Testimonials are undeniably necessary as social proof when you’re trying to sell anything on the internet. 

Most marketers I know solicit these, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I prefer to get my products into a few hands and then get their honest reactions.  That means I give a few copies away to others to review while I’m busy getting everything packaged up for delivery and putting together the website (graphics, copy, etc.)

Usually, I’ll get feedback from at least a couple of reviewers and that does one of two things.  If the feedback is anything less than excited, it tells me that I haven’t “hit the mark” with my product.  If the responses are what I hoped for – they make great reviews to add to my sales copy.

Once a product has been on the market a week or two, customers tend to give you unsolicited feedback.  Those are really great, because when the feedback isn’t asked for, the honesty comes through in the customer’s own words.  These testimonials are much more believable and give you a lot more credibility.

Sometimes the feedback isn’t even sent directly to you. 

I have installed Sid’s new program…. “Rapid Action Profits“. It’s outstanding… I’d recommend it to anyone. It makes it very simple to set up a sales site, complete with one time offers. I set up a whole ecommerce site in less than a day, and now the next one would probably take an hour at the most to set up from scratch.

Great Job Sid!!

I just found that posting by Frank Sousa (Viral Cash Cow) on someone else’s blog.

You can pretty well bet that it’s going to be posted on my sales site as soon as I get a chance.

One of my customers also just told me of a thread in the Warriors Forum Product Reviews section that is getting a fair amount of attention.  So far the comments are all positive.  These reviews are, in effect, a form of testimonial and because they are posted somewhere besides my sales page, will carry a lot of weight as social proof.