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A flog, or fake blog, is a method internet marketers can  use to take advantage of the trusted blog format to increase trust with the visitor, and in turn, improve conversion rates. This added trust has proven to be an effective technique for peddling anything from diet products, to grant offers, and so much more. The proof is in the numbers and hype that surrounds this landing page format. The diet and make money online niches are swamped with these landing pages. Although, with a little out-of-the-box thinking, this style of landing page can pull bank in just about any niche.

This post is intended to shed some light on what flogs are and how to effectively use this marketing technique. Grey areas, such as this, have potential to yield serious returns, but there is also a great deal of risk involved. As a result, using this technique may not be for everybody.

Background

The concept behind the flog is nothing new. In fact, its been effectively used by direct response marketers for years now. It is not uncommon to find fake articles in magazines, newspapers, or on TV. There has actually been a huge surge in such TV ads in recent months. Typically these companies attempt to disguise themselves as news programs; news reporters, special reports, news tickers, and all. From what I’ve seen, these ads are almost always marketing financial or real estate services, such as debt relief, loans, and foreclosure. In most men’s magazine, you’ll find a 2 page ad spread, promoting penis enlargement or something similar, disguised as an actual magazine article.

A thread on Wickedfire discusses the use of similar tactics in mainstream print advertising. One member even reminisces about using this tactic in political campaigns. To praise their candidate, and to smear the opposition.

Relevance to Internet Marketing

Again, flogs are nothing new. They’ve, more or less, been around since the creation of the blog format. Basically what happens is this:

• Create a blog
• Start writing about products in a particular niche, most commonly in review form.
• Include affiliate links or links to your own product in the text of the blog post.
• Profit!

When pay-to-post services started popping up, the money making possibilities grew significantly. Now with a marketplace full of advertisers willing to pay you to post, the only limit to how much money you could make was your Pagerank(PR).

However, this type of flog is not the subject of today’s post. Today we’ll be talking about the flog as a landing page.

The Flog as a Landing Page

If search engine marketing and media buys are your cup of tea, the same principles of the flog can be applied to landing pages as well. If you’re a  fake blogger, your probably getting free traffic from the search engine. If you aren’t paying for the traffic, it makes sense to quickly throw up posts without putting much thought into it. However, when you’re paying for your traffic, you better hope people are believing your “objective” review, and actually following through and entering their email, credit card info, or whatever it may be.

Keys to an effective flog landing page

As much as I’d love you to hire me to write your flog copy, here are a few tips to consider if you decide to go it alone.

Design

• Limit distraction – While a traditional blog may contain links to other posts, categories, and other blogs. This is a serious no-no when marketing a flog landing page. You want to limit your visitors options to conversion or leaving. If you do it right, they’ll convert. Otherwise, unnecessary design elements will only distract the user from finding what you want them to find, and can be a huge hindrance to your conversion rates.
• Personal Photo - Your flog requires a blogger persona, and a photo of yourself, or more commonly, a photo of someone else, can go a long way when it comes to building trust with the visitor. Also try to relate your photo to the niche. If  promoting a diet product, a before and after pic is essential. Promoting biz op offers? The person in the photo better appear to be doing very well for themselves. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.
• Sidebar – Having a sidebar isn’t essential, in fact, some marketers avoid them and their tendency to distract the visitor from the desired action. On the other hand, a sidebar is the perfect spot for some supplemental copy.
• Convey Authority – Just about every flog I’ve encountered has some sort of authoritative images scattered throughout the copy. And it almost always comes in the form of a celebrities face and/or the logos of major TV networks. The purpose of these should be obvious. To convey authority for the advertised product or service, no matter how loose the connections between the 2 may be. This is where you have to be careful. In fact, there’s a good chance many of you won’t even be comfortable doing this, and I don’t blame you. Although it can provide a huge boost in conversions, some may have moral resistance to this tactic, and there’s probably a good chance that it’s illegal.

Copy

Writing proper sales copy for your flog, is equally important as finding the right traffic sources, offers, and design. Unfortunately, many affiliates, and other types of internet marketers, don’t give this area appropriate attention. And as a result their conversions rates suffer, and they’re out money that was spent of traffic, design, etc.

• The One, Two, Punch – If you’ve ever stumbled across a flog, chances are you’ve seen the 2 step process people must take to live out all their wildest fantasies. The most common duo is the acai berry diet product(1), and a colon cleansing product (2). Wham! Conversion. This certainly isn’t the only element that makes these landing pages effective, but it does seem to help. I do, however, think that consumers are catching on, and a more creative way to guide the visitor smoothly through the buying process may be required in the near future.
• Comments That Convert – Before any purchase, 99% of use will look for consumer reviews on the product or service they are interested in. I too will not buy anything without hearing from others that it actually works, and meets their expectations. Amazon knows this all too well, and include consumer reviews with every product. I for one, read a bulk of them before ever buying.  We can use this to our advantage by including comments that come from “readers” of the blog. You, of course, should be the mastermind behind these comments, instilling trust for the product within your visitors with proven results.
• Appear Unbiased and Transparent – The whole point of taking the flog route, is that you want to come off as a amateur blogger. As a person that works online, you may struggle with finding a writing voice that sounds both professional and innocent. There’s an infinite number of places that you can start looking to get you started. Find some real review blog posts, they’re a good place to start. Now I won’t be outing any landing pages, but it isn’t hard to figure out what the competition is doing. It is, however, hard to find marketers that are doing it right.

Issues and Risks

Flogs, and the people that market them have seen their fair share of controversy. With FTC investigations and getting shut down by the advertiser, some may not find the risk to be worth the reward. Although many advertisers are more than happy with the results, and even employ the same tactics. As with all things that make you money, there is some risk associated, it just matters how long you want to walk that gray line.

There has also be initiatives started by credit card processors, as well as Adwords, YSM, and adCenter to prevent rebills (which most acai/grant offers are), and the use of flogs all together.

Yes, using a flog can landing page is risky. But there is still a ton of money to be made if you can find the right traffic sources, and play it safe.

Erect, from Wickedfire, helped me find this memo sent out by an advertising lawyer of some sort, outlining the changes the FTC has made to testimonials and endorsements used in advertising. Definitely check it out to get a better idea of what is and is not allowed.

*Don’t forget- I’m not a lawyer. I may or may not employ the tactics mentioned above in my copy, but I do not encourage you to break advertising policies put in place by the FTC.

Request a quote now for all your flog and landing page needs.

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