Safelists and Mailers are NOT working

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

This might be getting controversial - and I am all open for your replies,
and I started this discussion to get some real value out of it, not just

pointing out the most "obvious, why safelists and mailers are not working".

 

I am online since the mid 90s so I am around a while. When back then
i found "free-for-all-sites", "safelist" and "mailers" they did not work back
then - and they still do not work as of today.

 

Here is why:

People that to to those sites to "post for free", "read ads for free", "send ads for free"
are doing it just because of one thing:

To Post Their Ads! Nothing else.

 

They are not customers who want to buy something and have an open wallet.

 

Also: it is delusional if you think that you can "read ads" in exchange that others
will "read your ads" and make any serious income.

1. You are not able to leverage your time: how many of those ads can you read
until you run out of your daily "work hours"?

 

2. Safelists and Mailers are untargeted. They are full of people who are

"interested" and "just looking" but not committed.

 

3. The only way to make any money is if you OWN a safelist and mailer site,
and still with this you need to have a lot of customers that you can eventually

sell rather low-priced products and services. (Like making money with letting people
"upgrade" to services within your site.)

 

I know this post will get a lot of people HOT (and that is the intention of this post!)
I am not here to "hold-hands-and-be-happy" - I am here to see if ANYONE has
real high-income proof that those outdated marketing methods work.

 

Please go ahead and post your feedback and insights, but please be specific.

Do not write something like "I have had great results using this XYZ website."

How do you define "results"?

• Free sign-ups are no results.
• Real MONEY sales are results.
• How MUCH money did you make of a specific site or method:
  Specifically - How Much Profits did you make after you did
  actually used "paid" methods.
• What did you actually sell to people?

 

Thank you for posting constructive and helpful "hate replies" :-)

[Darren Olander]

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.

[Matt Koshko]

As Darren pointed out, Safelists DO work and ARE valuable but just *using* safelists doesn't mean it will return a positive value. Strategy, tracking, and optimization are all extremely important.

 

• Know your audience
• A/B test
• Have a plan
• Optimize
• Be committed

Most advertising needs multiple exposures to the end consumer before they take an action. Safelists are a great example where, if you're consistently using the advertising to bring exposure to your offer/product/brand, the results are more likely to be better than using a safelist only a few times.

[Jerry Iannucci]

I think safelists are very targeted.

 

I use safelists.

 

I also spend a lot of money every month on traffic and other services that are advertised on safelists.

 

Aren't I exactly the type of person you want seeing your ads every day?

[Sean Supplee]

It's your job as the affiliate or the marketer to make the offer stand out to make that browser or non interested person become interested. Its not the safelists job to do that. Their job is to get as many eye balls to your ads as possible.

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

Darren:

 

You own safelists. Which software or system did you find is the best to set up your own system?

Owning a safelist is always a different point of view. However: still you will attract a lot of freebie seeking
minded individuals. 

 

However you say you have used some safelists successfully as upgraded member, which are those
that you have made any significant profits from - how did you select them. Would you share those
resources?

 

Matt:

Your five points are valid and actually a must do in EVERYTHING you do in business.
It however has no impact if you target the wrong audience of freebie-seeking individuals.

 

Also: the "multiple exposure myth" is only samewhat valid. It is used by a lot of advertising
agencies if campaigns are not successful by numbers in sales. "Wait a bit more, and it does

actually 'build your brand' even if you do not get sales..."

Guess what: IF YOU HAVE NO CASHFLOW from your advertising activities there will be 

survival of your brand. To make it short: if your advertising fails to produce sales, you need

to stop it.

 

A few repeated tries and runs on ads is ok. But if you do not get any sales even after you

did change your headlines or other elements of advertising it might be 

 

the source of your advertising (the safe list)

and not your ad (that is what most companies want you to make you believe.)

Luckily if you have converting Optin Pages that work on other sources of traffic,
you know it is the traffic source, not the ad.

 

 

Jerry Iaanucci:

 

You own a safelist. That is the difference. And your slogan is "fast, free and effective email advertising",
so your target customer is a freebie oriented person. Now your site says you have 3633 "active" members,
does that mean those are PAID upgraded members? 

 

People are PAID to read emails and reading solo ads - so their motivation is pretty clear: I get paid no matter,
as long as I read it. Their mindset is not necessarily matching my offer. It will be an accident if someone reads
my offer and finds it interesting, because the way the reader was connected to my offer was not out of pure
genuine self interest!

 

By the way: your "Solo Ads" offer on http://mistersafelist.com/advert/ is saying "coming soon".
What is the deal with that? Let me know what the solo ad offer will be, who knows I might test it
out. (Even just for the reason pointed out before I doubt that there would be a lot of sign ups or
sales as people are being paid for reading those Solo Ads. - The normal Solo Ads that I use

are NOT from "get paid to read this" sources.)

 

Are there any banner ads offers for your network for non-members by the way?

 

And to your question if YOU are the type of person I want to see my ads every day:

I am NOT sure - you are a business owner - so that might be interesting aspect and
would match some of my criteria for some marketing. But so far in my experience of the
last 15 years online I have not found a lot of successful business owners within
"free advertising spheres". :-)

 

 

 

 

Sean Ground:

 

I know what my "job" is :-)

 

If I present my offer to the WRONG crowd of people then it does not matter how much committed I am. 

 

And: it is not always desired to get "as many eye balls on your ad". It is always about getting the
"right" eyeballs on the ad. I rather prefer 100 clicks of qualified buyers than 10.000 "just looking around" clicks.

