Welcome back!

The calendar on my wall says it is February but the thermometer is making it feel more like May.  Regardless of what the weather may feel like outside it’s time for another fun filled blog post revealing my top safelists and viral list builders.

I didn’t spot any major new launches last month but I am happy to report that Email-Hog is back up and running!  I held off on sending an email about the relaunch until I could verify that everything was up and working again.  Hopefully we will see them ranking well again next month.  If you were a member before the site went down a few months ago you may still be able to retrieve your old account data by filling out the form on this page: http://email-hog.com/recover.php

That’s it for the news.   Let’s get to the stats!

Every day I promote a number of squeeze pages using safelists and viral list builders which give away free copies of my ebook Safelist Marketing Tactics. I use a free link tracker to determine how much traffic my mailings generate as well as how many new subscribers I receive.  I then compile all of that data and share the results here on my blog each month to show you which safelists and viral list builders are bringing me the best results.

I always like to point out that I do have upgraded memberships at most of these sites which usually allows me to send my ads more often.  My ads are also very targeted to other safelist members which does help to increase the response rate.  Your results my vary.

Here we go…

Total January sign-ups from all mailers (including those not listed here): 142

Congrats to Viral List Builder Plus for making it to the top of the list!

A big thank you to List Hoopla for recommending Your EZ List to me.  It’s not the sexiest list builder out there.  In fact it’s about as bare bones as it gets.  But so far the results have been excellent.

Looking at the stats I also want to mention that I recently let my upgrade at List Joe expire.  It’s always been a relatively expensive upgrade which was well worth the price about a year ago but with all the new viral list builders it’s effectiveness had been going down.  Oddly, now that I am a free member again my results have been going back up.  If this keeps up I may have to spring for another upgrade.

That’s it for this month.  Keep in mind that these stats are the result of my own marketing efforts and your results may vary.  These stats are only provided as a guide to show you what is currently working best for me.  What works best for you might be something entirely different but you will never know unless you are tracking your ads.  You can get the same free link tracker that I use when you join TE Toolbox.

Click here to receive a free copy of Safelist Marketing Tactics

Happy New Year!

Another year down and somehow I have managed to keep these safelist stats coming in every month.  It’s been almost two and a half years!  So I just wanted to thank you all for your support over the years.

I think the big news from last month was the launch of the new “List Hoopla” ranking service from the creator of Traffic Hoopla.  List Hoopla ranks the top safelists and viral list builders every week.  How does that compare with what I do here?  List Hoopla uses a complex formula comparing traffic, conversions, bounce rate, and even how much they were paid in commissions.  I simply go by the number of sign-ups I received.  Not very scientific but I am a simple man.  While our rankings may not be identical comparing both lists should give you the best sampling of what safelists and viral list builders are producing the best results right now.

If you would like to receive your own List Hoopla page filled with your own affiliate IDs you can sign-up at the bottom of this page:
http://listhoopla.com/r.cgi/260

The top ranked site on List Hoopla this week is YourEZlist.  As you can see YourEZlist doesn’t appear on my list at all.  That’s because I wasn’t a member until a few days ago.  I’m in now and I look forward to comparing my stats next month.

Email Hog was hacked.  Most of their databases were corrupted so site has been down since mid December.  Quite a bummer since I had just joined and was already getting very good results.  They hope to have everything up and running again by Jan 15.

State of the Art Mailer has a referral contest going on until they reach 20,000 members.  I mention this only because I am in second place and I want to win!  Oh, they are also a great mailer and well worth the cost of the upgrade.  Now go join!

Ok, time for my stats…

Here’s how it works.  Every day I promote a series of squeeze pages for my ebook Safelist Marketing Tactics on 30-40 different safelists and viral list builders.  I use a link tracking service that shows me how many hits I receive from each mailer as well as how many new subscribers I received.  I should point out that I do have upgraded memberships on most of these sites which often allow me to send my ads to more members and more often.  I also spend time every day clicking emails for credits which allow me to send my ads to the maximum number of people as often as possible.  Your results may vary.

