How to Create a Better Landing Page for your Affiliate Marketing
There are very few guides out there that do a good job of teaching affiliate marketing. Most are sites used to sell other affiliate products. And even most affiliate products are pure BS. They don’t reveal all those little tips and tricks that REALLY make a difference in your work.
Lets start with the first lesson: Landing pages. Landing pages are absolutely crucial to making affiliate sales. I learned this out too late. I thought that I could just send traffic straight to a vendor’s site and that would be fine.
This is a huge newbie mistake. This is because a vendor has no idea where the traffic is coming from. They’ve created their landing page based on the source of traffic that THEY’RE focusing on. For example, the majority of vendors have their own PPC campaigns that they have tweaked to match up with their landing pages.
There are really only a few affiliates that tweak their landing pages to make it easy for an affiliate to sell a product. But even then, it’s important to create your own page, whether it’s a pres-ell or review page, that basically “fills in the gap” between the potential customer and the vendor’s landing page.
For example, lets take a look at a recent landing page that has converted for me. This landing page has only been up for a few days and has a conversion rate of 1:28. This means that out of every 28 people that click to the vendors page through this landing page buy the product.
However, how many people actually click through to the landing page? According to my google analytics, 73 people landed on the page, and 28 of those people clicked out. This means that the page has a 38% click through rate, with a 3.6% sales rate (sales/#click through).
We can also just simplify and say that 1 out of 73 people that land on the page buy the product, or 1.7%. Which is still good. So, if I want to make 5 sales a day, I need to send 365 people to that page. Since I know that the landing page converts, I’m just focusing primarily on sending traffic.
We’ll talk about traffic generation another time. Lets delve deeper into why the landing page works.
To begin, here’s a screen shot of the page above the fold:
Well, first of all in terms of good things, we have a video there. People love videos. Most people will click on the video right away and start watching. Is it a good video? Yes it’s a good video. I picked out the best video I could find by the vendor of the product I’m promoting and placed it so it can be viewed right above the fold.
All that text above the video is just introducing the product. And at the end of the paragraph I say, “Here’s a sample workout.” I’m giving people a taste of what to expect before I send them off to the vendors site.
Here’s a few things that I could change:
- “Truth About Abs” on side bar is distracting. I could get rid of the side bar on this page.
- I can also see if there’s a way to shorten the header, so that the page starts earlier. Meaning even more room above the fold.
- Finally the “Get Leaner, Stronger, Bigger…” is too scrunched up. I don’t even know if I need that.
Lets look at what the page looks like after changing the headline and getting rid of the side bar:
I saw a lot of vendors do the same, at it works! After watching the video, a prospect that be instantly interested in the product and go straight to the vendors site. Or, they can continue reading the review. One thing I want to experiment with is to see if I would get any sales just by having the video there.
Nothing else, just the video. In that case I can’t call the page a “review.” I would literally have to say something like, “Click here for a free Workout.”
Anyways, lets see what the next part of the page looks like:
That’s what prospects want to talk about. Talk about the benefits. Share you personal experience. Compare it to the other products. Since people coming to my site know that I review a lot of different products, they trust me to tell them what differentiates this from any other bodyweight product out there.
One tip when choosing which product to promote is promote something that’s truly unique. Don’t promote a copy cat product because it’ll be tough to convince prospects why it’s better than any other product out there (because it’s really not). And price doesn’t matter.
Just because something is cheaper doesn’t mean they’ll buy it. This is the section where you should spend the most amount of time on. Drafts, drafts drafts. But still keep it short, to the point, and make sure to use lots of bullet points. I’ve found that bullet points make a page much easier to read.
“Click Here for More Information”
Here we see the link back to the vendor’s page again. But, just in case they’re not convinced, we’ll give them more information:
“What is the 4×7 Progressive Method?”
There you go! This is what makes this product unique. No other product talks about this method. So, take a look at your product, pick out that one thing that really makes it unique. Something that prospects will really care about, and blow it up. Talk about it without actually giving away EXACTLY what it is.
Tough to do, but you can do it!
Ok, so the image is cut off at the top, but it’s a really cool image with the author doing one of the unique exercises I talk about on the landing page. Underneath we see another link back to the vendors page. The last part of the page is “Product Features and Free Bonus.”
Most people start their review/landing page with the features of the product first. That’s not a good idea. This isn’t some Best Buy you’re walking into where you need to compare computer specs and prices. This is one single product, and you’re trying to sell it on an emotional level (what else did you think marketing was?).
So, build it up. Build it up with benefits and unique information that a prospect will care about. Finally, show them what the product actually features, and then the final thing that will help them click that “buy” button is…the bonus. Large corporations and banks do it all the time.
My mom and sister rushed to commerce bank to get free piggy banks when it first opened. Grocery stores, department stores, and retail outlets give out free stuff all the time in exchange for certain purchases made. So why can’t you do the same?
It doesn’t take the long to make a bonus product. If you’re familiar with your niche, you can literally create your own product within a half hour. Mine took 15 minutes. And guess what, it’s good. But, it only makes sense to the prospect if they buy the product.
Hence, the bonus product is NOT a stand alone product. It’s not super detailed. It’s supplement. So, for example if a product features a 12-month fat loss program, you can say, “I’ll give a months worth of free training!.” And all you need to do is follow the same pattern as the 3 months featured in the product, and create a program that’s harder than the previous 3 months.
Of course, with fitness products, you must always place a disclaimer. And be careful. Don’t prescribe anything too crazy. I’ve trained a few people here and there. I’ve also looked at the product myself and tried some of the workouts, so I have a pretty good sense of what the customer just went through for the past few months.
Anyways, make your bonus, good and add one last call to action. Mine is: “Click here to Grab your Copy of Bodyweight Exercise Revolution Today!”
Future Steps:
I’ll leave this landing page the way it is, without making any further changes for a few weeks, until I hit my target of generate 365 hits to to the page. Then I’ll review my conversion rates and see if there’s anything else I can change to improve them (if they in fact need to be improved).
It was fun sharing this with the rest of the world. I know there’s a combination of beginners, intermediates, and advanced affiliate marketers reading this. So, if you have any question or comments, please feel free to leave them below.
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