Review my first affiliate attempt aswell...

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johnmatrix

johnmatrix

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Jan 4, 2008
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Yeah im new blah blah.. I've decided to get my feet wet with affiliate marketing now that i've graduated uni and dont have a job. I have all the time in the world to do this now... I made quite lucrative amounts through adsense and still do.. but I seem to have plateued.

My AM recommended trying the vistacards free business cards offer on azoogle.. so I've fired together a simplish landing page at VistaPrint Free Business Cards

I set up a campaign in adwords, targeting about 150 keywords i got from keyword elite and the google keyword suggestion tool. I wrote up 4 ads.. results from that are a 0.13% CTR on the ads, 4 clicks from 2,878 impressions. I am also bidding $1 a click.

I also set up a YSM campaign, targeting mostly the same keywords and got 20 clicks from 1,251 impressions hence a 1.60 % CTR.

Hell ill even show you one of the 4 ads im using...

Free Business Card Printing
42 designs to choose from
Only pay the postage.

MOST of the clicks from YSM have clicked through to the offer page from my landing page, something like 17 out of 20. Of the 4 clicks from adwords, 3 have continued on to the offer page. I have zero conversions.... So I guess this can mean 2 things, my landing page is not convincing enough to buy, but convincing enough to click through.. or the offer sucks (which goes against what my AM said).

What am I doing wrong? I've experimented with the keywords quite a bit.. using negatives, search network only, content network, tried to take an 'outside the box' approach by targeting keywords such as 'promoting my business' and crap like that. No cigar... My AM said its one of the top performing offers, so I want to get this to work! He also said he loved my landing page and the testimonials... hopefullly hes not just a very agreeable guy.

Cheers
 


Hi there,

I'm still relatively new to this but I thought my input might be helpful in even a small way.

From my experience, affiliate managers are more inclined to give you a high converting offer that is saturated by other marketers already and not necessarily a good route for a new marketer with a low budget.

Your header is hard to see, and doesnt instill confidence in the product you are offering, try making it abit simpler and adding a logo in along side.

Increase the size of your main selling point
"Get 250 Custom Business Cards for FREE"

Lose the 'pay for postage only'.

Your call to action still image has a linked border around it, you can lose that by simply adding this to your CSS:

Code: 
img {             
border: 0px none;             
}
Change the call to action text to "Get Cards Now" or something similar - 'design' makes it sound like too much work, especially for someone with the creativity of a pea.

Testimonials are all and well, but they are below the fold, reduce their size, and float them on the left or right side.

Move your call to action button to below your header, CTR will improve drastically.

EDIT: If this fails to increase conversions, choose an offer with low competition and MAKE it work.
 
Thanks for the tips mate, I'll have a new version up tomorrow.

Meanwhile I signed up the free trial of wordze.com and generated a 1000 keyword list, chucked them in adwords after some tweaking and bidding $1, and about 2 of them are actually showing my ad. The rest say im not bidding enough...

Its bloody ridiculous, a keyword like 'die cut cards photo champagne business cards' has 2 pages of ads.. Does this mean 20 people are running campaigns with keywords taken from wordze?
 
yea your landing page needs work man. The banner thing at the very top is ugly. Just saving it in a better image format will make it look better. Same thing for the main creative. The button that says "design now" or whatever is below the screen for a low resolution monitor. 1024x800 or so...

You need to learn how to use different font sizes to emphasize different things. You're using one font size the entire time basically(size 14px?). Learn to use padding/spacing in your text.

Your testimonial section sucks ass too. Looks like you tried to copy the other dudes idea from his LP. Well... you could, but yours looks ugly. You need more spacing/padding.

also, listening to your AM isn't the best thing when it comes to designing LP's. look at the lp's that exist for the network. Even the shittiest ones will turn heads with them.
 
LP building process

re: adwords - if an ad doesn't generate clicks inside of 200 impressions, i kill it. That's a bit aggressive, perhaps, but 'hope' isn't an effective marketing technique. Even if you are more lenient with your testing... the writing is definitely on the wall inside of 500 impressions.

Scrap your ads and words and start over. Perhaps a shorter, more focused list of words made up of terms IN the ads and ON the landing pages would work.

re: landing page - i'm not sure where to comment other than to suggest that you start over. Start again by (1) considering your buyer. Who are they and what state of mind are they in when they're buying? (you're not after corporations looking to print thousands of cards as much as you are after quick impulse buys - i think at least) (2) based on 1 above, think about your call to action. What do you want the viewer to DO? (click on a button and go to another landing page / form entirely). Consider (a) how best to get them to do what you want them to and (b) what info would you like them to have in their head when they do it. (3) Content. Now that you know what you want the viewer to do and what you want them to be thinking when they do it... NOW it's finally time to start designing the layout of the page and the copy you'll use.

Good luck!
 
That's because Affiliate Managers generally don't know anything or they would be publishers themselves. Affiliate Managers in Affiilate Marketing are analagous to Brokers on Wall Street
 
I agree with what the others have said here, but I will say that it's pretty good for a total n00b. I've seen WAY worse landing pages from people who have been "trying" for a while. :)

That being said, here's my two cents:
- You might wanna test a different color on your CTA (Call to Action) button. Red is good, but green or blue can do well too. Split test and find out.
- Your background image doesn't intersect well when it tiles. Try making it flow without the sharp line in the middle.
 
