One of the most important things in Affiliate Marketing is landing pages. Typically, if a campaign is not profitable, that's one of the first things I'm going to try to improve on.

Let's talk about direct linking first.

Linking direct means a user clicks on an ad, and it is sent directly to the offer.

1. Direct Linking

Have you ever heard of the offer Candy Crush?

If you happen to be browsing your newsfeed or somewhere online and all the sudden, appears an app install appears in your phone, that’s the advertisers actual offer page.

Direct Linking is just that; directly linking to the advertisers/offer page. Once a person installs the Candy Crush app on their phone, you get paid a commission.

   2. The Easy Setup

Open up your affiliate network dashboard and grab your affiliate link #1 and #2

What's a landing page?

A Landing page is a page on a website or server.

The purpose of a landing page is to get a potential customer to take action and talk about the offer.

The pre-sale page goes in between the traffic source and the offer page.

Let me show you how:

• The first thing you do is design an ad and put it on a traffic source designed to get attention and clicks
• Then they go to the landing page that you have designed and read about the offer. You will want to pre-sell the visitors here.
• Then the user clicks the button on the landing page - the call to action, then they are taken to the offer page where hopefully they convert.

If the visitor takes the appropriate action, then we have a conversion. We get paid when they install an app, purchase a product, download a book, submit a lead, etc.

A Landing page is a mini-site designed by you for the sole purpose of persuading people to take action.

On the Landing page will be a button, a "call to action" that will lead you to the offer page.

In the image above, it's the big red button in the center image.

The button will have a link connected to it via the affiliate link to take them to the offer.

In the case above, if they download the app or take action, that's how you get paid.

Why should you choose a Landing page?

The main reason you should use a landing page is because they work!

Below are some typical newbie questions:

If someone clicks an ad they're interested in, why put a Landing page in between that and the offer?

Do you have to host a Landing page?

What makes up a good Landing page?

All are good questions and solved easily with today's fantastic Landing page builders. We recommend ClickFunnels and the GrooveFunnels.

We like GrooveFunnels because they offer a lifetime upfront one-time payment, and the software is rock solid.

He explained

1. I spend a third of my life on a mattress
2. The benefits of that mattress cooling technology (Vegas is mighty hot in the summer)
3. Different ways to finance that mattress
4.  A promise to set it up the next night, so I can sleep on it right away

This guy looks like he knows his stuff.

Considering my back was bothering me and the main reason I was shopping for a mattress was the pain in my back, this guy really sold me “Hook Line & Sinker”

Well you guessed it, the chances are much higher that you are going to walk out of that store as a new mattress owner when a salesman is involved.

The goal here is to turn that curiosity into a sale.

That landing page is going to be your salesman on the internet.

For the most part when people click on an ad they aren't sold they are curious.

Of course, you know that there's good and bad salesmen.

The same goes for landing pages.

We have had a simple change of a landing page take a negative campaign and make it into a $5k a day campaign!

So when do you direct link instead of using a landing page

As a team we probably use landing pages 95% of the time.

There are a couple of occasions when I do direct link.

1. Sometimes when we are testing an offer
2. If the request is super simple and potentially no way to track it on the back door

It would be best if you considered using Landing pages for all your campaigns.

What does a landing page need?

You should have a systematic checklist in place for Landing pages.

You don't want to miss anything. There are a lot of features.

Here is a guide for you:
​
​Landing Page CheckList

Don't overthink this. You're going to want to keep this simple. You're never going to have the perfect landing page right from the start.

Overtime as you are getting more experienced in running traffic, you will slowly build great landing pages

Below is a traditional formula for Landing pages:

1. Headline - To catch people's attention.
2. Image - people are visual.
3. Body text - this is the benefits part of the landing page where you convince them they need your product
4. Call to action button - make sure people know exactly what you want them to do
5. Social proof - this is where you typically put comments, reviews, testimonials, etc
   When it comes to social proof you can also consider trust seals, badges, etc

How to create landing pages

Now you know what a landing page is and what it's used for so how do you create one?

Landing pages are simply a one-page website.

As stated above, there are landing page tools out there like Clickfunnels and GrooveFunnels which make our lives much more manageable.

Speed is super important when it comes to affiliate marketing. Check your page speed on pingdom.com or use the google site speed test.

I don't typically recommend WordPress either because it's too slow.

The last thing you want to see is someone click on a link and then it takes 6 seconds to load.

They will for sure hit the back button and you won't get the conversion.

Several tools add a lot of extra code and slow down the web pages, which causes five-plus second load times.

Here are some options for building pages:

#1 You can design it yourself.

1. Get out the old pen and paper and draw it out
2. Have a designer draw out .psd file
3. Hire a programmer to turn that page into a website (.psd and HTML service)

#2 You can also take existing affiliate landing pages and modify them.

#3 BEST WAY, grab GrooveFunnels or ClickFunnels, and build awesome pages in minutes! 

There are many affiliate pages out there that can be used in multiple verticals.

Be careful when you swipe affiliate pages because some pages can have code that can potentially steal Traffic from you.

Potentially they could be coded incorrectly and have code in them that slows them down, and it's just not necessary.

Testing Landing Pages

One of the biggest keys to success will be your landing pages.

Then the key to becoming more profitable will be to split testing your Landing pages continuously.

Your winning Landing page will be the control, and you are always going to want to try to beat that by changing elements at a time.

A perfect example is when you split test headlines.

Then go ahead and test the image, and so on.

Homework

1. Now that you have an offer, it's time to create a landing page for it.
2. This is where you can learn to code, hire a freelancer to do it, or get a Landing page builder.
3.  Make sure you have all the components of the landing page.