keysIn the internet marketing game, there’s more to making money than just writing good copy. A great landing page is the key to success in any marketing campaign. I’ve been following the landing page contest over at SEOMoz and everyone seemed surprised to find out what great affiliate marketers already know.

The single-page long-copy format works.

The highest-converting landing page looked like your standard long-copy landing page. We’ve all seen it. You scroll and scroll and scroll past testimonials and features and letters and bonuses to get to the buy-now button. But it works. It’s been proven, not only in the SEOMoz contest, but time and time again for many products on the internet. Take a look at clickbank, and you’ll see the highest converting products all have the same style landing page.

So what distinguishes a good long-copy landing page from a terrible one? I’ve identified five characteristics that seem to be present in most of these pages.

 

1. A great headline

Copyblogger wrote a great article on crafting great headlines recently. He has five proven techniques for writing good headlines, but what works for blog articles is a bit different than what works for this type of landing page. Take a look at some of the major players’ headlines:

Notice any trends?

  • Every one has some ridiculously high best-case-scenario figure for how much they make daily or monthly. It’s also usually not an even number, as weird numbers like $29,013.23 are more believable.
  • Every one of them implies that they’re being slightly devious or underground or found some loophole in google. They’re letting you in on their secret.
  • They usually imply that you won’t have to work very hard to make a similar amount of money with their system.

And it works. I’ve almost bought every one of these programs. The copy just sucks you in. You want to be that guy. And that leads me to number 2.

 

2. A good story

First of all, these pages are all talking directly to you, and most start out with an email header:

From: Internet Marketing Guy
Date: September 26, 2007

Dear friend…

Then it goes on to talk about how "I’m sick of all those get rich quick schemes." They tell a story about how they got to where they are. How they’ve been burned. How they were doubtful that this system could work.

Then they’ll toot their own horn a bit. "I’ve been in the internet marketing game for 13 years," "I’ve spent thousands on PPC," etc.

Then comes the pitch, and what do people respond to the most?

 

3. Results

Here comes the numbers. This section of a landing page is usually a series of screenshots showing several days or weeks of commissions that "prove" how their method works.

 

4. Testimonials

Put a face on the earnings. These are often combines with the results in "case studies" where an individual buys their products, and achieves astronomical results. These are usually accompanied by videos and screenshots as well. Don’t forget BOLD FACED, CAPITAL, ITALICIZED, HIGHLIGHTED, RED TEXT.

 

5. A call to action

Now we finally get to the hard sell. We calculate how much monetary value the system is actually worth. Usually there’s a list of bonuses worth at least $10,000, that are included free. These can be anything from rebrandable eBooks, graphics, videos, you name it. There’s often "only 500 slots left before we stop sales forever," or "only 37 more minutes that you can take advantage of this special offer." An opt-in e-mail form at the bottom takes you to the merchant page, and a sale is made.

I know how ugly this all looks, but like I said. It’s been proven time and time again to convert. So leave your 10 years of web design behind you, grab a one-column CSS template, and start writing.

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