Creating an Affiliate Marketing website does not have to be difficult, even if you have no idea how to even get started with creating a website. I know how you might be feeling, if you have never created a website, let alone an affiliate marketing website before, it can seem very intimidating.
There are so many questions you are probably asking yourself right now. Do you pay for someone to build a website for you? What about those “drag and drop” website builders like Wix or Weebly? Will you need to learn computer coding? Is WordPress the answer for building your website with? What is the best option for you?
Those are probably just a few of the questions you are asking yourself…
Well, first off – let’s just relax a little and take a few deep breaths. I am going to make it as simple as I can for you. We will walk through this together and go through it one step at a time.
If you follow the steps listed below in this guide, you will be able to create your own affiliate marketing website and it will be a lot easier than you might think…
Why Should you Take Our Advice…?
Hey, we are John & Gem! We have been benefitting from affiliate marketing for a while now and our business keeps on
growing because of affiliate marketing and what we have learned along the way. You can read a little more about us here.
Whilst we are in a position now that we are benefitting from affiliate marketing, a few years ago we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We had absolutely no idea as to how to build a website, or even what the heck affiliate marketing was…
When we look back, we realise that the worries we had were nothing compared to the great experiences we have had along the way too.
Some people never get started because they believe building a website is totally out of their technical range. But it isn’t!
Seriously, anyone can get started with the right help and support. That is why we are creating this guide to help anyone, and everyone get started with their own website and Affiliate Marketing.
What You Need to Know Before We Get Started
Before we can get started with the building of an affiliate marketing website, you need to have a solid understanding of how affiliate marketing works.
You need to have an understanding of the affiliate marketing business model and you will also need to know how long it can really take for you to make money from affiliate marketing. If you can get your head around these key points, you will be in a much better place to succeed with affiliate marketing.
How Much Will This Cost?
I know you might not be ready to spend any money at this point, and I totally get that. However, this guide is about getting you started the right way. There are many free websites out there, but if you are serious about being successful with affiliate marketing you are going to need to invest a little. If you are not ready to invest yet, then affiliate marketing is not for you.
There are definitely reasons to avoid free affiliate marketing websites and we want you to be successful. In this guide we will show you how you can get started with a website that will cost you $3.95/month.
We will also share with you a full in-depth training course that will help you start and grow a successful affiliate marketing business.
How to Choose a Niche for Affiliate Marketing
Before you get to the point of building a website, you need to think about the topic you want your website to be about.
What are you going to base your website on and write about, until you are ready to make this decision, there is little point in you building a website yet.
So, what topic are you going to cover…? What products or services are you going to promote on that website?
If you are looking for more advanced training on this, you can sign up for a high-quality training course like this one.
Alternatively, you can check out this great video I found below which explains how to find a good affiliate marketing niche:
If you still need help deciding on your niche, check out this article I wrote about finding a niche that might help you out.
Choosing the right affiliate marketing niche can be overwhelming, so if you still feel like that don’t worry. It is perfectly normal to be feeling like that.
Think about these key points:
- There need to be products and services for you to promote – no point otherwise
- You are going to be creating a lot of content on that topic – so pick something you will not tire of easily
- Take your time and think about it
Once you have chosen your niche, you are ready to start building your website with that niche you have chosen. Now we are ready to go and build your affiliate marketing website.
How to Create an Affiliate Marketing Website
This guide will show you how to create an affiliate marketing website using WordPress. If you are not familiar with WordPress, know that it is the World’s largest website builder, is free and easy to use. It is known as a CMS or Content Management System.
There are two key elements to a website, and you will usually need to purchase these two services, but they are usually bundled together.
Domain Name: the domain name is simply the name or URL that you want to use for your website. If you want an example, the URL or domain name for the website you are currently on is BestAffiliateMarketingTools.org. You will see it in the address bar above you. In order to get a domain name, you need to register your domain with a “domain registrar”. Don’t feel nervous, it is actually really easy to do this.
Web Hosting: Think of the domain name as a house, the web hosting is the land the house sits on. You need a web host for your website to be visible for people to find it. Again, don’t feel nervous about this step it is again really easy to do.
These two services are fundamental requirements to be successful with an affiliate marketing website. There are plenty of free options out there, but there are flaws to these sites that could affect the success of your affiliate marketing business.
We will be setting up both your domain name and your web hosting with the same service and both of these services are included for $3.95 a month, using this discount link.
If you are willing to spend a little more that and want advanced training, you can sign up for this training here. But I will go into more detail later.
How to Choose a Domain Name
This is the stage where you need to choose a great domain name for your website. It can sometimes be hard to do, but as long as it is relevant to your niche that is a great start.
