Most people start out by thinking that being an affiliate marketer is a piece of cake: sitting in front of your computer for a while, checking your stats and… well, that would pretty much be it according to most folks.

In a way, they’re actually right. There are a handful of marketers out there who have decided that they no longer want to hustle, that they want to take it easy and limit themselves to simply keeping their current projects alive. Sure, that involves work as well but still, we could say that these people are “living the live”.

But Can You Do That?

Probably, but definitely not right from the beginning! The problem is that the affiliate marketers who have decided to take it easy are a minority and that getting there was anything but a walk in the park.

Most (probably all) of the people who are now “living the life” have started out as workaholics, there’s just no other way. Learning the ropes, banging your head against the wall, making mistakes: it’s all a part of the game! Some people quit, others keep on hustling. The world can sometimes be a painfully simple place, there are winners and there are losers.

Adapt or Give Up

Unfortunately, nobody really cares if you think that life’s hard. The world is what it is, the Web is what it is. There are lots of life-changing opportunities out there and it’s ultimately your responsibility to make things happen. Ask any successful (online or offline) business owner out there, you simply have to suck it up and hustle when you’re starting out.

After one of your businesses (maybe a site, maybe a campaign, maybe several campaigns) is pretty much on autopilot, then maybe (just maybe) you can afford to take it easy for a while and reap the rewards of your hard work. After the (short) celebration though, it’s back to hustling if you want to stay on top.

If making lots of money online were as easy as most people think it is, everyone would be doing it. Why work 9 to 5 if you can make 10x more money just like that? Here’s the thing: yes, there are countless “harder” careers out there but this doesn’t mean that anyone and his dog can make it as an affiliate marketer. In fact, most people fail miserably because they’re not willing to keep at it when things get tough. Adapt or give up, what will it be?

What’s End Game?

The most important question to answer when creating a landing page is the goal of the page. What are you trying to get the user to do or know so that they will convert the offer? It could be entering an email address, signing up for a newsletter, or convincing the visitor to buy a product – whatever it is you need to keep the end goal in mind throughout the process of creating your landing page.

Think about the user Path user takes
Go through the steps the user must take from seeing the ad up to the point where the conversion takes place. You want to maintain a similar message and appearance throughout the process so that the user thinks they are following one specific path to get where they want to go.

If your initial ad shows in the Google search engine, make sure that the initial message is the same as the message on your landing page. If the initial ad involves a banner of some sort, make it match in color to your landing page. Go through the user path and try to imagine what a user would be thinking at each stage of the process.

Demographic of user

The beauty of internet advertising is the ability to target ads to specific consumers. Every landing page you create should be targeted towards a very specific consumer type – creating broad landing pages rarely work. Try to tailor your landing page to the interests/desires of the type of person who would be viewing your landing page.

Placement -­ What the user is looking for
Research shows that most people look at the top‐left hand side of your page, then move on to the center of the current page, above the fold (before you scroll down). These are the areas you want to focus your efforts on convincing the user to convert. Use the other space to make your landing page match the advertiser’s page as best as possible. Match color schemes, fonts, borders and even layouts, if possible, to the advertiser’s site.

Keep it simple
Landing pages should not be packed with information as this will confuse your visitor. Instead, go for a simple, professional look. Include multiple ways for the user to convert, and focus them on the center and top-left. Otherwise, make the site easy to read and format clearly.

People love convenience. You have one central message – the one that will get the user to convert. Only focus on conveying that message, any other information is extraneous and will only decrease the chances of gaining a conversion. Depending on the type of offer, a greater deal of information may be necessary to convey this message, but you want to simplify and clarify as much as possible. Bulleted text and visuals are always useful in accomplishing this task.

Testing your Landing Pages

Nobody knows every target audience perfectly. You will need to test and retest your landing pages to determine which design works best for your offer. One way to test is to create multiple landing pages with different sub ID links. Using the different sub IDs, you will be able to determine which landing page is converting the best. Using this method, you can throw away your low conversion landing pages, and keep your top pages. After you find your best designs, you can tweak the design by making small changes and creating a new sub ID. This is called split testing, as you are continuously making small modifications to determine which version of the landing page works best.

Checklist
Here’s a few things to evaluate after you have designed your landing page:
• Do you have a specific, clear message?
• Is your message aimed at the ultimate goal?
• Have you simplified the page and taken out distractions?
• Are there multiple conversion exits?

Most people make the huge mistake of becoming lazy once they find an approach that generates a lot of money. They invest a lot of time initially and once that phase is a thing of the past and they make lots of money by only working for 2-3 hours/day, they let the other 21-22 hours go to waste.

Yes, you deserve to be rewarded for being smart enough to find such a method. No, you don’t have to turn into a zombie who works 24/7. But on the other hand, everything has a limit. Enjoy the victory but then get back on that saddle and start diversifying: stop wasting time, make things happen!

Numerous studies have shown that NO, Google infact has the lowest conversion rate out of the Big 3. This is large inpart that Google has the youngest audience. As we all know, the younger audience are less likely to have the money (or even a credit card) to buy things online.

So what search engine converts the best then? The answer is MSN/Bing hands down. The ROI I’ve traditionally received from MSN is actually surreal. The traffic isnt even 1/3rd of the traffic that exists with Google, but the audience is substantially older. My assumption is that this is large in part because most of the older generation are less tech savvy than the Google crowd. Because of this, they are more likely to use Internet Explorer as their main browser, and the default home page for IE happens to be MSN.com.

To further backup my argument, one of the best case studies I found out there was a series of posts wrote by a WickedFire member:

Case 1:

http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/44358-case-study-quality-between-adwords-yahoo-adcenter.html

Case 2:

http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/45411-case-study-2-quality-between-adwords-yahoo-adcenter.html

The smaller traffic makes it harder to get burned and newbies have their best chance at converting with MSN. Once you have developed a solid campaign and provided it could succeed on MSN, then you can scale up with Google.

-RB