Get Rich With Jerry

I caught myself doing something the other day that I think all of us do without realizing it.

I was scrolling through ads online when one suddenly made me stop.

It wasn't the biggest promise.

It wasn't the prettiest design.

It didn't even explain much.

It just made me curious.

That got me wondering...

How many of our clicks are driven by curiosity rather than logic?

I think it's probably a lot more than most marketers realize.

The best ads don't necessarily tell us everything. They leave just enough unanswered that our brain wants to fill in the missing piece.

That's what inspired my latest blog post.

If you've ever wondered why some ads get ignored while others seem impossible to scroll past, I think you'll enjoy this one.

👉 https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/why-some-ads-make-you-curious-enough-to-click/

I'm curious... what's the last ad that made you stop and click?

Why Some Ads Make You Curious Enough To Click Discover why curiosity plays such a powerful role in online advertising and what makes people stop and click certain ads.

One thing I’ve started noticing lately is that a lot of marketers keep running the exact same ads for way too long.

Same headline.
Same image.
Same wording.

Day after day after day.

And after awhile people almost stop seeing them.

Not because the ad is bad.

But because it has become familiar.

I was thinking about this while browsing safelists and traffic exchanges recently. Some ads become so familiar that your brain filters them out before you even consciously process them.

Then somebody changes one little thing…

A new image.
A strange headline.
A completely different vibe.

And suddenly the ad stands out again.

That’s what inspired my newest blog post:

“What Makes People Stop and Notice an Ad?”

I break down why familiarity quietly kills attention, why fresh ads suddenly wake people up again, and why sometimes small changes matter more than marketers realize.

👉 https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/what-makes-people-notice-an-ad/

I think a lot of marketers — especially in safelists and traffic exchanges — will relate to this one.

What Makes People Notice an Ad? | Safelist Marketing Psychology Learn what makes people notice an ad in safelists and traffic exchanges, and why fresh ads often outperform familiar ones.

I was scrolling through a wall of ads the other day and noticed something interesting.

Most of them completely blended together.

Same kinds of promises.
Same wording.
Same overall feel.

And after a while your brain just filters them out.

It got me thinking about something simple:

What actually makes someone click?

In this new post, I break down the three things I think happen before somebody clicks an ad — and why most marketers are focusing on the wrong part.

https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/what-makes-people-click/

Sometimes getting the click has less to do with the offer…

…and more to do with whether the ad even gets noticed in the first place.

What Makes Someone Click? (Why Most Ads Get Ignored) What makes people click? Learn why most ads get ignored and how attention, curiosity, and relevance drive clicks.

Over the past week or so, a lot of sites in the safelist and traffic exchange world got hit by the recent cPanel vulnerability (CVE-2026-41940).

I got hit too.

In my case, I started finding weird files like ajax.php and README.md scattered throughout different directories on multiple sites. One new site I had been working on got completely trashed. Another kept running normally while infected files quietly sat in the background waiting to be activated.

From what I’ve seen talking with other site owners, this wasn’t isolated to one host or one script. A lot of people in this space got nailed around the same time.

The scary part is some servers may have been compromised long before the vulnerability became public.

The good news is most of this can be cleaned up if you catch it early enough.

If you run websites, especially on cPanel hosting, I would strongly recommend:

– update cPanel immediately
– change your cPanel, FTP, and admin passwords
– look through your files for anything unfamiliar
– check recently modified files
– make backups NOW, not later

A lot of people are still discovering infected files days after they thought everything was cleaned up.

Thankfully My Daily Mailer and my other sites are stable again, but this was definitely one of the more stressful online situations I’ve dealt with in a long time.

Hopefully this helps someone catch it before it turns into a much bigger mess.

— Jerry

Every once in a while I’ll run an ad that just… does nothing.

No clicks.
No response.
Nothing.

The first instinct is usually to blame the traffic, the platform, or the offer.

But a lot of the time, it’s something much simpler.

The message just isn’t connecting.

Same offer. Same audience.
Different message… completely different result.

In this post, I break down why that happens and what I usually look at before I go chasing more traffic.

https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/why-some-ads-dont-work/

Sometimes the fix isn’t more traffic…

It’s saying the same thing in a better way.

