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Day 15: Intro to Landing Pages (13)

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EXPLANATION

Today we will start learning about Landing Pages.

Usually we execute the "ACTION" section first, then read the "EXPLANATION" section. But today I want to reverse the order - because I want to provide an introduction to landing pages before we take action.



What is a Landing Page?

A landing page - also referred to as a bridge page, a pre-landing page, or simply a lander or pre-lander for short - is a page that we show to visitors first, before sending them to the offer page.

The Great Caurmen's introduction to landing pages can't be beat - so please go read that now:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...A-Landing-Page



Why Can't We Continue to Direct-Link to Offers?

You can. But pop traffic has gotten so competitive in the last while, that you can't expect to be making consistent profits using half-assed effort.

You'll need to use every trick in the book to gain an edge over the competition - and using a landing page is definitely one of the most value-adding tricks.

Another very important reason for learning to use landers, is that some types of offers simply will not convert (or at least not convert WELL) without adequate pre-selling.

And this is true for other types of traffic as well, not just for pop.

Many people have asked, "wouldn't it save money if I direct-linked to a bunch of offers first, to see which ones convert the best, and only THEN put in the effort of testing landers?"

I'm all for taking shortcuts and being more efficient, but this is one case where it's not a good idea. If an offer requires pre-selling in order to convert well, then you'll need to test landers from the very start.

So how would you know what types of offers require using landers, and which can be direct-linked?

Here are some tips to help you decide whether you should test the offer using landing pages from the very start - or at LEAST split-test between direct-linking and landing pages:

1)Look at how simple/complicated the conversion flow is. What action(s) does the visitor need to take in order to convert? Does it take very little effort or lots of effort?

Offers that require very little effort and look interesting/attractive, stand a chance with direct-linking.

As examples: Sweeps and Antivirus usually need landers to convert / convert well, because they typically require the visitor to fill out multiple fields. Whereas 1/2-click carrier billing offers will usually convert with direct-linking - especially entertainment type offers like gaming or video subscriptions.

2)Check a spy tool. If you go to a spy tool like Adplexity (we'll talk a LOT more about this tool later), do a search on your offer type (e.g. "iphone x"), and find lots of suitable landers, then that's a sign you should include landers from the start.

3)Ask! Either your AM, or in a new post here in the forum.

I can't stress enough how essential it is for you to learn to work with landing pages. This is not JUST important for pop. Basically, no matter which traffic type you decide to run in the future, you'll need to know how to pre-sell the visitors adequately using landing pages. And even if you have the resources to outsource this part of the work, you'd still need to know enough to specify exactly what elements you need the landers to include and how you want it to work.

So - DO NOT BE COMPLACENT! I know direct-linking is easy and you're comfortable with it. But please start using landers ASAP - you'll thank yourself later.



So Where Can I Get These Landing Pages From?

Typically there are several ways to get landing pages, which I'll list below.


1)Download (or "rip") them from your competition.

This can be further broken down to 3 methods:

a)Manually go to websites that are showing pop ads, and download them. I've grabbed the top placements from Zeropark for the US geo:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nm5at5f8gg...2020.xlsx?dl=0

Many of these sites are actually international sites (e.g. most torrent sites get international traffic), so there would be affiliates targeting geos other than the US, and showing their landers. All you need to do is fire up your VPN, set it to the geo you're wanting to find landers for, browse to the sites on the list and start clicking around to trigger pop ads.

When you find a lander you wish to download, you can either use a software like HTTrack to download it, or simply download from your browser (e.g. in chrome, right-click with your cursor anywhere on the page and choose "Save as...").

This method will take a long time to gather landers, because you'll be shown landers for all types of offers and verticals and not just the offer type you're wanting to rip landers for. Also, unlike Adplexity Mobile, you won't have any idea whether the landers you come across are tried and tested, i.e. have been used in lots of campaigns and/or received lots of traffic.

But if you really can't afford spy tools for now, then ripping landers this way would be an option.

Note: Many ripped landers won't work properly as-is after you download them. Some of the coding will need to be corrected in order for them to function and display as intended. Again, I will provide some guidance on how to correct these errors in a subsequent lesson.

b)Use a spy tool like Adplexity Mobile, which is constantly monitoring lots of placement sites to find and download landing pages and other associated intel, and display all the landers to you in a sortable format, so that you can download selective landers and use them.

