I Was Safe, Now I'm Out!

The source I paid for to learn more about Internet Marketing, suggested I join a safelist, which I did. But since I'm trying to do this on a very limited budget, I joined one safelist, as a free member.

I was allowed to promote one ad per week there. But the paying members were able to promote so many more daily. I was receiving tons of email everyday. With an appoximate ratio of 50 emails per day being sent to me, as opposed to my 1 permitted ad per week, this didn't seem quite fair to me.

No one told me I'd have to do that much reading, when I first signed up for all of this. Pretty soon I just couldn't keep up with reading all those emails anymore.

This also left me confused. Were all the affiliate marketers, just promoting their products to other affiliate marketers? Was this the way it was supposed to work? I had to wonder why would they buy the products I'm trying to promote, when their promoting their own things, and hoping I'll buy from them. Seems to me, that's a rather circular method of trying to get sales.

How about, if you buy five products from me, and maybe I'll buy one product from you? What, you don't like those odds? Well I didn't think much of the 50 to 1 ratio I was getting. Perhaps we can barter? Get 10 of your friends to look at my blog, or click on my cloaked affiliate links, and I'll read one of your ads, and even go visit the web site your promoting. I won't promise you I'll sign up with it though. I already seem to have signed up with more things then I can reasonably keep up with now.

I admit, I learned a great deal from some of those emails I received. Some people, pointed me to products I would never have known about, if I hadn't read those emails. I joined a few other programs, from the recommendations I got from the other members of that safelist.

But soon I had to request that I be removed from the mailing list of that safelist. There were just too many emails flooding my email address. It now makes me reluctant to join another one. Yet it seems to be what's recommended by many people, to get traffic.

In addition everytime I now put my name and email address down on a form, for a program I want to learn more about, it seems I'm appearing on yet another email list. Then I start receiving email, from things I don't recall ever signing up for. I didn't think I was agreeing to that, when I just requested they send me more info to my email address. It's getting to the point where I have to go through my email almost daily, in order to get things deleted, or to find emails that I might actually be waiting for.

Like a message that someone's finally bought one of the products I'm trying to promote. Begging people to buy one of my products, might be an option, I haven't yet totally ruled out.

I'll consider joining another safelist, if someone can convince me of the benefits I'll actually receive by joining one. I wouldn't mind joining another one, that at least gives me credits for reading the emails or ads of other members. I spent a lot of time, reading through all those emails, checking out different web sites, and I was still only able to place my singular ad once a week after all that.

It seems I should be rewarded for all the emails I voluntarily read. I'd like to get something back from spending my time doing that. It also became very obvious, very quickly that some people were sending the same email promotion out, over and over again. I could see the duplicate subject lines, that were coming from the same person. They soon became the target of my ever faithful delete key.

Which also makes me wonder, if I wasn't that interested in signing up for that product the first or second time I read that email, why would people think, my interest would drastically increase with reading the same thing, several more times after that?

I realize these things are sent out by an autoresponder, one of those gadgets I haven't yet gotten. But it seems to me other affiliate marketers might get more responses if they changed their subject lines from time to time, and even periodically changed the message in the body of the text. Otherwise I think that delete key, will be getting a lot more action, and not just from me.

Of course this is just a perspective from someone new at Affiliate Marketing. You're most welcome to add your comments, thoughts, suggestions, on any of the topics I've blogged about so far, as well as things I'll be blogging about in the future. Perhaps there's something about the way safelists work, that I just don't understand yet.

Your feedback is always welcome and appreciated.