I am sure you have seen it over and over… heck, you might even be guilty of it… but I cannot tell you how many times I have visited a site only to be plastered with ad banners all over? There will be banners above the article, below the article, on the sides of the article, and even within the article. It gets even more annoying when half of them are animated gifs or flash.

I will even go as far as to confess that for a brief stint, when I first started trying to make money online, I would try to find each and every banner and throw them everywhere. That being said, I quickly realized that this was not the most optimal and efficient method of trying to convert sales.

Now I am not saying ad banners won’t convert, but, to experience the best numbers you are probably going to have to rely on heavy traffic.

From a visual sense, it would seem reasonable for most people to gravitate toward banners ads when trying to promote products. For one, it makes our site look more professional and, two, it may make our site look more visually appealing. That being said, there is a reason why the best converting campaigns on affiliate networks are usually text links.

As an avid affiliate marketer and overall Internet business man, I always notice how users interact with sites. After all, there is no better research than actually seeing people perform the process. One thing that I have noticed is that many people have either:

• Trained themselves to ignore images all together.
• See banner ads as regular images and completely miss them all together.

So if all this is the case, then what do we do from here? Obviously, we do not want to just extinguish all the banner ads on the site, but at the same time could that space be used more effectively for something else?

Use text links.

By using text links alone, we have already limited the 2 factors above. People are visiting a site to read something, so they are going to read the text. By properly integrating these links within the article, our campaign will now look more like we are adding value to the reader, rather than a typical advertisement.

By using text links, we can also better target the article to gear more towards our text link. For example, I could right a detailed article on to lose weight, and then, at the end of the article, point my readers to an affiliate product of some diet weight product that makes the whole process easier. By using this simple format we have completed a couple tasks:

• Created high SEO content
• Gave value to the reader
• Offered them a solution how to do it easier and/or quicker (nice funnel system)

As you can see all this can be done without any banner images. If anything, there are now less distractions to help limit any external clicks away from your site.

Your Game Plan

1. Take a step back and just look at your site. Take note of your affiliates and where the banners are.

2. Create article for each product. From the list, you just created think about what articles you could write to help promote them and funnel the user to take action. The more value that article adds to the reader; the better the conversion will be. I would recommend to avoid the typical review or description of the actual product, but rather try a best of resource list or how-to article. Remember the example above.

3. Internal link. Once you have a bunch of articles at your disposable, find where you can link to them within you site. For example, see if you can highlight some related keywords in your other articles, or maybe your can promote them in your sidebar. Not only will you benefit your search engine optimization with internal linking, but now visitors will be directed to your “personal landing page” then had you used an affiliate link to direct them to some other page to learn about the product.

4. External link. Finally, try to find external sources to link to your site. Obviously, this will help get you more traffic and help boost how search engine spiders read your site. Post to social-bookmarking sites, submit articles to article databases with a link to your specific post, comment on other sites using one of your pages in the URL section of the comment fields, post throughout your social networks, and submit your article to related carnivals.

As you can see, not only have we now limited the banner ads that are displayed on our site, but we also reorganized and restructured it, for better content and search results. So the next time you come across a new affiliate, think twice before throwing up that banner ad.

Related posts:

1. How To Cloak Affiliate Links
2. Affiliate Marketing Overview
3. How To Create Optimized Landing Pages And Banners Without Tracking

First off, lets clarify what a landing page is. Some people call it a sales letter, sales page, or squeeze page, but they are pretty much all the same and the goal is to get the visitor to perform an action.

You can always just download our 8 free optimized landing pages, but if you want to venture out on your own, then make sure to use these tactics to create an effective landing page…

1. Effective use of white-space

Because we are trying to funnel the user to complete one action, we need to maintain their attention on the task at hand. Although it is easier said than done, make sure you landing page is concise and to the point. Don’t boggle it down with excess images and fluff text.

2. Create a store window display

How many times have you been walking around the mall and you or one of your friends suddenly see something on a store window (be it a sign or display) that makes you want to go inside?

