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Landing page - what does it do? (7)

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Hi All,

I'm a noob at STM, I'm a PHP web developer and have been for about 8 years. I've been growing more curious of affiliate marketing and the money people make from it.

I can see why a landing page is needed to capture details, but what actually happens to them details once they have been captured? Is it up to me to store the details or does the form on the landing page actually post to the merchant providing the offer?

Also alot of the offers Affiliates promote are CTA? Would I need to create a landing page with a link to the offer / retailer? Or would I just drive traffic directly to my affiliate link (cutting out the landing page).

Any advise on this or a link to another thread is greatly appreciated

Thanks

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Hi gavinrog and welcome to STM!

As affiliate marketers, when we refer to a landing page we usually mean a "bridge page" that primes the visitor for the final offer page where the conversion takes place.

Our landing pages usually don't need to collect or store visitor information, unless you're doing email marketing to build a list to market affiliate offers to in subsequent emails.

Both methods are used. As for which one to use in each case, that would depend on the type of offer and the offer page itself. For example, for free mobile app downloads, direct-linking (same thing as driving traffic directly to the affiliate link) from banner to playstore/appstore page is often enough to convert traffic, while for adult dating, a good lander is often required to make a campaign profitable - because more effort is involved in signing up or even making payment compared to downloading a free app, such that the visitor will need more "persuading" which is exactly what a landing page will do.

Hope I was able to shed some light on your questions!


Amy

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A great analogy I've once read somewhere, probably on STM, is comparing a LP to a car salesman.

Let's say you run a car dealership and have a newspaper ad that says "Best cars in town xyz, come and check it out today!".

There might be some people that just show up at the dealership, know exactly which car they want, how much they are gonna pay for it and be done with it.

Most people though will still need some "convincing" from a salesman, telling them about the awesome benefits of car xyz, how great it fits their lifestyle etc...

In IM terms, this would be your landing page, turning a merely curious customer into a paying customer.

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To piggy back off this thread, has anybody here ever had a great level of success with direct linking without using a lander? I'm obviously new here and I was wondering if direct linking will allow me to focus on one thing at a time.

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It would really depend on the offer and the traffic source (traffic quality and cost).

Some offers do not involve a lot of action or decision-making from the visitor - those may convert with direct-linking. In fact, for stuff like free app installs, direct-linking may even work better (would also depend on whether you're comparing to a bad or a kick-ass lander) because a lander takes time to load and creates an extra hoop for the visitor to jump through.

But for anything that involves paying money, entering credit card information, and/or filling out lots of fields on a long-ish form - vast majority of the time you'll need to have a lander to encourage/convince the visitor that it would be worth their time/money to go through with the desired action.

I also know affiliates that would sometimes direct-link to offers just to gauge potential. I also do that sometimes, but only if I feel that an offer page has a chance of converting at all without a lander. And I would only test offers with similar conversion requirements (e.g. all offers only require filling-in 2 fields to sign up) so I'm comparing apples to apples. This way data can be gathered faster and for cheaper. Then the winning offer can be made to convert better by adding a lander.

If you want to experiment with direct-linking - only stick with offers that require minimal work from the visitor. Alternatively, you can also try arbitrage - e.g. running the cheapest traffic you can find (i.e. PPV) to YTZ links. For details see this thread.

Another consideration is traffic quality and cost. If you can find good low cost traffic that still converts decent, it would be easier to make direct-linking profitable.

As for focusing on one thing at a time, you have several options:
-free mobile app install offers - direct-link from banners to playstore/appstore (focusing on banners only)
-pop traffic (focusing on landers only)
-arbitrage (focusing on traffic only - and cutting bad placements)

Hope that's enough ideas to help you decide what you want to do!

Amy

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Amy,

Thanks for the detailed reply to my question, very helpful.

-Alan

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Great analogy and info!

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