Emails

The “Secret” to 173 Sign-ups in 30 days

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Safelists don’t work.

I have heard this more than a few times.

When I posted my monthly safelist stats a few days ago I mentioned that I had received 173 new subscribers last month from all of the safelists and viral list builders that I use.  One of my readers found that hard to believe.

“Tell me how on earth did you ever recruit 173 people in one month on Safelists. You must have sent the Mafia out after them. In ten years I don’t think I got five. And of those only one ever did anything. What’s your secret?”

While I share most of this information freely and with more detail in my book Safelist Marketing Tactics I thought a quick summary of how I promote with safelists would be helpful.

1. I email every day.  Every day!  Or at least as often as I can.

2. I read other emails to earn credits… every day!

3. I use a lot of safelists.  Probably way too many.

4. I only use credit-based safelists.

5. I track my ads.  This tells me exactly which safelists are working for me and which ones are a waste of time.

6. I upgrade at the best safelists.

7. I promote something targeted to safelist users.  It probably doesn’t get more targeted than my ebook about safelist marketing.

8. I use eye-catching subjects.  I’ve studied what subjects other marketers use and I have tested dozens of my own to find out which emails get opened more often.

9. I personalize my emails.  I use the [FIRST_NAME] macro whenever it is available and try to include the name of the safelist in the body of the email.

10. I write short emails.  The goal is to just make them curious before they look at my site.

11. I promote unique splash/squeeze pages that I either made myself or had made for me.  Promoting a generic affiliate page is the best way to be ignored.

12. I use personal branding.  If someone sees my face long enough they may start to think I actually know what I am talking about.

13. I use autoplaying videos on some of my ads.  Why?  Because they work.

14. I use a rotator to show a variety of ads.  This is good for testing and can help you to keep your ads fresh.

If you are not using a rotator or link tracker you can get those at TE Toolbox.

As you can see there is no one “secret” to how I got 173 sign-ups last month using safelists and viral list builders.  It’s just a bunch of little things that add up over time.

There’s probably a bunch of other things I could be doing to improve my results more.  Anybody got some tips and tricks they want to share?  C’mon.. no secrets!

 Safelist Marketing Tactics
Click here to receive a free copy of Safelist Marketing Tactics

Where Are The JV Giveaway Updates?

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Hey Guys.

You may have noticed that it’s been about three weeks since I have posted a new JV giveaway update on my blog or via email.  I was hoping nobody would notice but a few people have called me out on it.

Here’s the deal…  it’s a pain to update that list every week!

Ok, so maybe i’m a wuss.  It just got to the point where I would be out with my friends on Sunday night and in the back of my mind I am thinking I need to get home and update the giveaway list.  Then I get home and i’m stuck compiling a list of events at two in the morning so I can send it out before I go to bed.

The fact is that there are usually 5 or 6 new giveaway events announced every week but there are usually only 1 or 2 per month worth promoting.  That’s not to say that the other events are not worth joining because they are free and they do still get me signups.  It’s just a lot of work to do every week without much of a reward.

I’m still updating the calendar inside my JV Giveaway Tactics website.  That’s easy enough to do.  I’m just not sure if it’s worth the time to do the weekly blog post and email updates.

For example I just updated the calendar tonight.  I added 7 new giveaway events.  Of those 7, only 1 is really worth mentioning.  That one is the Goodfellas JV Giveaway.  That site is run on the latest giveaway script, has a unique domain name, and has all custom graphics.  The other giveaways are all cookie-cutter designs that are hosted in folders with probably 20 other websites.

Seriously, if you can’t afford $10 for a domain name how much faith am I going to put in you to be able to run a successful giveaway?

So I want to hear what you guys think.  I plan on keeping the calendar updated inside the JV Giveaway Tactics website.  Would you prefer that I keep doing the emails and blog posts listing all the current giveaways?  Or would you prefer just the occasionally announcement about new giveaways worth joining?

Lemme know!

JV Giveaway Tactics

My First 3 Years of List Building

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I started building my list on June 30, 2007.

I know this because I just checked my Aweber account and searched for the date that my first lead was added.

I felt compelled to look this information up because I received an unexpected email from one of my subscribers tonight.  She was replying to one of the emails I had set to send from my autoresponder 3 years ago!

No, I am not crazy enough to try and write 3 years worth of emails.  I don’t even remember why I did it but for some reason I set the last message in my email series to be sent after 999 days.  The email simply said:

Just checking in to say hello.

How’s it going?

I never expected I would still be doing this 999 days later or that anybody would still be reading my emails after 3 years but sure enough I got a response back tonight:

[]Hi!
thank you for the message.

Have a Blessed new Week.
~ Becky

Thank you Becky!

Over the last few years I have started to gain some perspective on this whole make money from home thing.  I’ve noticed that there is always a handful programs that everybody is trying to promote claiming it’s the next big thing.  It usually lasts for about 3 or 4 months until the focus shifts to a new batch of programs.

For every hot new program you can name now I can name a dead one from a year ago that was just as popular.

I started building my list because I got involved with one of those dead programs which thankfully provided it’s members with lead capture pages to promote.  They had an in-house autoresponder but I chose to pay a little extra to use a 3rd party one.  That’s how I found Aweber.

The company I was promoting is long gone…

But after 3 years, I still have my list!

I’m not saying it’s wrong to promote the latest and greatest opportunity… just do it on the back end!

The only thing you should be promoting are things that build your brand and build your list.  Once people are on your list and have gotten to know you THEN you can introduce them to whatever you want.  If they aren’t interested… well, you’ve got at least 3 years to find something that they are interested in.

So thank you Becky for continuing to read my emails.  I’m going to keep building my list and I look forward to hearing how everyone else is doing for the next 999 days.

The Best Safelists for February 2010

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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.

Total Clicks

 Unique Clicks Action Sales CTA CTS
ViralAdStore 1,488 863 73 15 8.46% 1.74%
List Joe 1,668 1,203 69 15 5.74% 1.25%
List Auction 1,062 684 30 15 4.39% 2.19%
Got Safelist 3,801 1,539 45 9 2.92% 0.58%
Elite Safelist 1,423 750 33 6 4.40% 0.80%
FreeSafelistMailer 1,199 551 23 6 4.17% 1.09%
AdSolutionline 2,155 857 26 5 3.03% 0.58%
Global Safelist 1,521 750 27 3 3.60% 0.40%

“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.