I'm really struggling with making a landing page - do i really need one?

I think the main purpose of a landing page is to get you subscribers to your optin list. The real money down the track is in a big list. If you're not worried about that, then go with a redirect!

A good landing page is meant to get more conversions than a direct link, but that all depends on the offer, traffic etc, etc, which you cant find out unless you test test test!

You could get the traffic flowing first, with a redirect, then insert landing pages, to setup your split testing.

I'm not sure how to split test a wordpress page, but if your traffic isn't SEO dependant, then a basic html page will do, which have hundreds if not thousands of free pages you can edit easily and rotate easily.

The old saying around here, test it and see

It would be great, if you could tell us what traffic source are you using? Let's say that you're using PPV, you don't necessarily need a landing page or squeeze page in that regards. If you're using PPC, I'm not too sure about this, but I believe you can split landing pages using t202. If you're driving traffic using SEO, I don't think there is a way to split landing pages, but you can tweak your landing page though. Hope that helps =)

if you need one ..there are plenty of places to buy one=)
$5 each

It depends on what's your traffic source and vertical. The landing page is not the same for every campaign.

Try to see what your competitors are using and create something along the same lines. If you are not good wtih HTML/CSS maybe you should consider hiring a freelance web designer (go to the warriors for hire section), because it's not always easy to find a WP theme that fits your needs, and building one is even more complex than creating a HTML page.


William

just go to elance or/and rentacoder and search for some freelancers. I am sure for $10-$15 you can get a quite compelling landing page :-))

There (WF) are also plenty of workers that you can hire... Just go to WF Section: Warriors For Hire

First off, there is no reason you must do it in Wordpress. It may be your worst choice for this situation. It will be much harder to do split testing if it is created in Wordpress. You can find a few plug-ins to help you rotate a Wordpress page, but it would be much easier without Wordpress.

I would recommend you search for a simple HTML landing page template. You can create individual webpages for articles, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy. If you use a standard set of text and a template in should only take minutes. You will need to edit the menu structure to include links to each of the pages.

Second option. Use Worpress for content, but then use a standard webpage for the landing page. There is nothing which stops you from having both in the same domain and directory on your hosts. You can create easy links to the landing pages in your sidebar and blog posts.

Do you need a landing page? Only you can answer that by doing redirects for a certain number of clicks, and a landing page for a similar number of clicks. Then you choose the winner. If the landing page wins, create another landing page which you think might be better and keep testing until you optimize your conversions.

If you really want to do it in Wordpress, search out Istvan Horvath and ask him what he recommends. He is very fluent in Wordpress and ways to make it sing.