Today there are several social media web2.0 websites, getting traffic just from Google, yahoo and MSN is not that important. But for affiliate marketing does it is going to help to convert into sales.

Social media traffic is good if it is relevant. But useless if it is not-relevant. It is a new trend among online marketers to catch on the social media traffic. Also social media web2.0 websites brings in tons of traffic. Will it be helpful? Since the traditional method of getting traffic is through search engine optimization which takes effort and time or PPC advertisements which also needs time to optimize your campaign but also need a lot of money to see the ROI.

Here are some of the best methods to get traffic for affiliate marketing which will convert into sales :-

1)     PPC Traffic – Traffic from paid placement will convert better if you have a good landing page, Ad copy and keywords. One of the reasons it converts better is because People are taken to the right page for what they want. You are driving traffic to the exact page for what the visitors search query was. If you are able to do a good job with PPC you can make a killing.

2)     Search Engine Optimization – Traffic through optimized web pages converts better too, since most of the visitors reaches the web pages through navigating within the site. Also most of the visitors coming through search engine traffic are cautious and try to find a good deal with good reviews and comparisons with other products. Still SEO optimized web pages are good for affiliate marketing the only worry is it takes time as well as you are at the mercy of the search engine algorithm.

3)     Email Marketing – If you are an affiliate marketer and needs traffic email marketing is a good option but the conversion rate is very poor, but it is fast and cheap. All you need to sell a person is their email ID and send the traffic to the desired product page through that email. As we all know Spam is a big issue in emails, and so many email providers have spam filters. Getting through this spam filters is impossible and automatically your email is send to junk folder. Still there are ways you can get conversion. Try good Email Marketing services like Aweber who have a double opt-in email capturing technology. You need to capture email information through a squeeze page and create an email list; with this you will be able to successful.

4)     Social Media Marketing – Social media converts are little pathetic since it is not targeted.  But if done carefully it will be a tremendous success. Since certain social media sites like Myspace and Facebook can target certain demographics and age group. This is quite interesting since no other traffic can do that.

5)     Blogs – Blogs traffic can convert but needs to have updated often and affiliate marketing through blogs can be better achieved through reviews of the products. One of the good things about blogs is it is indexed fast and the blogging platform allows people to see fresh content.

6)     Article Marketing – This Bum marketing technique is little old but still some people rely on this, because they found it to be successful all these years. To build an Affiliate empire through article marketing is hard and takes long time and but provide good advice and linking to the right product in the resource box can convert better. Article writers are always regarded as expert in that particular field so; it converts only if you can provide a solution to the visitors for what he is looking for.

7)     Offline Ads – Placing ads on newspaper and niche magazine can convert but it conversion is really bad. It takes a lot of money to advertise on magazines and newspapers. One of the best ways to do this strategy is to advertise on certain niche magazine for example on magazines, newsletters and newspapers which is relevant to your affiliate product.

Residual Income Online is one of the best source of income you can earn on a regular basis, which is reliable too. But how do you create this kind of income. Well there are several ways to generate a residual income. Some of the common ways to generate residual income online are affiliate marketing, blogging, freelancing, creating membership sites and more.

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best strategy to make a residual income online, even though the other programs make more, but not lucrative as Affiliate marketing.

Some of the key important tips to know before making  residual income online:

1) If you are good at certain things you can write about it a lot too. The most important factor for making residual income online is you need to be an expert in at least one niche. Even if you are not an expert still there is a chance to make money here, but you should have interest in knowing that niche and try to learn more about that niche and be an expert.

2) It doesn’t matter you are a good writer, if you can answer peoples question or solve a problem in that niche that’s good enough to qualify yourself in making residual income online.

3) Determination that you will succeed. Making residual income online is as difficult as making residual income offline. You need to give you all effort to get some return. But once you are done with the learning curve you will find it lucrative and start enjoying making money online.

4) Will to learn from mistakes – making residual income online will be a failure in the earlier stages, But you can figure out those mistakes and correct it you can definitely make a residual income online.

Happy New Year to all my blog readers. I hope all blogger would be looking forward for 2008 to be successful. 2007 has brought blogging to a new level for blogger both as a platform to convey message as well as for making money. Earlier in the beginning of the year people have read blogs but they where not aware of what is a blog?

