I recently received an email regarding the issue of contact Solo Ads. The email raises some good issues. Below is my response to the email, as well as a link to the web-page where the contents of the email are posted. I hope you will read both, as it is indeed an important issue.

-------------------------------------------------

Hello,

I wanted to respond to the email you just sent me regarding admin contact mails.

First, let me take the time to thank you, both for writing this mail, and for your efforts contacting myself and other list owners. It shows a great deal of integrity and commitment on your part, and I appreciate that.

In response, as a list owner of multiple lists and a co-owner of a Safelist Host, I do have a few things to say.

I think it is important to make a distinction between the contact solos admins have been sending for years, and the new ‘contact solo ad blasters’.

The first, when used in moderation, generates income to support lists, which are used by primarily free members. In my over 30 lists I have a small handful of paid members. I sell contact solo ads, a maximum of three per day, and the funds support the lists.

The ‘contact list blasters’ are an entirely different matter. Selling access to the admin mailer for a monthly subscription price is nothing but abuse. When the first one was launched, I was immediately concerned that other safelist hosts would see the income potential and follow suit. Unfortunately that is what has happened.

Our safelist host does not allow outside access to the admin mailer privileges, though there has been request for same. We believe that each safelist admin should decide for himself or herself what solo ads get sent to what lists, and how often. I understand that we are one of the last safelist hosts that do not offer such a ‘contact solo ad blaster’.

However, I do sell and send contact ads. These I send manually, to a maximum of three per day. It is these ads I was selling in my summer solo ad package that you saw advertised on Crossworlds safelist. I believe that I handle such transactions with integrity. Incidentally, all of my safelist have it in the terms that the member signs up agreeing to receive mails from Admin as well as list mails.

Two other points (and I apologize for being long-winded):

1. Your comparison between my doctor/telephone/etc using my contact address to sell ads is not accurate for one main reason: I do not agree for my information to be used in such a way. When people join our safelists, they do agree to just that.
2. In your signature you have a link to an e-zine advertisement source and say it is ‘the PROPER way to utilize solo ads’. This I have to say I completely disagree with. When I join an e-zine it is for content. When I join a Safelist it is for advertising. I am far more irritated by the ridiculous amount of advertising in e-zines (which is often much more than the content) than by receiving ads from an advertising source.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me, and thank you for allowing me to reply.

Kindest Regards,
Jewel Goodwin
Admin, JR Solutions Network
mail to: admin@jrsnetwork.com



Here is a link to the article I was emailed:
http://www.opaobie.com/soloadsreality.shtml

[ 35 comments ]

In case you missed the mail....here it is - snag this NOW folks or you'll regret it later.


Greeetings Members!

You know I have been excited for days about this opportunity
to give you free traffic and advertising.

Well, the site is LIVE.

FreeAdvertisingGiveaway is a JV of 120 marketers,
all working together to give you loads of free
exposure for your sites.

We are talking everything from traffic exchanges, to top-sponsor ads,
to traffic generating software...you name it. All for free.

Wouldn't you love to see a nice big burst of targetted prospects
coming to your site? Of course! We all would, but the problem is
that quality traffic can cost a lot of money.

Not today.

Today you can get it for free.

I can only offer this to you for a short time, and then
the deal is off. Go ahead and click this link and start
getting traffic to your site.

http://freeadvertisinggiveaway.com/go/215

Warmly,

Jewel Goodwin

P.S. - There's no catch to this deal. You simply enter
your first name and email, and you will be given
instant access to dozens of business people just you
who want to give you a free sample of their targetted
traffic.

P.P.S. - Just think, if you don't make any money from the
traffic you get, you haven't lost anything. This is my
way of saying thank you for being my subscriber, and I
hope that you get tons of targetted traffic (and make
lots of money) in 2005

[ 8 comments ]

I LOVE it when I can point members and fellow admins in the direction of FREE STUFF.

But I can't tell you yet.

Not untill Sunday at 8AM.

So check back! You won't want to miss this!!

Ta!
Jewel
EMail Me

[ 86 comments ]

One of the first things you need to decide before you launch your safelist, is whether or not you want to offer free upgraded memberships, and if so, how, and how many.

