I will not lie. In my quest for free advertising, I have tried a few safelist services. Mind you there are thousands of safelists out there, and many places claiming to be a gateway of sorts. Pay this amount now, and send your letter to..say 500 safelists all at once! Err.
Shy away.
Safelists in general are bunk. Waste of time and effort. Two email address, one for the list, one your normal contact email address. One email address gets flooded with hundreds of emails, claiming fortune beyond your wildest dreams, gential enhancements, and bunk products. At your real email address you get SOLO ads. Ads that people pay to send directly to your contact email.
Thats where the business and money is. Safelists are in my opinion a _WASTE OF TIME_ unless you pay to send a "Solo" email ad out to everyone who sends out worthless list emails. Sometimes it is worth it.
I have sent out two emails (Paid for thank you) through
http://GlobalSafelist.com and I can not deny it, I did get results. Should I have received more based on the amount I paid? Maybe. Should I have written a better advertisment? maybe.
Out of 6000+ users. The first email I sent out, was text based. When it came out, the format was horrific. I would not have read it. Just merely clicked the link to get credits to have my banner displayed. Yet if I can recall 10+ people signed up to
http://RageHits.com from the list. A few weeks later, I tried again. This time I did an HTML based newsletter format.
20+ people out of 6000 signed up.
Was it worth $20.00? That is for you to decide. I want to help as many people as I can, so yes, yes it was.
Should more people have signed up? I wish. Could I have written a better ad? Well yea!
Quote:
DEFINITION
Basically, a safelist is a group of people all willing to receive each others promotions via email --in the hopes that their promotion will generate more business. In other words, safelists are many, many "marketers" that have agreed to receive each others email. The drawback is that everyone is trying to sell and no one wants to buy. Some do buy, however, and that's your market. You just need something that other "marketers" will want or need. Currently, there are many tens of thousands of members to various safelists, and some are more effective than others. Also, there are different types (i.e. web-based and PC-based) that we will explore.
Every single safelist member had to agree to receive your email. That makes these lists “safer” than simply mass-emailing (i.e. spam)
By definition then, that means that safelists are what is known as "opt-in". Opt-in is when:
People actively choose to receive your message by signing up somehow
People can opt-out or unsubscribe from the list at any time
Source:
http://www.marketinghwy.com/safelist...ter-system.htm
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Safelists are a interested side note to a foot note. While you should spend money for the SOLO ads. Sending out ads to free members is a total waste of time. At least with paid members, they are expecting an ad here and there.
IF you are a startup, a paid safelist might be a good way to get started. Gather a few users here and there, treat them good, and they will refer others, and start a never ending chain reaction of interaction with your website.
To use a Safelist or not is your choice alone. You must weigh the pro's and cons. There are pleanty of both.
While I am not advocating one specific site, I will point you in the direction of
http://GlobalSafelist.com as I have had experience using their service. (Note: This is not a referral link.)
One bit of advice to give:
Do not waste your time sending emails to the free list.
DO spend the money if you are serious and send emails to CONTACT email addresses
DO use a simple plain jane HTML format. Not Text, NO CSS, dhtml, javascript etc.
DO keep tabs on your statistics to see if it was worthwhile.
Its an easy way to get started building exposure for your site. Just weight the pro's and cons of it all.
- Larry
Owner. Ragenetic Communications Group LLC.
Advertising: Quick & Dirty: Safelist's
