Below is an article about Safelists. If you were referred here by me or one of my team members - Welcome! There is a list of Safelist Programs at the end of the article that you can join from to start you on your way.

If you have arrived here by browsing you can learn more about me and the NZPCS Affiliate Program through the links section.

Safe Lists Work – You’re Kidding, Right?

One of the Internet Advertising methods that a lot people have tried and failed with is Safelists. Safelist advertising CAN be an effective way to advertise, but only if done properly.

This information is for the novice internet marketer, many of whom I train, for free, in my NZPCS Million Dollar Blueprint Affiliate Program, and for the frazzled jaded marketer alike.

If you are new to internet marketing, have a new online business or have just entered the work from home arena, you will find some helpful strategies when using Safelists for your meagre advertising budget.

What Is A Safelist?

Be aware that safelists are different than the On-line or “Co-Reg” mailing programs. The main difference is that in a Co-reg system, you mail to a “matrix” of people that you build, while with a safelist, ALL members of the safelist can generally mail to ALL other members. In other words, with a safelist you do not have to build your list first.

It’s been a long established fact that email marketing is one of the most effective forms of advertising. Unfortunately in these SPAM filled days, getting your message delivered can be quite a task, and the threat of SPAM complaints is ever present.

This is where the safelist comes to the fore. Basically safelists are a gathering of likeminded advertisers who have agreed to receive (and read) each others mail. This can result in TONS of safelist emails in your inbox and it is suggested that you use a separate email account than your main one to receive safelist emails.

Does Safelist Advertising Work?

Yes and No! If used properly, safelists can be one of the most effective forms of advertising you will ever encounter, if not it can be a total waste of time.

I will try to give you a few hints and pointers that will help you be successful with safelists. I will also give you an insight into strategies that you can easily duplicate.

Auto Submitter, Inbox Cleaners and Other Safelist Killers

“Safelist don’t work!” The truth is most safelists don’t work. This is largely due to the so called industry killers: auto submitters, auto inbox cleaners and auto validators.

At first glance these tools might be tempting but don’t be fooled. If people don’t have to log in to the safelist to post, don’t have to log in to their inbox let alone read their mail, then what is the point?

Posting to a safelist that allows auto submitters is a waste of your time and effort. Chances are that nobody will ever read your ads. The use of auto submitters is the shot-gun approach of people who think that if they just send enough mail, results will come. Wrong! Sending one million ads to inboxes nobody checks will produce exactly zero results and is a waste of your money. What you need is a targeted missile approach. The inbox cleaners might seem like a good idea if you use safelists that do not have credit links, but I will show you later why this isn’t so.

The Four Different Types of Safelists

Generally you can categorize safelist into the following four categories:

Regular Safelists: This is the strictly sending and receiving ads, type of list. Depending on your membership level you can post at certain intervals or frequency.

Credit Based Safelists: Works just like a regular list, but here you also have to spend credits in order to send your ads, you earn these credits by clicking credit links in other member’s ads. This helps to ensure that mails are, if not necessarily read, at least is opened.

Credit Based with Page Views: This is a further development of the credit based safelist and it works in the same way. The only difference is that when people click a credit link they are taken to the page you advertise instead of a generic page that say: “you have earned XX credits”. This ensures that your sites will get traffic even if people are just clicking for credits.

SafeAdLists have been said to be the future of safelists. That still remains to be seen. The concept is that you do not receive mails to your inbox, instead you log in to your members area and read other peoples ads. In turn you receive credits and these credits are used whenever someone reads the ads you have posted.

I can not say that one type of safelist is more effective than the other, that all depends on the individual list. You also have to apply different strategies for using different types of lists; I will show you later how to do this.

How To Get Started Using Safelists

When you sign up for a safelist you will be asked to provide two email addresses; one contact and one list address. You will typically receive a confirmation link at your list address and sometimes also at your contact address.

At the contact address you will receive messages from the safelists admin and occasionally a few ads, I recommend setting up a specific email account for use as your contact address in all the safelists you join. You should log in to your contact account at least 2-3 times a week.

Where you will receive all the ads from the other members is your list address. You will receive a large amount of mail, so this account should be set up specifically for this purpose. If you belong to a lot of lists you might need several list addresses.

Note that almost all safelist restricts which email addresses they allow to be used, check their terms of service for details.

The Importance of Tracking Your Ads

You have to use an ad-tracker, I can’t stress this enough. Without one you will never know if you are wasting your time with an unresponsive list or if your ad copy and subject line needs tweaking. If you are not using ad-tracking yet, I suggest that you grab a free account at TrackThatAd right away. TrackThatAd is fast becoming the premiere tracking service on the internet. But for our purpose the important thing is, even as a free member, you are allowed to track an unlimited amount of URLs.

