Home-Income-Team Safelist Survival Guide By: Soren Jordansen Viking Safelist
What is a safelist?
It has long been an established fact that email marketing is one of the most effective forms of advertising. Unfortunately in these SPAM days getting your mails delivered can be quite a task, and the threat of SPAM complaints is ever present.
>This is where the safelist enters the picture. Basically safelists are gathering of likeminded advertisers who have agreed to receive (and read) each others mail.
Unlike list builders like The List Machine you receive from, and can mail to the entire safelist. In other words, with a safelist you do not have to build your list first.
Does safelist advertising work then? Yes and No!
If used properly, safelists can be on of the most effective forms of advertising you will ever encounter, if not it can be a total waste of time.
In this safelist guide 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 in to the strategies that have helped me become successful, strategies that you can easily duplicate.
The four different types of safelists:
Generally you can categorize safelist into the following four categories:
Regular Safelists: A typical example of a regular list would be Herculist, this is strictly sending and receiving ads. Depending on your membership level you can post at certain intervals.
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 members ads. This helps to ensure that mails are, if not necessarily read, then at least opened. A typical example of a good credit based safelist is GOTsafelist
Credit Based with Page Views: This is and offshoot 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: that you have earned 100 credits”. This ensures that your sites will get traffic even if people are just clicking for credits. A typical example of this type of list would be the Viking Safelist.
SafeAdLists: have been said to be the future of safelists, that still remains to be seen though. 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. An example of a safeadlist is Muscle Mail
You can not say that on 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, later in this guide I will show you how to do this.
How to get started,
using safelists:
When you sign up for a safelist you have 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 contact address in all the safelists you join. You should log in to your contact account at least 2-3 times a week.
Your list address
is where you will receive all the ads from the other members. You will receive a large amount of mails at your list address, so this account should be set up specifically for the purpose. If you belong to a lot of list 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.
Auto Submitter,
Inbox Cleaners and other industry killers:
“Safelist do not work!” You hear this phrase a lot these days, the truth is most safelists do not 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 do not be fooled. If people do not have to log in to the safelist to post, do not 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, chances are that nobody will ever read your ads. The use of auto submitters is also referred to as the gung ho approach. Some people think that if they just send enough mails results will come. Wrong! Sending one million ads to inboxes nobody checks will produce, yes you guessed
it, zero results.
The inbox cleaners might seem like a good idea if you use safelist that do not have credit links, but I will show you later why this is not so.
Finally if you spend $10 a month on an auto submitter I would recommend spending them on an upgraded membership at a responsive list such as Viking Safelist or Actual Visitors instead, you will receive far better value for your hard earned bucks that way.
The importance of tracking your ads:
I really can not stress this enough, you have to use an ad-tracker. If you do not you will never know if you are wasting you time with an unresponsive list or if your ad copy and subject line needs tweaking. In the rest of this guide I will often refer to the use of ad-trackers.
If you are not using ad-tracking yet, I suggest that you grab a free account at TrackThatAd right away. TrackThatAd
is fast pecoming the premiere tracking sevice on the internet and the perks and benefits are numerous. But for our purpose the important thing is that, even as a free member, you are allowed to track an unlimited amount of URLs.
How to spot the good safelists:
First of all the safelist recommended by Home-Income-Team.com are all worth giving a try.
Traffic Hoopla is a must have for any serious safelist marketer. With the use of ad-trackers you can easily be the judge yourself. If a list does not produce results, e.g. 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:
Learning from others: Now here is why using an auto inbox cleaner is a bad idea. The easiest way too becoming a good ad writer is to learn from others. Log in to your safelist inbox 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 sift through your safelist mail clicking for credits or looking for new opportunities, you will often come across ads where you think: “this is well written” or “I want to click this link”. Whenever this happens, 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.
Writing your own ads: There are a few general rules to follow when writing your own ads/subject lines. When writing a subject line.
First of all do not make your subject lines misleading e.g. “PayPal has cancelled your account”. You might get a few clicks eventually but once people realize they have been cheated they will delete your ad without blinking, and it breaks the TOS of ANY quality safelists.
When writing a subject line try to provide some sort of clear benefit e.g. ;Get in Now for a FREE Lifetime Pro-Membership”. Think about the use of caps, it is the online equivalent of shouting. Shouting can be OK in advertising, but it depends on the circumstances.
The ad copy it self should be short and direct, if it is to 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 is “YOU”, tell the prospect 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 do not forget to check the spelling… People wont buy from an ad that looks unprofessional.
For some good training on how to write a good ad copy you should take the 30 day free trial with TrafficWave, the training emails you will receive from Brian Rooney are perhaps the best in the industry.
As stated before there are four different kinds of safelists. What is a good ad copy on a regular safelist is not necessarily good on credit based safelist. Here is my take on how to write for the different types of safelists.
