Whole Lot

Totally Tweetable – An Honest Review

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Yesterday saw the launch of the new program from Walter Bayliss called Totally Tweetable.

Let me start out by saying that I am a big fan of Walter’s sites.  I use Instant Blog Subscribers every time I update my blog.  It’s a great program.  So I was very much looking forward to see what Walt’s latest project was going to be.  I have to admit I was very disappointed to find out that it was a new Twitter marketing tool.

I like Twitter.  I have Twitter setup as my homepage in my browser.  I don’t tweet a whole lot but I am following some interesting people and I love reading my updates throughout the day.  So when I started seeing automated messages sent by Totally Tweetable through the Twitter accounts of some of the people I was following I knew this was going to be a problem.  I say “was following” because I have no interest in having my Twitter feed filled with advertisements.  I have been unfollowing Totally Tweetable members since the site launched.

I was going to totally ignore Totally Tweetable until I started to see some glowing reviews from other marketers who’s opinions I respect.  I figured I should join and take a look for myself to see if it’s as bad as it appears.

To be fair, Totally Tweetable starts out pretty good.  It’s essentially a safelist/viral list builder.  As a free member you can send an email (not a tweet) to 100 members every 7 days.  You can earn additional credits to send your ads to more members by reading the emails sent by other members.

No problem there.  I love safelists so that’s right up my alley.

The problem comes when you read your emails and claim your credits the program automatically sends a tweet from your Twitter account promoting the ad you just read.  Yes, it’s good for the advertiser but it basically turns your Twitter into a spam account.  If you read 20 emails a day to earn credits that means you are going to be sending 20 tweets a day promoting other people’s sites.

Why would anybody want to do this?

Want to know the fastest way to lose Twitter followers?  Use Totally Tweetable.

It appears there are ways around this.  You can create a fake Twitter account to use exclusively with Totally Tweetable.  You can even skip the Twitter verification part to prevent the site from accessing your Twitter account.  But what is the point of this?  If your ads are being retweeted with Totally Tweetable you can bet that most of them are either going to garbage Twitter accounts or they are being sent along with dozens of other automated tweets pissing off that member’s followers.

I don’t know why Internet marketers have to try and turn everything they touch into a spam tool.  Twitter is far too powerful to be abused like this.  If you are a Twitter user you should be following people you want to follow and tweeting the things your followers want to read.  Twitter is a “social” platform.  It’s not for automated spamming!

To sum up… Totally Tweetable appears to be a good looking safelist/viral list builder that you can use to email your ads to other members.  However if you link it to your Twitter account you might as well kiss all of your followers goodbye.  If you choose to join make sure you setup a fake Twitter account or skip the step that gives Totally Tweetable access to your account.

 

The Best Safelists for January 2011

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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.

Total Clicks Unique Clicks Action Sales CTA CTS
Adchiever 1,677 1,014 71 17 7.00% 1.68%
The Lead Magnet 856 555 40 14 7.21% 2.52%
AdTactics 2,864 901 61 12 6.77% 1.33%
List Joe 1,568 1,025 63 10 6.15% 0.98%
StateoftheArtMailer 2,837 1,380 53 8 3.84% 0.58%
List Zillion 720 384 27 8 7.03% 2.08%
Global Safelist 1,802 802 22 7 2.74% 0.87%
AdsolutionLine 2,189 911 36 6 3.95% 0.66%
Quality Safelist 1,154 491 22 6 4.48% 1.22%
DownlineBuilderDirect 823 455 19 6 4.18% 1.32%

“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.

The Best Safelists for December 2010

Click here to get Safelist Marketing Tactics

The Best Safelists for September 2010

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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.

Total Clicks Unique Clicks Action Sales CTA CTS
List Joe 1,855 1,314 60 17 4.57% 1.29%
State of Art Mailer 4,239 2,109 122 16 5.87% 0.76%
AdTactics 2,897 1,029 81 11 7.87% 1.07%
Adsolutionline 2,392 915 40 9 4.37% 0.98%
List Auction 1,180 626 32 9 5.11% 1.44%
List Zillion 1,386 735 42 8 5.71% 1.09%
Elite Safelist 2,190 993 36 8 3.63% 0.81%
List Effects 973 611 30 6 4.91% 0.98%
Quality Safelist 525 379 27 6 7.12% 1.58%

“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.

The Best Safelists for February 2010

List Zillion – Safelist Review

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I know, finally!

I’ve been promising this review of List Zillion for about a month now and I finally have some time to get it written.

I considered doing another video review but to be honest there isn’t a whole lot to see inside the List Zillion site.  List Zillion appears to be run on the same viral list building script that i’ve seen running on a few other sites that have recently launched.  The members area consists of a message displaying the site’s stats (currently 5415 members) and that’s about it.  Other than some banners and full-page ads I guess you could say List Zillion has a “clean” design.