How to Spot the Good Safelists

With the aid of ad-trackers you can easily judge for yourself. If a list does not produce results, clicks to your site, within 4-5 weeks, chances are it never will. Delete your membership and concentrate on the lists that deliver.

How to Write a Good Ad Copy and Subject Line

Learn from others: This is why using an auto inbox cleaner is a bad idea. The easiest way to becoming a good ad writer is to learn from others. Log in to your safelist regularly and scan all the subject lines. Whenever you come across a line that makes you want to open the mail, cut and paste that line to a word document and save it. You will soon have a collection of attention grabbing subject lines that you can either use as they are, or modify to your own needs.

Also, when you come across ads where you think: “this is well written” or “I want to click this link”, cut and paste the entire ad to a word document. Later you can make a re-write for your own ad or simply “borrow” the titbits you find useful.

When writing your own ads: There are some general rules to follow.

When writing a subject line, try to provide some sort of clear benefit but don’t make your subject lines misleading. You might get a few clicks but eventually, once people realize they have been cheated, they will delete your ad without blinking. Plus, it breaks the Terms of Service of ANY quality safelist.

Think about the use of caps; it’s the online equivalent of shouting. Shouting can be OK in advertising, in small doses, but it depends on the circumstances.

The ad copy it self should be short and direct, if it’s too long and droning no one will read it. Use short sentences and plenty of line breaks - it makes the ad look more appealing and easier to read. Make the ad personal. The most important word to use is “YOU”. Tell the reader what benefits they can expect. Tell them what’s in it for them…

Call your prospects to action with phrases such as: “Join Now”, “Click Here”, “Get Your FREE Copy Here” etc.

Finally, remember to check the spelling and grammar… People won’t buy from an ad that looks and sounds unprofessional.

For some good training on how to write a good ad copy, you should take the 30 day free trial with TrafficWave Auto Responder system. The training emails you will receive are perhaps the best in the industry.

Strategies for Each Type of Safelist

What is a good ad copy on a regular safelist is not necessarily good on credit based safelist. Here are some suggestions on how to write for the different types of safelists.

Regular Safelists: Probably the most difficult of the four. Use of an attention grabbing subject line is very important, you need to get peoples attention or they will just hit the delete button and clean their inbox. Once you have gotten them to open your mail, present them with a short and precise ad that makes them curious to know more. You won’t get thousands of visitors from regular safelists, but the ones you do get are highly targeted and one click will often result in one sign up.

Credit Based: Your task is to stop them from just clicking the link and deleting your ad without reading. To do this your ad has to be short and right to the point. List a few key points and benefits, a call to action, and a link to click. Expect the reader to be just scrolling down to the credit link and plan how to get them to stop. As with regular safelist the ones who actually stop and click your link are highly targeted visitors.

Credit Based With Page View: Much the same as with credit based safelists (see above). The only difference is that when they click the credit link they are taken to your page. It would be ok to let the link in the body text lead to your main affiliate page, as people who click here are interested, but use a different URL as the credit link. Instead, put in a catchy splash page, or better yet a lead capture page that will entice the visitor to submit to your newsletter or auto responder series. Treat the credit link like a traffic exchange. This way you will get the normal targeted visitors from the main link and the random conversions of traffic exchanges in your credit link – the best of both worlds.

SafeAdLists: What you want to focus on here is preventing people from just clicking on to the next ad. Therefore you really need to think of your ad as a splash page: short, precise and interesting.

Writing good ads is all about trial and error; don’t give up just because an ad doesn’t get any clicks. At least you then know not to use that particular technique again. And remember to use ad-tracking or you won’t be able to see what needs tweaking and what works fine.

To HTML or not to HTML

Use HTML whenever it is allowed. Not so much for graphics but more for making the text, and especially the links, look appealing. There are a lot of good free HTML editors out there. Just remember not to overdo your HTML ads - if your pages take longer to load than it takes for people to locate the credit link, you are wasting your time and credits.

What to Advertise Where and What Not To

Don’t always advertise the latest doubler, tripler or get rich quick scheme, people won’t take you seriously and will not join your scams. On the other hand, if you are constantly promoting top notch programs, you will lend credibility to your name and people will be more inclined to join you.

No two safelists have the exact same member base and conversely different things are being promoted on different lists. Sift through your inbox, if you see one of your programs being promoted by a hundred different people on one list, maybe you should try promoting another program on that list.

