I talk to affiliates after affiliates that are starting to make money in this business, and one huge common problem that I hear and see from these affiliates all the time is that they are not split testing anything and if they are, they are doing it so half-butted that its not doing them any good…then they have the audacity to complain that split testing doesn’t seem to work for them…

At first when I started mentoring and consulting individuals, I thought to myself, well maybe they just don’t realize how important split testing is, but than I realized that just about every single affiliate blog out there talks about split testing ALL THE TIME!  In fact, I’ve talked about it in depth several times on this blog and touching on each aspect of split testing, whether it’s split testing landing pages, or split testing ads, split testing offers and networks, or whatever!

I’ve explained in these posts, why you need to do it, how extremely important it is, and what types of benefits it will have on your campaigns, in fact so have a ton of other bloggers like Chad from CDF Networks in which he wrote a post entitled Split Test Everything!  Jonathan Volk wrote a post on Increasing Landing Page Conversions where he talks about split testing and it’s benefits and why you need to be doing it!

I could go on and on with posts all over the internet that talk about split testing, yet there isn’t a need for me to, simply  go to any affiliate blog and type in split testing, you’ll see that it’s a subject that is talked about all the time, yet very few affiliates seem to be doing it!

Instead, they launch a campaign in a niche like payday loans, it isn’t profitable and they move on to another niche and so forth over and over wondering why they aren’t making money!  Instead, find out why you campaign is failing, whether it’s your ads, landing page, keywords, etc and split test them!  What???  You aren’t tracking each of those things to find out where your problems are?  Then you’re an even bigger idiot!!!

Quit being lazy, quit making excuses and start split testing…  I promise you if you do, you’ll drastically see increases in your profits as an affiliate marketer!

Sorry guys, I love you all, but really felt like I needed to be blunt with this one!  Hugs and Kisses!

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I think we sometimes forget as affiliate marketers just how much the small actions we do can increase conversions or click through rates when it comes to our landing pages.  We always worry about split testing the main headlines, the big picture at the top, the call to action phrase or button, etc.  We focus on these huge things because just by increasing one of them we can possibly raise our conversion rate or CTR by 5% or even 10%.

However, there are only so many big things we can change.  When it comes to small things though, we have tons of little settings we can fool around with like colors we can change, or certain words we bold, italicize, or highlight, etc.  Each of these small things may only raise our conversion rate or CTR by 1% or even .5%, but if we do 30 of these small things we could raise our CTR or conversion rate by 30%!!!

So what exactly are some of the small things that we can test?  Did you know that certain fonts convert better than other fonts?  Did you know that certain background colors convert better?  How about the fact that by bolding or italicizing a couple words throughout your landing page could increase conversions?

Have I sparked your curiosity yet?  If so, then hopefully the list below can kinda be a checklist for you to help you remember to check the little things when you are split testing your landing pages…

Things to Split Test on your Landing Page:

• Split test what font you’re using!
• Have you split tested your background color?
• Have you tried to bold or italicize certain words or phrases that could help sell users?
• What about underlining certain things?
• Are you linking to the offer page throughout your article?
• Are you including a Go Back To Top Link at the bottom of your landing page or another Button or Link at the bottom to take your user to the offer page?
• Don’t forget to add testimonials to help build trust with your visitors if your niche allows for them.
• Can you include any endorsed by, affiliated with, or as seen (in, on, at) buttons?  For example, As seen on Oprah or Endorsed with the Good Housekeeping Seal!

The list above is just a couple of the “small things” you could be doing and adding to your landing pages in order to increase conversions and CTR’s.  If you aren’t doing them, you need to start!  If you are using them then good for you!

If you have any other “small things” that you know of that work well in increasing CTR’s and Conversions I’d love for you to share them with me in the comments below.  It’s the smalls things that sometimes make huge differences!

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I’ve decided to write a couple more posts on split testing.  I’ve currently written one for both split testing ads and split testing landing pages.  In this post, I’m going to be talking about split testing offers and using different networks to do this.  In future posts, I’ll be talking about other things you need to be split testing.

Most blogs you read talk about split testing ads and then they leave it at that, however, as you’ll see from this blog there are many more things to split test!  I wasn’t going to do anymore articles on split testing because I wasn’t sure if it was necessary to touch on each one, however, after reading a post by Chad from CDFnetworks entitled Split Test Everything, I decided to go ahead and continue doing articles on split testing.