Well this is exactly what you need at the top of your landing page. Something attractive that catches the visitors attention and makes them want to learn a little bit more about what you want to offer. This can be an image, sign, or anything else that gets your message across.

3. Use of video

It wasn’t too long ago that the long drawn out sales page was the norm. While some people are still making effective use of this, the truth of the matter is that keeping the attention of a visitor for so long nowadays is much hard than before. With access to video production and sharing becoming so much easier, now it is almost a must to embed a video within your landing page.

This video can really be about anything related to your landing pages. There have been some effective ones where they just talk about new marketing trick they learned, and then at the end they say if you like these like this then opt-in. On the other hand, your video can be an introduction to the site, what it is about, and what they should do.

4. Add “legal” pages

Whether you are running some sort of pay per click (PPC) campaign or aiming for some great organic search traffic, your landing page must almost always be “Google compliant”. When Google determines the quality and relevance of your site, they don’t just look to see if your content matches the topic, but also if it looks like you are running a legit site here.

That being said, Google likes sites with these 3 pages. Thanks to great business minds, there are many free generators that will create these pages for you in a matter of seconds: privacy policy, terms of service, and site-map.

5. No External Links

Remember the focus of a landing page is to get your visitor to perform a certain action, so we need to make the page as simple as possible and with limited distractions. Unless you are linking to another offer or something else that benefits yourself, then DO NOT ADD ANY EXTERNAL LINKS to your landing page. What good is the page if they leave before doing anything?

6. Make sure there is a CLEAR call to action

Just because you got somebody to visit the landing page does not mean they will actually do something. Most of the time you need to remind them or at least try to enforce what the visitor needs to do. If you are using tactic 3, then get an image of an arrow and point it to the button or email form.

Surround the goal by a box or various images. Just find some way to make sure final action stands out.

I have also created a screencast video of some examples of highly converting landing pages. Are there any other tactics that have worked in boosting your landing page conversion rate?

Related posts:

1. Examples of Effective Sales and Squeeze Pages
2. 2 Important Reasons For Using A Squeeze Page
3. Your 4-Step Game Plan To Better Affiliate Conversions

Interesting fact… most web designers have little to no former training (including myself). Does that make us special (we like to think), but, in all honesty, learning how to create websites and other similar creatives is actually incredibly easy. It really just takes some time to play around with different templates, and see what changes what. Eventually you get a good idea on what works, and the rest just follows.

It also does not hurt to have a bunch of resources and cheat sheets on hand to help with your endeavors. I have been designing sites for nearly 6 years now, and I still have to look up stuff every now and then. Just like we use dictionaries and thesauruses the same can be said for design code. It is a type language after all.

Take a look at this massive compilation of 40+ guides, charts, and cheat sheets that will help you with your web developer skills, and prevent from hours of sorting through searches.

Related posts:

1. 9 Sites That Make Learning Web Design Super Easy
2. Gain Access To Hundreds Of Cheap Quality Web Themes

While they look nice, it can be pretty hard to create these icons, but, once again, something you can’t do others can. The following is a list of free creature-based icons that can be used to liven up your site.

Manto Smiley Icons

Feed Me Animals: RSS Icon Set

Cute Critter Icon Pack

Turbomilk Animal Icon Pack

40 Cute Twitter Graphics Badges, Icons, & Buttons

Cute Twitter Birds

Acorn Icon Set

Related posts:

1. 5 Bold Free eCommerce Icon Sets

The problem is if you can’t design or don’t have the resources how can you meet these requirements and highlight various aspects of your site?

The following is a list of high quality icon sets related to eCommerce.

Weby Icons

eCommerce Icons

Chalkwork Payment Icons

Credit Card Icons

VisualFarms Finance Icons

Related posts:

1. 7 Free People-Friendly Animal Based Icon Packs
2. Free WordPress Themes – Fact or fiction?