As a either an offline or online business owner, you never want to miss an opportunity to grow your business and capitalize on any potential sales. One of easiest ways to grow your business is by using testimonials. Quite simply, they’re cheap, are easy-to-use, and above, are a powerful marketing tactic.

Establishing credibility with your visitors and customers can build trust, which in turn will create profits. This should be high on your to-do list, regardless of which stage your business may be in. Due to our cynical attitude, most of us need proof that something works and would be more inclined to make a purchase based on this rather than rely on a sales pitch alone.

Fact-filled testimonials on your website will satisfy most customers and is one of the most high- impact ways to let your visitors know that the product you want them to purchase lives up to their expectations.

So, How Do You Get Testimonials?

Getting testimonials may require some work on your part, especially if your business is in its early stages. Here’s how you can collect the testimonials you need to help grow your business and increase sales.

Provide a link on your site with a web form, which will allow your customers to give you their feedback. This will give them the opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences about your product. As you collect your testimonials, you will then place your “request feedback form” next to some testimonials that you’ve already gathered. This will give your customers an idea of the kind of feedback you’re looking for.

A more effective approach to this method is to use your autoresponder. By having them opt-in to your autoresponder, you can then contact them after they’ve purchased your product - even weeks, or months later, of course you don’t want to wait that long to communicate with them.

Making Use of Your Sub-list

Creating this sublist serves another important purpose.

By having this sub-list in place, you have now established a list of people who have purchased from you. Now you can market to this group of list with other related products and services. Remember, the idea is to create a long life customer and not just a buyer.

Now that you have this sub-list in place, you can now follow up with them and ask about their experience with your product, as well as giving them a chance to offer feedback on their customer service experience. Don’t forget to follow up and recommend other great products or services.

If you happen to receive a great testimonial from one of your customers. Get their permission to post their feedback and comments on your website. Let them know that in return, you will give them some free publicity by including their website URL in your sales page, a win-win for the both you .

How To Make Use of Your Testimonials

• Here’s how to make the most of your testimonials:
• Place your best testimonials in the top fold or the side bars.
• Place some testimonials right in the middle of your homepage.
• Dedicate a separate page to your testimonials - include snippets of their comments.
• Link to your testimonial page next to each of those snippets.
• Include a link to your testimonials on each and every page of your web site.
• Don’t edit your testimonials to exclude a comment or add information you want to hear
• Never use a customer testimonial without permission.

Conclusion

Getting testimonials can certainly boost your business, but if you happen to have no testimonials in place, you can always offer your product or services for free to a select group of people on your list. This is assuming you have a product in place that you haven’t launched. Once your testimonial list begins to grow, make every effort to place them in the most prominent positions of your sales page.

Most important of all, never risk committing fraud by inventing testimonials as this can easily ruin any credibility you’ve worked for and can result in destroying your business. Follow these simple guide lines and your business will grow.

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Article marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing you can get online. Even more appealing, if you’re just starting your online business, it is an extremely cost effective method of generating traffic to your site or blog. I highly recommend that if you haven’t yet started to write and submit articles, you should make this your #1 priority over the next few weeks.

Here are the steps to writing an effective article…

1. Choose an attention-grabbing title:

Whether or not someone even reads your article at all is dependent upon your title. This is especially important when you submit it to directories and publishers where there are hundreds of entries.

Here are some templates you can use for your titles:

• How to _________ In _________ Steps
• How to _________ In _________ (Time Frame)
• The Real Secret to Quickly ______________
• Top 2 Ways to ________________
• 3 Little Known Tips for _____________
• The Hidden Costs of ________________

2. Determine 3-5 points of interest:

You’ll want your article to be 500-750 words, so write 3-5 sections that are about 100 words each along with an opening and a closing.

3. Write an interesting opening sentence:

Your title gets them to take a look, and you want to immediately get them into the main body of your article. There are several things you can do in this opening sentence to lure readers in deeper…

• Ask a question
• Reveal something startling
• Inject emotion
• Present a problem

4. Close with a call to action:

Your mission is to get them to move on to your desired action. When they finish reading your article, they are going to do something other than just sit there and stare. They’ve got a ton of options and only one of them is to do what you want them to do.

