My Daily Mailer: Year 1

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My Daily Mailer Year 1 featured image with a morning workspace, coffee, laptop, and sunrise view

My Daily Mailer is officially one year old.

That feels a little strange to write.

A year ago, I had an idea I thought was pretty cool. I knew how I wanted it to work. I had spent a lot of time thinking through the logic behind it.

But there is always one question you can’t answer until you put something in front of real people:

Will it actually work?

After one full year of My Daily Mailer, I finally have an answer.

I think it did.

And looking back through the numbers, I may actually like the idea behind it more now than I did when I launched it.

The Idea I Really Wanted to Test

I’ve been using safelists since 2003.

I’ve promoted on them, tracked them, written about them and operated them. I’ve watched the industry change quite a bit while the basic mechanics of a safelist stayed surprisingly similar.

One thing kept bothering me.

The economics of a traditional mailer don’t naturally balance themselves.

Members earn credits. Sites give away credits. Upgrades create credits. Promotions create credits. Balances accumulate.

Eventually, those credits turn into mail.

But there isn’t necessarily any connection between the amount of mailing power being created and the amount of activity available to support all that mail.

That was the problem I wanted to play with.

With My Daily Mailer, one Mail Token has a very specific value: one mailing.

But that’s not the clever part.

The part I still think is coolest is this:

The amount of MT members earn for reading changes based on how active the mailer is.

The economy responds to the mailer itself.

Member activity helps determine how much future mailing power gets created.

As conditions inside the site change, the earning rate can change with them.

Instead of constantly trying to force balance from the outside, the system is designed to move toward balance on its own.

It’s a little nerdy.

I know.

But I still love it.

The Members ARE the Economy

That’s also why My Daily Mailer depends so much on participation.

When somebody reads an email, they’re not simply clicking to collect an arbitrary pile of credits.

Their activity is part of the system.

Reading creates the conditions that allow mailing.

Mailing creates new messages to read.

Those reads create more mailing power.

And around it goes.

That’s the experiment I wanted to run.

Could a safelist economy regulate itself based on what the members were actually doing?

A year later, we’ve had enough real activity to give that idea a pretty serious test.

Year 1 By the Numbers

I pulled a full 365-day report directly from the My Daily Mailer database for this anniversary.

During Year 1:

  • More than 2,700 members joined My Daily Mailer
  • Members sent 28,305 mailings
  • Those mailings produced almost 15 million emails
  • Members earned 32,531 MTs
  • The mailer delivered more than 1.76 million reading hits
  • More than 100 members made upgrade payments

Those are real numbers from a real year of people actually using the site.

And I’m proud of them.

But there is another part of the report I like even more.

Month 12 Tells Me More Than Month 1

Launch numbers are fun.

They’re also dangerous.

You can launch something new and get a flood of curiosity.

People join because their friends are talking about it.

Affiliates promote it.

Everybody clicks around to see what’s new.

Then six months later…

Crickets.

So when I went through the Year 1 report, I wasn’t especially interested in proving that My Daily Mailer had a good launch.

I wanted to know what happened after everybody stopped caring that it was new.

September 2026 was month twelve.

During that month, members sent 2,621 mailings.

Those mailings generated more than 1.35 million emails.

The system delivered 174,812 reading hits.

And on an average day, about 144 members were actively reading mail.

That’s month twelve.

Even more interesting, the mailing volume throughout 2026 was remarkably consistent.

Not one giant launch spike followed by a slow fade.

People found a rhythm.

They read.

They earned MTs.

They mailed.

Then they came back and did it again.

Some Members REALLY Use My Daily Mailer

The Year 1 report also reminded me how much of the site is driven by a relatively small group of extremely active members.

There were 270 members who completed at least 500 reads during the first year.

Together, those members accounted for more than 1.13 million completed reads.

And 243 of those heavy readers also sent mailings.

I love that.

Because that’s the system doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The people doing the reading aren’t trapped on one side of the equation.

They’re earning the ability to become senders themselves.

Read.

Earn.

Mail.

Repeat.

The economy keeps circulating.

And to those members who have spent hundreds—or thousands—of reads helping keep that cycle moving:

Thank you.

My Daily Mailer would just be software without you.

Then I Accidentally Tested It Against Everybody Else

One of my favorite moments of My Daily Mailer’s first year didn’t actually happen inside My Daily Mailer.

