Everyone who has a website knows that to have sales you must have traffic, but not just any traffic it has to be targeted traffic.

Targeted refers to finding visitors who are interested in the topic of your website. As an example, speed boat enthusiasts will find websites about speed boats more interesting.

How do I get targeted traffic I hear you ask? The following are tried and tested methods:

Forums - If you are an active participant in a forum you can obtain targeted traffic through the link to your website you can add to the signature. If you spam you are likely to get banned. However, if you add value by joining in debates and answering questions you may even come to be known as an expert. If others like your style, the quality of your posts or even the promotional text in your signature you can generate targeted traffic that doesn't cost you anything.

Reciprocal Linking - For most product websites there are usually many other related websites which aren't direct competitors. You can contact the owners of these websites to ask for a reciprocal link. While a number of them will simply ignore your request, you will start to build up some useful links over time. Again, this can provide a source of targeted traffic.

E-zines provide a ready made source of targeted traffic because they are nearly always focused on a particular niche. Different e-zines tend to have different conversion rates, so it is good to do a test advertising run to check the return on investment, before spending too much on advertising with a particular e-zine.

Newsletters: When people visit your website offer them something of value for free if they sign up to your newsletter (like an e-Book). Your newsletter should be written tightly geared towards your topic. It should be published regularly at weekly intervals.

E-Books: Often used, these are usually free informational books for your clients and for others to give away free if they leave your links in the book itself. You can place links back to your website in the books you sell or give to your clients.

Joint ventures - Successful internet marketers are always on the look-out for new opportunities. If you have a good product which converts well, don't be shy in contacting them to offer a joint venture. You only need a few well-connected partners to see a large expansion in your traffic.

Buy Traffic: This is probably the cheapest in terms of time and most expensive money wise. It gives a traffic boost normally within 30 days. What are you buying? You are buying traffic from expired domain names which the company selling the traffic has bought. They are domain names still registered on the search engines which get a considerable amount of traffic. The previous domain name owners have either lost interest in the name or simply forgot to renew the registration. This means that the traffic from the expired domain name is simply redirected to your website. This is usually high quality traffic as only websites with traffic such as you want is redirected to you. As always, a test run to see if this traffic is suitable should be undertaken.

If the aim of your website is to make money then you really do want to increase the amount of targeted traffic it receives. By using some or all of these techniques, over time, that is exactly what you will achieve.