It just occurred to me that putting the name of the previous month in the title of these posts make them appear outdated the second I post them.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.
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yes jerry i would like to know some more about this cheat program. and how can i protect my site from it please reply
Hi Jerry,
I had a quick question for you… because of your posts I decided to give safelists a go to try and generate some sales for my first product. I signed up to a few based on your lists…
So far no sales made which I guess was no real surprise. But what’s bothering me is I used 50,000 credits from FreeSafelistMailer and received NOTHING. Analytics shows no views coming from there, no hopes from the tracking code I used etc. Nothing.
I sent two emails a week apart – 2 x 25,000 and find it really odd to have not received a single click from it all…
My question… Have you ever had this problem with them before?
Hi Melani.
Nope, I haven’t heard of anyone else having a problem like that with FSM. I usually get about 20 visitors a day from my ads there from my 30,000 credits. Doesn’t seem like a lot but they do send out a lot of emails.
There is a “Message History” you can check on the FSM site to make sure your ad went out. Unfortunately it doesn’t list the URL so if you are using a link tracker make sure you’ve got it setup right.
Jerry
Great post as always, Jerry. List Building Maximizer instituted the Captcha last week as well. There might be one more besides it and the ones you mentioned but I can’t think which one it is, if so.
What I find truly baffling is that Baxter’s program was being advertised in the same safelists the program’s made to cheat. Takes a lot of chutzpah to do that!
I must have run across ads for it three or four times this weekend while going through safelist mail. Hopefully others that may run across it will report it to the safelist owners in the safelist mails where they find it and help stamp out this cheater’s efforts.
It’s kinda hard to miss, the current site circulating is a whole lot of text on a bright yellow background, and the safelist ad itself usually says something about “never have to click for credits again” or “this may be the last time you have to click for credits”.
Jerry, Global Safelist just added cheat protection too.
I noticed you mention Adsolutionline, how do you manage to use them? For several months now all I get is a “address not found” when I try to access them.
Hello
I fail to see how entering a number stops people from just clicking the credit link, opening the ad page one after another in a tab browser and then just deleting each one, so no one still looks or reads the ad, two sites only need you to enter the number every 20 or so ad’s.
If this is important then why do sites still allow you to open another ad before the last one has finished ? very confusing.
Hey Chris.
I agree. It’s not perfect but it’s a start. Traffic exchanges are the same way. There is nothing to stop someone from opening 20 exchanges at a time and zipping through them all with a tabbed browser but at least there is still a chance your site will be seen if only for a second. That’s a lot better than your chances with a bot doing all the clicking.
Btw, FreeSafelistMailer isn’t using the captcha thing. Their new security trick is to only allow one credit link opened at a time for the full 12 seconds. I’m sure the cheaters will find away around that but at least owners are finally taking an active role to try and stop them. I’m sure we will start seeing some better solutions over the next few months.
That’s good to know. Thanks Ari! I’ll add them to the list.
I don’t know why you are having trouble accessing Adsolutionline. It works just fine for me.
thanks jerry for this overview and special thanks for your remark about this aweful cheat software – honesty is by far the better way, right?
best wishes norbert
Hello Jerry, (It’s weird to call you with my name LoL!)
how are you doing?
To Melani : Hi :-)
There is a lot to marketing effectively with safelists and most marketers don’t understand everything involved. as far as I’ve learned from many resources,
Here are some Tip’s for you :
1. Write safelist subject lines that get opened, and make your ads stand out from the crowd.
2. Get people to read and respond to your ads, avoid to use the same subject and content over and over, make it simple.
3. Know what’s working and what isn’t. Use url viral tracking, to make sure that you know what is working and what isn’t. there’s a lot of free url’s tracking that you can use to track your hits.
4. Yes, You’ve got a good and nice website, but who will see it ? getting more sales is about to drive hundreds to thousands quality traffic to your websites everyday, right?
Use Credit based safelist, use Supersolo ad, use Contact Solo ad, Use List Solo Ads.
Blaster ? Useless!!.
PTC, PTP, PTR? Some good some useless.
Text Ads Exchanges and Safelist is the BEST!.