This is a service I would strongly recommend subscribing to. If you really can't afford it, at least get it for a month and download enough landers for the next few months. STM members get a special discount:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...or-STM-Members

There are different Adplexity products - for landers from pop traffic sources, make sure to subscribe to Adplexity Mobile.

I will go into detail on how to use Adplexity in subsequent lessons.

Note: Again, many of the landers downloaded from Adplexity will not work properly before you fix up the coding.

c)Use the STM Landing Page Depository. Here you can find landers that are ripped with the coding all fixed up and ready to go. Apologies for not having added new landers to the depository for a while, but landers typically don't change that much in weeks or even months, so if you're strapped for cash and time you can give those a test. You can find the depository here.


2)Build landing pages yourself either from scratch or using a generic template.

I would actually not recommend taking this route in the beginning - even if you're an expert coder - and for this reason:

New landers (either built from scratch or using a template) are unproven. You'll have little to no idea how well the new lander, which you've so painstakingly put together, will perform. And worse, since you'll likely be running new offers you've never run before, if your campaign doesn't do well, you won't know whether it's your offer or lander that isn't good enough.

It would save you much time and effort to test ripped landers first, find the best 1 or 2 or few, then make variations of these, and/or even make landers that are completely original, and split-test them against the best-performing ripped lander.

The most popular landers you see in use must be working for at least some people, or there wouldn't be so many people running them still. Chances are if you split-test 3-5 of the more-popular landers you find on a spy tool like Adplexity, the winning lander of the batch would perform at least reasonably well. Once you have this, you can split-test any other landers against it - including the aforementioned lander variations and original landers - to potentially find ones that convert even better.

Just the same, I'm including some forum threads you can read, to learn how to build landers yourself. But as far as this tutorial goes, we'll mostly be sticking to testing ripped landers.


3)Get an expert to do it.

Below are several options...

a)Partner up with a coder. You can partner up with someone who is good enough at coding, to either fix ripped landers or build new ones.

It would be better to gain some experience first yourself. When you have a few profitable campaigns under your belt, it would be a lot easier to find someone who'd be happy to partner up with you, as you'd have more to offer in terms of skills.

To meet your prospective partner, attend industry conferences (like Affiliate World Conferences), local STM meetups, or start a thread to recruit them.

It would really help to start participating actively in the forum so that people will know who you are, and that you know your stuff. If you could at least post a follow-along for example, it would help to show your experience a lot better than if you were to just start a thread to say "hi, I'm looking to partner up with an experience coder because I suck at making landing pages".

b)Hire a coder. You can hire someone to fix up ripped landers for USD $300-500/month full-time, and less than that part-time. For your reference, please find a job posting I've used on UpWork - at the end of this lesson. Feel free to modify it to suit your needs.

Also: silvertongue's guide on this topic is a must-read:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Pages-to-a-VA

To hire someone to build pages from scratch will require that they have more coding skills than if you only need them to fix ripped landers.

c)Use a landing page creation/modification service. If you want a lander custom-created for you, or for changes to be applied on an existing lander, here’s a service I've used that will do that for you:

http://www.bannerslanders.com (Disclaimer: AMC does not endorse any products/services, so please use at your own discretion.)

Not a cheap option for sure, but they know what they're doing, and they're fast (at least they were when I last used them a few years back).

Another service you can try is this one offered by member @eurosen. I haven't used this one personally but there are good reviews within this thread:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Service-(BETA)



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ACTION


For the action part of this lesson, I would like to ask you to spend some time to learn how to code, if you don't already know the basics.

If you already DO know the basics, feel free to skip this step for now.

Otherwise, I would STRONGLY recommend that you spend at least a couple of days to go through 1-2 beginner's coding courses. If you don't build this foundation, you'll be completely lost when you need to edit ripped landers to fix errors.

Even if you're planning on outsourcing this part of the workflow, it would still help to know SOME coding, just so you'd be in a better position to convey your requirements to your outsourcer.