Have a look around at other lists. You will see an extremely broad range of free pro memberships available: everything from the first 50 sign ups, to the first thousand, to all members getting free platinum.

The decision of if and how to offer free pro membership upgrades for your list effects many things:


- It affects the initial speed of growth of your list (Offering free pro at launch causes a list to grow faster at first as members are eager to take advantage of the deal before it runs out).


- It affects the quality of your list members (Are they members who read mails and have found your pro link that way? Are they ‘drive thru’ members who join only for the free pro, post for a few days, then let their mailboxes bounce? Are they serious marketers who choose to pay for their upgrades?).


- It affects the profitability of your lists (Lists that offer lots of free pro tend to have less paid upgrades. Conversely, lists that offer free pro and grow faster, are also faster to reach a higher perceived value for selling advertisements).



With my own lists, I have approached this in a few different ways, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

On my very first list, I offered free upgrades to any members who were referred by one of the safelist administrators who helped me launch the list. Members had to email me for the upgrades and tell me who sent them. This was effective because it brought me active members from the start; ones who had read admin mails on other safelists, and were willing to take the extra step of emailing me for the upgrade.

I have since learned that if you want your list to grow faster, making the free pro available automatically to all members works better. There is a group of potential safelist members who simply don’t want to bother with the hassle of emailing for an upgrade. After all, there so many safelists offering free upgrades without that extra step, they may see it as a better use of their time to join elsewhere.

I do have one list that didn’t offer initial free upgrades. This was an experiment on our part, and worked very well. Upgraded memberships one that list are perceived as being extremely valuable, and it is the list where we have the most paid upgrades. The list is probably the most responsive of all our lists as well. The down-shot of this is that the list grew more slowly, as there was not the initial rush of sings ups taking advantage of the limited time free pro.

There are, of course, other ways to approach the offering of free upgrades.

Think about yourself, obviously a motivated marketer:

What do you look for in a safelist? Do you feel there is more value in lists you are a member of that have hundreds (or thousands) of free pro members. Or do you feel there is more value in lists with only paid upgrades?

We all have lists we are members of that are our favourites (and tend to get a better response from us) – what are your favourite lists? How did those lists handle the free upgrade issue?

Think about your goals for the safelist itself:

Do you want the list to grow rapidly so you can sell solos with higher perceived value?

Do you want the list to bring in more paid upgrades?

How can you make your list benefits unique?

Ultimately, the decision is yours. But do think it over carefully. Evaluate the options, be creative, and have fun with it!

Jewel
http://www.jrsnetwork.com/soloads.html
http://www.ultimatesafelisthost.com/
EMail Me

[ 3 comments ]

I'm keeping it short today.

I just want to drop a note here that there is a fantastic program that gets you viral traffic to your website. Some of you may have heard of this. It's called 'Instant Buzz'.

No there is NO spyware on this download. I have been using it for a couple of months so I know this to be true.

I have gotten impressive results with the toolbar traffic.

So how is this relevant to Safelists you ask?

Well - I am a woman of many talents :)

Seriously though, the real gem I see in Instant Buzz is the forum.

I am active on several forums. Forum networking is a fantastic way to make new contacts to get your name and business links out there.

But the Instant Buzz forum is something else - I have learned more there in a few short weeks than on most other forums put together.

If you are interested - you have to email me :) Instant Buzz is by invitation only.

OK so GO!

Email Me

ta!

~Jewel~
http://www.jrsnetwork.com/soloads.html
http://www.ultimatesafelisthost.com/

[ 163 comments ]

Right then, so what are good ways to grow your safelist?

__________________________________________

So you’ve read my blurb about the dangers of adding your safelist to several submittors in an effort to grow a massive list. Maybe you’ve even pulled your list out of a couple of submittors and begun testing responsiveness of the one or two you have kept.

And your sign-ups have dropped. That doesn’t feel very good.

Before you decide that I am a hack and go back to adding your safelists to submittors all over the internet, let me share with you some tips to grow your list full of responsive members.

When I started my first safelist, I was a member of easily 400 or more safelists myself.

