Many of us have heard of making profits with a website/blog and affiliate marketing together. This combination has worked for many experienced marketers in the early days of Internet, and still is working for many. The four main steps:
- Create your website.
- Set up your web hosting.
- Sign up your affiliate accounts.
- Add the affiliate products on your blog/website.
Let us examine how it can be done.
Create your website.
Build your first website using WordPress, which is a free website builder that many people use. WordPress gets a lot of support simply because of the many plugins that have been created by many developers around the world. With only a few plugins you can already enable many functions that does not come directly with the original or default WordPress software. For example, some of the free plugins would support optimizing SEO, caching of files, cloning pages with a single mouse click, quickly setting up banner ad manager, generating affiliate links, etc.
Set up your web hosting.
But where do you actually host your website/blog. The simple answer is to find an inexpensive share hosting solution. For example, Bluehost, Hostgator, Godaddy, Siteground, etc do offer hosting spaces for anyone to quickly host and set up their websites with relatively low cost. With these hosting plans, it would mostly cost between $5-$10 per month.
At these web hosting services, you can also register a domain name for your blog or website. Having your own domain name is very important, such as yourowndomainname.com. A custom domain name gives your website visitors or blog readers “trust”, and that is how they would start taking you seriously for what you do. Many people may be tempted to use the free blogging platforms where you can get a domain name like notmycustomdomain.blogspot.com. Do not try to save a few dollars at this stage but then lose the opportunity to build long term trust and brand.
Sign up your affiliate accounts.
Many affiliate networks or programs are available out there. Clickbank, Linkshare, and JVzoo are just some of the most commonly used affiliate networks. Sign up to at least one of the affiliate networks. There are many products available in your registered affiliate accounts. Even in your chosen niche, sometimes there are way more product available than you would have believed.
If you have registered with multiple affiliate networks, sometimes you may find the same products in two different networks. With affiliate marketing, no matter what, you always want the best payout or commission.
Add the affiliate products on your blog/website.
How affiliate marketing works is that you help other people or product/brand owners to sell their products. In this case you are going to sell their products on your blog. Most affiliate offers require that you successfully sell a product and then you will get paid a commission. The commission may be based on the percentage such as 20% of the product’s actual price, or a fixed rate per product sold such as $50.
This free traffic sources list can provide you a great start for knowing where to look for people from the internet who may come to your website.
In your affiliate network accounts, you should find the affiliate links or the method to create the affiliate links for each specific product. The affiliate ID on the links is specifically for your account and you.
When you create the product page or the review page, you should always add the affiliate links along. When a visitor clicks on any of your affiliate links on your website/blog, and subsequently ends up purchasing the products on the ecommerce website, you are credited with the commission.