Blogging in 2008
Every day thousands of blogs are bone every day, but just few of them survive, because keeping it updated with regular content is hard for every blogger. Blogging for 2008 is all about determination to provide quality and unique content for hungry web visitors. As we all know Internet is a tool to provide information, so providing quality and fresh content is key. 2008 will see more blogger try to blog with their own style of writing. Each writer has a unique way to express his thoughts that makes each blogger stand out from the rest of the bloggers.

Lucrative opportunity for bloggers in 2008
Blogging is going to bring in a lot of lucrative opportunity for blogger in this year. Because writing is hard task and to get content for blogs weather it is a personal, business or corporate blog they need well written content. So opportunity arises for bloggers in each and every niche. If you are blogger and want to make money online in 2008 be prepared to write a lot. Opportunity will come from each and every corner.

RSS feeds and Plug ins
RSS and blog plug-ins will make blog more advantageous to bloggers to get readers and search engine traffic. Traffic key to any successful blog, bloggers need to find different methods in 2008 to get more traffic to their blogs. Social media is still in its infancy, it can create a huge traffic for bloggers in this new year. Quality content is key to get bookmarked and diggs.

My Prediction for 2008
2008 would be a great breakthrough for bloggers, some people predicted blogs would be gone and will loose its popularity, but they where wrong. Blogging is going to stay, at least for few more years. So get prepared start immediately before it get crowded.

Below is 10 different ways you can drive traffic to your website or blog.

1) Bookmark button one of the easiest form of getting traffic is have a bookmark button on your all your web pages this can get traffic to your website from repeated visitors.

2) Article series – Have an article series on your website this will lead to more traffic since visitors would be curious about see the next set of articles and will visit again.

3) Forums – Give your visitors a chance to meet and share information about your niche. User generated content is a good way to gather unique content as well as get repeated traffic since visitors would be interested in posting questions and thread on the discussion board.

4) Guest blogging – If you are able to write on popular blog in your niche to write guest article this can drive a lot of traffic from that blog to your website.

5) Review your write by other bloggers – If you pay for bloggers to review your site can drive a lot of traffic depending on the popularity of the blog.

6) Provide RSS feed- Really Simple Syndication is a better way to make your sites content available to others, Have a RSS button on your blog or website article content for people to subscribe your content, RSS buttons can generate subscribers to your RSS feed as well as repeated traffic.

7) Create a Toolbar- If you have the ability of create toolbars it can generate traffic. Companies like Google and Yahoo and others offer free toolbars this allows them to remind of their website when users see their toolbar. There are several programming tools out there some of them free to create customized toolbars for downloading and installing.

Press Releases – Issue press release on a regular basis about your website and latest news and developments going on about your website, like latest products and news this can have viral effect and lead to more traffic and links.

9) Email list – Some internet marketers say that money is in the list, this means if you have a list your can send them newsletter once a week or month about your website. There are several companies providing email marketing services I recommend Aweber which is affordable and offers reliable services.

10) Offer something for Free – Internet is all about free information, to gain traffic you can provide free information of downloadable products, which will bring in traffic, Free stuffs can be a simple free report about your niche or free download products which will lead to a purchase or lead.

Gaman At Sabahan.com post about top 7 reason why newbie’s fail to make money from Adwords caught my eye. I agree with him because just throwing some keyword won’t help you in your PPC Campaign. You need to know a lot if you really want to make money through Google Adwords. My favorite tip was the No 6. Use Negative Keywords Effectively. Here is where you loose lot of money in your campaign to find negative keywords the best way is to install a web analytics tool and check the stats and see which keywords are getting click and add the keyword which you think is not relevant to your campaign in the negative keywords list.

Tish Mcqueen had a guest blog on Garry Conn’s blog, where she says about networking offline to strengthen your online identity; It is true that your loyal readers can provide friendship and partnership in future. I liked the idea about discovering local blog and how to find them It really works if you focus on getting it.

Etienne Teo at etienneteo.com 537 great resources that creates your professional web2.0 blog is a very useful resourceful list where you can find it all in one spot.

A guest post by Michael Martine on http://www.pureblogging.com/ is my last one for this week It is a useful list of how to choose the best wordpress plugins. And my favorite tip is No 8.Test plugins on a test version of WordPress which I do often before I install a plugin on my blogs

That’s all for this week. Have a nice weekend.