At this point, we are going to assume you have already picked a niche for your affiliate marketing website. This way you should already know what your website is going to be about.
So now we are going to find a domain name to use that is available. You may come across some that are already taken, but great domain names are still available for you to use.
To search for available domain names, you use the tool below. Once you have found an available domain name, make sure you write it down, but don’t register it yet. We will do that shortly.
How to Choose a Good Web Hosting Service
For a start, know that there are literally thousands of web hosting services around the world and they are not all equal. The competition has created a lot that are not worth your time, but it has also meant the good ones have come massively down in price.
Web hosting is cheaper than ever, and the quality of the good ones has also improved massively too.
The things to look for when picking a web hosting service:
- Ease of Use
- Good Customer Service
- Simple WordPress Installation
- Price
When you are just starting out with affiliate marketing, you do not need some “all singing, all dancing” web hosting. You just need something that is basic and doesn’t cost much until you start making some money. Then you can start upgrading if needed.
This guide is going to focus on registering your domain name, setting up your web hosting and installing WordPress all with the same service.
That service is Bluehost, a well-known and established web hosting company. You will also receive a discounted price of $3.95 a month with this Bluehost discount link and this includes everything you need.
Let’s get started with setting up your affiliate marketing website!
Go to BlueHost.com
The first step is to us this discount link for BlueHost.com, the you can click the “Get Started Now” button.
Choose Your Hosting Plan
It then takes you to where you will choose your web hosting plan to sign up with. But at this point, I recommend you stick with the basic plan.
If this is your first affiliate marketing website, the basic plan will give you everything that you will need at this point. You can always upgrade later on.
However, it is up to you. If you want to go for a higher plan, feel free to go for it.
Choose You Domain Name
Hopefully you now have a great domain name to use and you can enter it once you have selected your web hosting plan.
If you haven’t quite come up with a name at this point, you can still carry on with a free domain for now.
Fill in Your Account Details
This is just where you will need to enter your personal details.
Review Your Package Details & Payment Information
Double check all of your details are correct and add your payment method.
Check Your Email & Set Your Password
Once you have finalised your details and your account are set up, you will receive a welcome email that looks like the image below. Go and click the green button to create your password.
You should then see a screen like this, where you can set your password. Make sure you do not lose it!
Log into your Bluehost Dashboard
We are just a few steps away from your having your very own affiliate marketing website up and running. You web hosting is now all set up. You now just need to get your head around the bluehost dashboard.
Now to Install WordPress
Bluehost have not made it difficult to install WordPress. There are hundreds of free WordPress templates for you to use. These are pre-built websites that you can choose and then customise to make it your own.
You just need to pick a design you like. Don’t worry if it isn’t exactly right, you can always change it later.
Once you have chosen your design, it takes one click to install it!
Business or Personal Use…?
If you are building this website to start affiliate marketing, then you will choose the business option.
Get to Know Your WordPress Dashboard
Once you are actually into your WordPress dashboard, play around with it and get to know what all of the different options are for. Don’t worry if you don’t really know what you are doing with it yet, just click launch and let’s get that website out into the open.
Choose Your Website Title & Website Description
Choose a website title and website description next, this is what will show up when your website appears in the search engine results. Make sure it is an accurate description of your website.
Congratulations your affiliate marketing website is up and running and read for you to get started!! It wasn’t that difficult really, was it?
You will run into loads of questions along the way, like learning how to navigate WordPress but look at how far you have come so far.
Learn How to Create Your First Page in WordPress!
Lets get into a few of the basics, the important aspect of your WordPress dashboard will be pages and posts.
Pages are normally for your homepage, about me page, privacy policy and your affiliate disclaimer.
Posts are used for your general blog posts. These are where you are writing about the products and services you are planning on promoting.
A great starting point is creating your About Me page. Check out this tutorial video on how to create your first page in WordPress.
Learn How to Create You First Post in WordPress!
So, like we said Posts are different from the pages and most of the content you create will be a post. For example, this is a post that you are reading now.
Anything you want on your blog feed should be a post. Check out this great tutorial on creating a blog post:
Grow Your Affiliate Marketing Website
The simple technique to grow your website and gain traffic is by creating high-quality content on a regular basis.
But there is a key element to any content you create. You need to help the reader and not sell to the reader.
It is a fundamental reason why affiliate marketers fail. They focus so much on selling to people, but these people are looking for help to understand why that product is the one to the buy. Why that product is better than the other alternatives on the market.
If they were already in the buying mood, they would have probably already bought it.
But they aren’t, they are looking for help to fully understand what the best option is before going and buying something.
If you can help them come to this decision and have a subtle link to the product, you will have a much better conversion rate than someone who is totally focused on selling something.
