Darren Olander

As I said, I own safelists now, but I was full time online (quit my day job) before I ever owned one myself. I have safelists and other free traffic sources to thank for that, because that is where I was advertising. LFMVM is probably the best software, but I don't use it because my sites are custom built. If I had to go with one that is what I would choose to run a safelist. My list of favorite safelists is on my blog. Usually it is a combination of popularity (alexa rank), active members, and how many clicks I receive on my mailings there. I have a question for you, when you tested safelists where you testing Credit Based safelists (those that require either credits or an upgrade to send) or the old-school ones that don't require credits?

I own my own safelists now, but I didn't always used to.. so I'll tell you what happened that made me want to own my own safelists :-) I promoted a training program, and in fact made a full time income doing so. To do this day I still promote a training program, my Prosperity Marketing System using safelists and it does extremely well. Not only did advertising on safelists make me money, but it outperformed EVERYTHING else I've tried in over 12 years of marketing online. Safelists have had the best ROI period. I've also learned over the years that many people call out certain advertising methods as useless, but then I look at other people and they are using it successfully.. how does one explain this? It means it works, just the person not being successful hasn't learned how to use it effectively. Just using any source won't magically make you money, more important is your STRATEGY. I use dozens of safelists, and guess what, they do scale! How? I'm upgraded in ALL of them! Being a happy customer in many safelists made me want to own my own because they created success for me, and believe me, I wouldn't stay upgraded in them if they weren't making me more money - and I would guess my customers feel the same way about my sites and is why I put as much effort as I can to make sure they deliver results. Safelist marketing is simply email marketing.. you do list build right? Well these are lists, and they react and pay for things they like. The difference here is.. you can get your message in front of thousands of people for dirt cheap - so the ROI is crazy good. You aren't buying a one time send, you're buying perhaps a year of mailings over and over again to a list that is growing as well.

Hmm.. I'd say a lot of terms have changed meanings over the years and a co-op is one of them. I would agree with you that the traditional meaning is everyone is purchasing a share into an overall advertising campaign. Also you made a good point, these traditional Co-ops are done in bulk which means the advertising is usually obtained at a cheaper price which benefits everyone in the co-op. As for these credit based co-ops I don't think there is any price benefit except being able to earn the traffic for free? I think they are a brilliant idea though, and I have no problem with them, but if co-op is not the right word for them, what is?

Welcome! The forum itself is no place for advertising, but there are a few things you can do... When you post you can have a forum signature which is automatically attached, and have a banner or ad in there, you can set that up under "My Settings" and signature. As you post and contribute, you are earning points. These points can be used to send an email ad under the mail section on the top menu. If you read mails from other members who have posted email ads, you can earn even more points.

I think there are very few who use standard mails anymore, but I would agree, it would not encourage me to use their site.

I agree with Don, for the ability to always follow-up .. it is important to be building your own list.

Many list sizes are inflated. For example, if a site claims 100k list you can mail to, I would bet that 90% of that list is inactive and will never even look at the email. I can speak for myself that my sites are constantly scrubbed, so you ONLY send to a list that has a RECENT history of reading and clicking on mails. Anyone who is not reading we stop sending them mails, so as an advertiser you get the most value. Some other lists clean up their member sizes as well so you aren't sending to "dead" prospects, but there are quite a few that will claim the higher numbers just to look good and as a result you will receive a very low CTR because those people just aren't reading the email.

Sorry to hear of what happened to you. Unfortunately even when scammers like that are caught, there are always more of them.. the best way to defeat them is to stay educated and careful on such things and try to let others know. Thanks for sharing.

How many of those mailers are any good now though? The ones without some cheat protection are worthless to even use.

State of the art mailer has just released a new section on their site for CFC ads (Click for Cash), basically anyone sending out to their viral list - the highest button escalation or upgrade get included in the CFC section for free. Members can earn 0.001 for each email they click on, if they are clicking for cash they are not earning any mailing credits and vice versa. What do you think, is this good or bad?

Well some type of anti-cheat protection is important I believe, otherwise you can have a site full of bots that just earn credits on their own. However, you do make a point... how often should that verification be needed? Maybe every email is unnecessary.

Yes.

Of course! This forum is about voicing opinions One thing I don't like? Sites that force upgraded members to read mail each day before they are allowed to send their ad.

Interesting campaign, congrats to whoever wins!

I just didn't reply because I never heard of getting traffic from Fiverr, that is new to me... I've always known it as a place for buying/selling services, or do you mean buying traffic from people who sell it on fiverr?

Any files like that you can keep a copy on Google Drive for free - https://drive.google.com , or at least I know you can for PDF/HTML, Google may "convert" it so you can open it in Drive, but you can download it again for any format. Other then that, almost free is ViralHosts, they offer a $7 lifetime account which provides 50 mb storage. I would be wary to rely on any other free hosting service to be honest... your files could be there one day and gone the next.

I'd have to agree with Jerry, I don't write so much but I've had my own self hosted wordpress blog for many years and always been happy with it.

Are you saying you found sites that have no timer to earn credits? Personally I think it is important for a site to have the timer.

Thanks very much! We're definitely here to stay

Paul, I'd say anything that attracts extra traffic to your site is definitely a good thing!

I don't even own any bitcoin but I have been keeping an eye on it. Unfortunately there will be some bad companies.. Mt. Gox is just the first.. not trusting any third party with your bitcoins is probably the wisest decision. I'm glad to hear that you saved yourself from too much loss.

Hi Phyllis, I don't think this is a problem with your computer, although I could be wrong.. I think it is just the way the scripts are for those sites. Have you contacted the sites about the problem? I noticed in some sites if you open more than one mail at a time they will always give an incorrect click.

I tested it for about a month, and to be honest - judging by the traffic - it seems to be some elaborate scam. I don't throw that word around easily. My case study: I signed up and had them send traffic to my Prosperity Marketing System Raw hits: 11512 Unique hits: 258 Opt-ins: 0 Sales: 0 They are sending a large amount of repeat traffic that has not even opted in for free... I feel they will have a lot of one month customers and then we will not hear about this site very much anymore. That is just my experience.

Then if you are not seeing progress it is probably not the traffic that is the problem... You probably need to take a good look at your offer/landing page and make sure it is appealing to the market. Split testing different landing pages to see which converts better would allow you to at least see noticeable differences and room for improvement.

Hi Paul, have you tried solo ads? Also, would you consider upgrading in list mailers "free" or "paid" traffic?