Why Some Ads Just Don’t Work (And How to Fix Them) Why some ads don’t work even with good traffic. Learn how improving your message can change your results.

One of the biggest myths in online marketing is this:

“If I just had more traffic, this would work.”

I used to think that too.

More clicks. More visitors. More eyeballs. It feels like progress.

But here’s the reality…

Traffic doesn’t fix problems.

It exposes them.

If your message isn’t connecting or your offer isn’t interesting, sending more people to it doesn’t help. It just gives you more people leaving.

In my latest post, I talk about where things actually break down — and why fixing your message is usually more important than chasing more traffic.

https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/most-people-dont-need-more-traffic/

Sometimes the best move isn’t getting more traffic…

It’s fixing what happens after the click.

Most People Don’t Need More Traffic (Here’s Why) Most marketers don’t need more traffic. They need a better offer and clearer message. Here’s why.

I get asked this every once in a while…

Do safelists still work?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: it depends.

I’ve been using safelists for years. Long enough that they’ve just become part of my daily routine. They’re still one of the fastest ways I know to get real people looking at a page.

But they’re also different now.

More people know what they’re doing. Which means it’s harder to stand out. Just “doing it right” isn’t enough anymore.

In this post I talk about why I still use safelists, what most people get wrong, and what actually makes the difference now.

https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/why-i-still-like-safelists/

If you’ve ever wondered whether safelists are still worth your time, this will give you my honest take.

Why I Still Like Safelists After All These Years - Get Rich With Jerry Explore if safelists still work in marketing today. Discover effective strategies for using safelists to drive traffic.

A few days ago I shared the results from a small safelist experiment I ran.

Instead of promoting an offer or collecting emails, I asked visitors to do something very simple:

Click a button.

No funnel.
No signup form.
No reward.

Just curiosity.

The page ended up receiving 4,047 visits and 357 voluntary clicks across 40 safelists, which was interesting on its own. But after spending some time looking at the numbers, I started realizing the experiment may have been measuring something a little different than I first thought.

It wasn’t really testing conversions.

It was testing attention.

Different safelist communities interact with ads in very different ways, and the data from this experiment highlighted that pretty clearly.

I wrote a follow-up post today digging into what the results might actually be showing:

https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/safelist-experiment-insights/

If you enjoy looking at real safelist data and thinking about how people actually interact with ads, you might find this one interesting.

What My Safelist Experiment Reveals About Safelist Traffic Jerry shares insights from his safelist experiment and what the data might reveal about safelist traffic behavior.

Last week I mentioned that I was running a small safelist experiment.

No offer.
No signup form.
No funnel.

Just a page asking visitors to click a button if they wanted to participate.

I promoted that page across 40 different safelists over about a week and ended up with more than 4,000 visits and 357 voluntary clicks.

Now the numbers are in.

Some of the results were exactly what I expected.

Others were… not.

One platform in particular stood out in a very big way, and the difference was large enough that I double-checked the data to make sure I wasn’t reading it wrong.

I’ve published the full breakdown here:

https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/safelist-experiment-results/

If you enjoy seeing real safelist data instead of guesses, you might find this one interesting.

Safelist Experiment Results: Engagement Across 40 Safelists Jerry shares the results of a safelist experiment measuring engagement across 40 safelist platforms.

I ran a very simple safelist experiment recently, and the results were more interesting than I expected.

For years I used to publish monthly stats showing where my safelist signups were coming from. Those posts were always fun because they showed real data from real traffic.

But these days I’m not always promoting list-building pages, which makes that kind of tracking harder.

So I decided to test something much simpler.

No offer.
No funnel.
No signup form.

Just a splash page with a button that recorded whether someone chose to participate in the experiment.

I promoted that page across 40 different safelists over about a week and ended up with thousands of visits and hundreds of clicks.

And one platform stood out in a way I definitely didn’t expect.

I wrote up the first part of the experiment here:

https://www.getrichwithjerry.com/simple-safelist-experiment/

In the next post I’ll share the full breakdown of the results and which safelists showed the strongest engagement.

Curiosity got the better of me on this one. 😄

— Jerry

A Simple Safelist Experiment: What Happens When Visitors Just Click a Button? Jerry runs a simple safelist experiment asking visitors to click one button to measure real engagement.