New Time-Bonus Ads at SOTAM

Happy Fifth of July!

I am a few days late with this but over the weekend State of the Art Mailer quietly unveiled a new feature on their site that has been long in the works.  I am talking about their new “Time-Bonus Ads” which I will show you below.

If you are not familiar with State of the Art Mailer they are a unique viral list building site which is one of the most responsive advertising sites that I use.

One of the features that makes State of the Art Mailer so unique is that they offer their members the ability to participate in a profit-sharing pool where they share some of the money the site earns with their members as a reward for being active on the site.  Being active really just means reading the emails that other members send which is something most of us are doing anyways but offer this extra incentive means that State of the Art Mailer will typically bring you more traffic than any other mailer.

The new time-bonus ads work in a similar way.  By being active and reading emails you can now earn “time” credit that can be used to display a banner ad on their site and on the sites of other members participating in the program over a period of time.

You can also earn more time by displaying their widgets on your own pages.

Here’s a sample widget:


By displaying these widgets on your splash pages or blog you not only earn time credits but you can also get ranked on their page showing the top participating sites. If you click the click the number of “networked sites” under the banner you will see what I mean. Having your site listed on this page is also a good way to create back links to your site which of course the search engines love.

The time-bonus ads feature was supposed to be released at the time State of the Art Mailer launched but due to some programming complexity it has taken until now for it to be released.

So far this looks like an excellent way to earn some extra hands-free traffic to your sites. The banner I added has been running for about 2.5 hours and has already received 622 views with 2 click-thurs so it is definitely working.

It’s good to see that the owners of State of the Are Mailer are not taking a relaxed stance to their mailer but are actively trying to make it even better. This is the kind of stuff I like to see and I admit that I don’t see it enough in the safelist industry.

If you are not already a member of State of the Are Mailer definitely give this one a try. You won’t be disappointed.

Click the banner below to join…

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Safelist Solo Ad Stats

Hey guys.

Last month I relaunched my Safelist Marketing Tactics site.  As part of this promotion I decided to purchase a few safelist solo ads to help spread the word.  Since I always track my ads I thought you might be interested in checking out some of my stats.

I should point out that these stats probably aren’t as reliable as my monthly safelist reports.  Usually my stats are based on a full month of daily mailings.  These solo ad stats are 1-time mailings all sent within a few days of each other.  I probably would have gotten better results if I had spaced them out over a period of time so take that into consideration.

Total Clicks Unique Clicks Action Sales CTA CTS Cost CPS
European Safelist 612 563 16 4 2.84% 0.71% $7.00 $1.75
Adsolutionline 1,618 1,135 87 18 7.67% 1.59% $35.00 $1.94
Global Safelist 76 75 6 2 8.00% 2.67% $4.89 $2.45
AdTactics 822 799 27 7 3.38% 0.88% $20.00 $2.86
List Effects 287 279 13 6 4.66% 2.15% $25.00 $4.17
Elite Safelist 636 629 21 6 3.34% 0.95% $29.95 $4.99
List Joe 1,731 1,644 64 19 3.89% 1.16% $100.00 $5.26
FreeSafelistMailer 672 653 36 6 5.51% 0.92% $34.99 $5.83
SOATM 325 259 10 2 3.86% 0.77% $19.95 $9.98

“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”.  “Cost” is how much I paid for the solo ads and CPS is the “cost per sale”.

Not the greatest results.  Especially since I usually try to shoot for $1.00 per sign-up.

European Safelist ended up being the best deal.  I actually sent that solo ad for free as part of my monthly upgraded membership which costs $7.00.  I usually get 7-10 sign-ups from my monthly European Safelist solo ad which is what makes me think all theses results are a little bit weaker than they could have been.

Adsolutionline ended up being a pretty good deal.  It’s a little more expensive than the other solo ads but Adsolutionline has always been a responsive safelist for me.

I’m pretty disappointed in the viral list builders.  I normally get great results from these sites but it appears the solo ads weren’t really worth it this time.  List Joe brought me a lot of sign-ups but if you are going to spend $100 on advertising you’re probably better off with the monthly upgrade.

Just as with my monthly safelist stats please keep in mind that these stats are the results of my own marketing methods.  Your results may vary.  The only way to know for sure what works best for you is to track your results!  You can get a free link tracker from from TE Toolbox.

 The Best Safelists for February 2010