Unless you are avoiding forums, news, blogs and social media, you know that there have been some things from FTC that we haven’t seen for a long, long time.. Guidelines dealing with the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising which hadn’t been touched since 1980.
And it affects all kinds of things including Merchants and Affiliate Marketers… it initially seemed to focus just Bloggers, but ultimately it goes beyond that including the affiliate links we place on our sites.
I’m not personally going to provide you a long winded post here or tell you what my lawyer says.. others are doing a fine job doing that and I’ll simply link to some of the best posts I’ve found on this topic. And we have a lengthy thread in my private forum here in our membership about it if you are one of our Affiliate Marketing Members.
It was, as many things are, misunderstood by many, blown out of proportion by others and miscommunicated early on. That’s why I always tell folks to give these type of things some time. Whether it’s a major Google change or rumors, wait.. because it’s not always 100% how it’s first thought of.. or it doesn’t touch as many people as people might initially think. (remember, when bad happens.. you only hear from those affected; not the many more that aren’t)
And you have a ton of non-lawyers dishing out advice.. yes, some have disclaimers like I do below.. but do you think that means people don’t act on people’s opinions?
Most important, if you are worried about getting an $11,000 fine if you accidentally don’t comply to some minor thing on your site, don’t be. Although you ‘could’ be fined ‘Up to’ that, you will likely be warned first with a cease-and-desist..
Whats happening here..
– There are far to many, millions, of pages on the web for the FTC to police every single sentence..
– They are mostly complaint driven.. so if people aren’t complaining about your situation, you likely will be fine..
– And really, they’ll likely focus on the greatest offenders.. we’d hope.
If you are providing legit info and promoting Quality Merchants and Products THAT will help.. and follow the guidelines being talked about on the following pages (especially providing disclosures).. you should be ok.
And the bottom line is.. we’ll learn more. In the coming months, it’ll become more clear and you can emulate what others are doing and maybe even get a real glimpse of how this really is affecting the industry by seeing what happens to those that don’t comply.
One last thing before I provide links.. of course, people around the world want to know how or if this affects them. It will in a couple of ways:
– It may set a precedent for your government..
– You may still be an affiliate of U.S. merchants..
– And Google and other engine’s will make sweeping changes that may cross borders – do you think the recent changes at Google (suspensions, warning etc) are coincidental?
Bottom line, check with your own local situation outside the U.S… and keep your eyes open for changes that ‘might’ affect you.
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Me protecting my ‘behind’ legally.. Understand here, I am not a Lawyer.. I will not be held responsible for the information being dished out by those I’ve linked to in this post (or any post for that matter). In fact, it could ALL be wrong, links broken, inaccurate.. I can’t guarantee it isn’t. Proceed and apply the advice you find at your own risk including mine. And consult a lawyer for more clarity and how it affects you specifically..
Great!… Video about landing page design. Not often do you find fresh, freebie information like this that is so dead on. I’ve studied heat mapping and have been building landing pages for years and this stuff is solid gold.
After 40 minutes.. he sort of goes into a few minute pre-selling of their services and periodic plugs for his book etc, which is typical with a webinar, but keep listening even after the 40 minutes because the Q & A is golden. They touch on a variety of topics including:
How to Balance SEO (making the search engines’ bots happy) and Selling (copy)
Studying analytics to determine width of pages
How to overcome Experts’ Biases
Long vs short sales letters..
The Mythical 3 Clicks..
and more!
If you want to increase your conversions by double digit percentages, this is going to help get you there and give you a wide swath of information and actionable stuff to employ.
Hope you enjoyed the video. Landing Pages are an important part of my business (Campaign Blasting, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Selling my Own Products, Services and Memberships). So whenever I can listen to something like this to reinforce what I already know or that gives me even one or two tips, it’s worth while. One tip when applied can sometimes mean 100s or 1000s of extra dollars over time in your pocket.
Keep learning, keep getting better.. Crush your competition with your awesome Landing Pages!
Hello!
There is a big stumbling block for some people starting out with Pay per Click Advertising and Affiliate Marketing. That stumbling block is learning how to build and launch landing pages.