You need to learn basic HTML, CSS, Javascript and Jquery. If this sounds like a lot, don't worry - you don't need to have an in-depth knowledge of any of these languages in order to fix up ripped landers.


As a BARE MINIMUM, you should go through the beginner's tutorials at Codecademy.com:

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-html

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-css

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/make-a-website

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/lea...ponsive-design

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/int...-to-javascript


Then, if you have the time, I would recommend doing the tutorials on W3Schools.com as well:

https://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

https://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

https://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp

https://www.w3schools.com/jquery/default.asp



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READING

You don't have to read these threads now, but I would like to give you a list of the best threads we have on how to build landers, that you can refer to as you need them.

These threads aren't just useful for building landers from scratch, or from a template. Some of these will also teach you how to modify an existing lander, by adding lander elements such as a timer, or getting the lander to call out the visitor's location and device, etc.

For now, it would be enough for you to just briefly browse through each thread, to get a preliminary understanding on what is possible.


https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Actually-Works

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...t-Ripping-Fast

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...e-Your-Answers

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ing-Parameters

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Make-Decisions

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Input-Or-Time

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...e-Your-Answers

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ts-for-landers

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...nder-Nightmare



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FURTHER INFORMATION


As promised, below is a job posting I've posted on UpWork in the past, when I was looking for someone to fix up ripped landers. Please feel free to modify this to fit your needs.

You can get someone to fix up ripped landers for USD$300-500/month full-time, and less than that part-time.

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That's it for now! Do spend at least 2 solid days to learn the fundamentals of coding. You won't regret it.





Amy

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The coding tutorials is no joke. I literally feel smoke coming out of my head.

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Hi Amy,

Currently going through the HTML course on Codecademy, and it's much easier to follow than I expected!

I have almost no experience with code, other than looking at walls of it and wondering how it makes sense to anyone!

But I seem to have a modest grasp of HTML now and I'm enjoying the course so far.

So I'm wondering if we need to learn the "Tables" section? As it doesn't seem like the type of thing we'd use on a lander.

Just hoping to save some time lol

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Once you get the main concept it´s at least pretty easy to read the code.

This alone helps alot to know a bit better what and where to look for specific things.

Just remember that it reads just normal from top to bottom and left to right.

I also can´t code a landing page myself from scratch although I am doing that stuff for many years already.

And that´s the good thing, you don´t even need to master it in perfection, when you only need to make changes it´s enough to have a solid basic undertanding about HTML/CSS/JS.

Tables are not really needed.

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Thanks for the reply twinaxe!

That's a big relief to hear. So I'll just learn the basics of each code type, HTML, CSS and Javascript, instead of going through the whole course on each.

I can always expand my knowledge of coding when needed in the future.

Just itching to get back into the marketing stuff as you can imagine lol

Thanks again!

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I´m a big friend of learning by doing.

I don´t see much sense in learning so much stuff that I will never use.

Instead I rather check what I need to know and then gather the info to learn exactly this

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Never realised coding was this intricate. Definitely better to learn it early though.

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I have a question I always wanted to ask :-D

Since I come from a Design background, I noticed that the most of the "am" landers are ugly, but I mean ugly like it's 1997.
Why is that?

Let me finish:
When a coder creates a plugin, let's say Member Press, which is a Membership Plugin for WordPress, it works great but it's a nightmare in terms of usability, beauty, etc.

When a coder builds a website, you can tell in 2 seconds, because he thinks that the web site is awesome but you, as a designer, you want just to cry and explain him all the mistakes he did from a aesthetical point of view which, in most cases, is linked to the usability of the page it self. A coder for example is often not able to see the difference between these two buttons (i know for sure, i worked with coders for many years).


A coders is able to make the better but they just don't see the difference. Trust me, at least, the ones who do, are very special persons, like unicorns.


When an architect makes a logo, it's just horrible. Architects thing that they are graphic designers but they are not.

Now talk Landing Pages. Since most of the marketers have no clue about the graphic design rules, white spaces, black spaces, logic of visual design and so on, it feels like they doing LP that were made in 1997.

I'm not saying that they does not convert, I'm just saying that they feel old, ugly and that they could be nicer and done better from a Graphic Design point of view.