Earlier this year, I ran a safelist experiment for this blog.

I sent the same simple page through 40 different safelists.

There was no sale.

No opt-in.

No prize for clicking.

Visitors were simply asked to look at the page and choose whether they wanted to interact with it.

I wasn’t testing My Daily Mailer.

I wasn’t trying to prove anything about my own site.

I was testing attention.

And when I looked at the results, My Daily Mailer stood out.

By a lot.

Its visitors interacted with the page at a dramatically higher rate than the other safelists in the test.

Now, there are several possible reasons for that.

Members know me.

Lucky Letters give people a reason to pay attention.

The member base is active.

And the structure of the mailer may encourage a different kind of reading behavior.

I can’t separate all of those things perfectly.

But seeing My Daily Mailer stand out in an experiment I hadn’t designed to make it look good was pretty satisfying.

Especially because one of the things I wanted from the beginning was a mailer where activity actually meant something.

Year 1 Wasn’t Just Running the Site

Of course, I didn’t launch My Daily Mailer and then spend twelve months admiring it.

I tinkered with it.

A lot.

Lucky Letters became part of the experience.

I built a better contest system.

We now have reader contests and weekly reader sprints.

I added clearer guidance for new members who hadn’t yet figured out how to earn their first MT.

I watched the activation reports.

I changed things.

Then I watched again.

Some ideas worked.

Some didn’t.

Some things that seemed obvious to me were apparently not obvious at all once a new member landed on the site.

That’s one of the biggest differences between designing something and operating it.

Real members find every assumption you made.

That’s a good thing.

They make the product better.

The Site Is Still Evolving

My Daily Mailer is not finished.

I don’t really expect it ever to be.

That doesn’t mean I’m constantly trying to reinvent it.

The basic idea has held up remarkably well.

The self-balancing economy is still the part I believe in most.

But there are always ways to make the experience clearer, smoother, more useful or more fun.

Sometimes that means a new feature.

Sometimes it means changing a paragraph.

Sometimes it means staring at a report and realizing new members aren’t doing what I thought they were doing.

And sometimes it means spending far too long adjusting something that nobody except me will ever notice.

That’s part of running a site.

If You’ve Never Tried My Daily Mailer

If you’ve never joined, Year 2 seems like a pretty good time.

You can join for free.

You don’t need to understand the economics before you start using it.

Just read some member emails.

Watch your MT balance.

Earn a mailing.

Then use it.

You’ll figure out the rhythm pretty quickly.

And underneath that simple process is a system that’s constantly responding to the activity of the people using it.

That’s the part I’m proudest of.

Join My Daily Mailer

To Everyone Who Made Year 1 Possible

I built My Daily Mailer.

But I didn’t create what it became during Year 1.

The members did that.

Every person who opened an email helped create the economy.

Every person who sent a mailing gave somebody else something to discover.

Every affiliate who referred a member helped it grow.

Every Prime member who decided the site was worth paying for gave me another vote of confidence.

Every contest participant, Lucky Letter hunter and regular reader added a little more life to the place.

That’s what I see when I look at the Year 1 report.

Not 15 million emails.

People.

People using something I built.

People coming back.

People making the system work.

A year ago, My Daily Mailer was an idea I wanted to test.

Today, it’s a working mailer with thousands of members and a full year of real activity behind it.

That’s pretty awesome.

Thank you for Year 1.

Now let’s see what happens in Year 2.

— Jerry

My Daily Mailer

At Some Point, You Have to Launch

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Rocket launching from a website interface surrounded by design tweaks and launch notes

Hello!

My last post was about how just because something works doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ready.

That’s true.

But there’s a problem on the other side too.

At some point, you have to launch.

“Ready” Can Become a Moving Target

I’ve been working on my new project for quite a while now.

And lately, I’ve noticed how easy it is to keep finding things to improve.

Rewrite this sentence.

Move that button.

Adjust the padding on that box.

Make this section a little wider.

Change the wording again.

Then change it back.

I wish I were exaggerating.

There is almost no end to it.

And the tricky part is that most of those changes really do make things a little better.

That’s what makes it so easy to keep going.

You aren’t necessarily wasting time.

You’re improving things.

