Safelists: SPAM-Free eMail Solutions
A "safe list" is a mailing list with subscribers that have agreed to accept advertising from each other. Safe lists are useful because their members will not complain about spam when other members send them promotional material.
When you join such a list, use a web-based email account for your email address, but don't waste your time with zWallet, as it bounces most of the mail sent to it, and you will be removed from safelists for using it.
In truth, I rarely read them, although some interesting opportunities do show up from time to time, and they should not be overlooked.
The most valuable "safe list" is the one you create yourself. When you visit successful marketing sites, note that every single one of them offers a form for capturing email addresses. You'll find mine just below the Table of Contents, on the first page of this book. Operating your own newsletter or "ezine" is the best way to establish a good relationship with your prospective customers.
Safelists often offer Affiliate programs, paying small commissions for signing up new members. This page, for instance, provides me with a steady income stream, since most of the lists here pay commissions for such referrals. With diligence, you will be able to earn enough income from safelist Affiliate programs to use the safelists without cost.
It is not, however, necessary to spend a penny, and it is relatively easy to build a large and effective safelist portfolio exclusively through free lists. If you do not have a budget for safelist subscriptions, I recommend that you join as many free lists as you can handle. There are hundreds to choose from, and it doesn't matter where you begin.
Check every safelist link that anyone sends you. If the list offers free membership, join. If not, forget it. As you join more lists, you will need to organize your portfolio. You can make a simple table to do that, or use a spreadsheet like I do.
A real problem with lists is simply this: The more lists you join, the more email you have to deal with. That reality suggests another: Never, ever, use your primary email address for safelist subscriptions.
Instead, you'll need one or more of what I call "dump mailbox" addresses. Idealy, these should be addresses that permit you to automatically delete all incoming mail, simply by setting a few filters. (See ListMail4U, below, for one such dump mailbox system.)
Once you have such a mailbox set up, and understand how to turn the filters on and off, you're ready to start joining lists. When you do join a new list, you will have to provide two email addresses. The first will be the CONTACT address, and the second will be the LIST or SUBSCRIPTION address - i.e. the one that receives the list's mail.
Most safelist scripts will send a validation email to your LIST address, and you will have to follow the instructions provided to validate your subscription. In order to validate your subscription, then, it follows that you'll have to login to your dump mail account, turn the filters off, and wait for the validation email to arrive. Sometimes, alas, they never do, but normally they arrive within minutes; if they don't arrive within the time you have available, forget about them and move on to another list. Once you have received the validation letter and validated your subscription, turn your dump account's filters on again, and log off. All incoming mail will be deleted upon arrival.
It's good practice to make time - say 20 minutes a day - to login to the dump account and watch for messages offering new lists. Quite often you can obtain Pro subscriptions for nothing, so they're worth watching for. Just login, turn off the dump mail filters, and join any lists you see advertised within the time you have available, validate the memberships, turn the deletion filters back on, and log off.
If you do this religiously every other day, you'll have no problem at all joining hundreds of lists within a very short time.
Eventually, you'll find it too time-consuming to post to all of them each day.
When that happens, you'll have to automate, and there are several good
products which help you do that. I use, and recommend, several, and you'll
find them listed below.
Safelist Submission Systems
The Ad Builder. New system which launched in mid-January, 04. A 10-day Test Drive is available for $7.95, but this company is associated with Safelist Services, a company with a record of bad customer support and arbitrary deletion of affiliate accounts. Stick with iPostAd and give this one a wide berth.
Automated submitters are absolutely wonderful, except for one little problem: Validating hundreds - and I mean HUNDREDS - of safelist memberships at once.
It can, and DOES, take DAYS to do this. I don't know about you, but I've got better things to do with my time, and experience has shown me that I can't rely on the built-in "auto-validators" found on some submitters.
The solution is an amazing piece of software called SafelistBuddy! SafelistBuddy runs on my own PC, and it works every time. I can request resends for more than 1,000 safelists at a time, and let SafelistBuddy do all the work while I sit back and enjoy a quiet cup of coffee.
Recently, however, the system has received a major enhancement, and it's turned into a real powerhouse.
The first change, which came into play a few months ago, was that the submitter began adding safelists that were not a part of the Pearls of Wealth safelist family. That enhancement has literally doubled the value of the submitter by doubling the number of prospects your ads can reach.
The real muscle, however, arrived in the form of a fully automated "Auto-Send" feature that even iPostAd cannot match.
The Auto-Send feature presents you with a complete list of your saved advertisements, from which you can select one or more specific ads. At that point, the system provides two options. You can either have it submit one ad daily to all its lists, in which case it will rotate through the ads you have selected, or you can have it rotate all of the selected ads on a daily basis.
Do you see how lovely that is? Once you've told the system what to do, simply enable Auto-Send. Once you've done that, you don't have to login and send manually. In fact, you don't have to login at all, unless you want to change the ads being sent, or change the Auto-Send parameters!
The submitter also provides a simple means for updating "Hits-by-Email" links in messages sent from any of your Pro or Platinum Pearls of Wealth safelist accounts. This means you no longer have to login to dozens of accounts to update Hits-by-Email campaigns, and that's a great time-saver!
Pearls of Wealth currently services 1183 safelists, and costs only $22 a month, and accepts PayPal and StormPay subscriptions, providing enhanced flexibility for its subscribers.
With the addition of Auto-Send, the Pearls of Wealth Safelist Submitter has positioned itself as one of the most powerful submitters on the market, and I am pleased to recommend it.
Unfortunately, the company has become indifferent to the needs of their clients, and unresponsive to complaints. I no longer feel that the system can be relied upon, and no longer recommend it.
iPostAd will provide access to over 1,300,000 subscribers for very nearly the same price... and they'll throw in efficient, courteous service - something you can't count on getting from Safelist Services.
Safelist-Friendly Mailboxes
This is an outstanding system offering more bang for my buck than any other safelist mailbox I've tried.
RECOMMENDEDScams
It is my personal opinion that the sites listed below are outright scams. While I may be wrong, the evidence I've seen, and in some cases my personal experiences, support my belief.
Perhaps that is why Mr. Garcia would not respond to my query.
The HoneyFrog Blaster claims to be "100% endorsed by our members," but that's meaningless, given that anyone who leaves the system after complaining is no longer a "member," and thus doesn't count. The "Blaster" includes elements common to "Poopy Pants" blasters, in that it claims members will receive mail only from other members, not the "lists" being "blasted," which makes perfect sense if there aren't any lists, or if the "lists" are made up of people sucked into joining one of Mr. Wells' many "blasters." Members can also "blast" to "ALL the lists and other members" four times a day. Most of the Wells' lists offer multiple daily posting, perhaps because it attracts more buyers.
It's my belief that the old adage, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," certainly applies to the HoneyFrog Blaster. In my opinion, Mr. Wells is a scam artist, a thief, and I was very disappointed to learn of the association between HoneyFrog and "Poopy Pants" Wells.
In keeping with the extravagant claims made by Matt Wells with respect to his "blasters," the HoneyFrog blaster claims that you can post to 5000 safelists an hour. I wouldn't touch the HoneyFrog Blaster with a ten-foot pole.