Many of the big safelists have their own forum. There are many benefits in joining these forums. First of all you can get a feel for what people are promoting, if you see no one promoting your program it might be worth running a few ads. If you participate actively in a forum people will get to know you, and some people will think: “Hey, here is an ad from that nice guy I met at the forum, I think I’ll join under him!”

All in all safelist are a lot like traffic exchanges. You can advertise just about anything, but getting people to spend money is quite hard. Promoting a paid program on safelist is definitely doable, but on average you would need a larger amount of ad views/clicks than if you are promoting something free. In my opinion the best option is to promote a free program that has a backend purchase or upgrade options like the NZPCS Directory to Dollars Program

Little Known Strategies

Branding: Whenever you post an ad always include your contact information e.g. name, email, and phone number or messenger ID. This will give your offer credibility. I personally never join something that doesn’t list contact information in some way; To me it just smells if people aren’t willing to back what they are selling.

Adding your contact information also has the added benefit of getting your name out there, branding you in the world of online marketing. Many people actively search for well known people to join in certain programs instead of just joining under some body they have never heard about.

Safelist Signature: always include a signature below your main offer. This should be a free offer, usually for an ecourse or newsletter. There are obvious benefits for doing this: if you are promoting a paid program, people who don’t want to pay or who already belong to the program will often take the freebie. So with no extra effort this strategy gets you two shots with every ad, one for selling the main product and one for building my list.

Solo Ads: Many safelists offer you the opportunity to purchase contact solo-ads. For a given price you get to send your ad to all the members contact addresses. This can be very effective, because you will often reach peoples main email address and if its credit based, solo-ads will often give more clicks to your site.

Don’t go around buying solo-ads blindly though, only buy from the tested lists and always use ads that you have tested with the normal safelist mailer. You don’t want to gamble with your advertising budget.

Managing Your Safelists

Aside from the contact and list email addresses you submit, you may want to think about managing your safelist more effectively. Have five different email accounts set up: one as contact address for all safelists, one list address for regular lists, one for credit based, one for credit based with page views and finally one for testing new lists.

The safelists with the regular and two credit list addresses are either undergoing testing or have been proved responsive by your own testing.

The test address is used when you find a new safelist that you want to try. No list is admitted into the three main list addresses before it has proven itself. Vote with your feet; delete your membership with non performers, even with the big ones that used to work.

If you find your free email accounts not accepted by the safelists and the expense of setting up lots of paid email accounts daunting, I recommend you try Global Domains International. As a GDI member you get not only your own domain name with ten email accounts to use for just US$10 a month but you can also promote the service and earn commissions as an affiliate. Doing so means your commission earnings pay for your hosting and gives you another income stream. If you’d like to take a free 10 day test drive go to www.workfromhome4life.ws

Your Safelist Day: Start with logging into your contact address to see if there is any important messages e.g. new referrals, commissions etc. then browse the contact solo-ads to see if there is anything useful and click the credit links.

Then take a look at the list address accounts browsing for new subject lines, ad copy inspiration and useful products. Finally rack up the credits you need for your own posting.

Now comes the time to have a look at your ad-trackers. Log into your ad-tracker and analyse the stats. Depending on what you see, some lists might deserve a promotion to your main accounts or need to be dropped from further testing. You can also see if some ad copies or subject lines are under performing and in need of either tweaking or just a rest.

Next step is to write new ads and make the ones you have better. This is a continuous process of trial and error, no matter how experienced you are.

Finally it is time to post your own ads. Generally have 3-5 different ads in rotations at any given time, this is to ensure a good amount of exposure without saturating the safelists with the same ad all the time.

If you use traffic exchanges you might be familiar with the term “tabbed browsing”. Similarly you can use “tabbed posting”. Here is how it works.

In your Fire Fox browser open up ten safelists in different tabs and post the same ad to all of them. Then open ten new lists and post a different ad. Repeat the process until you have completed your list.

Of course while you are browsing your inbox, surfing or checking forums, always be on the lookout for promising new lists to test and products that looks good for advertising on safelists.

In Closing

Some say that Safelist advertising is all in the numbers; well they are at least half right. Of course you will get better results from a thousand ads than from a hundred. But quality is just as important, I will take 100 ads posted to proven and tested lists over a million posted via an auto submitter, any day of the week.

To Your Success

Dee-Dee Macleod-Wilson

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Below is a list of some of the best Safelists in the industry that I use.

You are not required to join all the safelists below right now, but it should be your goal eventually to join as many of them as you can.

• Actual Visitors
• Adsolutionline
• Adtactics
• BusinessWorld
• Cash4U
• GotSafeList
• Guaranteed Results4U
• Herculist
• KellysGate
• MadVlad
• MuscleMail
• Traffic 2You
• Viking Safelist
• V-Spiral