But eventually there comes a point where another hour spent adjusting padding probably isn’t going to teach you as much as letting a hundred real people use the site.

Real Users Change Everything

I can click through every page.

I can test different screen sizes.

I can create test accounts.

I can try to break things.

But there’s one problem.

I already know how everything is supposed to work.

That changes the way I use the site.

A brand-new member doesn’t know what I expect them to click next.

They may completely miss something I thought was obvious.

They may misunderstand wording I thought was perfectly clear.

They may use a feature in a way I never considered.

They may find some strange combination of clicks that I never thought to test.

And once a few hundred real people start moving through the site, I fully expect them to uncover a whole new list of things that need fixing.

Honestly, I’d be surprised if they didn’t.

That doesn’t mean the launch failed.

It means I finally have information I couldn’t get by testing everything myself.

How Do You Know When to Launch?

Before launch, a lot of improvement is based on prediction.

Will people understand this?

Will they notice that button?

Will this page make sense?

Will they know what to do next?

You can make educated guesses.

You can test.

You can stare at the page for the 50th time.

But eventually you’ve learned about as much as you can from testing it yourself.

After launch, the questions start answering themselves.

Instead of wondering whether people understand something, you can see whether they actually do.

Instead of guessing which features matter, you can see what people use.

Instead of polishing things nobody notices, you can spend your time fixing the things people actually struggle with.

That seems like a much better use of effort.

And Yes, I Still Haven’t Launched

There is some obvious irony in me writing this.

The project I’ve been talking about still isn’t live.

I’m close.

Very close.

And there are still a few things I want to finish before I open the doors.

I think they’re worth doing.

But I’m also becoming very aware that there will never be a morning when I look through the entire site and think:

Perfect. There is absolutely nothing left I could improve.

That day isn’t coming.

There will always be another sentence I could rewrite.

Another button I could move.

Another little bit of padding I could adjust.

Eventually, the next useful step isn’t another tweak.

It’s letting people in.

Because you don’t stop improving a product when you launch it.

You just finally start improving it with real users.

Why “Finished” Isn’t the Same as Ready

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Progress bar at 90% with a magnifying glass highlighting the final 10% before a project is truly ready.

Hello!

I’ve been working on a new online project for quite a while now.

I’m not ready to talk about what it is yet, but lately I’ve been spending a surprising amount of time on something I thought I had already done:

finishing it.

At some point, all the important pieces were working.

The main features were there. The pages worked. Nothing major was obviously broken.

That feels like the finish line.

It isn’t.

Once I started going through everything more carefully, I kept finding little things.

A sentence that sounded awkward.

Something that didn’t look quite right on my phone.

A step that made perfect sense to me because I already knew what was supposed to happen.

None of these were big problems.

But together, they made me realize there’s a big difference between something that works and something that is actually ready.

You Already Know Too Much

I think this is one of the hardest parts of working on anything yourself.

You know what everything is supposed to mean.0

You know the backstory.

The person seeing it for the first time knows none of that.

So instead of asking:

Does this work?

I’ve started asking:

Would this make sense if I had never seen it before?

That’s a much better question.

And it doesn’t just apply to building websites.

This Applies to Marketing Too

This is where I think it gets useful for almost anybody working online.

Think about something you’re promoting right now.

Maybe it’s an email, a landing page, or an ad you’ve been running for a while.

You probably know exactly what it is, what it does, and what you want people to notice.

But would somebody seeing it for the first time know the same thing?

That’s where things get interesting.

Look at your promotion without filling in the blanks yourself.

Is it immediately obvious what it’s about?

Is the next step clear?

Could something be simplified?

Sometimes improving a promotion isn’t about adding more.

Sometimes it’s just about making what’s already there easier to understand.

The Same Thing Happens With Almost Everything

We finish something, make sure it works, and move on. That makes sense.

The problem is that “finished” makes us stop looking.

Sometimes one more pass is where you catch the friction — something confusing, unnecessary, or not nearly as obvious as you thought it was.

Those can be small changes, but they can completely change how something feels.

I’m Learning to Respect the Last 10%

I used to think getting the major pieces done meant a project was basically finished.

Now I’m starting to think the last 10% is where you stop looking at what you made as the person who created it and start looking at it from somebody else’s point of view.

That applies whether you’re building something big or writing a short email.

