It just occurred to me that putting the name of the previous month in the title of these posts make them appear outdated the second I post them. So from now on I will be using last month’s stats to look forward at all the safelists I will be focusing on in the current month.
And it couldn’t have come at a better time because frankly last month sucked. Not so much for the safelists but for my own productivity. You can tell just by looking at how many times I updated my blog last month. I spent yesterday doing absolutely nothing in preparation for being extra productive today. Considering this is my second post of the day I guess that good but I had also planned on having this done at least 6 hours ago so maybe not so good.
Safelist news! Oh boy we had finally had some excitement around here. Usually not much usually happens in this industry but a few months ago some scum bag named Andrew Baxter thought it was be a good idea to create a software product that allows people to cheat credit based safelists. Basically this software downloads all your safelist emails and clicks all the credit links for you meaning you never need to actually view the ads of other members.
This is exactly the type of software that nearly killed the safelist industry a few years ago. If everyone started using this software then nobody would be viewing your ads which would make posting to safelists useless.
I happy to announce that last month many of the larger safelists began fighting back by implementing “cheat protection” in their emails in the form of captcha codes that must be entered before you can earn credits. This and some other techniques appear to be working so far. It’s also a great a way to find out who the cheaters are so their accounts can be removed from the safelist.
This change couldn’t have come soon enough. It’s got to be assumed that there are always going to be a small percentage of people cheating but nobody has ever been stupid enough to do it so publicly. These new security changes should hopefully make safelists even more responsive while cutting down on the number of emails being sent by the cheaters.
Here is the list I have so far of the safelists that have added some form of cheat protection last month for their members:
AdTactics
Elite Safelist
FreeSafelistMailer
Smart Safelist
Target Safelist
If you know of any others please let me know.
Update: Feb 2, 2010
Supreme List, List Building Maximizer, and Global Safelist have also added cheat protection. Global Safelist is actually using a number matching test like you would see on a traffic exchange. That’s awesome!
Oh, and if you one of the people who bought the cheat software from Andrew Baxter feel free to ask him for a refund. I am sure he will be happy to assist you. If not, I bet paypal will.
Ok, now the fun part. Here are my safelist advertising stats from last month. These stats come from advertising my video splash page for Safelist Marketing Tactics.
|
Total Clicks |
Unique Clicks | Action | Sales | CTA | CTS | |
| ViralAdStore | 1,488 | 863 | 73 | 15 | 8.46% | 1.74% |
| List Joe | 1,668 | 1,203 | 69 | 15 | 5.74% | 1.25% |
| List Auction | 1,062 | 684 | 30 | 15 | 4.39% | 2.19% |
| Got Safelist | 3,801 | 1,539 | 45 | 9 | 2.92% | 0.58% |
| Elite Safelist | 1,423 | 750 | 33 | 6 | 4.40% | 0.80% |
| FreeSafelistMailer | 1,199 | 551 | 23 | 6 | 4.17% | 1.09% |
| AdSolutionline | 2,155 | 857 | 26 | 5 | 3.03% | 0.58% |
| Global Safelist | 1,521 | 750 | 27 | 3 | 3.60% | 0.40% |
“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page. “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site. “Sales” is how many people joined my site. CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”. I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.
It seems like I received a drop in sign-ups from the big 3 list builders. It should be noted that these sites are also sending out far fewer emails than they had been a few months ago. It’s rare now that I am ever able to earn enough credits to send to the maximum number of members. That means my ads are reaching less people but at least I don’t have to spend all day clicking for credits any more.
Everything else looks pretty normal though it will be interesting to see if the new cheat protection scripts will have much of an effect when I check my stats again next month.
As usual, these are my own personal stats and depending on what you are advertising your results may vary. This information is simply intended to be a guide for trying out new safelists that you might not already be a member of. Also, don’t forget to track your ads to find out which safelists work best for you. You can get a professional link tracker from TEToolbox.