Steve Shapiro

I feel that correct spelling and grammar are very important in making a good impression on people who don't know you. I understand that English may not be someone's first language, but if they are going to try to market a product or service, they should do their best to make a good impression on English speaking readers, who make up the largest percentage of buyers.

The issue isn't so much "free traffic" but free traffic that converts. That seems to be the biggest challenge. The best advice I could give is to be creative, think outside of the box. Go beyond the traditional methods that everyone uses. There has to be some great new idea that will convert better than anything else. Maybe you can be the one to discover that method if you put your mind to it.

I've found that one viral mailer/safelist is pretty much the same as another when it comes to any positive results from their use. If you sell anything from using these sites to advertise, it's pretty much just pure luck. The problem is that even though people will click on the link in your ad, they're just doing it to get the credits. They don't actually bother to read what you're saying. It's all a numbers game though and you probably will stumble into a few sales if you send out enough emails through these mailer programs and the site that you're sending people to is appealing on some level or is selling something that people are actually interested in. But the big question is whether any return you get is worth the effort (and possible out of pocket cost) that you're putting in.

When are people going to learn their lesson? If it sounds too good to be true, then it almost always IS. When you find the rare case when it may not be a deceptive scam, please let me know. In the meantime, please throw YOUR money away, rather than encourage me to throw MINE away. Not just money, but time. How many hours were spent surfing to the point where you thought you could withdraw $150?

"most people quit before they give it enough time to work" Very true, but the question is "How much time is ENOUGH time"? People want instant gratification nowadays, Short of that, they at least want to see progress. Some sign that what they're doing is working is essential to keeping the motivation to maintain the marketing effort. It may be only a few upgrades or sales the first month....maybe a few more the 2nd month....but SOME sign of progress. What happens far too often, from my experience, is that the program you're promoting tanks before you can ever build up a profitable business with it. Or maybe it just stagnates. Once people start dropping out, it becomes a snowball effect. So, how much time is enough time kind of depends on what it is that you're promoting and how that business is doing in general, aside from your own efforts.

Maryanne Myers......No disrespect meant to you or the owner of this forum, but if you try to use a safelist on a CPA offer they will consider any clicks you get as "garbage" traffic and likely not pay you for them.

The fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter how good your ad is if nobody reads it. Sites like Herculist are a total ripoff in that the people who receive their emails are the same ones who are sending them....therefore regard them as spam and never open them. It's the same as any safelist. Any sales you make from these sites are by pure luck. You certainly cannot build a business around them.

I'm a big believer in the "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" philosophy. So, if your methods are working to your satisfaction, that's all that matters.

I don't necessarily think it will help sell a product or service that the viewer simply isn't interested in, but I think it will make people pay more attention to your sales page, which in turn could indirectly lead to sales. I think it must help, in general. How many news shows have you seen on TV where the lead anchor wasn't an attractive man or woman? Even down to the field reporter level, they're all pleasing to the eye.

Some people may have a valid reason for not wanting their picture out there. Then again, there's nothing to stop them from posting "any" picture and claiming it to be a current version of themselves. Of course, it does help to present an image of the person that you can relate to, whether it's an accurate image or not. I don't think it's unrealistic to say that I'd be more likely to join a person in a business who I could match their words to a face.

Since the great majority of recipients of TE or safelist emails won't ever read what you are sending, I don't think it really makes a difference whether you include the first name or not. I'll include it, just because I think it looks better, but I don't think it will help you make any sales. People will click the link for credits and the website that you send them to will have to do the selling for you.

Considering Payza's rather checkered history itself (putting it mildly), I would be very wary of them too when it comes to freezing or limiting accounts. But I agree with the poster who says that building a business by earning $.01 at a time is really not how you want to do it.

Sites that give you little information as to what they're really offering seem to be trying to get you on their mailing list primarily. They make their landing page just intriguing enough to pique your curiosity and give them your email address. or to sign up for free. I have to laugh when they advertise "Free to Join". Everything is "free to join" but not free to actually get anything worthwhile out of it. People sign up to these sites because they're curious enough to find out more. As to whether these people are actually good leads or not depends on what they're actually looking for. If they're just initially clicking on a safelist ad to get credits, chances are that they are a waste of time. But you never know. It's all a numbers game. You may get some real signups and upgrades from this group of people, but in my experience, the referrals who may really be worth something significant to you are probably not surfing through traffic exchanges or safelists.