Before you call something done, give it one more look.

Not as the person who made it.

As the person who is about to see it for the first time.

You may be surprised what suddenly jumps out at you.

Talk soon,

Jerry

P.S. Pick one thing you’re currently promoting and look at it with fresh eyes today. Don’t ask whether it works. Ask whether it’s obvious. That’s a much tougher test.

After 20+ Years Online, I Think We Quit Too Soon

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Online marketer at a crossroads choosing steady progress over constantly starting over

Hello!

One thing I’ve noticed after more than 20 years online is that marketers are really good at starting things.

Sticking with them?

That’s a little harder.

There’s always something new competing for our attention.

A new program. A new traffic source. A new page. A new strategy.

And lately, of course, a new AI tool every five minutes.

I’m certainly not immune to it.

But the longer I do this, the more I think constantly moving on to the next thing can keep us from learning what actually works.

There’s a Difference Between Testing and Starting Over

I test things all the time.

But testing only teaches you something if you give the test a chance to produce useful information.

Let’s say you send an email and don’t get the response you hoped for.

Next time you change the subject line, rewrite the email, promote a different page, and use a different traffic source.

Maybe the next mailing does better.

Great.

But what did you learn?

Was it the subject line?

The email?

The page?

The audience?

You really don’t know.

Sometimes the boring approach—doing something consistently and paying attention—is where the useful information comes from.

My Safelist Experiment Reminded Me of This

My Safelist Attention Project started with a pretty simple question:

Are people actually paying attention to the pages they’re clicking?

I could have run the experiment for a few days, looked at the first batch of numbers, and moved on.

Instead, I kept going.

That’s when it got interesting.

I started seeing differences between traffic volume and attention.

Some smaller traffic sources produced surprisingly strong engagement.

Repeated exposure started showing patterns of its own.

And eventually I was looking at things I hadn’t even thought to measure when I started.

None of that would have happened if I had looked at the first few hundred visits and decided I already had my answer.

Sometimes People Need to See Something Again

That experiment also changed the way I think about advertising.

It’s easy to assume that if somebody sees an ad and doesn’t click, the ad failed.

But people don’t always respond the first time.

Or the second.

Sometimes something has to become familiar before it becomes interesting.

I explored that more in How Many Times Do People See an Ad Before They Actually Click?.

That doesn’t mean you should run a bad ad forever.

It just means that replacing something because it didn’t produce an immediate result may be a little premature.

Persistence Isn’t the Same as Being Stubborn

Of course, some things really don’t work.

Some programs die.

Some traffic sources stop producing.

Some offers just aren’t very good.

There’s nothing wrong with walking away when the evidence tells you to.

But I think there’s a big difference between quitting because something isn’t working…

…and quitting because something newer caught your attention.

I’ve probably done plenty of both over the years.

These days, I try to know which one I’m doing.

Give It Enough Time to Teach You Something

When I try something now, I’m less interested in whether it immediately hits a home run.

I want to know what happened.

Who responded?

What didn’t happen?

Did anything surprise me?

Would the result look different if I kept going?

You can’t answer many of those questions if you keep changing everything.

That may be one of the biggest differences between how I approached Internet marketing when I started and how I approach it today.

I don’t feel nearly as much pressure to chase every new thing.

Sometimes the better move is to keep doing what you’re already doing…

and pay closer attention.

Thanks for reading,

Jerry

P.S. Before you abandon something you’re working on, ask yourself one question:

Has it really failed, or have I just not given it enough time to teach me anything yet?

The Traffic Exchanges I’m Actually Using in 2026

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Surf smarter with a few core traffic exchanges and a wider network for more advertising reach.

Hello!

I’ve been using traffic exchanges for more than 20 years.

Over that time I’ve used a lot of them, but these days my actual surfing routine is pretty simple.

I have a few traffic exchanges I use regularly, a couple of traffic exchange games that help me decide where to spend some extra surfing time, and Harvest Traffic to spread my advertising around even further.

This isn’t supposed to be a ranking of the best traffic exchanges in 2026.

These are simply the ones I’m actually using right now.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you join through one of them, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

How I Surf

Before I get into the traffic exchanges, I should mention Camel Tabs.

Camel Tabs lets me manually surf several traffic exchanges at the same time. The free version lets you have up to seven going at once.