There are ways to drive traffic without having to have your own landing pages and websites. And, in fact, people still do make money just going that route or using that in combination with other methods. Driving traffic direct still works if you know how to approach it.
But there are advantages, some big advantages, to building your own websites and landing pages. Even those that are testing markets Direct to Merchant could benefit greatly from having the option to expand with their own landing pages.
It’s something that shouldn’t be ignored.
The problem arises from the fact that there is a learning curve when it comes to learning how to build landing pages. Even simple landing pages there is some time involved to learn.
It seems overwhelming to many. And quite a few people want a shortcut to profits and don’t want to go through that learning curve.
And that’s totally understandable… and, in fact, the Campaign Blast Method has been teaching Direct to Merchant techniques for years now; it’s a great way to test a lot of markets quickly and to find profits; it’s a great starting point to learn about a market, it’s profitability and then to expand into it AFTER you know there are buyers in that market.
Many start Direct.. see there are profits.. and then expand using landing pages and more advanced methods. Before investing time and money into a market, they measure the potential with these techniques.
We still do this. And besides the fact it just works, the reason many go this route is because there are people out there that want to start out without having to worry about learning how to build those landing pages.
But I want to reassure those of you that are hesitant about going the direction of landing pages that the effort is worthwhile and that you can get a system down pretty easily that you can replicate and make successful.
I’m a big believer in systems. That’s what the whole Blast Method is built around. It’s a proven system to identify profitable markets to expand in to.
I encourage people to develop their own individualized and personalized landing page systems to get things done quickly and efficiently.
A system is essential with landing pages. Because you don’t want to be going through a process of fumbling around with each one you launch! You want to spend as much time as possible on marketing and launching more and more campaigns.
Once you have a good system to build landing pages… they can be easy and quick.
There are a lot of different ways to approach landing pages. There scripts you can use, web based dynamic solutions or you can build them as static web pages.
As a PPC Marketer your first duty is to choose a method and master it.
That’s the ticket!
There are ways to lay out your landing pages, develop the content on them, and things you should know to get great Quality Scores. In other words to get good rankings in the search engine results and for Google to love you.
But once you establish that and you have chosen a solution for yourself. Once you have a platform and solution established for yourself… Once that’s all in place, the actual launching of these landing pages is pretty quick and easy.
You’ll develop templates for yourself where you just flip out content, flip out the affiliate links and banners and flip out your tracking.
Their are things you can integrate to automate some stuff. PHP code to embed relevant keywords into your landing pages. There are solutions that can automate and speed up the creation of landing pages.
But you don’t need fancy solutions!
The most important thing is to develop a system for yourself. I don’t care if you are creating just static pages and using an HTML editor. Once you have a template, you can just duplicate it!
You ONLY NEED TO CREATE A TEMPLATE ONCE. And it can be used over and over again.
You will need to commit to some time developing that system and template, but YOU CAN! Anyone can!
Once you have a good template, you change, test different strategies, layouts.. and over time, you improve the effectiveness of those templates.
Over time, you’ll get better at launching them. You’ll find solutions to speed up the process. You’ll learn how to use outsourcing to your advantage.
Whatever direction you take with your landing pages, it all starts with taking the time. Start.
I challenge you to block off that time.
Depending on what foundation of knowledge you are starting with that might be a few hours, days or even a few weeks to figure it out. But it’s time well spent.
Even though some of the non-landing page methods are still effective today, they may not be tomorrow. And the additional time you put into landing pages will come back to you with more clicks.. more action.. and more opportunities to monetize.
The One URL Rule melts away
The ability to capture names is now available to you
Additional opportunities to monetize traffic come into view
The ability to track and analyze your traffic comes into view
The ability to pre-sell comes into play
The ability to even write better copy than the merchant to sell a product is available to you
More affiliate programs will allow you to promote them because you have a website to send traffic to!
That’s just for starters.
Time is always a consideration.. the time to build a landing page is obviously going to cut into how many campaigns you can launch.
But if that extra time doubles, triples or more your traffic, it could be worth while. It’s a wash or better.
So if you are on the fence about learning how to build landing pages, let this be your motivation. Start now. Start today. And increase your potential for profits and results!
