Are you using landing pages or not?

[terryd]

With the recent shake up with Adwords are you still using landing pages or are you linking directly to the vendors products (assuming clickbank products) ?

Cheers,
Terry

[Lev]

Terry, the changes with Google has to do more with your ads than landing pages. If your ads coincide with the content in your landing pages, you should be fine. Unless, you have a big review site or a resource site with a lot of content, I think it is better to send the traffic directly to the vendor's site.

[thecashcow]

I agree with Lev, from a customer's point of view would you want to read an entire long landing page only to be then asked to click and read similar content over at the real sales page?

[KevinJB]

I think everbody has already said it. Especially thecashcow. Worry more about making your ad stick out and the money will come. :)

[Afromaiko]

Ho, I've just started with this, and I am using a landing page. I thought that with recent Google changes we had to do this?

Can anyone please give me the definitive word on whether we can still direct Adwords ads straight to the vendors site using our affiliate URLs? I thought that there was some Google thing in place that would stop us doing that. That only one TLD could be shown in an Adwords block at anytime.

If I was to use my own domain (without landing page) and just frame the vendor's site, is this ok by Adwords? Do they see it as a different site, or will I still run into the duplicate domain problem? Also how do Clickbank feel about this? Is it against the TOS? What are vendors thoughts?

Sorry, I'm a bit confused and keep reading different things about this and just want to know where to focus my efforts. After getting my feet wet with this current PPC campaign, I'd really like to try a few more out to see what converts, but I don't really want to spend ages making custom landing pages for each vendor while I'm just trying things out in case that product is a dud.

cheers
Afromaiko

[kasodo]

Hope this helps:

How this will affect you:

If you're an affiliate, this means that you no longer need to identify yourself as an affiliate in your ad text. However, your current ad text will continue to display your affiliate status until you change it.

Affiliates or advertisers using unique URLs in their ads will not be affected by this change. Please note that your Display URL must match the URL of your landing page, and you may not simply frame another site.

Taken from https://adwords.google.com/select/news/sa_jan05.html

A little advice I can give you is to not bother with a landing page, it's a bunch of BS and not a requirement to get low cpcs. Try using your own domain and get creative.

[ClayTrainor]

okay... what is a landing page? i thought a landing page was just ur main page that u go to when you click a link in a search engine or whatever... basically ur index.html... am i wrong.... if im' right than i dont understand your question at all... u ask if we're using landing pages? what else could we possibly be using?

[Afromaiko]

Thanks Kasodo.

I only have one campaign running at the moment and I've now changed it to go straight to the vendor instead since they have their own landing page.

However out of about 100 clicks from Adwords, I got 75% click through my own landing page to the product and one purchase. But if it it's not a requirement of Google I will give it a shot without, because 100% of visitors going through is even better! Click through multiple pages must really increase the chances of all but the most determined visitor leaving.

I am using my own domain, and will link to that with a redirect to the vendor. I thought about using frames, but not sure if it such a good idea due to the mixed messages I hear about that way. It will be interesting to see if the lack of intermediary landing page brings better results.

cheers

[ClayTrainor]

So Confused!

[Afromaiko]

Ok, well that experiment didn't last long!

Now all my ads have been dissaproved due to inaccurate Display URL.

I think I will start a new thread about this to try to sort it out.

Claytrainor, I'm taking landing pages to mean what you said - a page on your site where the searcher/visitor will first arrive to. The other option is to just send them straight to the merchants site, or to redirect them from your site to the merchants site. But I seem to be having trouble with that.

Cheers

[ClayTrainor]

Ok, well that experiment didn't last long!

Claytrainor, I'm taking landing pages to mean what you said - a page on your site where the searcher/visitor will first arrive to. The other option is to just send them straight to the merchants site, or to redirect them from your site to the merchants site. But I seem to be having trouble with that.

Cheers


cheers man... that clarify's it... it's little misunderstandings like this that are keeping me from making money... 1 down a few to go.

thanks alot man.

[Trudat]

Not.
I agree with the others here. The less my customer has to click and search to buy the product, the better. People are willing to pay more for ease of use, and so they're more likely to buy a product if its easier to get to it.

[Afromaiko]

Ok, to those that are not using landing pages, I'm assuming you are using the merchants domain in your display URL and your hoplink in the Destination URL. Given that Google supposedly doesn't allow multiple affiliates Adwords ads to be shown at the sametime, how is this affecting your impressions if there are other affiliates or even the merchant promoting the same product/URL ?

[neweconomy]

I'm going to have to disagree with the rest of the group here.

Landing pages are absolutely critical in my opinion.

When I first started internet marketing, I ran clickbank hoplinks directly from AdWords and made a little bit of money. But it's not a long-term winning solution.

Think about all the disadvantages to just running straight ads:

1. If the webmaster advertises (and many do with a unassociated Cbank ID) you are going to have a REAL hard time competing since they get 100% and you don't.

2. Affiliates are constantly entering the market. Less-than-ethical websites claim insane conversion rates (people-search.com claims an overall 5% conversion, this is NOT true). They pay out on average $20 a sale, so I can afford $1 per click on investigation names. If you are an affiliate, you can't compete and you lose your traffic.

3. Websites AREN'T optimized. Now, I won't name names (PlatinumPartner) but some companies launch 500 sites a month and don't test or optimize. I'm not saying having lots of sites means they are bad. Procash is very respectable because they test internally before launching to all affiliates. But when YOU host the landing page, you can build sites that actually convert better. In one market, I could never break into profitability as an affiliate. I was doing EVERYTHING right, but I couldn't make it work.

But then I launched a review site, built content and I immediately started making more sales.

In sum: For those who say that it's best to send the traffic straight to the merchant, beware. A webmaster who sees he can make a killing on paid search, a new affiliate in the space, or a Google policy chance and spell disaster for your profits. With a landing page, you are protected, you are in control, and you can make your efforts more profitable.

NOTE: As for content and min-bid issues: many webmasters provide affiliates with downloadable copies of landing pages and review sites. This can be a good place to get started. Also, check out ezinearticles.com - you can copy and paste these articles onto your website, then link to them at the bottom of the page. This will help counter-act the new adwords policies.

[toniya]

With the recent shake up with Adwords are you still using landing pages or are you linking directly to the vendors products (assuming clickbank products) ?Landing page is must now with the recent shake up in web promotions. But the hop link should not be your home page. I mean you bring your customer to home page and then move him to another page on your web site and then redirect him to vendor's site. This is must as Google and Yahoo are rejecting the listings which have links on landing pages - I mean if you have links for the prodcts on the same page where customer is coming from Google or Yahoo, search engines will reject that page while revieving the content and site.

I hope I am clear!!!

[matchoo77]

PPC Masters feel free to correct me here....but...

If you are trying to use direct linking to promote a fairly successful cb product, chances are most good keywords are already being used in another affiliate's DL campaign....(only 1 ad for 1 url per keyword)

Also...by using a landing page you can add value to the product by offering a unique bonus of your own.

Lastly....Aren't we supposed to be pre-selling our traffic? Can't do that without a landing page.

My 2 cents.

Matt