Continuing with safelists - gathering resources I need

This post is continuing on my earlier post regarding my entry into the world of safelists. I have an update. To get the most out of safelists I’m going to need some resources to help me do it.

Now, I am a programmer and I can make most of this stuff myself. Thus, why should I join any programs instead of making my own tools? I’ll tell you why. Time. Have you heard the saying “time is money”? I’ll bet you have. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel and waste time creating what these services already offer. Also, these services are dedicated to doing what they’re doing — so they’re probably done better than what I can do in a short time frame.

First off, I do believe that if you’re not using safelists or traffic exchanges to build your own personal list then you are leaving dollars on the table. Dollars that someone else will snatch up while you’re helping to build their list.

I guess that’s why you hear “the money is in the list” so often. It’s true!

OK, so now I need a list manager. Ideally, this list manager should manage my list(s), send auto-responses when someone subscribes, allow me to send one-off messages, import and export, and all of the other great features that come with list managers.

Regardless of the recent debacle or controversy and partial make-up regarding AWeber and traffic exchanges, that has nothing to do with me (I’m building a personal list here!). So I went with AWeber and it is without a doubt exactly what I’m looking for. No wonder it is so highly praised in the internet marketing community. I was able to quickly and easily set up what I needed and I’m already all ready to begin receiving subscribers.

But wait.. I need something for them to subscribe to! I can’t just make a page that says “hey buddy, join my list!” Well, actually I could — but I reckon I won’t get many subscribers doing that.

So I thought for a bit. What do I know about that a lot of people don’t? Aha! Computers. I’m fairly nifty at those. So I wrote up an email series regarding some computer stuff. That is one of my options. What are your options? Let’s take a look..

• Write/Create your own content
• Promote someone else’s content (affiliate promoting)
• Find stuff to give away for free

I’ll actually probably do all three of those when I get deep into this stuff.

So what is next on my list now that I have content to deliver and a way to deliver it? Ah, the subscribe pitch! Like traffic exchanges I believe you need a quick loading page with good ad copy to truly grab the readers attention and push them to subscribing. I need splash pages and squeeze pages.

I made my own splash/squeeze pages because I felt that I could do it quicker and with more control than using a splash page builder or a squeeze page builder. That is just my preference. It was quick and painless for me to do. AWeber even gives me the option to copy and paste the subscriber form into my HTML. Awesome!

However, I realize that a lot of you scream and throw fits when it comes to HTML and building web pages. Luckily there are some really good resources available that will allow you to make and host splage pages and squeeze pages quickly and easily.

Here’s two that are widely used and popular:

• Steve Ayling’s Splash Page Maker
  
• Robert Puddy’s Instant Squeeze Page Generator

With those tools you should be able to create just about any page you want and link the subscribe form (if you use one) to your list manager.

Next up for me I’ll be finding more content to offer to people to get them to subscribe to my list. Then I’ll be making more splash and squeeze pages to highlight what I have to offer. Then after that I’ll be ready to start my promoting and building my list!

I’ll keep you updated.

My jouney into safelists

Now that I’m concentrating my efforts on being a full time internet marketer, I simply cannot ignore the huge market and opportunity that safelists offer. After all, there are millions of people out there who are wanting my advertisements in their inbox — and I simply cannot deny them!

I’m taking my adventure into safelists slowly for a couple of reasons. Firstly and most importantly I want to do it the most effective way possible. This will allow me to skip parts of the “trial and error” that comes along with learning anything. I still fully expect some trial and error to happen, and I welcome it. Trial and error is the absolute best method of learning. Why do I say that? Because you not only learn what doesn’t work, you also gain the knowledge of learning why it doesn’t work. This information is invaluable. To quote the famous Tomas Edison..

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.

So, where do you go when you want good information on a subject? You go to one of the leaders in that industry. I sent some questions over to Soren Jordansen. I believe Jon Olson titled him the ‘King of Safelists’, and based on what I’ve learned from being around internet marketing for a little while I can’t disagree with that assertion.

He promptly sent me over to his Ultimate Safelist Survival Guide. I grabbed my copy and eagerly read it. Without venturing too far into safelists yet, this guide has already helped me identify lots of time saving features, some good logic, and some “secrets” that will help me make money later on down the line. It is a quality piece of reading and I already highly recommend it.

I then thought to myself that I should join just a few safelists to get the feel of things. I wanted to join five initially, but so far I’ve only joined three. The three I joined are:

• EliteSafelist
• Adtactics
• GotSafelist

Please note that these are all credit based safelists. From my understanding these are the most responsive types of lists.

Other than clicking a few (hundred) emails sent from each safelist, that is as far as I have gotten. So if you’re not into safelists yet and want to join me on my venture into them — feel welcome! You can come back here to read my progress, results, and what I’m doing to obtain them. If all works out as planned I’ll have a “from beginning to safelist master” blog series.

Oh, I should mention this as a note: The only “advantage” I have over anyone else right now is obtaining my copy of the Ultimate Safelist Survival Guide. This is paid information and I shall not duplicate it or speak of it’s techniques here in my blog.