 

And: I do not know what kind of a strategy it is to make "non-interested persons" interested.
They are the wrong people to look for. I need an exact match for my customer profile, a customer
who I already have defined that fits all criteria and will make a purchase because they WANT and
NEED it. People "talked into" something usually cancel and refund and are not seen again. :-)

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

Also Important:

I would never "read emails" in order to get credits

or if I am required to click on ads or all that other
mind-numbing tasks to be performed in order to be able
to "advertise".
 

I need straight advertising options without the endless
upsells.

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

Here is another excerpt taken from the blog post i referred in http://www.marketingcheckpoint.com/topic/481-the-truth-about-traffic/

 

 

That’s very, very important.

Here’s a true story. I bought a half million guaranteed visitors from a very well-known site. It was not the cheap stuff. I sent them to the Directory of Ezines, which is a page that I know converts very well. I’ve owned the DOE for 10 years, I know exactly what our numbers are. The result was zero sales. I lost $1,100 in that experiment. I don’t mind. I learned something and that’s good.

Here’s another true story about safe lists which I think are not so safe. One client joined all of the top safe lists. He spent five hours per day for three months sending emails. He made an honest-to-goodness effort. He sent 200 million emails. It’s hard to believe.

He had zero sales and he made zero money. His inbox was flooded with offer after offer. I spoke to him on the phone. He said, “I can’t read all of this email. I said, “Of course you can’t.”

How could this happen? How could he send 200 million emails and make no sales. It’s because the way that safe lists are supposed to work makes no sense at all. People join safe lists for one reason. That is to send email, not to read email.

Safe lists actually teach you how to avoid reading the email you will receive by using a free email address. I know because I joined a bunch of them last year to test it out.

Here’s my question. If everyone is using safe lists to send email but no one is reading the email then how is anyone going to buy anything? The answer is that they don’t. He lost about $200. What is worse is that he lost three months of time.

[Jerry Iannucci]

I used safelists successfully for years before I owned one.

 

I get around 100 new sign-ups every month for my site from using the credit mailer on other safelists.

 

When I was using safelists for list building I was getting a lot more than that.

 

People may be more interested in earning credits than looking at your ads but they are still looking.  It's your job to figure out how to take advantage of that.

 

I am curious to see the page that someone sent out 200 million emails for with no results.

[Darren Olander]

Darren:

 

You own safelists. Which software or system did you find is the best to set up your own system?

Owning a safelist is always a different point of view. However: still you will attract a lot of freebie seeking

minded individuals. 

 

However you say you have used some safelists successfully as upgraded member, which are those

that you have made any significant profits from - how did you select them. Would you share those

resources?

 

 

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? 

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

Darren: I tested those like 10 years ago and did try some test runs every now and then and I guess I tested almost any kind of system out there. The thing is again that I refuse to look at other incoming emails in order to be able to send out mails nor did I "click on ads" to earn any credits.

[Matt Koshko]

Darren: I tested those like 10 years ago and did try some test runs every now and then and I guess I tested almost any kind of system out there. The thing is again that I refuse to look at other incoming emails in order to be able to send out mails nor did I "click on ads" to earn any credits.

 

In that case I would guess you're also not in to Manual Traffic Exchange services or anything along those lines, right?

[Darren Olander]

Darren: I tested those like 10 years ago and did try some test runs every now and then and I guess I tested almost any kind of system out there. The thing is again that I refuse to look at other incoming emails in order to be able to send out mails nor did I "click on ads" to earn any credits.

 

I can speak for my sites that you do NOT have to even receive mail if you don't want it, and you can still send mail. As long as you upgrade you can send mails without having to earn any credits. You are not required to read anything. Most other safelists do not require you to read either, but will make you receive mails somewhere, and a few make you read before you can send.

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

Matt: Manual Traffic Exchanges - are you kidding me?

 

Darren: It makes no sense to receive anything "anywhere" if I will not read it.

 

My whole point is this: if I can pay to ignore the emails, so will others do the same.
The really interesting people that are willing to PAY for their upgrades I will NOT reach

with my emails - I will only reach the freebie seekers and free-tool-marketers and those
are low quality prospects who need a lot of "convincing" to try or buy anything.

 

Also: please note, while I now appear to be quite active with posting in this forum
this does not mean I have "free time" to waste. I was attracted to this forum by accident

because of the "Twice Confirmed Traffic" Post - and then I thought: maybe this is a nice
and friendly form where it would pay to place some banner ads and post a few posts and
see if I get some referrals from your site.

I limit my active posting on forums because this is also a very limited strategy for exposure.
Usually I outsource forum postings - you just can't do your necessary work and do ongoing

sensible content rich postings on forums at the same time.

So I appreciate your feedback and will take some things in account, and look forward to get

a bit more practical inside into your safelist successes. I am not convinced at this point how
much money you get out of posting to safelists - and maybe this is something to be discussed

behind the scenes in some private meeting (chat) settings.

 

(I mean what kind of price level products do you sell via those safe lists?)

 

Thanks!

[Walter Latty]

There are some pretty good arguments "for" safelist and I must say I agree.  Safelists DO work!  Using safelists may not be the fastest way to build a list or earn rapid income, but they work.  I believe  that a part of working successfully with safelist is "branding" yourself.  Don't just send people to your affiliate page or whatever else you are promoting.  People need to see you -- a lot--- before they are comfortable joining your list or handing over their hard earned money.