Asking for a Review - Where Did I go Wrong?

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hookshot

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I've just finished my first campaign, and while I don't have a huge number of statistics, I do think I have enough to conclude that I probably screwed something up.

If anybody could give me their advice, I'd greatly appreciate it.

The campaign was the trails.com offer on CJ, which pays $7.50 per lead (signup for a free 14 day trial).

This was a sample of one of my ads (they were all fairly similar and had this gist):

Hiking Trail Maps - Free Trial
Over 30000 High Resolution Maps, Guides, Topo Maps, Directions & More.
unvexed.com

And my landing page was here: Unvexed - Product Reviews » Blog Archive » Trails.com - Guides and More! - Great For Hiking and Biking!

I ended up spending around $17 and getting no leads, so I've given up on this offer at least until I get better at this aff marketing game.

Can anybody suggest anything I may have done wrong?
 


your landing page might be the problem. Its plain, blah and not very pleasing to the eye. If you want to convert someone into a trail map subscription you want imagery of beautiful hiking trails and majestic mountain ranges. You want to imply that they will see these sites if the subscribe. You definetly need to work on the "conversion architecture" of the page. In addition I really don't like Wordpress for landing pages. There are too many distractions.

If you have any specific questions you can PM me.
 
I'm by no means all that talented at this game, but I'll give you my first impression.

I had no idea where to click, the link doesn't really stand out. Use a graphical button or an arrow to the link.

Get rid of the comments at the bottom and the "about this entry" it makes it feel cluttered and added nothing to your page.

Add some pictures so that I would get a sense of it being for hikers as soon as the page loads. Right now I don't get that feeling.
 
A lot of things wrong with your campaign.

First off, spending $17 and not making a sale is not a sign of a failed campaign. You don't have nearly enough statistics.

Your landing page...really sucks. Seriously, it's horrible. Go to the Buy/Sell/Trade section and get someone to design an LP for you.

What does unvexed mean? Buy a NEW domain name for your offer, it's only $8.

Your ad could be better. Try using a strong call to action and experiment with DWI. It's all about split testing.

It's great that you're out there trying, but you could benefit a lot by reading more about this stuff before you try again.
 
i thought the same thing about the links. at least make the text trials.com link to the actual site. Lots of visitors might just be typing that in into their browsers instead of following your links
 
props for trying.

my 2 cents:

1. color scheme just doesn't really relate to trails. maybe a light background image with compass, trail marks, etc?

2. your vertical image on the right sucks. Hiking trail doesn't mean walking on dirt road meant for cars

3. as said before, your "call-to-action" is non-existent. pre-sell upfront. make people want that trial. only then have a prominent button/picture/whatever to sign up.

i would stop wasting time working on stuff like favicon and get to the meat: which is copywriting.

good luck
 
Drop the damn wordpress already and make a landing page. It looks like your making a blog.
 
Your approach was:
I'm going to make a blog for reviewing "products" (aff ads) and convince people to try/buy them.

What everyone here is saying:
Make the page for just that "product" Aka create a landing page that caters directly towards hikers and people of the outdoors, use the entire page for that offer, not some blog review site.
 
Agree with everyone else, your landing page is shit.

It was not obvious that I had to click in the article title to actually sign up for the free offer. The pictures on the right weren't hot-linked, so dumb clicking didn't get me anywhere ( at the very least hot-link to the sign up page there too).

You can keep the text, you just need to format things in a way that tells the user, this is soooo fucking good they *need* to click HERE for more details/sign up.

The color scheme is ass too. Oh and get a picture of a cute chick hiking on your page near a call to action (I said cute, not smokin' hot, big difference). Boom, more conversions.

If you are PPC, you need to build a pre-sell landing page, not a fake blog article, for natural search engine ranking, you want the blog format. Do both for both but don't use the wrong one for each task.
 
I would also setup a campaign based on city names, plenty of places to get the names. Then do dynmaic keyword insertion.
Setup your keywords for "Hiking in [City|Town]", then...

{KeyWord}
blah blah blah

Much more targeted.
 
Last edited:
Thanks everyone... I really appreciate the advice! Just one question... I'm currently working on an entirely different landing page. Is it ok to take the link from the text links offered in CJ and use them to hotlink an image, or do I have to use exactly the text links/banners they have on CJ? Or is this something I need to ask them about?
 
hookshot said:
Thanks everyone... I really appreciate the advice! Just one question... I'm currently working on an entirely different landing page. Is it ok to take the link from the text links offered in CJ and use them to hotlink an image, or do I have to use exactly the text links/banners they have on CJ? Or is this something I need to ask them about?
Click to expand...

You can use the text link url from CJ to link an image but I would only do that if you are using that text link on the page somewhere in case they should decide to check the page (highly unlikely)

It's called linking not hotlinking. Hotlinking is when you display an image from another site on yours.

It's already been said but I'll say it again, you need to make your call to action more prominent. Have it at the top and bottom and make it very clear what you want them to do. Anyplace you can link to your offer should be used (images, phrases in your copy, etc).

For landing pages you need to decide on the one thing you want the visitor to do and design the page to give them as many chances as possible to do that one thing
 
Where is the headline? Please hand over that looking glass. My advise: learn copywriting, pick up a copy of "make your words sell".
 
Alright, having taken into account the advice that was given, here's the basics of where I want to go from here:

Get a FREE TRIAL of Trails.com

I realise that (at least in my FireFox) it doesn't work properly, and I'm working on fixing that, but I thought I would maybe get some feedback on this next attempt. Thanks!
 
I agree, that is one BAD LANDING PAGE... Two quick tips off the top of my head.

1. Scrap wordpress and make a clean and clear landing page with a good call to action above the fold.

2. Choose colors etc that somewhat look like the offer.
 
WayneDog said:
I agree, that is one BAD LANDING PAGE... Two quick tips off the top of my head.

1. Scrap wordpress and make a clean and clear landing page with a good call to action above the fold.

2. Choose colors etc that somewhat look like the offer.
Click to expand...

you didnt even SEE the original, your looking at an updated version. The original was pathetic.
 
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