Happy Monday and Happy November!

It’s the first of the month and that means it’s time for another update on the best safelist and viral list builders that I am currently using.

So last month someone asked me what I dislike most about safelists.  I didn’t have to think about it too long before telling them how much I hate the 24-hour submission rule.  You see, most safelists and viral list builders limit your mailing to once ever 24 hours, or 48 hours, or 72 hours.  Basically it means submitting at the same time every day and not a minute earlier.  Unfortunately no matter how punctual you are you almost always end up a few minutes late which pushes your start time later and later every day.  Eventually you find yourself up at 3:00 am waiting to submit your sites so you can go to bed.

Due to the 24-hour submission time I probably lost at least 4 or 5 days of mailings last month.  I’m sorry, but I am not always thinking about safelists at 3:00 am and if I forget it’s going to be at least another 8 hours before I am awake.  It seems like having an 18-hour submission cycle would make life so much easier, but that’s just me.

That’s enough ranting.. what else is new?

Quick List Profits launched at the beginning of last month.  New mailers always seem to generate a lot of excitement when they launch and this one was no exception.  They already have 3539 verified members and placed really well in my ranking below.  Let’s hope the momentum continues.

I’ve been bad.  One of the first sites to launch using the script that Quick List Profits is on was called Instant Profit List.  At the time I didn’t know how to categorize the site and so it’s stats weren’t being saved along with my other safelists.  It turns out Instant Profit List has been one of my most responsive mailers over the last few months but I have neglected to include it in my reports.  That ends today!  Check the stats below to see how well Instant Profit List is performing.

List Building Maximizer made an interesting move last month.  To celebrate their 10,000th member they decided to offer $10 solo ads for 10 days (they are usually $25).  This resulted in a flood of solo ads being sent to my inbox every day.  If that wasn’t bad enough as soon as the promotion ended they started offering $12 solo ads for 12 days.  This should have made the regular mailer virtually worthless but surprisingly my stats weren’t down too much.  It did just miss making it onto the stats list below but only because of the two new additions.

Speaking of stats…

What you see below are my link tracking stats for several splash pages that I am promoting on a rotator in various safelists and viral list builders.  Yes, I have upgraded memberships in almost all of these sites so take that in consideration if your numbers aren’t as high as mine.

“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.

Considering how many days I missed last month those numbers aren’t looking too bad.

Big congrats to List Joe for making it back to the top again just barely beating out State of the Art Mailer.  These two sites are both equally awesome and I am glad to be a member of both.

I would also like to welcome Quick List Profits and Instant Profit List as the newest additions to the top list.  As I mentioned earlier Instant Profit List should have been added months ago but better late than never.

I guess that’s it for this month.

As usual these stats are the result of my own efforts using my own splash pages.  Depending on what you are promoting and how often to are promoting it your results may vary.  Of course the only way to know is by tracking your own ads.  You can get free link tracker that will track all of your ads from TE Toolbox.

Well that was fun.

As you may or may not know I have been working my butt off rewriting my first ebook which is all about advertising with free traffic exchange programs.  It’s been going slow but I really got into it again a few weeks ago and was hoping to do a huge relaunch at the end of the month… and then Tony Tezak released Traffic Exchange Solutions a few days ago.  D’oh!

Tony is sort of a legend in the TE world so there is no way I could realistically release my ebook right on his heels and expect any amount of excitement for it.  I guess that just gives me a little more time to work on my book to make it even bigger and badder than ever!  You’ll just have to wait a few weeks longer before you get a chance to behold it’s brilliance.  lol.

In the meantime I figure I should keep this writing thing going and post some new content.  I decided to write a short info series for the people who are still struggling to make money online.

Before we get started I should probably point out that while there are a whole lot of good free traffic sources and free services out there that you can use to build your business…  from my personal experience it is almost impossible to start a successful online business with absolutely no money.

Not exactly what you wanted to hear, right?

The good news is that it doesn’t take much money to start and most of the tools you will be using include affiliate programs that can eventually earn you a tidy profit every month.

So here is your first assignment…

Follow this link and download a free copy of a book written by my good friend Jon Olson called “The Pizza Plan”.  Inside you will find the exact budget that Jon used when he quit his job and started working online full-time.  It includes the “must have” tools that every Internet marketer needs.

Click here to get The Pizza Plan:
http://getrichwithjerry.com/downloads/pizzaplan.htm

Think about how much you are willing to set aside each month for your own online business.  You don’t need to spend as much as Jon did but if think you can build a successful online business with zero out of pocket expenses you are going to have a very long struggle ahead of you.

We’ll start getting into the good stuff next time so keep checking back here or subscribe to this blog at the top of the page so you don’t miss an another action packed update.

Enjoy the book!

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.