there but at least the anti-cheat stuff is working.

Also I want to remind everyone that while there are people using bots to click your safelist credit links this doesn’t hurt the effectiveness of safelist advertising.  When you spend your safelist credits your credits are used whether or not someone opens your email.  The bots just allow people to earn credits they don’t deserve.  This could result in more emails in your inbox but that also means more credits for you to earn.

There was a pretty huge launch last month.  List Effects is the new viral list builder from two of the biggest names in the safelist and text ad exchange industry.  To be honest, the site isn’t really pretty.  In fact, it looks a little too much like the inside of a text ad exchange… but it’s the results that matter.  And WOW is List Effects kicking butt.  Check the stats below and you will see why I am so excited about this new program.

A not so new program that I finally joined last month is List Building Maximizer.  I don’t know why I waited so long to join this one.  I guess I figure that newer sites aren’t going to have enough members until they have been around for awhile.  Obviously I was wrong.  Based on the stats below List Building Maximizer is crushing it!  If there are other great safelists like this out there that I am missing out on please let me know.

Ok.  Here are my safelist stats from last month.  These stats come from advertising my video splash page for Safelist Marketing Tactics.

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

Not counting the two new sites it looks like I had a slight drop in my overall results from last month.  That could be a result of me playing around with my subject lines.  I am surprised that List Auction continues to drop.  This could be a result of how few emails they are sending out which means less credits for me to earn for my own ads.  It’s nice to see Got Safelist and Elite Safelist doing really well again.

Obviously the biggest winners this month are List Effects and List Building Maximizer. If you are not a member of these two programs yet you are missing out on some seriously good traffic.

I guess that’s about it for this month.  As usual my stats are a result of my efforts and the pages I am promoting.  Your results may not be the same but you can use my stats as a guide for deciding where you should be promoting this month.  How do I know which safelists work best for me?  I track my results.  If you aren’t tracking you are wasting a big chunk of your time.  You can get a free link tracker from TEToolbox.

It just occurred to me that putting the name of the previous month in the title of these posts make them appear outdated the second I post them.  So from now on I will be using last month’s stats to look forward at all the safelists I will be focusing on in the current month.

And it couldn’t have come at a better time because frankly last month sucked.  Not so much for the safelists but for my own productivity.  You can tell just by looking at how many times I updated my blog last month.  I spent yesterday doing absolutely nothing in preparation for being extra productive today.  Considering this is my second post of the day I guess that good but I had also planned on having this done at least 6 hours ago so maybe not so good.

Safelist news!  Oh boy we had finally had some excitement around here.  Usually not much usually happens in this industry but a few months ago some scum bag named Andrew Baxter thought it was be a good idea to create a software product that allows people to cheat credit based safelists.  Basically this software downloads all your safelist emails and clicks all the credit links for you meaning you never need to actually view the ads of other members.

This is exactly the type of software that nearly killed the safelist industry a few years ago.  If everyone started using this software then nobody would be viewing your ads which would make posting to safelists useless.

I happy to announce that last month many of the larger safelists began fighting back by implementing “cheat protection” in their emails in the form of captcha codes that must be entered before you can earn credits.  This and some other techniques appear to be working so far.  It’s also a great a way to find out who the cheaters are so their accounts can be removed from the safelist.

This change couldn’t have come soon enough.  It’s got to be assumed that there are always going to be a small percentage of people cheating but nobody has ever been stupid enough to do it so publicly.  These new security changes should hopefully make safelists even more responsive while cutting down on the number of emails being sent by the cheaters.

Here is the list I have so far of the safelists that have added some form of cheat protection last month for their members:

AdTactics
Elite Safelist
FreeSafelistMailer
Smart Safelist
Target Safelist

If you know of any others please let me know.

Update: Feb 2, 2010
Supreme List, List Building Maximizer, and Global Safelist have also added cheat protection.  Global Safelist is actually using a number matching test like you would see on a traffic exchange.  That’s awesome!

Oh, and if you one of the people who bought the cheat software from Andrew Baxter feel free to ask him for a refund.  I am sure he will be happy to assist you.  If not, I bet paypal will.

Ok, now the fun part.  Here are my safelist advertising stats from last month.  These stats come from advertising my video splash page for Safelist Marketing Tactics.

