+ RSSSafelists -- Can Safelists Help Build Your Business?
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.
Just to see how they work, and to see if they indeed drive traffic to my site, I set myself up with four safelists: GlobalSafelist, Croc-Ads, Herculist, and ListDotCom. I basically picked these randomly from the hundreds available. For each one, I entered the information for my email, which I pictured as going to millions of unsuspecting email boxes, standing out from the two or three others which safely made their way there.
Instead, my own mailbox was filled to the brim with emails. I got over fifty the first hour, about one a minute. I had over two hundred by the time I logged off for the day. By the end of the week, I was getting over SIX HUNDRED emails every day day, all promising me that I could make the most money for the least effort. Think about that for a minute. Six hundred emails a day. That's about one every two minutes 24/7. I don't even scan through them anymore. I just select all and delete.
So, if you really think you have to use one, here is my advice on safelists:
1. Create a phantom email account first. Gmail seems to work the best, as it can easily handle the volume. Just make sure you have a place separate from your regular email box.
2. Begin with only one safe list. Wait for your inbox volume to level out. You might want to add another one, but if you start with six hundred emails a day like I did, you won't read any of them anyway. You will spend more time deleting them than reading them.
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.
My experienced conclusion is that there are several far more effective ways to drive traffic to your landing page. Perhaps they were a good idea at an earlier time, but for now, there is no way to stand out from the crowd.
