Safelists

Safelists are basically lists of people who have opted in to receive email messages from, and send messages to, other people. This is a good way of getting your site seen by thousands of people, and is relatively cheap (free in some cases), particularly if you use some kind of safelist submitter that will send messages to hundreds of different safelists for you.

However, like traffic exchanges, your ultimate success with this form of promotion will depend largely on the theme of your site. For example, safelists can be a great way of building a list of people who are specifically interested in your site or products. In my experience they are not as effective if you are selling a tangible product, because if you think about it everyone on the list is interested in one thing, promoting their site or product. No-one signs up to safelists looking for good offers or potential products to buy.

Safelists do offer a number of benefits. Firstly they are a cheap way to test the effectiveness of your email sales copy or headline, before you embark on more expensive email campaigns. Remember that your email message will only get read if people open that email, and the only way of making sure this happens is to write a compelling title or call to action in the subject box. Something like "How To..." or if you are offering a free service include the word "FREE" in your message. Not surprisingly, tests have shown that emails that include the word "free" in the subject box get a much higher response rate, despite certain email providers' spam filters starting to block emails containing this and certain other words.

Another benefit is that you don't have to worry about being accused of spamming because everyone on the list has opted in to receive messages, hence the name, safelist.

The main downside of safelists is the fact that you will receive thousands of emails from the other members, so if you do decide to use safelists make sure you sign-up for and use a free email account, and not your main one.

Overall though if you are just starting out in internet marketing I would recommend trying out a few safelists, test different titles and sales copies. This will give you a good grounding for future email campaigns, particularly if you're planning on building your own list. The response rates won't be as good as your own individual list but you should still make some sales, and if not then it hasn't cost you very much to find out, with safelists being so cheap to use.