Ultimate Safelist Survival: What is a safelist anyway?
What is a Safelist?
Basically a safelist is a gathering of like minded individuals who have agreed to exchanges ads. You agree to receive ads from all the others members in exchange for the opportunity to send your own. This concept has many advantages, here's a couple of them.
The advantages of safelist marketing
For one it's spam free as people have to double opt-in to the safelist and thereby agreeing to receive your ads, should some nutter decide that the safelist mail is spam anyway it's not really your problem as the mail is not sent from your email address or server. Actually this is the origin of the name, a safelist is a closed community where it is safe for members to exchange ads.
The second advantage is quite obvious but many people fail to see this, what does all safelist members have in common? They have something to sell, but they have not advanced far enough in their internet marketing career to dismiss a very mundane task as posting to safelist is. That means that if you have a product, report, e-book, income opportunity etc. that can help people on the way to internet glory, the average safelist user is an excellent prospect for you - GRIN is exactly the system they want and need!
Why I will always use safelists
I could probably make do without safelists but I sure wont. Safelist are a starting point for many newbie marketers and picking those up as subscribers and customers can be very profitable e.g. they do not own every product out there and they do not know everything, meaning that you have plenty of stuff to sell them.
Bonus Tips On Safelists
In addition I would like to add that with safelists you need to know your strategy. The same is with any advertising but even more with safelists. You should sign up for two FRESH gmail accounts before joining any safelists. For example: yournamecontact@gmail.com and yournamesafelist@gmail.com (one for contact address and one for safelist address)... without this you will get way too much e-mail in your regular inbox so you need to make sure you have separate e-mail addresses just for safelist advertising.
In a safelist like most advertising you need to give them what they want. If your offer is something that can help them (or most people) then it will be more favorable. This is why advertising GRIN will do wonders for you!
Also, DO NOT ever use any safelists that allow automation of any kind. Safelist submitters, etc. simply DO NOT work, and give safelists a bad name.
Depending on the type of safelist (credit based safelist may be best - especially for newbies) you need to know what you are doing. If you are just starting I would recommend first using Credit Based Safelists since then your subject and ad copy is not as important for them to actually see your site. However, when you look through the safelist e-mails that you receive, look briefly over them and try to pick out subject lines that grab YOUR attention. Keep them in a personal swipe file (notepad, etc) so that you can go back if you ever have trouble thinking of a subject line to use yourself. Being creative will always work... draw the reader in and build up their curiosity to the max.
I have also compiled a list of safelists you can get started with, these are the safelists I have found to be most effective, but it is also a great idea to sign up for as many safelists as you can so that you can get your advertising out there as much as possible! So always have a look-out for new safelists to advertise with.
Sign Up For These 10 Safelists: Remember to use a list address and keep organized!
GotSafelist
Elite Safelist
Adsolutionline
GlobalSafelist
FreeAdvertising4All
AdTactics
Herculist
Newage-Mkt
ListJoe
FreeSafelistMailer
Take your time because this can take a while to get everything set up. Make sure to keep track of when your mailings are available, some safelists let you mail every 48 hours, some every 72 hours, and some once a week.. so write down the days you can mail for each safelist!