And I admit to being slightly afraid of the owners and administrators of the lists I was on.

After all, they knew so much more than me, right? They were making their online fortune, right? Why would they be interested in a ‘newbie’ like myself? By gosh who was to say that they would even have time to read an email from me much less help me out?

I tell you I was like a teenager going to the principal’s office in high school. I composed my letter three or four times before I had the courage to send it off to a safelist admin. Then I waited with my heart in my throat for the email I was sure I would get telling me to bug-off … or to get no reply at all which would be worse.

Instead I got an extremely warm reply titled ‘Welcome to the Safelist Community’

The admin offered to send my new list to her members with a recommendation to join. I was thrilled. I sent more letters to more safelist administrators from sites I was a member of.

In about 12 hours I had the list over 275.

Now there are some of you who will think that’s not a very impressive number, what with ‘gurus’ and their millions of subscribers.

But I can tell you as a safelist host that I have seen several lists take 2 to three months to get their members over the 200 mark.

Safelists are people, just like you and me. They are looking to grow their network, just like you and me. They will help you (most of them) simply for the sake of creating a tie between the two of you that may one day benefit them, too.

Don’t be afraid – drop a safelist admin a line and ask for help launching your new list.

Who’s going to be the first admin you contact?

Jewel
http://www.ultimatesafelisthost.com
http://www.jrsnetwork.com/soloads.html


Email Me

[ 439 comments ]

__________________________________

Either you are a new safelist admin, or your list has been put-put-puttering along for a few months now and you want to kick start it. After all, the bigger the list the better, right?

Well, no, not exactly. In fact, huge lists can be more of a drain on your server than they are worth if they do not consist of responsive members who actually read their e- mail.

It can be quite tempting to add your safelist to a submittor, or several submittors. After all, most submittors have members joining daily, all of them eager to join each and every list they can submit to. All you have to do is get your list on several submittors and you will have new members by the hundreds daily. Within a week you could tip the 1000 member mark and imagine how valuable your solos ads would become!

Why indeed don’t all safelist administrators want to add their list to every possible submittor?

I will share my reason with you.

Time and experience have taught me that those members who join from submittors almost never read admin mail. I myself, when I was a ‘newbie’ marketer, joined a submittor or two. I opened a new free web-mail account for admin mails and another for list mails. Both of them got set up with auto-delete features. I never read list mail or admin mails.

And yet, lists that I had manually joined went to my personal inbox, and I read every admin mail I got!

And I assure you, I am not alone! Thousands of marketers use automatic safelist submittors, blasting thousands of their ads out every day, and never looking at an ad they receive in return. We might as well all be sending our ads into a black hole! Why do we DO this?

We see submittors advertised daily with such lines as ‘set and forget technology’ or ‘put your marketing on autopilot’. Is it any wonder that when using a service that encourages us to forget about the safelists we are members of … that we actually DO that? We set them and forget them!

Fill your safelist with active, responsive members who have not joined your list simply to forget about it!

Now before anyone jumps to the attack, let me acknowledge that in the world of safelist users, as in everything, there is no black and white. Certainly there are submittor users who read all their admin mail and scan all their list mail, just as there are manual users who send both list and admin mail to ‘the abyss’ without so much as a backwards glance. I am not suggesting that there is no value in safelist members who join through submittors.

Instead what I am suggesting is to limit the number of submittors you allow to submit to your safelist. One is a good number. Maybe two. Do some research on various submittors. Choose one that has a track record so you know they are not going to disappear on you after all your hard work. Pay attention to the wording of the submittor home page, pay attention to the features available. Ask yourself if the submittor has the safelist administrator’s interest at heart or just the safelist user.

Once you have chosen the submittor or submittors you want to be included in, monitor your traffic.

How many of the bounces come from submittor members?
How many duplicate members do you have from the submittor?
How many paid upgrades are from submittor members? How many admin mail responses do you get from submittor members?

Decide for yourself where the line between the benefits of the member influx and the extra work and bandwidth used. If the line gets crossed, it’s back to the drawing table. Choose a different submittor and start again.


Jewel Goodwin
Admin, JR Solutions Network
EMail Me

[ 1 comment ]