Regular Safelists: When using regular lists people do not have an incentive to read the mails e.g. there is no credit link. Therefore an attention grabbing subject line is very important, you need to get peoples attention or they will just hit the button and clean their inbox. When you have gotten people to open your mail you want to present them with a short and precise ad that makes them curious to know more.
Regular safelist is probably the most difficult of the four, but when you make it work it can also be the most rewarding. There are no credit links so when people open your mail and click your links it means they are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. You will not
get thousands of visitors from regular safelists, but the ones you get are highly targeted and one click will often result in one sign up.
Credit Based: With credit based safelist the subject line is less important, after all people have to open their mail to get to their credit links. You 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 that people are 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. Now for example lets say you are promoting Empowerism.
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 in Empowerism. But do not stick the same affiliate URL in as the credit link, people have already seen this a million times on traffic exchanges. 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 autoresponder 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: Here the subject line is totally unimportant, the ads will automatically open. 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, do not give up just because an ad does not get any clicks. At least you then know not to use that particular technique again. And do not forget to use
ad-tracking or you will not be able to see what needs tweaking and what works fine.
To use HTML or not:
I use always use HTML for my ads 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, if you are an Empowerism member you will find some good ones in your members training centre. The one I found there is my best tool and easily worth my monthly subscription.
Just remember not to overdo your HTML ads, if your pages takes 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:
Do not always advertise the latest doubler, tripler or get rich quick scheme, people wont take you seriously and will not join your scams. On the other hand if you are constantly promoting top notch programs, that 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 Empowerism being promoted by a hundred different people on one list maybe you should try promoting GDI on that list.
Many of the big safelists e.g. AdTactics 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 Home-Income-Team.com 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 will 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 option.
Little known strategies:
Branding: Whenever you post an ad always include your contact information e.g. name, email, phone number, this will give your offer credibility. I personally never join something that does not list contact information in some way, it just smells fishy to me if people are not 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: I always include a signature below my main offer, and this is always a free offer usually for an ecourse or newsletter of mine. There are obvious benefits from doing this: if you are promoting a paid program, people who do not want to pay or who already belong
to the program will often take the freebie.
So with no extra effort this strategy gets me two shot with every ad, one for selling the main product and one for building my list.
Here is an example of a safelist signature I currently use:
Double Your Online Sales - FREE Report!
http://www.trafficwave.net/members/ ibmotivated/report.html
Solo ads:
Many safelists offer you the opportunity to purchase contact solo-ads. This means that 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 large rewards meaning more clicks to your site.
You do not want to go around buying solo-ads blindly though, only buy from the tested lists and always use ads that you have testes with the normal safelist mailer. You do not want to gamble with your advertising budget. If you want to give solo advertising a try The Mad Vlad is definitely worth a try, their contact solo-ads have a very high response rate.
A day in the life of a successful safelist user:
I have been quite successful in using safelists, and it is my main form of advertising. Here is what I do on a day to day basis, if you duplicate this I will guarantee that you will start to see results.
The lists I use: I 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 by Traffic Hoopla, or have been proved responsive by my own testing. If a list have been dropped by Traffic Hoopla I move it to my test address and give it a few weeks, if I do not get any result either I delete my membership.
The test address is also used if I find new safelist that I want to try. No list is admitted into the three main list addresses before it has proven itself. I vote with my feet, so I religiously delete my membership with non performers even with the big ones that used to work.
My safelist day: I start with logging in to my contact address to see if there is any important messages e.g. new referrals, commissions etc. I then browse the contact solo-ads to see if there is anything useful and click the credit links.
I then take a look at the list address accounts browsing for new subject lines, ad copy inspiration and useful products. Finally I rack up the credits I need for my own posting.
Now comes the time to have a look at my ad-trackers. I log in to TrackThatAd and analyze the stats. Depending on what I see some lists might deserve a promotion to my main accounts or deserve to be dropped from further testing. I can also see if some ad copies/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 I have better. This is a continuous process of trial and error, no matter how experienced you are.
Finally it is time to post my own ads. I generally have 3-5 different ads in rotations at any given time, this 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”, well I use “tabbed posting”, and here is how it works.
In my Fire
Fox browser I open up ten safelist in different tabs and post the same ad to all of them. I then open ten new list and post a different ad and repeat the process until I am through my list. Who needs an auto submitter anyway when you can post this effectively to all the responsive lists?
Of course while I am browsing my inbox, surfing or checking forums I am always looking for promising new lists to test and products that looks good for advertising on safelists.
In closing:
Safelist advertising is all in the numbers some say; 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 The Mad Vlad
over a million posted via an auto submitter, any day of the week.
Remember to use ad-tracking! Safelist posting without ad-tracking is the online equivalent of playing tennis blindfolded and with both arms tied behind your back! Here is that link again TrackThatAd.
If you have previously given up on safelist advertising or you are a new user, I hope I have given you the inspiration to try using safelist. Remember that if you apply some or all of the strategies I have shown you here: “Safelists really do work!”
Søren Jordansen Viking Safelist