Don’t worry.  What List Zillion lacks in personality it more than makes up for by being an extremely responsive mailer.  Isn’t that what counts?  But I’ll get back to that in a minute.

As simple as the List Zillion design is I still found myself getting lost several times when I first joined.  It seems the link to the “upgrade” page isn’t where you would expect it to be and once there I had an even harder time noticing the link to compare memberships levels.

List Zillion does offer some unique features for those who take the time to explore the site.  There’s the standard link cloaker and downline builder but there’s also something new called the “list builders optimizer”.  This appears to be a way to organize your mailings with other viral list builders.  I haven’t really taken the time to set this up yet but it seems like it could be useful.

Upgraded members can submit “top sponsor” ads which appear at the top of every email.  They also have access to a unique “referral mailer” which acts like an autoresponder by sending a welcome email to your new referrals as well as sending a recurring email to them every 6 days.

Here’s a peek at the List Zillion membership levels.

Membership Free Gold Platinum
Mail To (memberships) Free, Gold Free, Gold, Platinum Free, Gold, Platinum
Mail Frequency Every 7 Days Every 5 Days Every 3 Days
Mail To (members) 300 (up to 1000 w/credits) 2000 (up to 3000 w/credits) 3000 (up to 5000 w/credits)
Message Personalization Yes Yes Yes
Click Tracker Yes Yes Yes
Can Save Ads Up to 2 Up to 10 Up to 20
Credits for reading Messages 10 15 20
Credits for reading Solo Ads 20 40 50
Credits for your downline reading messages 5% 10% 20%
Signup Credits 1,000 4,000 6,000
Credits per Referral 150 250 300
Monthly Credits 0 4,000 6,000
Top Sponsor Ads 0 3 5
HTML Mailer No Yes Yes
Visual HTML Editor No Yes Yes
Commissions 15% 30% 50%
Monthly Cost – $16.99 $26.99

So is List Zillion worth the platinum upgrade?

Here’s my personal advertising stats from last month with List Zillion:

Total Clicks: 1,226
Unique Clicks: 741
Splash Page Clicks: 47
Sign-ups: 15
Clicks-to-Action: 6.34%
Clicks-to-Sign-up: 2.02%
Cost per Sign-up: $1.80
Daily Emails Received: <10

Not bad.  This is comparable to most of the major viral list builders out there right now.

List Zillion is still a relatively new site.  With just over 5,000 members there is still a lot of room for growth.  Anyone looking for a solid viral list builder who cares about results should definitely give List Zillion a closer look.


Click Here to Join List Zillion

TE Command Post – Free Traffic Exchange Manager

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Happy Tuesday!

Sorry I have been a little bit quiet lately.  There honestly hasn’t been a whole lot going on.  But today I have some pretty big news.  It’s a brand new program that just launched this morning from my buddies Paul Kinder and Scott Martin (yes, I really do know all these people).

It’s called TE Command Post!

Paul and Scott have designed and built a site that I think fills a HUGE gap in the traffic exchange market. It’s something that surfers have needed for years without ever really knowing it.

TE Command Post allows you to:

* Command Your Credits
* Control Your Time
* Cash In Cool Commissions On 24/7 Autopilot
* All With Push Button Simplicity Right Now!

And the best bit – yep, it’s free!

Here’s everything you will get if you join today…

* Up to the minute account information for every listed exchange almost instantly.

* How many credits you have waiting to be assigned

* How many credits you have already assigned

* Which url’s are running low on credits

* High converting Affiliate Tools designed to build your downlines fast and bring you passive recurring affiliate commissions for TE Command Post and many other traffic-related sites

* TWO downline builders to get you passive referrals.

* Your links appear in Paul’s emails so you get to lay back and let an email master make you commissions!

Now check this out:

TE Command Post 1

That’s a screen shot from inside my TE Command Post account.  I had no idea I had so many unassigned credits laying around!  But TE Command Post found them for me.  Now I can easily login to each of those accounts and assign all of my credits.

And it also works with your banner and text ads…

TE Command Post 2

That’s how many unassigned banner impressions I had.  Wow!

BUT… there is an absolutely HUGE list of extra features for upgraded members too (I know because I am using them).

PLUS… a special launch promotion where you can lock in up to 88% discount – secured for life!

Highly recommended!

btw, Scott and Paul are not saying they will start charging. That’s bogus! They really are happy to share their own personal system that has helped with their success and you will always be able to get it free but…

The special launch discount is expected to sell out quickly and will only be available for a few short days!

So join free or grab yourself a real bargain,

Either way you won’t regret it!

Click Here to Join TE Command Post.