As owner of a network of web sites receiving well over a million hits a month, in this article I give you my five top tips for increasing targeted traffic to your web site.

Newbies on web frequently make mistake of just wanting traffic, and join any and every program offering just that - "thousands of hits to your web site", with vast majority of them completely worthless. When their web sites fail to make any money, many of them give up on web as a money-making myth.

For those that do persist, and try to learn from their experience, they realize it's not just any traffic they need - it's targeted traffic. That means web site visitors who actually want to visit (rather than those who are 'forced' to visit via some traffic exchange program), and so are actually interested in what you have to offer.

This type of traffic is far more profitable to you - your visitors are far more likely to purchase from you, simply because you have what they want.

But how can you attract targeted traffic?

Here are my five top tips:

1. An Affiliate Program

This works by giving those who promote your products a commission if they make a sale. Over time you can build up an army of people who are busy promoting your web sites for you.

My own affiliates account for well over half of all my sales, and to do that, by definition they have to be pushing a lot of traffic my way.

You can begin to see what my traffic and sales levels might look like without an affiliate program.

For beginners who are selling digital products such as ebooks or software, easiest and cheapest way to start your own affiliate program is through ClickBank. That's how I started and I still use them today.

2. Add Content

Providing quality content on your web site is an excellent way to permanently increase traffic to your web site.

Search engines like Google appear to favor web sites with a clear navigation structure that provide quality content within a certain genre - that means not adding anything you can think of to your web site, but focus on a particular niche, and provide content broadly in line with that.

You don't even have to create it all yourself. For example, look in article directories on web for free reprint articles you can use, such as http://IdeaMarketers.com.

3. Create Content

** Generation One - The Pop-Up

Until a few years ago, pop-up was considered biggest breakthrough in advertising on web.

When they were first introduced they were a great success and click-through rates went through roof.

Imagine being able to interrupt whatever your visitor was viewing, by launching a secondary window on top of browser window and drawing attention to your advertisement or subscription box.

But after a while - like most effective marketing tools - pop-ups started being abused.

A primary popup would open secondary pop-ups till eventually just visiting a page that has a single popup in it, could land you with a barrage of about 15 to 20 pop-ups.

Unscrupulous marketers exploited this to fullest, especially those hawking porn sites.

Frustrated visitors soon began complaining about pop-ups, and more considerate webmasters began to use cookies to ensure a pop-up was not shown more than once per visitor.

Pop-ups became such a nuisance that developers created popup blocking software.

These applications delete code that's trying to open a window - and BAM - it's bye bye popup.

** Generation Two - The Pop-Under

Not to be left behind, web marketers came up with another version, pop-under, which launched a secondary window under primary window.

In most cases, visitor didn’t even notice this pop-under until they closed primary window.

Although less intrusive, these were still a nuisance, and you don't get an award for guessing what happened next.

Right, pop-up blockers soon started blocking pop-unders as well.

** Generation Next - The Hover Ad

What beejeezus is a Hover Ad?

Well, it’s a floating window that popup blockers can't stop.

The technology that creates Hover Ads is not new. In fact, it’s been available to web designers for at least 2 years now as DHTML (Dynamic HTML).