You Website Must Offer Value
If you are totally focused on the money, you will not see the kind of success that you are after. That is because the monetisation of an affiliate marketing website comes last.
You need to follow the CTPM model.
C – Content
T – Traffic
P – Pre-Sell
M – Monetise
If you create high-quality content, that will drive traffic to your site, and you are pre-selling (or helping them) with great information around these products and services you are recommending. The reader then feels happy to buy it.
The Customer Purchase Lifecycle
Another way to look at it is that your readers could be anywhere on the customer purchase cycle.
Readers could be in any of the following stages:
Research Phase
These people are looking for information on a particular topic. But they may not have product awareness yet. Some purchases could be spontaneous, most are just looking at this point. This is where most will check out Google for more information and hopefully land on your blog post.
The best approach to this type of customer is to get them to follow you on social media, join your mailing list or bookmark your site.
Decision Phase
This is where the readers have product awareness but are now looking at a number of different products or services and are researching which one is the best fit for them.
These decisions can be easily persuaded by reviews and personalised opinions of others.
People at this stage are looking for product reviews. Deliver a convincing review and you can encourage a decision.
The best approach at this stage is product reviews.
Purchasing/Action Stage
This is the stage where that reader is ready to make a purchase. It can be difficult to detour someone when they are ready to buy. But your goal is to have walked a reader through the three stages via your blog:
They have researched for information on your blog. They then read a product review you have written. At this point they are ready to take action and they are ready to follow your recommendations and click your affiliate link.
You Need to Think of Your Affiliate Website as a Small Business
The one thing everyone would love to hear is that there is an easy way to build an affiliate marketing website and that it will
make money really soon. But no one in the world can promise that.
You will find plenty of so-called “Gurus” that claim to do that, but in all honesty, they are 99% scams.
If there was a sure-fire way of doing it, every existing affiliate marketer would be doing it and they are not.
Having said that, it is not impossible to build up your website and it to be successful. But the important thing to know is that it is going to take time and effort to achieve it.
It isn’t easy as in the fact you are going to have to work hard to achieve your success. Once those recurring payments start coming through, all that hard work will have paid off.
You can achieve the success and the lifestyle you want if you are willing to put the time and effort in to achieving it with affiliate marketing.
How to Find Products & Services to Promote
Once you have a decent flow of traffic, you are going to want to monetise your website, right?
So, how do you find products and services to promote in your niche and on your website?
Well, just about every industry has affiliate programs that you can use by promoting other peoples products and services.
Check out this fantastic video by Pat Flynn. It breaks down how to choose the best products and services to promote on your blog or website:
Still Feel Overwhelmed…?
Do you feel like there is more to affiliate marketing than you initially thought…? You may be feeling a little overwhelmed at this point. Now that it is totally normal.
There is a lot to get your head around when it comes to affiliate marketing.
For those who may be wanting some more guidance and help, we have a top recommended program for you to check out.
This platform will walk you through everything. Not just how to build an affiliate marketing website, but to truly grow that business to the point where it is profitable.
Check Out the Training Available at Wealthy Affiliate
A few years ago, I didn’t even know what affiliate marketing was or how to build a website. In fact, I had just been caught out by a scam and was really wary of signing up for anything online. But when you are struggling to pay the bills you carry on looking.
I noticed a blog post about affiliate marketing and wanted to know more. It led me to a review of Wealthy Affiliate, and it felt totally right. So, I signed up!
I don’t regret it in the slightest. We now have a couple of websites that are helping people online and regardless of your technical skills or concerns about your technical skills, the training is pitched in such a great way you will soon find you have mastered stuff you don’t even realise you need to be successful.
But What Exactly is Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate offers step-by-step training for someone wanting an easy to follow guide to building an affiliate business. It comes with some amazing support from a community that cares.
From being able to register a domain name and superb web hosting to provide research tools and other tools to develop your affiliate marketing website. There is not much elsewhere you would need outside of Wealthy Affiliate to become successful.
There are hundreds of training modules and training videos that you will be able to access and learn from. These include weekly live webinars that you can also benefit from.
Wealthy Affiliate has literally changed our lives and to say that I would recommend them over any other product is an understatement.
I recommend their course because it works and there are plenty of success stories that show how good following their training will work for people
If you are truly looking for the right training and support, sign up for a FREE account with Wealthy Affiliate. As long as you follow the training, commit to giving the time needed to grow your business you will be able to quit your day job.
Get Set up for Long-Term Success
I need to ask that this point as to whether you are just “testing the water” or are you actually serious about building an affiliate marketing business. If you are serious about it, you need to go for the long-term strategy.
Do not keep chasing the get-rich-quick route.
