Yesterday morning, I woke up a hour early with a few ideas that wouldn't let me go back to sleep. So I got up and got to work, and now I've got a bunch of new testimonials, complete with photos, on my squeeze and sales pages. And I'm confident I'll also get more traffic.

Big idea #1: I'd email my affiliates rather than all of my customers to ask for testimonials. I told them (truthfully, of course) that I'd reserved some highly visible spots for testimonials with links to their sites on my squeeze page. Users who aren't affiliates can get theirs posted on the sales page, but the squeeze page is reserved for affiliates only.

Big idea #2 (which will get my affiliates to promote more): when someone follows an affiliate link to the squeeze page, if that affiliate has given me a testimonial, their testimonial gets displayed in the top spot!

I obviously haven't had time to verify it yet, but this should increase sales (and thus their commissions) by lending more of the trust and credibility they already have with their referrals to my product than a recommendation without that extra connection would.

Big idea #3: I wanted to have one testimonial, complete with photo, there before I emailed my affiliates. So here's how I got a good one: I knew that Shawn Collins (one of the organizers of Affiliate Summit -- a huge affiliate marketing event held multiple times each year) uses and has commented about CaRP (my #1 product) on his blog. In fact, we've emailed back and forth a couple of times about it.

So I went to his blog, copied one of his comments, edited it a little, found a photo of him from Google Images, made a mock-up of an endorsement from him and uploaded it to a private page on my site. Then I emailed him the comment as edited and a link to the private page (making it clear that I wouldn't put it on the live site without his approval), and asked whether it would be okay for me to use it (and if he'd like it changed in any way). He replied that it was fine and thanked me for asking before posting it.

Reader Comment:
Chris said:
Hey Antone, I just designed up a pretty cool infographic flowchart that shows "How To Get Testimonials" - I think you'll like it. Check it out on my blog: http://www.chrisbrisson.com/strategy/how-to-get-testimonials Let me know what you think....
(join the conversation below)

The lesson: if you know that someone prominent uses and loves your product, write an endorsement for them based on comments they've posted elsewhere, and ask for their approval to use it. You may have better luck getting a quick stamp of approval than you would convincing them to put their valuable time and effort into writing one for you.

You can see the results here.