I want to cover the importance of testimonials on your squeeze page or email responder when selling your products (or affiliate products) to your niche. I would like to start with a simple comparison:

Let's talk about the difference between a good salesman and a credible salesman for a minute. You see, both salesman may have all the experience in the world (especially when it comes to receiving "no's" from customers), but there is a key difference between the good salesman and the credible salesman. A good salesman can meet you where you are with your needs in life and introduce a product's benefit to match up with those needs. That salesman simply SELLS the product: nothing more and nothing less. The credible salesman possesses the same traits; however, he makes more sales and retains more customers. Why is that? It's simple:

He can back up what he sells through other customers.

One of the toughest challenges I faced when first starting to convert traffic into targeted leads was not only a service that portrayed value to my visitors, but also digging from experience. I needed past satisfied clients to gain further knowledge and CREDIBILITY when it came to building my list for eventually selling my products.

So how did I finally do it?

Well I needed to get some testimonials. I needed ACTUAL customers to promote my newsletter and talk about it openly with other prospects who were targeted for my website. It was easy for me. I had a buddy in the landscaping business and another in a Polo Shirt business who desperately needed some system of client retention and follow-up.

No problem. I wrote some articles for them, did a few short-line flyers, and grabbed every current customer's name and email to provide them with services that were applicable and directly geared towards them. In other words, I put their businesses on Auto and let it drive itself after I did the initial promotional work.

This turned into 2 testimonials for me of which I threw up on my site. The result? After a week of tracking my conversions, the rate went from about 4% to 12%. That's 8 percent! I was only getting about 100 hits a day back then, so it went from 4 new leads to 12. But that was EVERY DAY. If I had 1000 hits a day, my leads would have increased from 40 to 120!

You see? It's exponential. Get traffic, get a good converting page, and get testimonials to seal the deal! That's a pretty simple answer to what can be a pretty self-induced confusing equation. Focus on the basics and let your product sell itself.