Total December sign-ups from all mailers (including those not listed here): 130

Kind of a crazy month.  I think I will let the numbers speak for themselves.

Don’t forget that these are my own personal stats based on my own marketing efforts.  I provide these stats only to show you what safelists and viral list builders are currently working best for me and to give you some suggestions for new mailers to try.  Your results may be completely different from mine.  The only way to determine which sites work best for you is to track your own stats.  You can get the same link tracker that I use for free from TE Toolbox.

Click here to receive a free copy of Safelist Marketing Tactics

Hello and welcome to November!

It’s a new month and that means it’s time to dig out my safelist and viral list builder advertising stats from last months and share with you what sites are currently bringing me the best results.

But first… the news!

The biggest launch from last month was the new release of a unique viral list builder from my good friend John Bell.  It’s called Viral List Builder Plus.  I don’t have any stats to share yet but so far I am really enjoying this site.  One of the unique features displays the open rate of all emails sent through the site.  Members are receiving between 17% and 20% open rate for all emails sent through the system.  Not bad.  I will definitely keep working this one and share my stats with you next month.

Now for the stats.

If you’ve never been here before this is how it works.  Every month I promote a series of lead capture pages for my ebook Safelist Marketing Tactics on 30-40 different safelists and viral list builders.  I try to view as many emails from other members as I can to earn enough credits to send my emails as often as possible.  I use a free link tracker to find out how my hits my pages received from each site as well as how many new subscribers I received.  I do have upgraded memberships at most of these sites which usually allows me to send my ads more often.  My ads are also very targeted to other safelist and viral list builder members which help to increase my results.  Your results my vary.

Not a bad month.  The top 3 sites continue to dominate as they have for the past few months.  I love seeing List Adventure in the Top 5.  So many VLBs have come and gone over the last year that it’s great to see this site still competing so well.  If you are not yet a member of any of these I highly recommend joining now.

That’s it for this month.  I will be keeping a close eye on Viral List Builder Plus over the next few weeks and hopefully have some good stats to share with you next month.

Keep in mind that these stats are the result of my own marketing efforts and may not match your own.  These are only provided as a guide to show you what is currently working best for me.  What works best for you might be something entirely different but you will never know unless you are tracking your ads.  You can get the same free link tracker that I use when you join TE Toolbox.

Click here to receive a free copy of Safelist Marketing Tactics

Welcome to September!

Another month down and a whole new month of stats to share for the best safelists and viral list builders out there today.

The big news from last month was the re-release of List Surfing.  This site definitely got a lot of attention and with good reason.  List Surfing does an amazing job of blending the best elements of a traffic exchange with a safelist to create a unique advertising environment.  Best of all List Surfing has brought social marketing into the safelist arena which is something this industry has been very much lacking.

If you missed it I did a video review of List Surfing that you can watch here:

http://www.getrichwithjerry.com/list-surfing-video-review/

Not too much else to report.  I did test a few older safelists that I had joined years ago but quit because they weren’t producing good results.  The results from last month weren’t good enough to put them in the top 15 so I won’t bother mentioning them.  Needless to say if you have any good safelists or viral list builders that you recommend which you don’t think I am member of please send them my way.

On to the stats…

Here’s how it works.  I promote a series of squeeze pages for my ebook Safelist Marketing Tactics on 30-40 different safelists and viral list builders.  I use a tracking service to tell me how many hits I receive from each site as well as how many new subscribers I received.  I do have upgraded memberships on most of these sites which often allow me to send my ads to more members and more often.  I also spend time every day clicking emails for credits which allow me to send my ads to the maximum number of people as often as possible.  Your results may vary.

Total August sign-ups from all mailers (including those not listed here): 166

Not a bad month.  Pretty cool to see an old school safelist like AdsolutionLine topping the list.   Makes me wish I earned commissions there but it’s a totally free safelist.  So if you’re not a member, that’s definitely one you will want to join.