You will find yourself in a year’s time no closer to your goals, when you could have built an amazing affiliate marketing business following the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
I have learned so much from going through the training at Wealthy Affiliate and my business has benefited massively through it. You will be surprised at what you will learn and be able to do in such a short period of time setting up your business for long-term success.
Things like keyword research and search engine optimisation and creating amazing content that converts, etc. There is a lot you can learn!
Something to Think About…
I do hope you have found our guide on how to start an affiliate marketing website for beginners has been helpful.
You must now at this point realise that running a profitable affiliate marketing business needs much more than just a website. You need to work at it, grow it and nurture your business over an extended period of time.
But for those of you who can commit, the affiliate marketing lifestyle is an amazing one.
If you feel it is time, then what are you waiting for? It may still seem overwhelming, but it will not feel any different until you get started. But if you have support, like that at Wealthy Affiliate you will soon lose all of your worries and it will be replaced with a belief that this will work for you.
I know you can do it; you just need to start.
Thanks for checking out our guide, we hope you found it useful. We would love to hear what you think, let us know in the comments below.
Wow! Thanks so much for the break-down on how to set up an affiliate marketing website. I’m still a beginner myself, but I’m a little past the point of choosing a website host or anything, but all information is useful, so I checked this post out. You definitely laid it out in an easy-to-understand way and the information is very thorough, so thank you! I look forward to more!
Hey Selenity Jade,
thanks for checking out our blog and for writing some comments. Thanks for the feedback, we are always there to help people no matter where they are in their journey.
all the best
John
There are a number of steps involved, but I still think affiliate websites are the easiest way to achieve financial independence. Although I’m a writer myself, you don’t have to be a writer to do this. I started out writing freelance for other people who were basically doing the same thing, so I know there’s a ton of writers out there looking for website owners that need their services. All you have to do is follow a proven formula and establish some consistency. Thanks for sharing!
Hey Mark,
thanks for checking out our blog and for writing some comments. It does seem like a lot of steps, but when you actually get started it is surprising at how much you will have achieved within a few days…
Hiring writers is always an option and many affiliate marketers supplement their earnings by offering their services too.
thanks
John
I was about to sign-up in Bluehost via your link when I saw that you are also promoting Wealthy Affiliate. I’ve heard good things about the company, from excellent training to excellent website hosting, people are praising them online.
Now, I’m confused about where to start my own website, is it in Bluehost or in Wealthy Affiliate?
I find making a decision quite hard because I am tempted to go for Bluehost since there’s a free domain name registration offered.
But if I go for Bluehost, then I’m gonna miss on the excellent hosting Wealthy Affiliate offers.
Hey Gomer,
thanks for checking out our blog and for writing some comments. I think the key difference would be is:
Are you after just a website for affiliate marketing or would you like to have an extensive training platform that can help you every step of the way.
If you already have an idea around stuff and want to work it out yourself, a bluehost website is a good deal.
But Wealthy Affiliate is a comprehensive training platform and has made a huge difference to many new affiliate marketers. The choice is yours Gomer.
thanks
John
Hi John,
This is a very comprehensive post about starting an affiliate marketing website for beginners.
I am with Wealthy Affiliate as well and the trainings are easy to follow plus with the supportive community 24/7, I am slowly building my own site.
I know it is hard work and persistence,so patience and consistency is the key.
I like your embed video of Neil Patel about writing a blog post especially his tip # 6 about linking to other websites. I’m not really doing this much, so I will do more from now on.
Thanks for this valuable information.
Marita
Hey Marita,
thanks for checking out our blog and for writing some comments. Neil Patel is a great source of information and inspiration, glad you found his video useful. I know I did.
thanks
John
A very well detailed article on getting started with affiliate marketing.
I must agree that it can seem rather like information overload when facing all the steps from choosing a niche, site design, SEO and social media marketing, to name a few.
Fortunately, we have Wealthy Affiliate to thank for, taking the time to put a well-structured course outline together. Simply follow the steps without skipping and apply.. Be consistent and pay attention to your marketing daily. You can’t help but succeed.
Thanks for sharing!
Hey Stella,
thanks for checking out our blog and for writing some comments. I know what you mean, it can seem like a lot to learn, but with the right training and support it can become very easy.
thanks
John
Hello John, I must say that this article is very helpful and informative. Affiliate marketing is definitely one of the best ways to make online passive income. It is very important to choose the right hosting as I had a problem with Hostgator regarding the website speed which affects rankings. I am glad you explained it well and hope that folks will give a chance to online business because it is definitely worth it.
Hey Daniel,
thanks for checking out our blog and for sharing your experience. We love affiliate marketing and love helping people with the concept too.
Slow website speeds can be a killer to an affiliate marketer. free or cheap website hosting does not guarantee a good service. There is sometimes a need to spend money.
thanks
John