What you want to do is LEAD the reader to your resource box. You do this by bridging the gap between your article and your resource box - you create a “transition” between the two.

In your article conclusion, you’ll summarize the 3-5 points you made in the article. Your resource box should reference something related to those 3-5 points. It will draw the reader to click to your site.

Conclusion

Whether you are submitting your articles to directories, posting your articles at your website, blog, or inserting your articles into viral e-books to be passed around the web……your #1 goal is to get subscribers onto a list and your 2nd goal is to get them to your sales letter.

You can do this by giving away a free report or mini-course in your resource box and place that freebie at the top of a sales letter or redirect them to a sales letter after they’ve joined a list.

Traffic generation using Web 2.0 linking strategies and Web 1.0, still share a one thing in common, which is a visitor to your site. Regardless, of whether they came from one of your articles (a 1.0 linking strategy), or a post from your Hub pages (a 2.0 linking strategy), the end result was the same. Implementing Web 2.0 linking strategies, does require work on your part, but as you will see, some automation is available.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social Bookmarking sites are a way for other to share things of interest with others. Due to their high traffic, you can easily get a flood of visitors to your site within minutes. However, care must be taken as to how you submit your blog post and websites, as you can easily be banned and blacklisted.

Here are some of the more popular ones:

StumbleUpon: Allows user to share their websites, videos and pictures. They have a toolbar available, which you can download to your web browser, which simplifies the process for URL submissions.

Digg: Is a community driven and news aggregator. People submit their stories and people vote or “digg” the story. The more diggs a story gets, the higher it ranks. Diggs are basically just votes.

Mixx: A news, video and photo sharing site.

Reddit: A source to what is news and popular online. You can also submit your URL’s here.

Onlywire: Bookmarking site that allows you to submit your URL posts with one click; however, you do have to register with each website that’s on the Onlywire list.

Recommended Method Of Submission

Before submitting your blog post or URL, submit 4-5 other blog post from other website before you do yours. Do try to pick high quality posts or stories, and not just junk links. If you only submit your links, you will get banned and blacklisted. Understand that this is a recommendation, so post responsibly.

Social Networking Sites

Ever since their inception, social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, and Ning continue to grow. The concept behind these sites, was to facilitate the process of socializing online. All social networking sites offer a “personal page” where you can upload your photo and “about me” section. When done correctly, social networking sites can prove useful to your niche marketing efforts. If you plan on using any of these sites for your promotions, be sure to read and follow the rules in place. On Facebook for example, your are only allowed to have one profile, but you are allowed to add the URL’s to your sites within your profile. Facebook also has a strict policy regarding advertising. MySpace on the other hand allows you to create multiple profiles, but also have a strict rules regarding promotions.

Other Sources

• BlinkList
• Furl
• Bebo
• Yahoo Groups

Video Sites

If you have the technical-know-how, and are creative, you can create and submit your work to the video sites. The great thing about video submissions, is you don’t have to worry about hosting the content yourself. Even if you don’t have the technical know-how, you can always hire someone to do it for you. Some of the popular video sites are:

• YouTube
• Google Video
• MetaCafe
• Revver
• Grouper
• Guba
• Vidmax

If you create a video that goes viral, this method can easily bring you thousands of visitors. To automate the process, you can use submission software like VideoTrafficAssistant or UploadVideoPro.

Information Sites

If you have a yahoo account, you’ve more than likely have come across their own research site called Yahoo Answers. Sites like these allow anyone to post a question on any topic. Here are some the topics covered:

• Business & Finance
• Cars & Transportation
• Computers & Internet
• Consumer Electronics

The nice thing about Yahoo Answers, is they allow anyone to post a response to the questions made by others. In a nut shell, individuals are scored on the quality of their response and activity. If you build up your credibility by actively participating, over the course of time, you’d be able to bring some incoming traffic to your sites. Understand that this method is more of a long term strategy.