Everything else looks about right.  A nice mix of safelists and viral list builders.  It’s not too hard to see from looking at this list which are the best sites to be advertising on this month.

I should mention that List Surfing is a little bit lower on the list than I would have expected.  That’s because the mailer credits are earned by surfing in the traffic exchange side of the site.  Unfortunately I haven’t had enough time to earn enough credits to reach the maximum number of members for every mailing.  That makes it a little harder to compare to the other sites.  I will say that the branding and the social aspect of List Surfing puts it a little bit ahead of the competition but that is something which is kinda hard to measure with these kinds of stats.

That’s it for this month.  Don’t forget that these are my own personal stats based on my own efforts.  Your results may differ from mine.  These stats are provided to give you a starting point for new safelists and viral list builders to try.  The only way to determine which sites work best for you is to track your own stats.  You can get the same link tracker that I use for free from TE Toolbox.

Click here to receive a free copy of Safelist Marketing Tactics

Hello!

Welcome to my August 2011 report of the current best safelists and viral list builders.

If this is your first time here you are in for a treat.  Every month I share my personal marketing stats from all of the safelists and viral list builders I used during the previous month.  This should help you get a better idea of what safelists and viral list builders are producing the best results going into the new month.  I also like to share any news or announcements of big launches that recently happened.

Last month there were no new safelists or viral list builder launches to report.  Sorry.

There was a new feature released at State of the Art Mailer worth mentioning called “Time Bonus Ads”.  I wrote about this in a previous post that you can find here.  To be honest I totally forgot all about this new feature since I last wrote about it… but that’s how it works!  You earn credits to show your banner ads across their network just doing the stuff you are already doing.  Since I last checked it I have had my banner shown 23,198 times and had 30 click-thrus to my sites.  Not bad for not having to do any extra work.

Ok, time for the stats…

Here’s how it works.  I promote several squeeze pages for my ebook Safelist Marketing Tactics on all of the top safelists and viral list builders.  I then track how many hits I received from each mailer and how many new subscribers they brought to my list.  I do have have upgraded memberships on most of these mailers which allow to me send my ads more often.  I also spend time every day clicking email ads for credits that allow me to send my emails to as many members as I can as often as I can.  This list is only intended as a guideline and your results my vary.

Total July sign-ups from all mailers (including those not listed here): 160

Not too much has changed from last month.   The only exception is Instant List Empire which has made a pretty big jump from last month.  I like this mailer because as an upgraded member I only receive maybe one or two emails a day.  That makes earning extra credits a little tricky but it also means every time I send out an ad it gets noticed.

That’s it!  Don’t forget that these are my own personal tracking stats from promoting my own pages.  Your results may vary but you will never know unless you are tracking your own ads.  You can get the same tracking service I use for free from TE Toolbox.

Now get out there and start sending your ads!

Click here to receive a free copy of Safelist Marketing Tactics

Hello and welcome to February!

I don’t know about you but it’s weather like this makes me glad I work from home.

I have some big changes to announce this month but first I want to shine a light on one of the better safelist related launches that took place last month.  It’s a site called “The Traffic Button” and it was released by Mike Purvis who is best known for creating The List Auction, Viral Ad Store, and Traffic Zipper.  The Traffic Button is a series of free training modules which will show you how to get the most out of advertising with free viral list builders (such as the ones Mike owns).  There is definitely some good content here and well worth the time to check it out.

I also released a new edition of my popular ebook Safelist Marketing Tactics.  Nothing major.  I just wanted to make sure the content is current and still relevant to marketing with safelist and viral list builders into 2011.

Ok, the big announcement… my tracking script died!

Yep.  I was doing some routine maintenance on the database and for some unknown reason the script will now no longer recognize the tracking cookies used to tell me when people click my splash page and when they join my program.

So now I am tracking all of my links exclusively with TE Toolbox!

The bad news is that I lost all of my data from before January 13th.

The good news is that the new trackers are working great.

