Safelists With Suicidal Tendencies?

As mentioned before, apart from owning a safelist, I also happen to use safelists quite extensively in my marketing. Because of this, I watch this form of marketing with a little more interest than most.

And I keep hoping I'll see other safelists set up better by their owners, so we will build and grow as an industry. Heck, it's enough that we have to overcome the bad reputation of the earlier incarnation of safelists (those without credits). But from what I see, I wonder... Because many safelist seem to have very self-destructive -- even suicidal -- tendencies.

The first is managing basic credit distribution. So many safelists give out either way too many or too few credits with the credit links within each email. And that's bad.

TOO FEW
When a safelist gives out too few credits, this creates a downward-spiral effect, i.e., because it takes longer and longer for members to earn enough credits to send emails, fewer emails go out... so fewer members can send emails... then less emails go out, so members make less credits, then less emails go out, providing fewer credits... on and on, until no one can send an email and no one can earn credits... A downward-spiral.

I guess those guys are banking on the idea that people will upgrade in order to otherwise gain the extra credits -- or -- that members will buy credits. Trouble with that is, because of the way it's set up, the list is worthless. No one takes it seriously and NO ONE is going to either upgrade or buy credits in a list like that.

A safelist's primary strength is in the number of active members it has. To build the membership, the SL has to offer something to its members each and every day. Not just the pro members, either, but all members. And when a member cannot at least send one email per day... that's bad. That's the kind of thing that makes people go elsewhere. Like to my safelist!

TOO MANY
Much more typical is the mistake of giving out too many credits per link-- hundreds, even thousands. The trouble with this is, people are very pragmatic. They are not going to click on credit links if they have 2,893,382 credits and can only use 2535 per email. Why? And if they know that they don't need the credits, they are also not going to open the emails... in fact, they will most likely delete all of them, all the time.

And while more and more safelists are figuring out that giving out massive amounts of credits are actually to their own -- and their members' -- detriment, now they have gone a step further and begun giving out massive amounts of credits in solo ads, as well as sending unlimited amounts
of solo ads.

Great... just great. For me.

In 4 separate safelists that I belong to, all I have to do is check my contact email account, click on the credits in the five or six solo ads and, voila`! I can toss out the other hundred or so emails that have been sent by the rest of their members. The only trouble is... well, unless I send a solo ad, too, chances are, my emails are being tossed as well... so, how effective IS that safelist?

Not very.

I belong to about 30 safelists. But there are only three, in which I KNOW members have to open and click on credits each day. How do I know? Because I have to, even as a pro member. Because the credit ratio is so low that, if I don't, I won't be able to send to the list. And because the solo ads are so infrequent and only offer a lower (but still better) amount of credits.

So, though I belong to 30, I only really have to work three or four. Easy-peasy.