Free Blog Sites

Free blog sites are a cost effective method to traffic generation, since they cost you nothing to implement. The idea here is to post content, with “long-tail” keywords, which you then link to your website or main blog. An example of long “tail-tail” keyword, would be “dog-training-tips-for-bloodhounds”.

Examples of free blog sites:

HubPages

HubPages allows you to place two self serving links within your post or hub, but your post must also point to authoritative sites, such a wiki page for example, or a major news page. They also have strict rules about having different hubs pointing to the same website. On a side note, HubPages doesn’t allow any spam, adult, or gambling posts.

Squidoo

Squidoo is another free blog type site, which allows you to make posts or lens. The more unique your content the better, especially if you’re an expert on a particular subject. Google also loves Squidoo and frequently crawls the site and also has a high page rank.

Blogger and Wordpress allow you to post articles at no cost to you; however, there are drawbacks to not hosting the content yourself.

Some of the Pros:

• Easy to set up and maintain - no installation necessary

• Free to use and newbie friendly for the most part

• Easy to monetize for adsense

The Cons

• Lack of customization

• URL not very friendly - for example your URL is
  alwasy www.yourdomain.blogiste.com

• Not as professional as a self-hosted site

If you have to decide between the two, always go with a self hosted wordpress blog.

Final Notes

There you have it, implementing Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 linking strategies can easily bring you a steady flood of traffic over time, which can pay dividends to your email list and bank account. Not to mention that these are cost effective, which means, more money in your wallet. If you put into action these techniques, you can easily create a funnel of traffic to your site.

To better make use of your time, you can always hire someone to assist you with the process, if your business budget allows it. Most important of all…is to take action.

Recommended Resources

Here are some recommended resources to help you implement the web 2.0 linking strategies:

Web 2.0 Wealth System

This, in my opinion is ONE the most complete, and affordable blogging course on the net today, and is a great blogging course for beginners. Alex Sysoef is the creator of this system and provides a complete step-by-step video tutorial to get your blog started right away. The Web 2.0 Wealth System provides you with a pre-packaged word press blog (version 2.5) along with the necessary plug-ins to make your blog seo friendly. Go check ahead and check out the Web 2.0 Wealth System by going here.

Space Bankers

SpaceBankers, is a complete PDF guide that shows you how to profit from social media sites as MySpace and FaceBook. The creator of the course, Ryan Moran also provides video tutorials, which you can gain access to for free. Some of the topics covered on the free video tutorials include:

• MySpace Video Tutorial

• FaceBook Video Tutorial

• HubPages Video Tutorial

To make the most of your web 2.0 linking strategies with MySpace and Facebook, go check out SpaceBankers.

Improving your page rank through link building doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, the web 2.0 era, has brought advancements that has made some of the link building process some what automated. This automation, will make it much easier to obtain some of those links in a cost effective manner. The key to building up your links, is to do it gradually, and schedule accordingly. Remember that this is not a race, but more like a marathon.

Web 1.0 Link Strategies

Although the web 2.0 era has made it much easier to get back links to your site. Web 1.0 link strategies can still be effective when done properly. As mentioned before, the key is to do it gradually and to have a schedule in place to better make use of your time.

Blog and Forum Commenting

Commenting on other forums and blogs in your niche can bring you many backlinks. There a couple of ways you can do this. One will require that you do a little search on Google, while the other can be done automatically, using a special software tool. If you prefer to do it manually, then do the following on Google:

• For forum search: your niche topic+forum ex: “dog training tips+forum”

• For blogs search : your niche topic+blog ex: “dog training tips+blogs”

To do it the easy way, use a free link building software like Comment Kahuna, which searches for blogs that are within your niche and brings up their page rank. In order to maximize on this strategy, its important that you read the posting carefully and make appropriate, constructive comments. Once you find and have selected the blogs where you will post your comments, make certain that you leave your name and URL address.

