Building Effective Affiliate Landing Pages.

Objectives:

1. Creates easy URLS for your affiliates.
2. Creates quality inbound links to your website.
3. Search Engine Optimized.
4. Increase visibility of your "Buy DVD" link/ increase sales.
5. Increase visibility of Newsletter/ increase sign-ups.
6. Track Affiliate Leads w/ Box Office Widget.
7. Track Affiliate Sales w/ Cinema Clicks.

A simple sample site is created at www.myfilmname.com. (If you have not secured the title of your film as a domain name, now is the best time to get one.) Metatags are left off of the sample site, (the instructions below indicate to use them.)

Please note, pay attention to the structural linking of the page and the placement of the links, rather than the "look" of the site. Also, while you may change the main subdirectory name ("donate") and the link description from the home page, do not change page names from "index.html". Unless you have a better understanding of seo or directed to by your hosting company.

It's important to interlink and constantly refer to the other pages, it will help search engines.

When your finished, you will have a site directory that will look similar to this:

STEPS:

A. Create two directories in your root directory and call them "donate" and "newsletter".

B. Create a page in both of the directories and call them "index.html"

C. In the directory "donate" create folders with the name of the charities/affiliates. For example "redcross". Keep the name of these exactly as the name of the organization, do not ad non alphanumeric character such as spaces, exclamation points etc, and if the organization does not have a number, then do not use numbers. For example, do not use "red cross", "red-cross", or "redcross1". Also, use lowercase letters. Do not use "RedCross".

D. In each of these subdirectories, create a page called "index.html".

E. Each of these pages should have these elements (click here for sample page):

1. Page title, for example "Donate to the Red Cross" or just "Red Cross". Do not get carried away with the title. Keep it short, and simple.
2. Meta-Tag Description, "Buy (name of film)" and we will make a donation to the Red Cross.
3. Meta-Tag Keyword, "Red Cross" "Film Keywords" (about 12)
4. At the top of the page, place "Donate to the Red Cross, giving it an H1 tag. You can control the style of this via a style sheet.
5. Embed youtube/ talentlaunch.com flash trailer. Don't get fancy with any other media pluggins.
6. Short sentence describing the donation you will make.*
7. Short Description of the film
8. A "Buy Now" button. This should be the most prominent link/graphic and a link that will place 1 item in the cart and contain your affiliates cinema-clicks information. The buy now button should not fall below 450 pixels (from the top of the page.)
9. Underneath this graphic a "no thank you" link and link that page to the index page in the directory "newsletter"
10. At the bottom of the page, create a small text navigation menu that links all of these sudirectories together, as well as a link to your main home page, newletter, the index page of the "donate" directory, your main buy dvd page. The links should be relative to the site root.

F. On your home page, create a small text link that says "Donate to one of these charites"

G. On the index page of the "donate" directory, place a navigational menu that will link each of the subdirectories. You can place information regarding the charity, and perhaps there logo to fancy it up. At the end of the description write "donate to the Red Cross" an hyperlink those words to the directory.

H. On the index page of the newsletter, put you signup form from Box Office Widget.

I. Create a "Thank you page" (thankyou.html) in the directory "newsletter". Give this URL to Box Office Widget. Put your lead code from cinema clicks on this page.

J. Upload to the web.

K. Send your afiliate their URL, for example:
http://www.myfilm.com/donate/redcross
(Do not add the /index.html to this, it will automatically pull this page up.)

*If you are donating a portion of the film sale to an organization, make this clear. Do not try to confuse or mislead your customer that this a direct donation, make sure you explain the relationship.