Split Testing Offers

Most affiliates leave this step out and in my opinion it’s a very important step.  In fact, some do start split testing their offers, however, after they find a decent one they all of a sudden stop!  Instead of pushing forward to try and find an even better converting offer, they become complacent.  So what exactly do I mean when I say split test different offers?

Split testing your offers is the same process as split testing your ads or landing pages.  In essence you are simply swapping out your affiliate link from one offer or network and replacing it with a different offer or network to see if that other offer is able to give you a higher ecpc.

So I simply try to find an offer with a higher conversion rate?

No, most affiliates fall into this pattern of looking at the conversion rates of offers!  So before I continue talking about how to split test offers and common practices, I want to clear this up!  You are looking for an offer that has a higher ecpc (estimated cost per click).  Let me explain why real quick…

If you have an offer that pays out one dollar for every lead and it converts at 25% that means for every 4 people you send you’ll earn .25 cents.  .25 cents is your ecpc.   That means that the highest amount you could bid in order to break even.

Now let’s say you have an offer that pays out ten dollars for every lead and it converts at 20% that means for every 5 people you send you’ll earn 2.00 dollars.  2.00 dollars is your ecpc.  That means you could bid up to 2.00 dollars on your keywords and still break even.

Of course that isn’t always true, sometimes you have an ecpc of .50 cents but if you raise your bids to .50 cents you’d start to lose money, however it gives you a general idea on what you could spend up to.  That’s why it’s important to ask for the ecpc for a particular offer when looking.  Simply ask your affiliate manager and they should be able to supply this information to you immediately.

Moving On

So, you’re not looking at the conversion rates, but the ecpc.  So after you have selected your first offer to run, you will want to allow time for data to come in.  Normally a week is about what I like to give each offer personally.  This allows me to make sure it’s as accurate as possible since some days perform better than other days during the week depending on the offer.

After you have run your offer, you simply replace it with another offer to see if it will perform better or not.  Okay, I know your next question…  How do I know which offers to try and which ones to stay clear of?  Well, unfortunately there isn’t any surefire way to tell if an offer sucks or not without testing it yourself in my opinion, however, there is a good way to get a starting list.

Simply email your affiliate manager and ask them if they could send you a list of all the offers they have for the niche you’re working in and ask them to include the ecpc for each offer.

NOTE: Make sure if you’re only running PPC traffic to it, that you tell them to give you the ecpc for search traffic only.  This also goes for organic traffic or email traffic.  That way you ensure that you’re receiving the most accurate data you can.

After you receive this list, you should have an order in which to test the offers out.  Starting with the offer that has the highest ecpc and moving down.  Easy enough right?

Testing the Same Offer on Multiple Networks

Did you know that multiple networks normally have the same exact offers?  Did you know that most even have the same exact landing page?  Okay smarty pants…Did you know that the same exact offer with the same exact landing page can possibly convert better and have a higher ecpc on a different network?

That’s right, your ecpc can vary depending on the network you’re using!

Not only do you need to test different offers, but you also need to test different networks.  That makes it a little more difficult, well not really difficult, just more time consuming!  I won’t beat around the bush, some networks scrape leads, although sometimes it’s not really the networks but the software they use…*cough* Direct Track *cough*

So the bottom line is you need to track both different offers and the same offer on different networks!

Finding a Great Offer with a Great ecpc

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I see affiliates all of a sudden stop split testing offers.  Why?  Well, my guess is because they find an offer that does really well and have a great ecpc so they don’t want to keep testing and drop to an offer that does worse, however, you must also remember that you could again find one that does even better!

What I Recommend

If you find an offer that is doing exceptionally well, instead of split testing new offers across your entire campaign, only send maybe 10% of your traffic to a new offer in order to keep testing!  This will still give you an idea on offers and if you find one that is doing better in that 10% then try it across the whole board!

Question

Do you currently split test your offers?  Do you split test the same offer among different networks?  Do you feel that all affiliates should be doing this simple step?  If you could say one thing that could encourage some affiliates to start split testing their offers if their not currently doing so, what would you say?

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So, you’ve heard over and over that you should be split testing your ads.  That if you’re not you could be losing out on a lot of money!  However, the question most affiliate have after they figure out what exactly split testing ads means, is what do I split test in my ads?

Below you’ll find 5 different things that you should be testing when you start to split test your ads!