When commenting on forums, be certain you read the rules and regulations they have in place. It is always a good idea to contribute to the discussion of the threads so that you establish some credibility and not be labeled as a spammer. Don’t forget to create a signature file, with a link back to your site, which is automatically added at the end of your posted comment.

Do’s and Dont’s to Blog and Forum Commenting

Do find high page ranked blogs and forums and post responsibly, and follow the rules. As mentioned before, when posting on blogs, post constructive and appropriate comments. If you make a post like “nice blog”, or something along those lines, you’ll immediately get flagged as a spammer. Forums do’s; Read and follow the rules established within the forum, and do contribute constructively. One of the more popular forums on the net, is the Warrior Forum

Article Marketing

According to some, article marketing has proved to be NOT be as effective as it once was. Although it is debatable, don’t underestimate its traffic generation potential. The key to article marketing is to write a key word reach article on a specific topic, fill out a compelling bio box or resource box, and submit it to the article directories. If you are unsure what the “bio box” is, it’s simply a short summary about the author, (also referred as the “resource box” or author sig) which in this case, would be you. The purpose of the “bio box”, is to compel the reader to click on your links, who then visits your website. Most marketers will use the following tactics, like offer a free report, free gift, or eCourse.

How It Works

Once you’ve completed your key-word rich article, check it for spelling, and complete your bio box. Your next step will be to submit it to the article directories. The easies way to do this, is to use an automated software like, Article Submitter, Unique Article Wizard, or Artcle Post Robot. (check them out for yourself and decide which one is right for your). After you’ve submitted your article, here’s how the process works:

1. Submit Article To Directories
2. Person Visits Directory
3. Person Likes Article and Takes Back To Add Their Site
4. If They Do It Correctly-They Keep Your Bio Box In Place
5. Which Gives You a FREE One-Back Link From Their Site

This is just demonstrating one person, if you right an excellent article, it can easily be picked up by many other webmasters, maybe a few high page rank sites. Just keep in mind that this is not going to give you results overnight.

Where To Submit Your Articles

One of the more popular ones, is EzineArticles.com. To get the top 50 article directories by traffic and page rank go here. On a side note, most article submission software will have a list of directories in place.

Things To Consider

As mention, your article must be key word rich, but don’t over-do it. There is a delicate balance here due to the search engines of possibly seeing your article as being spammy. Sprinkle your key words throughout and if necessary, have someone else read it and have them give you their input.

One important thing that needs to be mentioned about EzineArticles.com. As of May of 2008, they have changed their policies regarding self-serving links. They’ve enacted this policy in order to attract high profile expert authors and differentiate those who write thin content for the sole purpose of generating back links. You can learn more about it here.

Link Exchanges

The link exchange process works sort of the same way as with forums and blog posting, except you actively exchange links. You find similar websites that are in your niche, with whom you aren’t in direct competition and offer an exchange. You do this by placing a link on your site with a description, and they do the same for you. It’s like getting a vote. If possible, try to get links to websites with a high page rank. The higher the page rank, the better. Although the process of getting links can be very tedious and time consuming. There is good news, as the process can almost be done on complete autopilot. Here a few website that really simplify the process:

LinkMetro.com
EthicLinks.com
CyberLinkPro.com
30MinuteBackLinks.com

Web Directories

As far as web directories are concerned, there are literally thousands where you can list your site. Some marketers find this a waste of time. If you go this route, understand that it is not quick process, as it can take weeks to get listed. If you decide to do so, here are a couple of sources for you to check out and decide if web directories are right for you:

Web-Directories.ws

SeoCompany.ca

Conclusion

Web 1.0 link strategies are and can still be highly effective ways of generating traffic to your site. To better maximize, it is highly recommended that you put a schedule in place. For example, you can make it a point to actively participate in forums 1 hour a day, and post to blogs 30 minutes a day. Write 3-4 articles a week and submit to directories over the weekend, and do active link exchanges after that. This just a suggested schedule, the trick is to implement an accumulation of links using each of these strategies. Over time, you will reap the benefits of your hard work.