I’ve been spending some time recently in the warrior forum and it seems that the minute you mention that you use safelists in your marketing the spears some out and you get attacked for saying you get results.

So here’s a list post that gives you some basic tips on how I get results from safelist marketing. No real order, just a good old fashioned brain dump, so I hope you find a gold nugget somewhere in here.

#1 Use Gmail, and set up a new account just for your safelist marketing. Currently I have 411.370 messages, the account is 25% full, imagine having that many e-mails on a pop3 account downloading onto your computer!

#2 Like all forms of advertising hundreds of safelists exist, but how do you know if they will actually deliver results? The best place to get started is listhoopla as this ranks the safelists based on testing and tracking.

#3 Use filters on your gmail account. If you want to look at messages from a particular safelist it’s super simple to find them. Here a video I made that explains how to set this up – http://www.safelistsecrets.com/free-video/download.html

#4 Think about the demographics of safelist users. The average safelist user is someone who is trying to promote something via the internet. So promote something that will appeal to this type of person.

#5 Don’t sell directly. The safelists that deliver the most traffic tend to be credit based, where the other members are simply checking out your site to earn credits so they can mail their own links. This means you have 10 seconds to make an impression, is a long sales page with a video that takes 15 seconds to load going to work well?

#6 DUSAP – Don’t Use Standard Affiliate Pages, you’re advertising and building the brand of someone else!

#7 Create a splash page – Use Adkreator to make your adverts stand out from everyone else.

#8 Self Branding, people buy from people, if you’ve created a splash page that explains who you are and why you’re promoting opportunity X it stands out from the sheep who are just promoting the standard affiliate page. Now if opportunity X is crap you will still be wasting your time, but at least you’re learning about branding.

#9 Stop being a victim – if results aren’t coming then look in the mirror before blaming the traffic source. Read this post and the comments from members of the traffic exchange community – http://www.hitexchangenews.com/news/stop-being-a-traffic-exchange-victim/

#10 Learn how to write headlines. When you check your gmail account keep a swipe file of the headlines that stand out, and adapt them for your own use.

#11 Tracking, when you get a positive result, how do you know where it came from? Was it even from your safelist marketing campaign? I use TEtoolbox to track all my safelist marketing campaigns.

#12 Patience, use your tracking to see the results of the same advert over the course of at least a month. It may be an internet myth, but apparently you need to see the same thing 7 times before taking action on it. Don’t quit after just one mailing.

#13 Testing, assuming you’ve managed to stick it out long enough to get some good data it’s time to try and improve things. Use your swipe files to see if a different headline brings more traffic, and does the extra traffic still convert at the same rate as before? Dull, but very profitable

#14 Assign Banners & Text advertising, these are super effective if you want to actually do some branding

#15 Update your profile, sites such as ListSurfing put the sites inside a frame and show you the social media details of the member. Again this is brilliant for branding and costs you nothing extra to do it.

#16 Build A List – by now you may have realised that the people getting results are branding and building a list, don’t use lack of technical knowledge as a blocker for doing this.

#17 Get Involved – If you keep seeing the same faces advertising then get in touch and ask them for help / advice.

#18 Network don’t pitch! If you do decide to connect with someone through social media remember that just because you’re both into marketing doesn’t mean they want to see your affiliate links. Remember first impressions count, don’t be the sado pitching in the lobby and giving out business cards to people who don’t want them.

#19 Treat safelist marketing like a business. Don’t expect results without putting in effort, you should have already learned that a single $xx payment won’t make you rich overnight. Forget hype and focus on turning yourself into someone who fellow safelist users will trust.

#20 Set a budget for credits and upgrades. If the tracking and testing show a certain safelist works, then consider upgrading or buying an advertising slot, eg. login-advert or solo mailing.

#21 Set up a marketing funnel. When someone joins your list make sure you have something related to sell them, at the very least place banner adverts on the download page to cross sell related products.

#22 Start a blog, this is personal branding at it’s finest, and you can create a splash page around your best content so that you’re seen as someone who is worth listening to.

#23 Get to know the owners of the top safelists. I’ve created a safelist marketing facebook group via my alter ego of Hugh Robertson – Click Here to join

#24 Plenty of big name marketers will tell you that solo ads are a great source of listbuilding traffic. By learning about safelist marketing you’ve just set up a really effective marketing funnel, and if it’s profitable from safelist traffic then a paid solo advert stands a really good chance of working really well for you.

#25 This isn’t technically anything to do with safelists, but if you follow the clicktrackprofit training you will learn how to create splash pages for self branding and become part of a community ready to learn about using the internet to make some money