There are a number of keys to making sales online.

Obviously, there is the product itself. Is it something that people actually want? Can they afford it? Are they willing to pay for it? Is the market reachable online? These are all questions that have to be asked during your marketing research, before you pick your product.

Then there is the sales copy. The quality and power of the sales copy is another very important key to making sales. It the copy is flat, then even if the product is wanted in a good reachable market, then sales will be low.

Of course the headline is the most important key to the sales copy. If the headline does not get the readers attention and draw them into the rest of the copy, then even the greatest sales letter in the world will not get read. And of course, if the sales copy is not read, there will be no sales.

But if there is no traffic to the website sales letter, then there will be no one reading the headline or the sales copy and likewise no sales.

So, if you want to make sales, you must figure out a way to drive traffic to your website. But not all traffic is created equal.

Random or untargeted traffic is worthless. In fact, it is worse then worthless, it consumes time and resources but returns no sales. It is a drag on your business.

What you really need is targeted traffic. That is, traffic that is actually interested in and looking for what you are selling. If you can match a desirable product in a reachable market, with highly interested visitors, then you will have a winner.

So, how do you drive targeted traffic to your website?

There are a number of ways, some more efficient than others.

Let's take a look at a few.

1. Pay Per Click. Pay Per Click traffic is targeted because it is delivered from people who were actively searching for something and were attracted by your ad enough to click on it by their own choice. Check out Google AdWords at: http://www.google.com/ads/

2. Articles. you can get targeted traffic by writing articles such as this article and sending them to ezine publishers that publish ezines in your target niche or to article directories. A link to your website should be placed in your resource box at the bottom of your article. If the article is good and gets published in popular ezines in your niche, you should see some good targeted traffic as a result. You can get help distributing your articles quickly at sites such as http://www.ArticleMarketer.com or http://www.isnare.com

3. Press Releases. A good press release with a link back to your website will also generate targeted traffic because only people who read your press release and were interested in the subject matter will bother click the link to your website for more information. For more information on this technique see http://www.PRWeb.com

4. Reciprocal Linking. If you establish reciprocal links from other sites within your industry niche, there will be some level of targeted traffic that will come to you through those links. The key to getting targeted traffic from reciprocal linking, is establishing links with other sites within your target niche.

5. Blogging. Create a blog with occasional links back to your website and blog about topics of interest to your target niche.

6. Syndicating your blog. Submit your blog to major blog directories such as feedster.com, technorati.com and blogstreet.com.

7. Publish an Ezine. If you ezine is good, you will find interested subscribers will also visit your website if you place a link to it in your signature file.

8. Give away free reports. Provide good solid useful information in your reports with a link back to your website. More information on this tactic can be found at http://www.MiniEbookProfits.com

9. Create a community forum on your site. A good forum based on your targeted niche will draw potential customers who are interested in what you have to sell.

10. Buy your traffic.

a. Create an affiliate program and pay your affiliates a share of the profits,
b. Purchase advertising on other websites.
c. Advertise in ezines.
d. Advertise offline with your website URL in the ad.
e. Purchase traffic from a web traffic service.

WARNING about that last tip. You have to be careful when purchasing traffic from a web traffic service. Many such services will send untargeted traffic to your site from expired domains, pop-unders, or other untarget sources. Some will even cheat and send what appear in your logs to be hits, but in reality no real visitor came to your site. If you purchase 10,000 visitors and get no sales, then you either have a terrible conversion problem or you have been taken by the web traffic service sending bogus hits.

The bottom line is, that all other things being equal, the more highly targeted traffic you can drive to your site the greater will be the number of sales you make. Always be on the lookout for good sources of targeted traffic and forget all the systems that tell you they will send you a large amount of traffic, but their traffic is untargeted.