Testimonials are a great strategy to pull traffic to your website and in list building. What makes them special? Testimonials come from the actual users, which gives them their authentic feel.

Buyers write testimonials when they are happy about using your product or service. They like to highly precisely what they liked about your product and how it benefited them specifically.

Testimonials from your customer help you increase sales. On the other hand, when you write a testimonial for another site and let them publish it, it becomes a good linking strategy as well. When you write a testimonial and have it published by a website that receives tremendous amounts of traffic consistently, your link is going to be exposed to all that traffic. You also gain link popularity.

Testimonials need not be confined to merchant sites. You can also write testimonials and have them published in ezines with your link.

By their sheer simplicity, testimonials make an effective marketing strategy and a list builder when used in the right manner. How do you go about it?

You can let your existing customers know you care about how they perceive your product or service by asking for feedback in the form of testimonials. Have a separate testimonial page linking to your products pages.

Every affiliate marketer can greatly benefit from unbiased testimonials. Here’s how you do it:

• The testimonials you use must produce measurable results. Its not enough to publish a testimonial that just rambles on about feelings. The testimonial must be specific about the benefits and results. This could be in the form of saving money (how much in what time); testimonials could also highlight your responsiveness to your customer, good presentation of product, promise of quality kept, etc. The exact info would be based on what your product is.
• Testimonials must be short and well worded. Long lengths of text are usually quickly browsed through without actually reading them.
• Ensure that you include information about the writer of the testimonial instead of a couple of initials. This will establish credibility. So, first and last name, city/state, website url if there is one, occupation, plus any other info that the customer feels comfortable about disclosing in public.

The thing about testimonials is that most people wont volunteer one. You’ve got to ask for them. And watch your list grow as you feature them on your website and elsewhere.

Popularity: 90% [?]

I’m sure you got into the Internet business with only one magic formula in your mind: Internet = Business = Huge profits.

But to fully integrate this formula into a working model, you will need another component: Traffic, and loads of it.

In the competitive business of making money on the internet, timing is essential. You should always be at least one step ahead of your competition. Strategies to improve your traffic should have been done on a war footing, starting yesterday!

So let’s move ahead quickly.

Top 6 methods to build traffic that pays:

1. Build a website: This would be the logical first step. Your website is your identity on the web. Choose a theme, font, colors and functionalities that nicely complement your niche. Build your website using a number of competitive keyword phrases that attract search engines.
2. Invest in ads: Yahoo’s Overture and Google Adwords are great advertising schemes that can truly pull in traffic. A Google Adwords account is cheap and it has a number of great tools like the Traffic Estimator, which helps you analyze the effectiveness of your keywords. While many people shy away from spending money on ads, these are surefire ways to boost incoming traffic. Believe me, every penny you spend on Google and Yahoo ads is worth it.
3. Exchange links with other sites: This two-way process rewards you and your link partner. When one site that specializes in a niche offers links to a supporting site, the efforts are doubly beneficial to both. The more links you trade, the more traffic you generate.
4. Join online communities: This increases your visibility dramatically. It also helps establish you as THE expert in your field. If you contribute material worthy of being read, seen or heard, you can be sure that you will experience an immediate ROI in terms of increased traffic to your site. Put up a Blog and start populating it with thoughtful comments and useful information.
5. Write: Put quality articles in your website. Publish note-worthy pieces in eZines and send your clients some outstanding newsletters or reports. Nothing can beat a piece of intelligent reading when it comes to attracting paying visitors. Your best option would be to write your own articles. However, if putting pen to paper is not your thing, hire ghostwriters to do the work. Or buy a pack of readymade PLR articles. The only thing to look out for, is that your articles need be 100% original and high-quality.
6. Use viral marketing: Viral marketing is a relatively new method of driving focused traffic to your site. It is low in cost but high in returns. Using video, audio and RSS feeds on your website can multiply the volume of people coming to your site.

These are some of the methods in which you can build traffic to your website.

But there is yet another crucial factor that decides the kind of traffic you get. I mean, while your ads can bring you visitors, it need not bring you targeted visitors, the kind of visitors who actually spend money. To do that, you have to concentrate on your keywords.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Many web masters work very hard to attract unique visitors to their website but once they start pulling links, something curious happens. They ignore their incoming traffic altogether in their frenzy to woo even more traffic. They simply give details of the services they provide and ask their visitors to pay up. To them, the only source of income from their web traffic is through making a sale.

But making money on the Internet need not be a linear process at all.

Did you know that web gurus generate a neat income by monetizing their web traffic in various resourceful ways? You can do the same. Let me tell you how.

Selling ad space: Big players on the Internet are always looking for new places to sell. If you are pulling lots of eyeballs, you can make money simply by allowing associated ads on your site. Inviting merchants to advertise on your website will give you immediate ROI (Return on Investment).

Affiliate programs: This is the cheapest and easiest way to monetize your web traffic. By integrating popular affiliate programs into your website, you get a chance to earn a high percentage of commission on the products you promote. Promoting products closely associated with the theme of your website has a very high conversion ratio. You can promote as many products as you want.

Ebay programs: Another great way to make money from web traffic. Simply place an Ebay product listing along with your website content. For instance, if you sell weight loss tips, place a block of weight loss supplements listed on Ebay on your website. The advantage? Ebay pays excellent commission rates. And if the products you promote are good, your visitors will thank you for it!

Sell text link ads: Sites like text-link-ads.com allow you to increase your revenue in a quite and uncomplicated manner. Simply place their text link on your site and start earning! They take care of all the hassles of billing and payment; you only need to receive the cash! More importantly, they offer you various tools that help you ensure that only quality links are published on your website. The good news? Commission is sky-high: almost 50%!

Google Adsense: This one has been around for a long time but people STILL manage to under-utilize it. Get a membership from Google and start publishing appropriate adsense script along with associated content. Every click you generate earns you money, sometimes even as high as $25 per click!

Newsletter ads: Your newsletter is a vehicle of interaction and you can promote anything you want through it. Besides promoting products, you can even sell ad space on your newsletter.

Membership website: Every successful guru has at least one of these. The logic is simple: people pay money to access content on your website. Why? Because you are the expert!

Link directories: If you are the proud owner of a page rank of 5 or more, many websites, particularly the new ones, will want to place their links on your website. You can charge a nominal fee for this.

Assignments: As you start pulling in more traffic, a vast number of speaking and writing assignments will automatically find their way to you. People will want to interview you or hear you deliver a speech. This will keep your cash registers ringing.

This letter presupposes that you already have roaring traffic tearing its way to your website. But if you’re wondering how to develop this kind of traffic in the first place, just wait until my next article when I reveal a powerful arsenal of traffic-building strategies.

Popularity: 33% [?]