I believe strongly in passive sales. I don't have a single LP/website that follows a direct sale strategy.
When you are pushing a direct sales approach I believe that you really need to have a few variables in place to make it work: highly qualified traffic, a truly revolutionary product (which, let's face it, you likely aren't promoting), or a ultra-niche product. When I say "highly qualified traffic", I don't mean people searching for "WIDGET X REVIEW" or "BUY WIDGET X". I'm talking about people who have already done the searching, read the "reviews", and are now looking for more credible information to direct them to the sale.
You see this a lot with eBooks. The direct sales approach works because the traffic is SO qualified. You also see this a lot with diet pills/acai, because the initial trial is such a trivial amount it negates a lot of someones initial apprehension.
What I find works best for most CPS campaigns is a combination of a passive approach and a direct close. I'll have two or three websites focused on qualifying the visitor, and then I direct them to the "sales website" that will do the direct close for me. I have found that having multiple websites to do this accomplishes a lot of things that simply weren't possible from the same domain:
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Having a passive website direct to a direct website transfers authority to the direct website, as well as asserts authority on the passive website. Who are you more likely to believe when shopping for a car: someone who appears to offer you advice, and then tries to sell you a SUV, or someone to offers you advice and then RECOMMENDS where to go to buy your SUV? People have it in their heads that if someone isn't selling something they are inherently more credible than someone who is.
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Having multiple domains on the subject provides more exposure. This is pretty obvious. Having three passive/information sites feed to two direct sale/close websites simply allows for your mininet to absorb more traffic. Of course, if your direct sale websites are able to gain ground and build their own traffic... bonus!
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Most importantly, having multiple passive sale/informational websites allows you to properly monetize two different streams of traffic. Those who stick around on your passive sale website and decide to buy from it are generally less qualified visitors that became qualified on your website. Those who skipped and went straight to the direct sale allow you to effectively monetize the qualified visitors.
I have found this approach works really well for web hosting. I'll have websites designed to take traffic from keywords such as "what do I need for small business hosting" and then put them through the qualification process so that they buy. The keyword itself isn't exactly a highly qualified buyer, but they are a qualified information seeker. Providing that information in a non-hostile, no-pressure way will almost always allow a product/service to sell itself more effectively than forcing it upon them.
Hope that helps
