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When building a landing page for an affiliate marketing campaign, there are many decisions that need to be made. One important decision is in regards to the links that will be on your landing page. Too few links and your visitors might not even see them, too many links and they might click on one that has no benefits for you.

What Not To Do: Too Few Choices

On one end of the spectrum, you could create a landing page that promotes a single product and has a single affiliate link. This probably isn’t a good idea for the reason mentioned above, many visitors will miss the link all together. Most affiliates with half a brain probably wouldn’t do this. Instead, they would promote one affiliate program and have multiple instances of the same affiliate link all over the page.

A landing page like this (promoting a single offer) could very likely be profitable; but are commissions still being left on the table? I would bet that they are. What if a visitor comes to your page and has already tried what you are promoting? What if they simply aren’t interested in it? They will just hit the back button and be counted as a waste of advertising dollars.

What Not To Do: Too Many Distractions

On the opposite end of the spectrum is a landing page that is loaded with links. A perfect example of this would be a landing page that is built directly into an existing blog. Although the chance of a visitor clicking one of your links is very high, the chance that they will click the link you want them to click is probably pretty low. A typical blog could have the following “distraction” links (please excuse the redundant reasons ):

• main navigation - not going to make as much money as affiliate links
• RSS feed subscription - unless all of your posts contain affiliate links
• categories - unless all of your posts contain affiliate links
• archives - unless all of your posts contain affiliate links
• sponsors - no need to send your paid traffic to them
• advertisements - no need to send your paid traffic to them
• top commentators - no need to send your paid traffic to them
• blogroll - no need to send your paid traffic to them
• recent comments - you won’t get many sales from your comments
• recent posts - unless all of your posts contain affiliate links
• and probably much more…

That isn’t the kind of page I want to send paid traffic to. It just isn’t going to convert at its maximum potential.

I realize that the given example is pretty extreme (I did say it was the other end of the spectrum), but it is useful to illustrate the disadvantages of having too many distractions on an affiliate marketing landing page.

What To Do: Multiple Beneficial Choices

Instead of having too few links, or too many distractions, why not create a landing page with multiple related offers? Some of my most successful affiliate marketing campaigns have employed this strategy and I really believe it can make the difference between a break-even campaign and an income-producing campaign.

Because everyone likes lists, here are 5 techniques that can be used on their own, or mixed and matched together to form a profitable landing page with multiple choices:

1. Review competing products - If you are promoting an affiliate marketing ebook, review other affilaite marketing ebooks. If you are promoting an LCD Television, review other LCD Televisions. This adds value, builds trust, and gives the visitor a chance to purchase different products through your affiliate links.
2. List related products - Someone interested in FURminator dog brushes might also be interested in FURminator shampoo or FURminator dog treats. On some of my landing pages, I have sold just as many related products as I have featured products. Many people just buy the main product, but some people buy the featured product and a handful of related products while others completely bypass the featured product.
3. Promote your newsletter - As mentioned in this email marketing article, staying in contact with prospects over long periods of time can allow you to sell to them over and over again. Even if they don’t buy what you are currently promoting, you have an idea of what they are interested in and can attempt to make sales in the future.
4. Promote an RSS feed - Similar to the previous technique, but useful if you run a product review blog. If the visitor is interested in your market, they might also be interested in other products that you review. I haven’t used this technique yet, but it is obviously something that could work.
5. Compare the same product through different merchants - Price comparison websites have been doing this for years. There are two main benefits to using this technique. The first is that you give your visitors confidence that they are getting a good deal. The second is that, if they click more than one of the merchant links, your cookie gets placed and you get credit for anything else they might buy from that merchant (as long as your cookie doesn’t get replaced by another affiliate).

I have used every one of those techniques (except number four) and have almost always had favorable results. Of course, you will need to test and track the results to be confident that you are maximizing your conversion rates.

Just make sure everything on the page is something that your visitors would be interested in. Going crazy with this technique and selling auto insurance on a dog training landing page will probably have the opposite effect on your conversion rates.

Incorporate Multiple Profit Extraction Points

The main message I am trying to get across in this blog post is that you should have many different ways to extract profits from your landing pages. If they are too narrowly focused, you could be missing out on a lot of revenue. On the other hand, if you include too many distractions that do not contribute to the revenue, you will lose a lot of potential revenue.

These principles are not new. A huge example that can be seen in another sector of the “make money online” niche is John Chow’s blog. Whenever he makes a post about his blog earnings, he always stresses how little he would be making if he only relied on one source of revenue compared to how much he is making by taking advantage of multiple sources.