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

It seems like I received a drop in sign-ups from the big 3 list builders.  It should be noted that these sites are also sending out far fewer emails than they had been a few months ago.  It’s rare now that I am ever able to earn enough credits to send to the maximum number of members.  That means my ads are reaching less people but at least I don’t have to spend all day clicking for credits any more.

Everything else looks pretty normal though it will be interesting to see if the new cheat protection scripts will have much of an effect when I check my stats again next month.

As usual, these are my own personal stats and depending on what you are advertising your results may vary.  This information is simply intended to be a guide for trying out new safelists that you might not already be a member of.  Also, don’t forget to track your ads to find out which safelists work best for you.  You can get a professional link tracker from TEToolbox.

Just in case you haven’t already heard… Happy New Year!

Is it really 2010?  I was just getting used to the 00′s.

2009 was a great year for me and safelists.  I guess because of the success of my ebook some people have actually started referring to me as “the safelist guy”.  I don’t think I deserve that title yet but I do have some big plans for 2010.

Let’s get to the news..

It appears AdSolutionline upgraded their surf bar.  It now features a cool graphic spinny thing.  Unfortunately my sign-ups there started to go down around the same time.  Not sure if it’s related but I just put in a support email to make sure everything is working ok.

Elite Safelist had some problems last month too.  Seems there was a hard drive crash which took the mailer down for about a week.  Luckily the problem got solved and everything there is running smoothly again.  Unfortunately, the missed week did bring down my numbers down for last month.  Here’s hoping this month puts Elite Safelist back up where it belongs.

Probably the biggest news last month was the launch of Viral Mail Profits.  This thing is really sweet as it manages all your safelist accounts from one location.  I am told they will be adding a mailer to the program very soon and I expect it to really blow up after that.  If you haven’t joined Viral Mail Profits yet, do it now!

Ok, let’s get to the stats:

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.

I should probably mention that these stats came from promoting my SMT splash page.  So depending on what you are promoting, your results may vary.

Are you tracking your ads?  Don’t just rely on my numbers.  When you use a link tracker to track your ads you will always know which sites get the best results for you.  To get you own free link tracker… CLICK HERE.

It’s November 1st and that means it’s time to check my stats to find the best places to advertise.  I decided to change the title this month to focus on safelists because let’s face it, that’s mostly where I am advertising.

As usual, I am advertising my splash pages from Safelist Marketing Tactics.

I’ve been looking forward to checking out last month’s stats for awhile.  Partially because I have been testing out some new safelists and I wanted to see how they stack up against the competition.

I just pulled up my stats a little while ago and I have to say that the results were very poor.  Looks like i’ve had a huge drop in the number of sign-ups i’ve been receiving from safelists all across the board.  I think this means it’s time to get off my butt and start testing out some new splash pages.

I did find a new safelist that is producing better than expected results for me.  Smart Safelist currently has less than 2000 members but is giving me excellent results even as a free member.  They seem to have a good grasp of just giving out just enough credits to keep people coming back and reading their emails every day.  Worth checking out.

Last month I mentioned that I had started seeing a drop in the response from AdTactics since they changed to a 3-day mailer (send 1 email every 3 days) for free members.  I spoke with the owner about it and he said I was the only person who was having a problem with it and that others had seen increased response.  They are trying it out now as a 2-day mailer.  My sign-ups went up last month but only slightly.  We’ll have to see how it works after I get my new splash page up and running.

That’s all the news.  Let’s see who’s on top this month.

ViralAdStore – Hits: 1,811  Clicks: 89  Sign-ups: 20
List Auction – Hits: 1,354  Clicks: 90  Sign-ups: 17
List Joe – Hits: 1,766  Clicks: 111  Sign-ups: 15
Got Safelist? – Hits: 2,942 Clicks: 47  Sign-ups: 7
Elite Safelist – Hits: 1,746  Clicks: 32  Sign-ups: 7

It’s nice to see Elite Safelist back on top again.  Very surprised to see Got Safelist? only got me 7 sign-ups though when I had 17 last month.  That’s with an upgraded membership too.  Not very good.

I guess that’s about it for this month.  Hopefully I will find the time to make some new splash pages after my new website launches on Wednesday.  Oh, did I mention I am launching a new website on Wednesday?  I don’t want to “give away” too much info yet.  You’ll just have to wait and see for yourself.

And don’t forget to track your ads cuz tracking is half the battle.  If you need a link tracker you can get one for free by clicking the link below.

Click Here to Track Your Ads with HitsConnect