Go Vegas - I couldn't have said it better myself....

vegasmike949 said:
That's because Affiliate Managers generally don't know anything or they would be publishers themselves. Affiliate Managers in Affiilate Marketing are analagous to Brokers on Wall Street
Click to expand...


I have to agree.... I think if I owned an ad network personally I would would only hire publishers!!! I was just at Ad-tech not to long ago in cold azz NYC...

It was great to see all my AM's that I talk to all the time, but I felt I was running circles around them.. That was not my intention by any means, I just wanted to share & discuss some ideas/methods with my good friends... They just keep nodding & smiling.... I was apparently wasting my breath, you just assume when you go to an event like that, that you will be around people that are knowledgeable about how things work.... :yin-yang:
 
basically, your landing page sucks.

now, i really would love to give an explantion why it sucks and what it is, that you need to do to make a better one, but that is simply out of range for me as i am not a designer myself and hence know too little about those little secrets regarding "why we find some landing pages more attractive than others".

somehow, the whole design is flawed. there is no harmony, no real feeling that would make me want to spent any time longer than 5 seconds on your page.

i wanted to get convinced to get some really great business cards. you offered me, well, i don't know what, but basically something for free which turns out not to be for free at all as i would have to pay for shipment. so, i feel scammed.

you are spending the first seconds of my attention span (which is pretty low as we are on the internet and your site is just seconds away from being closed if you don't bring up some interesting subject for me) by telling me, that i get 250 business cards for free, for which i only would have to pay postage. and bye bye. seen that, done that, not interested.

i thought, ypu wanted to sell me something really cool? no one believes in free lunch, so i basically expected having to pay something once i want some somewhat fancier cards than the average joe, but you even don't try to upsell some to me?

free cards for paid postage, that's it? nah, gone.


well, i surely exxagerated an average users experience here, but basically, that is what i feel about this page. unoriginal, boring and a "nervous" design. no attempt at all to lure me into it, no real "promise" as what i could get if only i really would try your service.

please take this as constructive criticism.
 
I'm new 2, heres what i think. I entered the landing page and all i see are words. People usually dont buy into that. U need a landing page with attractive pictures and great headings to your audience into buying mode (converting mode). So u might wanna put up bigger words with more inspiring headings to get them moving. I clicked into start designing, and i dont really see anything. It brings my to another page....with a bunch of products. And..........| Yah thats your problem, and what? even if your landing page was attractive, your audience moves on and then what they do? i see that little box on the left side, but is 2 tiny bro. I think ur either using the wrong html, or theres something wrong with that offer. Cuz usually when u make a landing page, it leads them straight to the registarion.

Hope that helped. Welcome to Wicked Fire! ^^
 
Thanks people, these are eye opening replies. I've paused my adwords campaign (which got no clicks overnight out of 250 impressions by the way), and ill get to work on a new lp taking all the advice into account.

Is it advisable to include the 'only pay the postage' phrase in the ads? i figured it would be a huge turn off for me to convince them its free and then they get hit with a credit card form once they have designed their cards.

But yeah regarding the actual affiliate link.. it doesn't go straight to the designing form, thats just the link i got from azoogle, might ask my AM about it to see if it can link straight to the free card design form instead of the 2 choices. Im in australia so my AM doesn't come online til about 3am for me which SUCKS.

thanks again
 
Just getting into this stuff too, so i'm no pro...

Your CTA is below the fold on my screen. My res is1024x768 15in monitor. it should be above the fold...

But it seems your real problem is your Adwords CTR...

What is your average pos.?

Have you tried Dynamic keyword insertion?

Have you tried different visual shapes with your adwords ads?
EG:

------
-------------
-------------------
so:

Free Cards
Free business cards
42 pro designs. Just pay S&H
www.businesscardway.com/FreeCards

i find the slant dras attention and gets more clicks

or
--------------
-------------------
-------------

Also, i would opt out of content network if you are just starting. Since your an adsense master you know that tons of people click on adsense ads b/c they are well blended into pages. Do you want your content ads appearing on some other guys adsense site? I have to think that those clicks rarely convert...

I would try to master search and then try content if you still want to try it. But if you do use content make sure you have a different campaign for search and content

Also, are all 150 of your keywords using the same 4 ad groups? try making your ad groups very specific to your keywords...


hope that helps some....
 
Im in australia so my AM doesn't come online til about 3am for me which SUCKS.
Click to expand...
Lol. dont rely on your AM. If their pro at this, they could be doing it themselves. I called my AM today asking him what i can do with my website, and that son of a bitch told me to throw some banners on my site hoping that it converts. So i called him again and started bitching at him cuz i had nobody converting for the past 4 weeks.

But yeah regarding the actual affiliate link.. it doesn't go straight to the designing form
Click to expand...
I ono bro that really suck, cuz im with neverblueads and they provide me with links that goes directly to the registeration section.
 
I have to echo the comments above: Don't rely on your AM.

If you're a new affiliate and you haven't been doing huge volume with other networks, they're not going to give you their superstar AM right off the bat. And remember that the AM gets their commission regardless of whether or not you make a profit. If your AM was staying up nights thinking of ways to make offers convert for publishers, he/she would either quit and do it themselves or give the tip to one of their publishers who does more volume than you.

The top publishers are not sharing their secrets with their AMs, and the AMs are not sharing their publishers' secrets with other AMs. You are on your own.
 
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