There is no motivation like success. A few sales will go a long way toward keeping a person motivated. If you go day after day, spending hours each day promoting and have very little or nothing to show for it, its hard to stay motivated indefinitely. I'm not talking about "instant riches" or being at the top of the leaderboard. I'm speaking of incremental progress....just something that shows that your hard work has not been for nothing.

I'm dead wrong about what? I said that I don't see any difference in the quality of the members between free safelists and paid safelists. I never said that people who only join free safelists will never spend any money. I just said that people who have no intention of spending money won't join the paid safelists, because they don't want to pay to join.

I have noticed no difference between sites that make you pay a couple of dollars to join or free sites, in terms of the quality of the people who you mail to. The only discernable difference I've seen is the number of members who you can mail to. In sites where you can become active for free, there can be thousands of members. In "paid only" sites there will be substantially less because it will eliminate the tire kickers and people who have no intention of spending any money, no matter what. In either case, I find that these sites generally become stagnant shortly after launch, which is when most of the membership joins. Once their initial credits are used up, they leave and move on to the next launch to join. It's a pattern that I've seen over and over and over again

The whole idea of mailing imitations on free members is to get you to upgrade. But unless the money doesn't matter to you, I've found upgrades to be pretty much a waste of money. Just about 99% of people who click on your safelist ad aren't going to read your email anyway, no matter how cleverly crafted it is. They're just clicking for credits....and trying to accumulate them as quickly as possible, meaning that they won't take the time to see what it is that you're offering. They go straight for the credit link, wait the 10 seconds or so required, collect their credits and move on to the next ad. When a mailing site first launches, that's usually when you'll get the most clicks on your ads. That's because there are usually promo codes for new members which allow them to mail with minimal (or no) clicking involved. Once those credits are used, people stop using the site and the clicks go down. This pattern happens on EVERY mailing site launched. No exceptions. The most heavily promoted sites (especially by the recognized "heavy hitters" ) will gain the most new members the fastest, and therefore be the most valuable to you...initially anyway. By advertising in sheer volume and spending a lot of time doing it, you will get a few sales here and there. But you'll never make the big money advertising through safelists. Advertising on mailers/safelists in general is an extremely time consuming chore for free members, and usually doesn't result in enough profit to really make it worthwhile at all. You could make more money working at McDonalds. But hey...at least you're doing it on your own schedule and you're your own boss. That has to be worth something :-)

LFMVM seems to be the standard at the moment, and the easiest from the user standpoint, if someone is mailing from several mailers each day. Its much faster when you can get into the flow of one format. I agree that the mailers that are successful are the ones which are heavily promoted. I feel that its a waste of time to open a mailer site if you're not going to have at least 1,500 to 2,000 "active" members or more. There is a lot of attrition on these sites as people use up their free credits and never return. There are new mailers being launched almost daily and users just jump over to those to get more free credits.

The industry is always in need of new mailers, The older mailers become less and less effective, as members use up their free advertising and then go elsewhere to find more free advertising. You've got to remember that credit based mailers are generally not very effective, since members don't really read the emails for the most part. They're just clicking for the credits. If you have a good website that interests them, you'll get some signups, but mostly free signups. The upgrade rate is generally terrible on these mailers. While more members doesn't always mean a better response, size "does" matter. Why bother with a new site that has 200 or 300 members unless you know that its run by someone that is actively building the site and attracting new members. If you're looking at the traditional click thru rates its really not worth the time to get 10 clicks or less on these sites. I personally won't mail on a site with less than 1000 members. There's no way to tell how many "active" members that a site has, but its probably a safe assumption to say that the newer the site, the higher the percentage of active members as opposed to inactive. I mean...what good does it do to mail to 20,000 if only a handful of them will ever see it?