Since I made such a major change in the way I track my links I also decided to take this opportunity to make some changes in the way I have been promoting.  Before I was promoting splash pages and tracking how many people clicked my ads and how many people ultimately joined my program.

I decided that instead of promoting the usual splash pages that I am now going to promote a squeeze page instead and track how many people subscribe to my list through that page.

Here is the page I am promoting:
http://safelisttactics.com/squeeze/?rid=1

That page is available to all upgraded members of Safelist Marketing Tactics if you would also like to use it to build your list.

The results?

Since January 13th I have tracked 208 new subscribers to my list from promoting that page exclusively through safelists and viral list builders.

Wow!

Which safelists and viral list builders worked the best?

As always I would like to point out that these stats are a result of my own marketing efforts and your results may differ.  I also have upgraded memberships on most of the safelists and viral list builders listed below which normally produces better results.

Enough of that… here’s what worked best for me:

Not bad for only half of January.

As usual, if you are not already a member of State of the Art Mailer… oh boy are you missing out!

Adchiever also continues to rock.

I am really impressed this month by Quick List Profits.  While this is still one of the newer viral list builders the conversion ratio is the best on the list.  I don’t know what Kym Robinson is doing over there but it’s definitely working!

That’s all for this month.

Keep your eyes peeled on Feb 13th for a brand new viral list builder launch that is definitely going to make some big waves.  Also be back here next month to see what kind of results I get from a full month of building my list with safelists and viral list builders.

Click here to receive a free copy of Safelist Marketing Tactics

Happy Saturday!

I just wanted to post a quick note about a few of the changes I just made with the Safelist Marketing Tactics ebook and website.

As you know things in this industry moves very fast.  I hate the idea of having my books floating around out there with outdated information.  So maybe twice a year I like to go back and make revisions to keep the content fresh.

I’ve added two new mailers to the list of recommended sites.  If you have been following my monthly safelist stats it should come as no surprise which two they are.

The new sites are:
Adchiever
State of the Art Mailer

I’ve also added my new ebook:
Autoresponder Profit System

If you are an upgraded member of the SMT website please login and add your referral links to the rebrander to make sure you have the most recent edition.

http://safelisttactics.com/login.php

I’ve also added two new video splash pages that you can use to promote the SMT website.

You may have seen my “3 Stooges” and “Video of Me Talking” splash pages  before.  I made these pages for my own personal use but after getting many requests I have now added them to the members area.

These pages convert like crazy!

If you would like to promote them yourself here are the links:

http://www.safelisttactics.com/splash5.php?rid=(YourRefID)
http://www.safelisttactics.com/splash6.php?rid=(YourRefID)

Free members earn 25% commission on all upgrades and OTO purchases.

There is a complete list of promo tools available inside the SMT members area.

http://safelistactics.com/login.php

That’s all for now.

If there is anything you would like to see added in future updates feel free to let me know.

Click here to get Safelist Marketing Tactics

Happy New Year!

That’s right.  Another year of safelist marketing is in the books.  And what a great year it was!  2010 saw more than a few new safelists/mailers step up and compete with the big guys who have dominated the market for years.  I have also started to notice a much wider acceptance of safelists by the Internet marketing community as a whole which benefits all of us.

So what’s new this month?

Not a whole lot, actually.  Probably the best thing that happened last month was The Lead Magnet opening it’s mailer.  The site got off to a slow start and held off opening the mailer until the beginning of last month.  It was well worth the wait though as you will see from the stats below.

Viral Mail Profits, which is a free safelist submission tool, is going to be relaunching on a new script later this month with some really cool features.  Most of this is still a big secret and I can’t say much about it so you didn’t hear about any of this from me.

I have a new site launching next week!  It’s not safelist related but after the launch I am going to release a revised version of my most popular ebook Safelist Marketing Tactics.  Look for that later this month.