That’s usually plenty for me.

I load up the exchanges I want to surf, let Camel Tabs keep track of the timers, and click my way through them.

Nothing fancy.

TrafficG

TrafficG is probably the one I come closest to surfing every day.

It has a 1:1 surf ratio, a big audience, and a simple daily incentive I like.

Surf more than five sites and you’re entered into the next day’s credit drawing. The prize is currently 3,000 credits.

I try to at least qualify for the drawing. If I have room in my Camel Tabs rotation, I’ll usually surf more.

TrafficG has been around a long time and still feels worth the time I put into it.

EasyHits4U

EasyHits4U has also been part of my routine for years.

I don’t think it’s quite as strong as it was at its peak, but it’s still a huge traffic exchange and it still gives me a 1:1 surf ratio.

That’s enough to keep it in my rotation.

Simple as that.

Traffic Ad Bar

Traffic Ad Bar is a little different from the normal traffic exchange.

There are rankings, points and other parts of the system you can pay attention to.

I don’t really worry about any of that.

I surf.

Traffic Ad Bar handles the rest and gets my advertising shown through its network.

It’s unique, it has a lot of reach, and I think the time spent surfing there is well worth it.

Hungry For Hits

Hungry For Hits is one of my favorites because it feels like the place where traffic exchange people hang out.

When I surf there, I see a lot of familiar names and faces.

The chat is usually active too.

If I’m promoting something aimed at traffic exchange users, Hungry For Hits is one of the places where I want my ads to be seen.

The Food Game

I’ve written about The Food Game quite a bit over the years.

A lot of traffic exchanges participate in it.

As you surf participating sites, the Food Game logo appears every so often and you collect food.

There’s an entire game built around cooking recipes, earning points and moving through the system.

I don’t really do any of that. :-)

I usually just trade my food in for gold, which I can use toward traffic exchange upgrades.

What matters to my surfing routine are the Tasty and Delicious traffic exchanges.

Those change every week and give better Food Game rewards.

So if I’m going to spend time surfing anyway, I might as well spend some of it at the exchanges that are paying out the most Food Game rewards that week.

Viral Traffic Games

Viral Traffic Games works into my routine in much the same way.

A lot of traffic exchanges support Viral Traffic Games.

While you’re surfing, the Viral Traffic Games logo appears every so many pages. When it does, you get to make a move on the game board.

I’ve written more about how Viral Traffic Games works here if you want a closer look at the whole game.

There are also certain traffic exchanges that give boosted rewards each day.

So again, my thinking is pretty simple.

If I’m already going to surf traffic exchanges that participate in Viral Traffic Games, I might as well spend some of that time at the ones giving me the best rewards that day.

Between The Food Game and Viral Traffic Games, the exact mix of traffic exchanges I surf changes quite a bit without me having to think too hard about it.

Harvest Traffic Helps Me Reach the Rest

The other big part of my routine is Harvest Traffic.

Harvest Traffic is a traffic co-op.

At just about every traffic exchange I use, I have at least one website slot pointing to my Harvest Traffic co-op link.

I’m upgraded at Harvest Traffic, so I get a 1:1 ratio.

That means every visitor I send into Harvest Traffic earns me another visitor that gets sent back out to one of my pages through the co-op.

I like that setup because it lets me concentrate my own surfing on the places I actually want to use while still getting my pages shown across a much wider group of traffic sources.

I don’t have to personally surf everything.

Harvest Traffic helps take care of that part for me.

My Traffic Exchange Routine Is Pretty Simple Now

That’s really what my traffic exchange routine looks like in 2026.

TrafficG, EasyHits4U, Traffic Ad Bar and Hungry For Hits are the main sites I keep coming back to.

The Food Game and Viral Traffic Games influence where else I spend some surfing time.

Harvest Traffic helps spread my advertising beyond the sites I surf myself.

And Camel Tabs makes the whole thing manageable.

That’s about it.

After all these years, I don’t feel any need to make traffic exchange surfing more complicated than that.

I’d rather spend my time on a handful of sites I like, take advantage of the extra rewards where I can, and let the co-op help spread the traffic around.

Which traffic exchanges are you actually surfing in 2026?

Let me know in the comments. I’m always curious to see where everybody else is spending their time.

Thanks for reading,

Jerry