Landing Pages/Sites Question

[makethatmoney]

After reading extensively around about the flow of affiliate marketing recently, I have gathered the following:

Arbi >> Mini-site >> landing-site

Now, I realize that arbi and mini sites are still banking, but to creating a full blown landing site I have a few questions.

I am wondering which of these would be more viable as I am not the best designer, but obviously a blog setup would be millions easier than designing a fully functional website from scratch.

Would it be viable to use a wordpress setup for simplicity of adding content, pictures, videos, and instead use a post, page, or static landing page to direct PPC content to?

Unless I'm mis-informed, doing that would be rape for search engines, and very easy to add content.

If anybody has experience with this, insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thx

 

[chatmasta]

"Arbi?"

Arbi is short for arbitrage, which means sending PPC traffic to a page optimized for AdSense or YPN ads. It's called arbitrage because you're exploiting the difference between the price you pay on one end and the price you receive on the other. As far as I know, it's pretty much dead now except for a few big players.

Maybe you're talking about PPC? Because that would make a little more sense.

 

[makethatmoney]

That's what I mean. I guess I was mis-informed on the definition of arbitrage. I thought it was sending traffic directly to the offer.

Either way, what I meant with my little chain was that this is the direction AM is heading; full blown landing sites. What I'm wondering is whether or not a wordpress blog would be a viable site, or would that be considered lazy and not bode well? I know "test, test, test" but I am wondering if anybody has experience before I write hundreds of articles on a blog/website.

 

[acemenace]

The reason you would want to make a complete site is
1. Because Google doesn't want just single landing pages. And unless you have the will to make restart a campaign every time google slaps you, then go for it.
2. You are trying to add content so hopefully, your site will climb in SERPS and possibly get you the free clicks and money.

As for using wordpress, it is viable option, and an easy way to make a full blown content site. But in my experience, using WP and PPC, I get shitty CTR to the offers from my site.

 

[makethatmoney]

Thanks ace. Do you have the destination URL directed to a post or page on the blog? My thinking was this: create a blog with tons of content for organic traffic, but create a static landing page that does NOT have the blog layout. However, on the landing page, put links to different posts and pages within the blog: contact, videos, images, content posts, site map, etc.

I'm not sure how well that would work, but I figure worst case it can be a long term money maker. You make a generic blog (DietInfo.com) or whatever, and write about diets. They create a landing page (DietInfo.com/FadDiet) and users go there. When FadDiet expires, you can simply create a new landing page (DietInfo.com/FadDiet2) and potentially create a long term site that will take a long time to become obsolete.

I'm sure this has been done before, but you said the CTR blows. Do you think that is why?

 

[acemenace]

I do not have a static page that looks like a landing page, just because I am afraid that when a manual review for google qs comes there, I might get slapped, and thus wasting all the effort that went into building that site.

 

[makethatmoney]

That's true. Technically everything is hosted together and built as one, but the layout changes from the blog to the landing page. Is that a "slappable" offense? I think I might develop something like that and hope for the best. If so, I'll keep you posted.

 

[harry1970]

I've done something similar many times before. Send the google bot to your content rich index page, but use keyword url to sent clicker to your offer page.

 

[ImagesAndWords]

Thanks ace. Do you have the destination URL directed to a post or page on the blog? My thinking was this: create a blog with tons of content for organic traffic, but create a static landing page that does NOT have the blog layout. However, on the landing page, put links to different posts and pages within the blog: contact, videos, images, content posts, site map, etc.

This is exactly what I do and it works great.
Basically;
- install Wordpress on your domain with some template of your liking. Make it in theme with your niche (colors, graphical style, whatever)

- write up some posts to the blog and get backlinks to them (let the blog "age" a little bit). Submit some stories to Digg or whatever you feel like doing for some backlink love. My personal favourite is actually using Xrumer for this.

- start building custom landing pages onto that same domain. These pages are NOT part of the blog. Just separate php files that happen to share the same theme, colors, look&feel of the blog. I will sometimes reuse the exact same or similar header and footer from the blog theme for this. My header never has links in it btw - you don't want distracting links or leakage on your LP.

- the landing pages and my blog has no relation other than the fact that they are on the same domain, and that the LP has links to the About Us, Privacy Policy, and Contact Us (which are WP Pages in the WP blog). These links are in the footer. Some of the blog posts also link to some of the landing pages.

Doing it this way with a blog, and always building several variations and versions of landing pages (for different demographics, for split-testing designs, for different buying mindsets, with keyword-custom content, etc.) I always get a great QS.

T
I'm sure this has been done before, but you said the CTR blows. Do you think that is why?

His CTR blows because he uses WP blog posts or blog pages as landing pages. You don't wanna do this unless you have a theme that is VERY clean and can be customized with dynamic keywords, has no distracting navigation bars (which most blog themes do) etc.