Resources - What You Need For Your Home Based Business

One of the 'necessities' for the Home Based Business person, at least in the onset, is the 'Email Safelist', or rather, Safelists (plural), as one is not nearly enough to get a promotional message (or message of any kind)  to the number of people required for it to be worthwhile and effective. Safelist memberships range from as little as 10 (those just staring up) and 5,000+. However, there are a number of worthwhile Safelists with memberships around 5,000 to 30,000, whose numbers are sufficient for your emails to be seen by a reasonable number of people each mailing.

A quick word about the Safelist. They have become popular and necessary because of the Anti-Spam laws which were passed a couple of years ago, which basically made it illegal to send unsolicited emails to individuals or companies (they were also very necessary and popular prior to the Anti-Spam Laws because of the fact that even though it wasn't illegal, it was wrong and unwelcome to send unsolicited mail anyway). They are a collection of people or businesses that have signed on to receive emails for the privilege of sending emails to the other members of the list who have also agreed to receive. The idea being that even though most people are only receiving, opening and reading emails so they can send theirs to other people, there will always be people who are interested in one thing or another. They do work and are an economical place to expand your Home Based Business. They are especially effective for Home Business people who are promoting a product or service to other Home Business people, because the Safelist is where you will find a high concentration of Home Business people promoting their products, services, plans and downlines etc.

Some are based purely on a 'credits' system where no fees or money is involved. You might receive credits for reading emails (sometimes a time limit will apply whereby you will need to stay on a link for a minimum of time - maybe 15 seconds), to receive the credits. The credits earn you the ability to send that many emails to other members. Others work purely on a time basis. You can mail once per week or once every 72 hours or whatever the arrangement. You will generally be able to increase your mailing frequency by updating to 'Pro' or 'Gold' membership. These 'upgraded' memberships can also increase the amount of members you can mail to. Free memberships, which almost all Safelists have, sometimes only allow you to mail to other 'Free' members. Upgrading to 'Pro' or 'Gold' (or whatever their 'buzz' word is) allows you to mail to the free members and other pro or gold members also. Each Safelist has it's little plans and arrangements. Upgrading usually involves a monthly subscription (generally around $5 TO $10), which will often include an 'allowance' of credits each month if there are credits required to mail, thus relieving the need to read other emails to earn the credits.

As I mentioned, those who generally register and maintain active membership in Safelists are those who, like yourself have set up a Home Based Business or Affiliate related business and are looking to promote their website or products to anyone who may be interested in the product or in becoming part of your downline etc, as well as increase the amount of traffic to their website. For this reason you are not going to come across too many 'average' Internet shoppers. Consequently, many are of the opinion, including myself, that Safelists are of virtually no value when it comes to selling products or services to 'end users' or your average Internet shopper. The exception here may be the kind of product Home Based Business people would be likely to be interested in like an ebook manual about setting up a Home Based Business or marketing Strategies etc. Also software that is used by Home Based Businesses is often sold through the Safelists simply because they are full of people who would be interested in such software programs.

Also there are literally hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people running Internet Businesses of a type, be they Home Based Businesses, Affiliate businesses, MLM or whatever. All of these people are going to be at least moderately interested in any business opportunity that you may have for them, especially Affiliates who are always on the look-out for a worthwhile program or product, especially if they can get in on the bottom floor. So, the Safelist is very useful for building your downlines (Affiliates who join under you, for whom you are are paid a percentage of their Affiliate commissions). Some Affiliates actually make a large portion of their incomes from their downlines and many of these join through safelist emails.

You can get the occasional 'non-business' type sale in a Safelist because Home Business owners are human beings too, and consequently, they do use some products that may be offered by other Safelist members, but by and large, the members are not there to buy 'everyday products', but to expand and promote their businesses.

Safelist Submitters

Before I recommend any Safelists or types of Safelists, I want to briefly warn against 'Submitters' or 'Auto-Submitters'. These are websites that 'claim' to have (or may actually have), access to multiple Safelists. When you join them, you are usually joined as a 'free' member of all these Safelists and your emails are then (supposedly or actually) sent to all these lists. 

Some are connected to literally thousands of Safelists. This means two things - first your emails will go to many, many people. Secondly, no-one will ever read them! The larger 'Submitters' also promote 'Email Account Clearing' services, so that the members email accounts don't get full (this will happen very quickly when you belong to 1,000 or more lists). A bit of a contradiction! Selling a service that claims to get your email to millions and then telling you how to avoid having to see any of the emails you will get from the same lists! Don't waste your money!

There is also apparently a lot of 'cheating which goes on, whereby, some unscrupulous 'submitters' will not have the permission of the Safelists to which they will submit your emails. They will be submitting through some under-handed 'back door' way, which is illegal. My personal advice is, don't bother with them, they are NOT a good idea and most Safelist owners don't like them.

Which to join?

Obviously, the larger the Safelist, the more people you are going to reach with your emails so, you need to become a member of at least a couple that have sizeable memberships (around 20,000 to 30,000+), however, the smaller ones can be very responsive. The smaller ones (around 500 to 5,000) can be lucrative, remembering that these are continually growing and you will be able to take advantage of any Affiliate program.

Another way for members to earn their credits (in a credit based list) is as a percentage of the credits earned by their downline (the members they have introduced to the Safelist themselves), so being an active recruiting member of the smaller ones can also be important, the larger they get the more advantage you get from them, provided you are actively recruiting. It's even useful to become a member of a number of the smaller ones, with only a few hundred members, for the very same reasons. You won't get too many people now, but if you actively recruit, you can end up with literally thousands in your downline, especially where the Safelist has several downline levels (most have at least five levels). This means that you earn credits (in a credit based list) for those who join directly under you, those that join under them, and so on, down to five 'generations'. You will earn commissions for those who join as 'Pro' or 'Gold' members, in those lists that have an Affiliate program. So certainly don't ignore the smaller lists. I actually find them more responsive than the larger ones. I also suspect that there are a number of 'inactive' members in the larger lists.

Fist of all, obviously, I have to recommend the 'HomeBaseBiz' Safelist. It is owned and run by us here at OnlinePlus.biz and is growing very quickly. Being a Home Based Business related concern, we have made our Safelist very friendly and suitable for those with Home Based Businesses, as we know what they are looking for in a Safelist. Our Safelist is hosted by the very professional and experienced 'Pearlsofwealth.com', a leader in the field - NO third party submitters are allowed, so your email will get to everyone on the list. You will find a number of facilities and features, which many Safelists don't offer. Check us out by clicking on the banner below: