An affiliate landing page that isn’t making money is a common problem. When it comes to the progress of your affiliate program, you want to inspire your affiliates. One of the easiest ways to do that is through a quality affiliate landing page that converts.
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A truly successful affiliate landing page will extend your reach, generate leads, and increase your conversion rate.
Moreover, landing pages bridge the gap between the site user and the transaction, establishing an emotional bond – and creating a feeling of desire.
But what exactly does this effect create?
And what works 100% when it comes to making sales?
In this blog post, we discuss some tips on how to build affiliate landing pages that convert and why your affiliate landing page isn’t making money the way you have planned.
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Landing page’s main goal
Affiliate landing pages exist to encourage action; your aim is to get your site visitors to press, enter their addresses, buy, or otherwise behave in some way. It’s important to note this when designing your landing pages because it’s going to help you make the right decisions.
For example, it may be tempting to make design decisions based solely on aesthetics or on your personal taste. While this can be satisfying from a creative perspective, your goal with affiliate landing pages is to make more money, so you want to think chiefly about conversions. This doesn’t mean that you cannot introduce your own style and touch to your landing page’s design, but just remember your primary goal, which is making money.
Don’t miss the benefits of a landing page
Let’s be honest: affiliate links can increase skepticism in the minds of increasingly tech-savvy consumers.
Merely hovering over an affiliate link makes it easy to see where it’s going, and long random character URLs can be incredibly off-putting to some people.
Affiliate landing pages bypass this problem entirely, with URLs that are as short and as nice as you want them to be, making the whole process appear a little more straightforward and “safe” to the consumer.
With all the scams, data breaches, and cyber threats that occur today, potential consumers are growingly suspicious of something odd, so why not use more transparent and legitimate methods? Customers really enjoy it.
It’s a lot easier to directly promote your affiliate link, but a landing page allows you to do so much more with your traffic. Don’t be lazy, make one!
The structure of an affiliate landing page
By definition, a landing page is basically a one-page website – a stand-alone web page or a post that clients land on when they go to a specific URL, click a connection, etc. In general, landing pages are also part of an advertising strategy or marketing initiative designed to draw more site visits, leads, and sales – and serve as a sales promoter, educating and persuading the consumer in a targeted manner.
When it comes to affiliates, landing pages have a customized experience for affiliate customers who (usually arrive on the page by heading to the affiliate’s custom URL (via a link or reference).
Affiliate landing pages not only make it simpler and more enjoyable for the consumer to engage with your brand; they also improve customer confidence by ensuring that the affiliate clearly endorses all transactions made.
Let’s take a look at the elements that make up the affiliate’s landing page’s anatomy.
The actual website
Creating a landing page can be accomplished in a variety of ways. If you do your own code, design, and content management, you can prefer to build your own landing pages. Plugins such as website builder allow you to allocate any post or page to a particular affiliate. If you’re just starting and you don’t know any HTML or CSS, tools like Instapage or Thrive will help you create landing pages without a technical background.
Design
In terms of the overall design, clean and contemporary design wins every time. Nobody wants to go to a page that looks like it’s out of the ’90s.
The use of white space is also a big trend. When visitors arrive at your landing page, it should be easy for them to concentrate on the most relevant details. Too much-cluttered content, walls of text, or disorganized aesthetics will make people leave the page.
Remember, you want to get your customers to look at what you want them to see.
Holding the most relevant information “above the fold” makes consumers grasp the offer as quickly as possible, and a minimal approach to page design helps eliminate distractions.
Headlines and photos
The headline is your perfect chance to get the reader’s attention. This is where you need to encourage potential customers to want to read your landing page body – and eventually buy your product or service.
Don’t be afraid to think of your headline’s different choices; you can narrow it down to the best ones later. It might take some time to come up with something that sounds notably interesting.
Your headline could compare your product to your competitor’s or the customer’s testimonial. You may want to highlight an excellent feature or explain the main lifestyle benefits that your product offers. You may want to customize your headlines for unique parts of your affiliate base or create themed headlines for various holidays, special events, etc.
If it’s a photograph, a banner, or some other graphic, the visual imagery should be front and center. In reality, your picture may be the most important thing on your landing page, with the ability to communicate it all at once. The imagery could be useful. If your product is visually focused, take advantage of it!
The written copy
When you write your body text or a copy of your landing page, your aim is to get the visitor to keep reading. A copy will make or break the experience; it must be concise and convincing. It has to communicate the critical points of the deal and the real-life advantages of the product. Most of all, the first sentence must make the reader want to proceed.
Consider having the storytelling in your copy. Everyone loves a good story, mainly if it’s a success story or a story about overcoming relatable obstacles. Asking questions from the outset and introducing an element of suspense can be incredibly successful, stirring interest in the reader and generating a desire for a conclusion (often referred to as an “open-loop”).
Another thing to remember when writing a copy is that you want the value proposition to be straightforward and forward-looking. Customers need to know why they should buy from you; there’s a lot of competition out there.