• Capitalization – What is the best way to capitalize your words in your ads?  Should You Capitalize The First Letter of Each Word?  Should you only capitalize the first word of each sentance?  The first letter of Important Words?  How about your display URL?  Should any part of that be capitalized?  This is something that is very important and by simply capitalizing your words a certain way could change your CTR% by crazy amounts!  Unfourtenly, you must test each of these things as it changes depending on the niche!

• Use of Numbers – Should you use an average number when you’re mention numbers or statistics?  For example if the cost is $49.99 for your service or product should you put $50 instead?  Studies have shown that using exact numbers is typically the best approach as it helps to make your ad stand out from all the other competition thats out there!  However, again this isn’t alwasy the case!  You’ll need to test this yourself for each niche you enter!

• Display URLS – Display URLS can be very important and are often ignored as part of your ad writing process!  Most affiliates feel they have 3 lines to work with when it comes to creating ads, however, if you count your display URL, you actually have 4 lines!  Should you capitalize certain letters?  Should you only use the base URL or add a /keyword to it? Should you include the “www” or not?  Again, the key to figuring this out is to test each way until you find the display URL that gives you the greatest conversions and CTR%.

• Ask a Question – A simple way to increase your CTR% normally is to simply ask an inticing question in your ad.  This will cause searchers to think and if they feel their answer will be met on your site, they’ll typically click through.  So make sure you test several different types of questions and also try not having a question.  You’ll never know which way will work best for any given niche unless you test it!

• Write Specific Ads for Each Keyword Group – As most of you have probably heard your adgroups should be tightly grouped by using base keywords.  Naturally and Simple Enough, your ads should be different for each of these adgroups and include teh keywords for each adgroup in the ad!  You should never ever write generic ads and just throw the same ads into each adgroup and expect the results to be good.

There you have it!  5 things to test when you’re split testing your ads.  By testing these 5 different things you can easily take an ad that is getting a CTR% of 2% and increase it to 8%, 12%, or even 20% depending on the niche and amount of competition you have!

So quit your crying and get to work before I pass you up in the niche you’re working on!

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A landing page or landing site is one of the most important aspects to an affiliate marketing campaign in my opinion. Your visitors can convert or leave based on your landing page. You control the conversion rate and can easily take a campaign losing money and turn it into a campaign that is a winner simply by your landing page. One simple way to do this is to split test your landing pages, however, unless you know what your doing wrong, split testing won’t do you much good because you won’t know what is causing the problem!

This topic will explain some common mistakes that people make when creating landing pages. Hopefully after reading this post you’ll be able to clearly understand the problems your landing page may be causing!

1. Your Call to Action is below the Fold - Your call to action is what causes your visitors to go from your landing page to the offer or service your promoting thus the reason it’s called a call to action. This could be a big red button that says sign up for free, or a list of features with a sign up now button, etc. So, why would you want your call to action below the fold when you automatically lose ~30% of your visitors if they have to scroll down?
2. Trying to Collect too Much Data – Trying to get a visitor to sign up for a newsletter is fine for future sales to an email list you put together, however, you may be hurting your conversions! The more information that you try to collect from your visitors the more likely they won’t end up completing the offer. Try to keep your data collecting to a minimum and only collect information that you truly need!
3. Missing Testimonials - Testimonials can greatly increase conversion rates and instill trust in your visitors eyes. They tend to help the visitor realize that the product/service your offering is worth their time in filling out any necessary information or even whipping out their credit card. If you can use testimonials in your niche, your only hurting yourself by not at least trying them out on your landing page!
4. Too Many Call to Actions – As said above you need to have a clear call to action above the fold. You shouldn’t ever have more than 2 call to actions on a landing page. Asking a user to sign up for an offer or service your offering would be one call to action, asking them to sign up for a newsletter would be another call to action. Asking users to subscribe to newsletters, subscribe to your RSS feed, give you a call, etc may sound like a great idea to get return customers and build up a great list, having too many can cause confusion and also end up making the visitor forget why they even came to your site, thus, you lose out on a commission!
5. Not Split Testing Landing Pages – Another mistake I see people commonly make is to not split test their landing pages. I recently wrote an article about split testing landing pages, how to do it, what parts of your landing page to split test, etc. If you haven’t check it out already, you need to as split testing can greatly increase your profits and allow you to find out which landing page(s) work best!

So there you have it, five reasons your landing page may suck! Get to work and correct the problems on your landing pages and immediately see the results. You’ll be amazed at what a few simple things can do to your conversions!

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