I freely acknowledge that I have a great deal to learn. Research is one of the things that I can do reasonably well. My last job was building a massive global taxonomy for goods and services so I am a little OCD :)

If you look at the websites of some really big name internet marketers they may have several landing pages each of which is aimed to quickly engage the reader, offer them something of value and obtain their email address as quickly as possible in exchange for the "gift" or freebie. That is conversion optimisation in a nutshell.

These super affiliates have huge lists and all seem to promote each others' offers and have also created high value products themselves. WA is itself a great example of a high value item that rewards successful affiliates. The landing page for WA is optimised very well.

It does seem to me that lots of people here are promoting low value items and doing a great deal work wise to get that and in the process losing faith. Is it a great ROI for the time spent or would they be better off promoting very high value promotions by creating compelling landing pages?

If you check out JVZoo you will see affiliate deals that offer very good payouts. Most are in the internet marketing niche.

The niche that I hope to succeed in has several related self development courses that are worth hundreds of dollars each to affiliates. I love this niche as you are not only helping other people but are also likely to make a reasonable income by doing so.

I use Thrive templates because the hard work re optimisation is already done and well proven. Why reinvent the wheel? I am sure there are other equally as good templates but that's the one I am familiar with.

It seems by conversion optimized you imply only email capturing.

Optimization has a much wider meaning. It starts from the title, snippet, and everything else. This is all in lessons here. A post is optimized if it is ranked well, if its snippet is attractive so that the visitors click on it, then that the text is convincing so that the visitor click on your link, and finally buys an item after being convinced with your nice text.

In the process (s)he may be impressed and indeed sign up for your email.

This is my understanding of it, but we are clearly not in the same niche.

IMHO the home page is the most important - first impressions are everything and you only have a second or two to catch the interest of browsers. It's a shame that it's not covered until much later.
If it came early on and people were encouraged to create an irresisteble offer and build their lists they would find more rapid success and stick around longer to reap the rewards of all their efforts.
A bit of tweaking could make such a difference to some as well. Aesthetics is critical and some have great information but are not very attractive or inviting.
I wonder if it would be worthwhile to have some examples somewhere on this website of great clean design?

Aesthetics are deeply personal, so that's a definite gray area. I personally don't think the aesthetics on some of the most profitable sites around here are any good at all. Something you could develop training for when you're eligible if you chose to.

People are supposed to follow keywords and therefore to land on various posts. Home page is just a container for the blog roll in most cases.

If the url is not keyword based there is no reason for people to land on your home page.

Agree with Mel. See Kyle's sites and as he says, sites of the most successful guys around, no bells and whistles.

Thanks for your support Kit .