Now the question: Are marketers aware of this? They know the Landers are ugly but they still use them because they work because they are also ugly like plain html in 1997 or they are just not aware that they are ugly and continue to use them because they are not able to build nice Landers?

So why most of the landers are just super ugly?
It's because someone tested the ugly ones Vs the nice ones and comes out that the ugly ones perform better or none actually tested nice landers so they don't know?

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Great question! There are 2 reasons I could think of:

1)Ugly usually requires less code, which means faster load time - and load time is of paramount importance (especially when you're running pop).

2)More importantly: Ugly = amateurish = looks less like an ad = people let down their guard = higher conversions.

Of course this is a very general statement, and it definitely is NOT always true.

But that's where testing comes in.

Please (as always) don't take this as gospel (true for anything you hear from anyone else). If you're itching to make a page beautiful, by all means try it and do a split-test!

Yours may win, or it may lose. And the reason may or may not be because yours is more beautiful.

You should be split-testing different things anyway, so why not include that - you won't know until you try.



Amy

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On native often the ugly ones convert better. There's so many good lp builders the only reason people run ugly ones now are that they convert better... but yeah I was shocked by the same thing when I started...

And it all just depends... there's so many factors at play... you just gotta split-test it.

In my experience ugly vs pretty are both okay but its 'red flags' and 'trust signals' that are key.

For instance a tracking link like loading-please-wait.com or sitename-connect.com seems to do much better than a random one like xy88hghy.com or xx7777hi.io or something like that.

Same thing if the cursor doesn't adapt on hyperlinks or image links. So if you have a really basic html page (I believe) the cursor won't change when it hovers above something clickable... I think that's a big red flag personally and I would bet my left arm it affects conversion rates (although its one thing I haven't tested).

That's one reason I like using Clickfunnels even though its a bit slow is that it makes pages that "feel" very normal.

With that said in a lot of verticals (and especially pops if I remember right) speed is the name of the game, so I would not use Clickfunnels for that I don't think (or at least I would split-test identical landers in basic HTML vs Clickfunnels ones).


PS Another cool hack is to use .org domains... might not matter on pops or push but I think on native it increases conversion rates (although again, I haven't properly split-tested it, and it would depend on the full site name and vertical obviously).

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I agree 100% on this one. We were talking about this few months ago, well, a year ago or more that these days advertisers should start to use more realistic "amateurish" kind of images in their ads because they feel less ads, so yess, this is a great reason I agree.

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Agree, I think the reason is the trust.

I'd like to bring on the table some of my ADV experience.

Normal VS Beauty

A lot depends also on the target and the price the user will pay.
This has a lot to do with feeling special.

A pop ad is generally something cheap right? So yes, the targeted person is not in need of feeling special, so yes, he will trust the "cheap" look of the LP.

On other side, if you sell Louis Vuitton you can't go cheap by any means. The users must feel special and buy something expensive. He is not buying the bag but the feeling special thing. So the LP must be special. Recently LV created an IG campaign which invites people to follow them on IG. It's a very nice made video, very luxury feeling and all of this just to have more followers. When you make that FOLLOW, you feel special...

So yes, I think another important part of this is: how much costs the product we are promoting and yet, sometimes I see LP who sells 2K course and they are still cheap (this is harder to understand by the way).

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Good point for sure. That's definitely one exception.

Another point that comes to mind is that "expensive" doesn't have to be complicated. Look at how simple the google search interface is. Or apple.com with their black text against white background.





So I guess I have a point 3) to add to the 2 points in my post above:

3)Simple means less distractions, which can lead to higher conversion rates.


Here's a site I often use as an example:

http://thirdwaymanletters.com/litsl01.php

Look at how simple and "ugly" it is. And yet the page converts - I know it does because I bought the ebook. Mainly of course it's the copywriting that makes it convert. But the simple design makes the words so much more powerful - because there's nothing else to look at BUT the words.

Time and time again, website split-testing has proven that simple designs work better than complicated/clever ones. It may be hard for you, as a designer, to sit on your hands to keep from making things beautiful. But it may be the better approach.

Thanks so much for the interesting discussion!



Amy

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