safelist

Safelist Experts Tell All

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Happy Saturday!

Can you believe that anybody would want to interview me?

It’s true.  In fact I didn’t quite know how to react when John Karnish contacted me a few months ago with the idea of interviewing me for his new book he was writing about safelist marketing.

Of course I agreed.

And now you can read that interview at Safelist Experts Tell All.

Let me tell you a little about how this all came about because I think this is really great.

I’ve talked before about how important it is for you to have your own product but I can understand that not everyone out there is the greatest writer.  I’ve mentioned that one way to get around this is to simply do an interview with someone who knows more about a subject than you do.

And that’s exactly what John did.

John contacted myself and three other big name safelist marketers and asked us the important questions that everybody needs to know about marketing with safelists.

The result is that John now has his own ebook jam packed with quality content and he only had to write about one page himself.

Pretty clever, right?

What’s also great is that John is giving everyone who signs up for his free ebook access to his affiliate program that pays 75% commissions on the one-time-offer.

And let me just say something about this one-time-offer.  I think John is nuts!
This thing is waaaay underpriced.  Even if you don’t buy it yourself (and you
should because it’s a steal) you’ll have no problem converting any free members you send to his site.

So, what are you waiting for?

Click the image below to get your copy.

It’s really good!

I know because I wrote 1/4 of it :)

The Best Safelists for April 2010

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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.

Total Clicks

 Unique Clicks Action Sales CTA CTS
List Effects
 1,742 1,072 117 35 10.91% 3.26%
ListBuildingMaximizer 1,817 843 37 18 4.39% 2.14%
List Auction 1,646 1,028 47 16 4.57% 1.56%
List Joe 1,629 1,147 51 15 4.45% 1.31%
Elite Safelist 1,565 694 24 13 3.46% 1.87%
ViralAdStore 1,654 943 37 10 3.92% 1.06%
Got Safelist 4,041 1,595 44 9 2.76% 0.56%
FreeSafelistMailer 1,333 609 23 6 3.78% 0.99%

“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.

The Best Safelists for February 2010

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.

The Best Safelists – December Stats

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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:

Total Clicks

 Unique Clicks Action Sales CTA CTS
List Joe 2,175 1,599 123 29 7.69% 1.81%
ViralAdStore 1,714 934 84 28 8.99% 3.00%
List Auction 1,059 718 66 17 9.19% 2.37%
FreeSafelistMailer
 2,151 1,061 46 11 4.34% 1.04%
Got Safelist 3,948 1,721 49 10 2.85% 0.58%
Elite Safelist 1,534 799 37 5 4.63% 0.38%
Global Safelist
 1,741 868 15 5 1.73% 0.58%
AdSolutionline 2,820 1,140 44 4 3.86% 0.35%
Smart Safelist 783 373 11 4 2.95% 1.07%

“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.

Day 3 of the “Safelist Marketing Tactics” Launch…

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It’s been 3 days since I launched my Safelist Marketing Tactics website and so far I have been very happy with the results.

Have you joined yet?

http://www.SafelistTactics.com

Since Monday I have had almost 800 people join and the site has generated close to $900 in sales.  Not epic numbers by an means but this was a pretty small launch.  Now that I am a little more confident that I know what I am doing I think I should be able to pull off something a little bit bigger next time.

I must admit that I was also a little hesitant to release something I had personally written to such a large audience.  I am not a professional writer.  I usually just write the way I speak.  Based on the feedback I have received it sounds like I at least did a pretty good job of offering some valuable content which is what I was shooting for anyways.

I was planning to get started on my next project right away but I think I am going to spend some time expanding the Safelist Marketing Tactics site.  I
have some great ideas to help make the site a little more valuable to free members and also help the upgraded members earn more money.

If you haven’t joined yet I would love to have you as a member.  Even if you are not really interested in safelist marketing the membership site is still an interesting business model that you can use to build your own business.

Check it out here:

http://www.SafelistTactics.com

Safelist Marketing Tactics