Two things:

1) Ugly sites can make money if they are content rich.
2) Not all affiliate sites are ugly.

Check out SEO Training and Link Building Strategies - far from ugly I would say :-) Guess what - that guy makes his money with affiliate links and his own products.

Check out Tim Ferris's blog - Tim makes money from affiliate links too.

Everyone does affiliate marketing. Even the "big guys". My "money site" is very well designed - professional banners etc.. (sorry - not going to link to it though).

I have seen an ugly landing page outperform a pretty one.

So you can't just assume that a good looking one is better.

You need to test.

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Perhaps you should go for a career in web design and marketing .

Frank

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Is there an echo in here?

Frank

What's the next step if I've already done that?


But if aesthetics and credibility were directly related to conversions, wouldn't it make sense to spend a little more in a site appearance?

Ironically enough sometimes the ugly ones actually convert better.

We aren't designing sites to look pretty, we design them to make money

Yes, you're wrong.

I can't explain why this happens but lower end designed sites tend to convert better than modern design. I've tested this on a few of my own sites. The traffic is a wide range from hobby users to professional businesses that routinely buy 10s - 100s of thousands of dollars worth of products from software to business equipment.

Look at Craigslist, folks say it's an ugly site. Personally I don't see ugly, I see simple to use. Craigslist banks millions every year for 20 years now.

Hello,

It's not about how a website looks, It's all about what it delivers!!

Not every one have same ideas, but try to get an idea which is having maximum no of people.

Thank you.

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Well maybe they dont focus some much in design .Important in INternet Marketing its trafic and content and not so much the design .I know people who have uglly sites but the have a lot of trafic and they made easy 300$ per day

Somebody who was very successful and mentored me a bit when I was just starting out told me something that I will never forget when it comes to squeeze pages/affiliate landers, etc.

He told me: "It doesn't have to be pretty. It just has to WORK."

Enough said...

Only one way you'll ever know for sure, and it isn't asking the question here.

Do a legitimate A/B test with a control vs. your 'cleaned up' version.

The numbers don't lie...

Edit:

I think one reason you tend to notice 'ugly' designs is because they distract you from the message. In much the same way 'outstanding' or 'beautiful' designs do.

Truly elegant designs enhance the message while going largely unnoticed.

Good or bad, if the purpose of your site is getting people to do something and all they remember is the design, you're doing something very wrong.

It's more important what you say rather than how the site looks.

It is like banner advertising. They say the ugliest banners get the most attention because they are an eyesore and stand out.

But I hear what you're saying.

I think balance is key.

I have seen design heavy sites that look great but the copy sucks. Unless it's porn, beauty alone won't sell a product or service.

Affiliate sites can look ugly because many owners don't nurture one (or few) sites.

Instead, they establish site after site in order to gain small portions of income from a wider distribution and thus, time and effort is diluted.

It's a result of putting ones eggs in many baskets with no regard for the strength of the weave.

Few dive in head first with solid branding and design, since for many, through lack of artistic skill, involves delegation, which means an outgoing of money pre-launch, in each instance.

With this in mind, a lot of the sites out there are just residual market tests, the 'failed' ones of which remain only to yield the odd conversion - sale or signup, amongst many other sites which generate the same.

sometimes people are so focused on money they forget about design. Maybe you could offer them a nice designer and get a hefty human resource referral price?

I know one of the most successful sellers on Warrior Plus that uses a simple HTML sales page that can be put together in less than half an hour on Kompozer and every time he launches a product, it sells 1000+ copies (some of you may know who I'm referring to). He's also one of the very few vendors whose products I will go ahead and promote without looking at them first, because I know they are incredible.

He can use very simple and plain sales pages because he puts out incredible products and people know it. He could put out a sales page using an HTML template from 1998 and crush every single launch he does.

On the other hand, I've seen some absolutely gorgeous, modern looking sales pages and the product turned out to be absolute crap. I've seen magnificent sales pages and yet the product refund rate is in the double digits.

So what do you think a customer would rather have? An AMAZING product that they bought from an ugly sales page, or a hyped up JUNK product that they bought from a beautiful sales website?

I know which one I want.

Bottom line, people are getting wise to the whole game with the fancy websites that promise the world and don't deliver. People understand that just because a sales page looks great, that doesn't mean it's a good product.

I have a friend that is a great painter.
He considers himself a business man that makes money from art.
And he does.
There are many other artist that are struggling to connect these 2 things.
In business what matters it what works not what looks good and doesn't work.
So yes sometimes very basic pages work better than too much graphic pages.
In my experience you can save the great graphics to products themselves you create and sell.
And go with what works in your marketing funnel.
Also it depends on the audience.
It's possible you can use more graphics with your buyers lists.
Look how Digital Marketer using both high converting funnels and branding.

Because affiliate marketing started in 1996 when Amazon Launches their Associates Program that is why we saw simple looking sales pages, landing pages logos. since HTML5 and CSS3 we see some changes in design and affiliate is designed for newbies who have not any designing background. and one thing more its Sales and Marketing thing. sales pages should have long text and specially crafted. like Direct mail days. now there's days of growth hacking since it has been introduced in 2011. A/B testing and UX/UI.
hope we would see better creative things in future

and remembering old days around 1999-2000 while surfing when sales page appears I though what are these single and long text sites are used for. i don't want to read and then bingo X close window

I tested this years ago on a few sites. Granted it was a limited test of 5 sites. I upgraded all 5 websites to "better looking" themes and designs. Conversions dropped on 3 of them and the other 2 stayed about the same. In one case, the old standard Wordpress theme was converting at twice the rate of a much more modern (at that time) looking design.