And now the stats…

But first, a confession.  My numbers are going to be way off this month.  I took my first vacation in almost two years to visit my family in Connecticut for the holidays.  As much as I love reading safelist credit emails every day I decided to switch all of my accounts to “vacation” mode and enjoy some quality time with my family instead.  The result is that I received far fewer sign-ups than usual but the stats should still reflect which safelists were most responsive from the few mailings I was able to do.

“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 nearly as bad as I was expecting.

A big congrats to Adchiever for landing in the top spot this month.  I don’t know about you but it seems like every time I try to send an email with Adchiever the mailer is always down for maintenance and the volume of emails that the site sites out does takes a lot of work to stay on top of but the results are well worth the effort.  If you are not a member of Adchiever yet you are missing out on the best new mailer of 2010.

And a special shout out to Stefan Berg’s The Lead Magnet.  This mailer has only been running since the beginning of December and is already producing some great results.  The membership is still rather small but Stefan is doing a great job at making sure it’s a responsive membership.  Check it out!

That’s it for this month.  I look forward to all the big stuff happening this month including a new mailer launching on the 11th which I think is going to do really well.

As always I like to point out that the stats above are the result of my own efforts advertising my own sites.  What works best for me might not necessarily work best for you.  That is why it is important to always track your own results.  You can get a free link tracker from TEToolbox.

Click here to get Safelist Marketing Tactics

About a week ago I started seeing some ads for a new program that was just released called “Safelist Genie” which is supposed to help you manage all of your safelist accounts.

Having written a book on safelist marketing (“Safelist Marketing Tactics“) I thought Safelist Genie would be a good product to buy and review here on my blog.  Luckily, I didn’t need to buy anything because the program comes with a 14-day free trial which is more than enough time to see exactly what it can do.

Safelist Genie is a stand-alone software product that works with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (sorry, there’s no Mac version).  It was created by the same people who did TE Browser.

Before I continue I should probably point out that safelist marketing has been a daily part of my marketing routine for the past two years.  Having spent so much time doing it I have naturally developed my own style and method for handling the tedious task of reading credit emails and submitting my ads every day.  It’s not fun, but it works.

It was my hope that Safelist Genie would be a good enough for me to recommend to my readers who don’t already have a system of their own to hopefully make using safelists a little bit easier for them.

So I signed-up for Safelist Genie with high expectations.   I was even prepared to buy the “one time offer” but I was surprised to find that there was none.  Instead I continued with the free 14-day trial and installed the program on my computer.

I don’t know about you but I like to jump right into new programs and start pushing buttons.  I guess I like to learn from experience.  Unfortunately that just isn’t possible with Safelist Genie.

After staring blankly at each of the feature screens for a few minutes I finally came to the “Help/Guide” section which contains the user manual for Safelist Genie.  You must read the manual if you want any chance of figuring out how to setup and use this program.  And good luck getting through the manual without scratching your head in confusion more than once.

My first task was to setup my pop3 email so that the program could download my safelist emails.  I admit that I am one of the few people who still checks their emails with an offline email program.  Because of this I do have some experience with managing my pop3 email setting but I still had a hard time configuring this thing.

After several failures I finally guessed what “port” I was supposed to use by trying the one in the manual’s example.  With my pop3 settings in place I selected a few safelists to test.

The safelists page is basically a giant spreadsheet containing a list of all the supported safelists.  If you enter your username and password into the spreadsheet and click the “update” button the program will retrieve your safelist info… sorta.

As you can see in the image above the software was able to tell me the current mailing limit and even how many referrals I have but it failed to tell me how many credits I have left.  Don’t ask me what “daily use” and “credits level” are because it failed to fill anything in there too.

Checking my email for the selected safelists wasn’t too difficult once I got my email settings correct (there is no error message if they are wrong, it just does nothing).  However I also found myself confused just trying to read the emails.  Back to the manual!

As you can see in the image above (click it to make it bigger) the downloaded emails appear in the top frame.  To open an email you click it once and the email will appear in the bottom left corner of the screen.  To access the credit link click the email twice and the link will be opened in the bottom right corner of the screen.

