What is a landing page? And how to create, publish, and automate it? In this article, I'm going to reveal my process of creating landing pages for almost free. You may want to invest around $5, and you're good to go. Sounds exciting? Let's get started! Whether you're an email marketer, entrepreneur, or CPA consultant, you need to make a landing page. Even if you're a freelancer and want to make money, you can build landing pages for your clients. First off, let's understand what a landing page is! What is a Landing Page A landing page is a specific web page created and published to hone the power of a marketing campaign. It's where people land after they click on a link in an email or anywhere on the internet. A landing page is usually clean with a clear CTA. How to Create Landing Pages for Almost Free July 1, 2021 / 15 Comments / Hasan AboulHasan / 11 min read H-educate What makes a landing page different from any other page? A landing page is a page dedicated to a specific campaign that has only one call to action. There's an almost complete absence of navigation on a landing page so that visitors stay on the page and take action. A landing page takes a single call to action (CTA) rather than a web page, which can have many goals and encourage exploration. a landing page delivers conversion rates up to 60% and is the most effective for lowering your cost of lead generation. Let's have a look at some examples of landing pages now. Landing Page Examples When you're doing something important like creating a landing page for your business, getting inspiration is a must. I've got you a few landing page examples and templates as well. Let's have a look at them now. Startup Institute H-Educate Academy's Landing Page The Startup Institute's landing page clearly states the next step after applying and provides a list of Q&A next to the form. I like it because it better understands and servers its audience. Codecademy The copy on this landing page is simple, while the design is creative. Below the fold is a screenshot of an HTML bracket with a blinking cursor — a whimsical visual that complements the form. And it shows what Codecademy is all about. Edupath Edupath's website primarily caters to students but does include sections designed to advise parents on assisting their teens with college applications and SAT preparation. This is important on every landing page. So these were a few examples of brilliant landing pages. Take inspiration. And read on to learn how to create them for cheap. How to Create a Landing Page for Cheap For creating a landing page for almost free or cheap, follow my guidelines and choose the tools accordingly. The first tool I would like to introduce to you is PixFort; it's a brilliant page builder for beginners because it has SEO optimization Easy customization Grid system based builder Seamless drag & drop functionality Pop-ups for you that require no coding knowledge Responsiveness to any device in the world, including phones And much more. Here's how it works: My Method to Create Landing Pages for Only $5 Purchase the license of Pixfort's Megapack on Codecanyon, create a PixFort account, and sync it with Envato Market. Why do I recommend PixFort to create and build your landing pages? It's because you need to pay for the license only one time. Step 1. Log in to your PixFort account Step 2. Click on “Create New Project” if you haven't already created the one. Step 3. Now is the time for you to explore landing page templates. Or you can start from scratch because PixFort is design-friendly for beginners. Step 4. Edit your template and add powerful CTA Step 5. Set up the CTA with your email marketing service. There are a lot of options to choose from. You can get started with MailChimp, GetResponse, or even MailWizz. Also, you can choose the ‘Custom Email' option so that you can send an email list straight to your inbox. Step 6. Unlike other landing page builders like Unbounce, Convertkit, or ClickFunnel, you need to host your landing page built with PixFort. For that, you need to download your landing page file from the PixFort. Go to ‘Settings' and choose ‘Export Project.' And that's it! After a few seconds, you must have downloaded the zip file of your landing page. Now is the time to host and publish your landing page. There are tons of hosting services you can use to host and publish your landing page. But for demonstration, I will use DigitalOcean because it offers: Compute cloud products Customizable networking products Databases to optimize your application Highly scalable storage for quick data access Brilliant catalog of pre-configured -click apps Create Landing Pages (2022) Now that you know the reasons to go for DigitalOcean let's get to know how to host and publish your landing page. Step by Step: Host Lead Pages Get your hands on DigitalOcean for free for your first month with my affiliate link. Anyway, let's get to know how to host your landing page on it. Step 1. Sign up and sign in to your DigitalOcean account Step 2. Choose the green button given on the top-right and click on “Droplets.” Droplet is like a small server from DigitalOcean. Step 3. Go to Marketplace, click on “LAMP on Ubuntu” because it's a pre-configured server. Step 4. Scroll down and choose the $5/month machine. You can also choose a data center on DigitalOcean. Step 5. Enter your password and go down to create your droplet. By the way, you can always skip the hostname given in the form. Step 6. Copy the IP address given next to your droplet to redirect to your landing page. Step 7. Go to the WinSCP app, which is a hosting client for Windows. It transfers files between local and remote servers. Also, it offers file manager functionality which helps you upload content to create landing pages. Step 8. Click on ‘New Site' and enter your IP address as the hostname, give a username, and password to your DigitalOcean. Step 9. Log in, and WinSCP will search for a host to connect and authenticate. Go to the “var”, “www”, AND “html” folders one by one. Step 10. Delete the index.html file and upload the zip file of your landing page here. Now open the PuTTY app, which is a network file transfer application. Unzip Your Page File Step 1. Open the PuTTY app, paste your IP address in place of the hostname given in the app Step 2. Enter your username and password on the newly opened window now. Step 3. Now launch your server with the ‘CLE command and press enter. Write the “apt install unzip” and press the enter button again in the PuTTY app. It will unzip your file in a second. Step 4. Go to change the directory now by entering “cd /var/www/HTML and then press the enter button. Write the command, “unzip project.zip,” and press the enter button again. Step 5. Now go back to your WinSCP app and refresh the www folder. It will have a lot of files now. Step 6. Rename your landing page's HTML file with ‘index' and try opening your IP address. It will show your landing page by now. Now you don't want to host your landing page with an IP address only. Now go to GoDaddy and get your domain if you haven't already got it. Step 7. Log into your domain registrar and choose your domain name. Click on “Manage My Domain” and add a DNS record as: Type: A Host: Landing Page (Give your choice of name) Points to: Your IP Address You must have pointed your domain name to your IP address by now. Congratulations! You've done it for extremely cheap. Traditional landing page builders cost you a few bucks every single month. And that may be not very pleasant for beginners and for those who are yet testing out things. That's why I have shared this tool with you. If you don't like it, try other options I've listed below. Options for Hosting Your Landing Pages If you want to create landing pages, you need hosting services. And there are tons of other options for that. Choose the 000WebHost if you want to go totally free. But then you'll only enjoy 300MB disk space, which isn't sufficient, of course. If you want to go premium and enjoy the best value for your money, Hostinger offers hosting for around $2/month. And choose Contabo's VPS hosting if you want to start your online ventures on solid grounds. But if you're like me, you would want to choose a much more customizable option. And that is DigitalOcean, which offers a lot more functionality in the form of marketplaces and more. That's why I have chosen it for this example. Best Landing Page Builders Again, there are many landing page builders for you. For example, ClickFunnel offers an all-in-one solution for all your marketing campaigns. ConvertKit's landing page builder is also awesome for its simple and clean layout. in 2022 I also recommend SendInBlue's landing page builder for a lot more functionality than just a page builder. But Mautic also helps you build landing pages in minutes for a very short amount of bucks. If you want to build your landing page within your WordPress dashboard, then MasterPopups is a brilliant plugin to do that. But then for all those options, you need to pay continuously for months and months. That's why I have chosen PixFort's Megapack to build landing pages on the go. And you need to pay for it once only. And you can create unlimited landing pages for as many campaigns as you want. Summary: How to Create a Landing Page