When I say old standard Wordpress theme, I'm talking about this boring ass thing



I never really understood why and could not wrap my head around it. Surely a better looking website is more credible, right? Apparently not.

The only conclusion I could come to was that simple works.

Yeah Mike I think Simple is really key. And more and more people seem to be learning this. Sometimes
the hard way lol

thnx

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Affilorama provides one of the best affiliate marketing programs on the internet today. The content you receive for free will definitely assist anyone with marketing efforts, traffic, blogging, outsourcing etc. They also provide a lucrative affiliate program that will allow you to make some serious passive income for free because they give away a bunch of free software, tools, programs, lessons, for FREE that could easily be charged thousands of dollars. By giving this stuff for free, you can build relationships with the folks that sign up and build a team for a lifetime.

Yes... sometimes affiliate sites look ugly, but you never know how much value they have in there.

Having a well-performing and good-looking affiliate site is surely a plus.
Having a well-performing but not-so-good-looking site, well, at least it performs well! What's important is you earn $$$.

But, not all affiliate sites are ugly and poorly designed though!

If already convert, the design don't have to be great as long as the sites get more sales and leads.

I Think Design is important to have a professional blog. People Judge ebooks by their covers. If you work hard to Bring High Converting Content which is not easy and Design Your Blog Professionaly then you have done a great Job. But since you are a newbie You should think about Getting customers instead of Design.

I know Its important But it costs money to come up with Great websites and Courses. Nowadays We Have Vurtaul Reality and You can Create Something of your own and Bring it to life to help more people.

Think about That and make it your advantage to help those bloggers with your Design and Your Vusuals SO you have something Great to offer.

(sorry about to revive this thread)

I can agree that visually there are far better sites out there. But the bare truth is you'll find that most affiliate sites / sales pages tend to follow a certain top to tail formula with minor alterations that generally emcompass the following:

> Brand
> Headline
> Video Sales Letter
> Follow Up Pitch Text
> Countdown Timer
> CTA To Buy Area
> Product Text: Problem
> Product Text: Solution
> Product Text: Even Easier Solution
> Validation Area
> Buy Area
> Discount Value %
> Countdown / FOMO Area
> Footer / TC's / Disclaimers / Contact Us

I'm not one to say it's not essential to have everything, but from a conversion factor it's like having all of your information on one page rather than segmenting out all the information into separate tabs / webpages. It's just there (even if it is a little used car salesman-like).

I've found conversions work far better this way even if it looks like a programmer threw up on a page. Bear in mind traffic for these pages are generally coming from affiliates and referrals (on top of organic and paid traffic).

I also believe markling (founder of Affilorama) is on the Forum too, so maybe he can chime in

If ugly can't sell, I am in big trouble

Most sites are ugly because ugly equals unprofessional which equals "Real"
which makes people more apt to believe in what you're selling for
some reason.

(This is according to marketing legend Dan Kennedy.)

Also, a lot of these people will build a site and from then on
out affiliates will send traffic to it. If the traffic converts so the
guy will focus on other things and won't be bothered to update
his site ever again, which is why they all look old and ugly.

Spot on.

Too polished and your conversions can go down.

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder....
I don't mean that to me sarcastic because bad looking sites can still make money.

BUT...

If you have a good looking, content rich site that is easy to navigate then you will do much better than a plain article with a link.

This is where CRO comes into play and so many people ignore it when they should not.
If you take notice of user experience then you will have altogether better results!.

The (very) simplistic way of looking at it is...if you found your site online, would you honestly buy anything from it, if the answer is no then back to the drawing board!

The original older plain wordpress themes have become iconic. That familiarity may subtly confer some sort of authority and trustworthiness to the site. There is no need to change what is already working.

New and sleek may be a turnoff this case.

Do some research and you will see that often an ugly website will outsell a nice one. Why is this so?

People often associate pretty with expensive. A nerd once told me that he would never ask a pretty cheerleader out because he already knew that the answer was no. Also, he needed more time to study for the algebra exam. He is now worth 20 million, and the football player that the cheerleader did marry...well, so he works at hell mart making near minimum wage. She dumped him for a balding fat investment banker who only makes $100,000 per year.

Long story short - making something too beautiful does not help you.

Because ugly gets the job done, rather than focus on looking pretty?

Isn't that why ugly guys/gals get better grades in school than pretty guys/gals.

"Ugly converts"

So many marketers are being hold back by the idea that there landing page has to look perfect in order to make sales. You will find the most success if you just get the site uo and running and send traffic onto the page to test it. From then on it's a good idea to test different ideas / designs as you now have data to backup your opinion.

Ugly can mean they focused on quality over superficial stuff. Quality will mean more in the end. If you want ugly, think of reddit... huge popular site and they look like you are clicking around in the backroom... and yet popular. So much so that it feels like their servers are about to bust.

Unfortunately a lot of people don't focus enough on CRO when it comes to affiliate sites.
You can get all the traffic in the world to a website but it will only convert a small percentage if the site is "ugly".
Focusing a lot more on user experience can have an enormous effect on your conversion rate on your pages.

This is why so many affiliate sites are taking such a beating from Google as they are focusing more and more on UX and value for readers and some affiliates have failed to keep up with the changes that Google wants

They ugly because the vendors don't want to spend money to create good ones and put on affiliates all the shit