Types of Safelists

Automatic submitters feature the "gunshot" approach to advertising safelists. The gun shot approach doesn't work with Safelists! Some people will use submitters to email thousands of safelists with the idea that if you send out enough ads, someone is bound to respond.

It sounds like a good idea, but what is the major drawback? The trouble with this concept is that enormous resources are needed to handle all the incoming mail. You'd receive thousands and thousands of email messages a day - mostly from worthless safelists. Testing has revealed that 95% of safelists on submitters are also ineffective. "Ineffective" means that they NEVER have a response from their membership EVER.

Instead of wasting resources on worthless safelists, it makes much better sense to subscribe to use only tested safelists.

Credit-based safelists frequently will respond better to your ads. They're not all alike, though. We can divide safelists into these two categories. The distinction is important, because it has a very critical impact on how effective the safelist is.

1. One type of a credit-base safelist requires members to earns credits by visiting your site for a certain amount of time. If you have to insert the URL you are advertising into a special box when emailing your ad, members earning credits will be taken to your website. Some safelists have a "credit-based mailer" AND a "regular mailer". You'll want to use the credit-based mailer. The regular mailer is like any other safelist. There are no links for earning credits.

2. The other type of credit-based safelist is much different. To earn credits, the member is taken to a page that says something like this: "You have been awarded 100 credits." In other words, the member has to open your mail, but not read it. They can scan down the message to find the credit link.

Some credit-based safelists send few emails, this may seem like an advantage to you but it really isn't. It is probably because their members don't have enough credits to send messages. This is not the type of list you will get a response from and you will not find any of these lists in the Top 20.

The "SafeAdList" - In an effort to counter two major drawbacks to safelists, your unread email messages and the mountainous incoming email, the SafeAdList was created. It's similar to a credit-based safelist in that the membership is expected to look at ads. As a member, you'll receive mailing credits for reading ads.

Instead of having your email box flooded with more ads than you can possibly read, ads are posted online. Members logon to their account and read the ads there. There aren't a lot of these out there and time will tell if they last or not.

The key to safelist success is using only tested safelists.