Can Safelists Help Build Your Business?

July 17, 2008

by http://theonlineresourcesite.com

The first thing you learn about Internet Marketing is that spam is a giant no-no. It can get you banned, fined, and in more trouble than you ever imagined. Because of that, literally millions of people have turned to safelists. These are gigantic lists of people who have told someone (anyone) that it is okay to send them some information about something. They turn out to be huge exchanges of spam among people who don’t read them.

As an experiment for myself, just to see how they work in general, and to see if they do drive traffic to my sites as promised, I set myself up with four safelists: ListDotCom, Herculist, GlobalSafelist, and Croc-Ads. I picked these randomly from the hundreds (or maybe thousands) available. For all four, I entered the required information for my own email, along with a zippy headline and content. I pictured this going to millions of email boxes, finding its way to an eagerly awaiting biz opp seeker, standing out from the two or three others which safely made their way there.

Instead, I found my own mailbox inundated with emails. Over fifty the first hour. Two hundred by the end of the day. A week later, I was averaging over SIX HUNDRED emails a day, all promising me the Promised Land. Think about that for a minute. I get over six hundred emails a day. I don’t even scan through them anymore looking for the latest and greatest.

Here then, is my advice on safelists: (if you really think you have to use one)

1. Create a junk email account first. I have found that Gmail works the best, as it can handle the volume easily. Just make it something separate from the mail box where your regular email comes.

2. Sign up for only one safe list. When your inbox volume levels out, you might want to add more, but if you start with six hundred a day like I did, you won’t read any of them anyway.

3. Track your results for a week or so. If your website is not getting increased traffic, (actually, increased CONVERTED traffic), cancel your subscription and move on to other options.

Safelists might have been a good idea a few years ago, but for now, they offer no way to stand out from the other 599 emailssomeone is getting. My conclusion, based on first hand experience, is that there are far more effective ways to drive traffic than safelists.

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