Landing page vs. direct

Definitely depends on the offer. Some of the affiliate stuff I run (as the vendor, not the affiliate) I offer my affiliates direct-to-sales page links, meaning they can effectively make their own website in between and just use my vendor URI to collect the money. For some types of marketing, this is definitely the best - I've seen guys twist my marketing to highlight totally different features that I never thought were important and make tons of money doing it.

I agree that it depends on the offer. If you can pre-sell someone with a short landing page before sending them to a long form sales letter you are often ahead of the game. I know that some people (like the Arbitrage Conspiracy guys) will often iframe an offer first just to see if it comes close to making money. If it does - then they will build a landing page.

Getting an answer like "depends on what it is" is a very broad and general statement that covers one's back when saying it along with not divulging any valuable information the OP or viewer can learn from. I myself wouldn't mind hearing that as long as it's backed up with pros and cons of each.

Because I don't know the "depends" part(the offer), I highly recommend developing a landing page that is seo optimized, has good content and captures the viewer's name and eMail. To gather their info so you can expose them more than once to your offer is critical. This way you get to build a list, get them multiple exposures to increase your chances of a purchase.

If you don't get their info, but they read enough to click your affiliate link and go to make the purchase.... good for you, but there's no back-end sales after that. If they read through to the main page and do not make a purchase, you lose that viewer all together. At least with their info you can upsell and back-end sell when they're on your list.

If you create a short page without much content and you're using PPC via Adwords, you won't get a good QS, ie, quality score and it will hurt you by adding to your CPC, hence my advice to create a good optimized page that has decent content. In the event something happens with the original offer, you're still set up to promote something similar AND have the viewer's name and eMail.

LastWarrior

9 times out of 10, you're probably going to be best served building an intermediate page.

It's just the way it works. People are generally a lot more inclined to commit to a CPA offer if they've had a good pre-sell to get them in the acting mindset.

If you direct link straight to an offer, you're only appealing to the small minority of users who are in the "ready-to-act" mindset. This could be as low as 5-10%, maybe even less.

That's a lot of traffic that you're going to lose because you haven't pre-sold them.

I also like to use an intermediate page for the simple reason that anybody who doesn't capture their data with an email opt-in is ONLY making money if the user acts now.

Okay, so you might spend $0.50 on an AdWords click. If the user doesn't commit to an action on a direct linked offer - that's $0.50 that you've wasted.

Alternatively, if you link them to a landing page and get them to hand over their email address - you have access to them long after they've left your landing page.

Statistically, you're also a lot more likely to get them to go on and sign up for whatever the offer is. That's assuming that you're not a total moron when it comes to persuasive sales writing.

You'll also benefit from an AdWords Quality Score boost if you're using a well thought out intermediate page. I say "if", because the majority of you won't - and will be penalized by Google accordingly.

There's also the much underappreciated benefit of being able to upsell different offers to different audiences. Something that not nearly enough affiliates do to maximize the ROI on their paid traffic.

using your own landing page is perfect....that way you can also build a list.

it think landing page is important.....i love to do landing page stuffs...

Thanks for all the advice, I think I'll have to look at each offer and experiment a little to see which one will work out.

I think I'll probably go with the landing page attempt first though as I liked the points addressed by LastWarrior, as well as Finch especially the "pre-sell" statement.

Best way to see what works for you is to try both. See which one converts best. You may see a pattern that certain types of products are better with a landing page and some are better direct. All depends on product and market.

When in doubt split test it.

I would say that landing pages work better. It depends on how well you are able to presell your audience.

I have tried both and for me landing pages definitely work better - plus I am building my list.

One more vote for building your own page. The preselling works great. And, since most people don't buy on the first visit, if you capture their info you can keep marketing to them on this offer and future offers

Try Both.
Use Direct for limited testing across multiple markets and eval.
Use landing page for your long term, better conversion, and list building.