To speed things up Safelist Genie has 6 different browser windows that you can use.  So you can double click an email to open the credit link, switch to a new reader, and open another credit link.  This saves you time because instead of waiting for the safelist timer to count down you can open up 6 credit links at once.

While this may be a huge time saver for earning credits it certainly doesn’t help the people who are using safelists to get their ads seen.  The actual email becomes virtually meaningless as it is confined to the small bottom left corner of the screen.  While the size of the window can be adjusted to show more of the email it isn’t necessary if all you are after is the credit link.

Even if you wanted to read the emails it’s almost impossible.  It seems that Safelist Genie will only displays emails in html format.  If the email was sent as a regular text email it is virtually unreadable here.

The credit url window isn’t much better.  While it can be resized to make the page more readable I suspect most people will only be seeing the very top of the pages being promoted.

It’s not all bad though.

The safelist submission tool is actually pretty cool.  Once you setup your ads you can simply select the safelist you want to submit to from a pull-down menu and push “Go”.  The submission form immediately appears with your ad already filled in.  What’s cool is that it also fills in the maximum credits to use and even sets the “Save This Message?” button to “No” (I hate always having to change that).  All you need to do is click the “submit”  button and move on to the next safelist.

It usually takes me about 15-20 minutes to submit to my 25+ safelists every day.  I’m guessing once I have this all setup Safelist Genie can probably do the job for me in about 5-10 minutes.

I am interested in hearing what safelist owners think of this submission method though.  Automatically loading the safelist submission form does save time but it also means less revenue for the safelist owners as fewer people will be logging into the site normally and bypassing any offers.

Overall thoughts?

Pretty disappointing.  While I can see the value of some of the features this program is just way too complicated for me to recommend for the casual user.  The interface is neither intuitive or user-friendly.  However, if you have the patience to figure out how everything works I can see how Safelist Genie can be a huge time saver.  I just hope giving members the ability to read emails in tiny windows doesn’t kill the effectiveness of safelist advertising in the future.

Click Here to Download Safelist Genie

What?  September already?

Somehow we managed to survive the blistering summer heat here in the midwest.  If you believe in the summer slow down then now is the time to start promoting again because the busy season is about to begin.

So what’s new in safelists?  Not a whole lot.

I did join Quality Safelist which is the new safelist from Michael Coursey that launched about 2 months ago.  The results have been decent but i’m not blown away.  There’s only about 2,200 members right now though so hopefully it will continue to improve as the membership grows.  Mike has been in this business for a long time though so you can bet Quality Safelist will be around for awhile.

I am being told that there is a new viral list builder getting ready to launch tomorrow.  I can’t say anything else about it right now.  You’ll just have to check back here tomorrow after it launches.

Ok, let’s get to the stats!

These stats were obtained by promoting my rotating splash pages for Safelist Marketing Tactics on all of the top credit safelists and viral list builders.  I had been promoting the same two splash pages for awhile but I just added a 3rd new splash page about a week ago.  I’m not sure if the new page is converting as well as the others but overall the results this month have been pretty good.

“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.

Looking at the stats.. List Joe is back on top!  Even though State of the Art Mailing System brought me a lot more traffic I think List Joe got a nice little bump this month because they have been offering random credit multipliers for every email read.  I’ve been earning as much as 50 credits per email which is pretty nuts but worth taking advantage of while it lasts.

As you can see Quality Safelist just managed to creep it’s way onto the list.  While it didn’t generate a lot of new sign-ups from me you can see by the numbers that even though the membership base at Quality Safelist is still relatively low they are definitely some active members there.

That’s about it for this update.  Keep your eyes peeled tomorrow for the new viral list builder that is getting ready to launch!

And of course, don’t forget that the stats above are my only personal stats.  Your results may vary.  The important thing to remember is that you will never know how good your ads or advertising sources are unless you track your ads!  You can get your own free link tracker from from TE Toolbox.