Focus on communicating the advantages (real-world results) that consumers can achieve from using the product or service, or highlight the excellent features that give your products a competitive advantage over rivals. The bottom line is that you want to eliminate all questions about whether your product solves the customer’s dilemma.
A call for action (CTA)
Depending on the duration of your affiliate landing page, your call to action can appear several times, from the top of your page to the body copy itself to the end of the page. This helps users to make buying decisions at various stages, allowing them quick access no matter where they are on the page.
In addition, as mobile devices account for a significant portion of eCommerce purchases, a call-to-action that is “above the fold” ensures that potential customers can see it as soon as they land on the page. Even on pages with endless scrolling, this trick always directs their attention right away.
However, modern best practices suggest that having a single click location is more efficient – and this is particularly true for short landing pages that do not require scrolling at all.
Irrespective of that, the color of your CTA button should be something that corresponds with your page colors – a color that stands out and is incredibly easy to distinguish from the rest of the page. You’re also going to want to settle on a copy for your CTA button.
Consider the following popular choices:
- Buy or purchase now
- Download now
- Sign up today
- Add to cart
- Order now
Tip 1: Why your affiliate landing page isn’t making money?
So, the first idea of why your affiliate landing page isn’t making money could be that your landing page’s actual anatomy. Go over your landing page with a critical eye and see if it meets all the criteria we have discussed above. Is it easy to navigate? Is the call to action button appealing? Is your copy enticing enough to make the reader actually read it all? Are your design and overall look and feel of the website match user’s expectations? Your page may be the one to blame for the low earnings.
Analyze your page and ask yourself this question: would YOU buy or convert on the offer presented on this landing page?
Customer trust
Customer trust is worth noting because it is essentially what makes a sale.
It’s what’s behind the consumer’s buying decision, and you just can’t do without it. So how do you earn and influence customer’s trust?
The answer is – many factors.
This includes:
- industry authority,
- company credibility,
- site SSL protection,
- social proof,
- actual ads,
- and successful marketing.
Customers want to buy from people they know and, ideally – trust.
This is, of course, partly accomplished by affiliate landing pages in general because the affiliate has already built confidence and familiarity with its customers. But you can be extra reassured by increasing your exposure to the consumer and sharing your own business experience.
It is also important to include payment gateway logos and trust badges/seals or awards because they serve as visual trust signals. Customers want a safe browsing and shopping experience – and you want their confidence to make sure they get it.
Tip 2: Why your affiliate landing page isn’t making money?
The answer is – simply because they don’t have trust in your page or your company in general. If your website lacks an SSL certificate or doesn’t have a clear payment policy, people may be hesitant to buy from you. Of course, lack of trust can be overall because you are operating in an industry with a bad name or history of fraudulent transactions. Either way, you can improve the situation by displaying various “trust badges”, logos of payment gateways, and certificates.
Look for ways to improve your potential leads and customers’ communication, so they will buy more from you in particular.
Split Test
For any landing page, split testing (or commonly known as A/B testing) is essential. How do you know what is working and what isn’t if you don’t have any data to compare?
Creating landing pages that convert is more than just guesswork – you need to do some research. But you don’t really need to go to extremes. Sometimes, only making minor adjustments to details like your headline, photos, text, and call-to-action will yield significant results.
For example, if you’re having a hard time picking your CTA button’s color, try two different colors on two other landing pages to see which one is performing better. It might take time to optimize your landing pages to the point that they are as powerful as you want them to be.
Just be patient.
There are so many industry-standard movements when it comes to affiliate landing pages. So, take the cues from successful businesses and get the ideas moving – there’s no harm in emulating! Some creativity will always be needed to find the right combination of elements that will make these conversions possible.
Tip 3: Why your affiliate landing page isn’t making money?
Perhaps you’ve already figured out that your landing page isn’t the best, and it needs improvement. You may not know right off the bat what to tweak – colors, fonts, copy, or maybe even the ads?
If you neglect A/B split testing, you are working blindfolded. You need to have a heavy and steady traffic flow to be able to do a split test, but assuming you do have visitors – now it’s time to direct them to different landing pages and compare results. We have already covered how to make a killer landing page, but right now, if your affiliate landing page isn’t making money, your goal is to use all tools available to polish it to perfection.
You can have many landing pages performing in rotation, so don’t be afraid to experiment until you find the ideal combination that works for YOU.
Conclusion
Perhaps, the good news is that most landing pages are underperforming or not living up to the affiliate’s expectations. Landing pages are among the most important details in the affiliate marketing world and have been around for a long time.
Making your landing page perfect can be a trial and error process, and hardly anyone can hit it for the first time around.
Note that you need to be succinct without being over-salesy, have straightforward calls to action with proof to back up how good the product is, and give the consumer a fast and smooth experience.
Not everyone who ends up on your landing page will immediately decide to make a purchase or complete whatever action you want them to. However, if you set it up correctly and monitor its progress, you’ll see results over time, and your landing page will inevitably start making money.
Last Updated on October 18, 2023
