1. CHOOSING A PLATFORM
However, it’s much easier to build an audience and increase your affiliate sales via one of two channels: a blog or YouTube channel.
Starting a blog/site today is relatively easy and cheap. There are plenty of tutorials online that teach you how to get started. The best part? It’ll likely only cost you a few dollars per month.
HOW TO BUILD A BLOG SITE
How to build a website with bluehost
1. Choosing a domain name
Before you can begin building your website, choosing your domain name is one of the most important parts as this is how your audience will find you and identify with your brand.
Your domain name is what people type into their browser to get to your website. Though it’s tempting to choose something funny or flashy, pick a domain that both represents your brand and makes it easy for people to find you.
2. Choose your package and set up your hosting account
Bluehost offers a couple of hosting packages from our standard WordPress plans to our fully managed WordPress hosting plans. Once you have established your domain name, you’ll need to create an account for your hosting plan.
- Enter your personal information into each field and then scroll down to the package lists
- Choose an option that fits your budget and service needs. Prices vary across hosting providers, but most offer add-ons, like extra security features, tools to boost search rankings, and site backup.
- Check the appropriate boxes and scroll down to enter your billing information. Take a moment to read through the terms of service, cancellation policy, and privacy notices, then click the box to confirm that you agree with the policies.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to create a password and, boom, you are ready for step three: choosing your WordPress theme.
3. Choose a wordpress theme
If you’ve chosen Bluehost as your web host, WordPress will be automatically installed for you. All you have to do is click, ‘Log in‘ and choose a theme. if you aren’t sure which theme you want, don’t worry! You can go back and change it later. If you don’t like the generic themes, you can upgrade to one of the premium
themes
The next screen will ask if you are building your website for Personal or Business reasons. This will help us provide you with accurate recommendations to help on your website building journal.
4. Learn your wordpress dashboard
Now that you are ready to start working, you should find yourself on the Dashboard, or the back-end, for your new website. This is the service area that allows you to control what your website visitors will see when they land on your pages. Spend some time learning the WordPress admin dashboard by reviewing features that you will use most often.
5. Customize themes and pages
Let the fun begin! You are ready to start fine-tuning your site with your color choices, font styles, and special elements that will help you express your company culture or personality. You can dive right in and write your first post, but it’s beneficial to get to know the features and functionality of your site first.
On the left-hand sidebar you’ll find navigation links that allow you to customize your site. The best way to get to know your way around is to click on each tab and explore the options.
- Browse the themes; there are paid and free options available.
- Customize your theme with colors, headers, and social media buttons.
- Upload photos to inspire your site visitors and add clues about your values and services.
- Create your first blog post and main page content.
- Add a contact form
Don’t forget to set up Google Analytics in order to collect data on visitors coming to your site and link Google Search Console to make sure there are no errors.
These five steps will have you running a WordPress website for your small business in no time — okay, about 30 minutes. Ready to get started? Get your domain name and self-hosted service package at Bluehost today!
2. CHOOSE YOUR NICHE
Let’s be honest: if you’re starting a blog today, you’re facing a ton of competition. Statista estimates that the number of bloggers in the U.S will reach 31.7 million by 2020.
To stand the best chance of success, niche down.
Choose a topic that focuses on a specific category. For example, the topic of “food” is an enormous category. Rather than tackling that, try something more specific, like grilling food.
Keeping your topics tight can help you build a more focused audience and potentially help you rank higher in search engines.
That’s what I did when I built my first site. Instead of talking about “dance” or “hip hop,” I decided to limit myself to just breakdancing. Despite not knowing anything about SEO back then, I managed to rank for a few key terms and generate ~3,000 organic visits per month.
Later on, as you cover the bulk of this category and build traffic to these pages, you can expand into other areas.
Now, if you’re going to be the main content creator, choose something you’re interested in.
Many affiliate sites die due to a lack of consistency. So at the very least, if you’re passionate about a topic, you’ll find it much easier to press on when the going gets tough.
3. Find affiliate programs to join
There are three types of affiliate programs to choose from.
A. High-paying, low-volume affiliate programs
These are affiliate programs for niche products with high payouts.
For example, ConvertKit’s affiliate program pays almost $700 per month if you send just 80 customers their way. However, as they sell CRM software for small business owners, there’s a limited pool of buyers.
There also tends to be more competition for programs with high commissions. Since you’re probably just starting, it’ll be quite challenging to make a meaningful amount of money competing against skilled marketers with deep pockets.
B. Low-paying, high-volume affiliate programs
These are affiliate programs for products with low payouts but mass appeal.
For example, take PS4 games. Lots of people play PS4, but the average cost of a game is only around $50, and affiliate commissions are usually in the single digits. This means you’ll earn $2–3 per sale if you’re lucky.
The redeeming quality of these types of programs is that they usually offer tons of products to sell. Take Amazon’s affiliate program, for example. You can earn up to 10% commissions on almost anything Amazon sells.
The other good thing is that you often get commissions on the entire value of the purchase rather than just the product you recommended.
To make these types of affiliate programs pay, you’ll need lots of traffic.
C. High-paying, high-volume affiliate programs
These are affiliate programs for products with mass appeal, which also pay high commissions.
One example is credit cards.
Everyone needs a credit card, and most people stay with the company for years (sometimes even decades!)
The downside of these types of products is that they attract affiliate marketers with lots of expertise and deep pockets. Some also use spammy tactics that you just can’t compete with.
And since this is a tutorial for beginners, I won’t go any deeper into this.
Just be aware that these programs exist.
How to decide which affiliate programs to join
This depends on your niche and level of expertise.
If you’re targeting consumers, you’ll likely go with the second model of low commissions and higher sales volume.
If you’re going after a business audience, you’ll likely go for the first model: high-paying and low volume. The most popular programs here are for software and web hosting-related products.
The best way to find these affiliate programs is with a Google search.
4. CREATING GREAT CONTENT
If you want your affiliate site to succeed, you need to create high-quality content where your affiliate links fit naturally.
Here’s an example. Tim Ferriss interviewed 100+ famous people and asked them this question:
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?
He published the answers in a blog post and included affiliate links to the products mentioned:
| This is what you have to emulate when creating content for your affiliate site. |
Don’t just blindly curate products from Amazon’s best sellers. Go the extra mile to make sure your content solves the visitor’s problem.
How? If you’re doing reviews, actually purchase the product and test it. This is what the Wirecutter did, which explains their success.
| If you don’t have money to buy every single product, you can always start with what you have at home. For example, if you had a tech blog, you could create reviews on the gadgets you own |
5. DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR AFFILIATE SITE
You’ve created great content. The next step is to get more people to read it, so they will click on your affiliate links.
Here are three traffic strategies to consider:
A. Paid traffic
This is where you pay for traffic to your site. You can do this using PPC ads.
The advantage of paid traffic is that the moment you start paying, you get traffic.
However, there are some downsides.
First, running ads will dig into your profits. It’s quite normal for advertisers to lose money before they make it… if they ever do.
You need to be realistic about how long it takes to optimize a paid traffic campaign.
Secondly, once you stop paying for ads, your traffic will stop.
Generally speaking, ads are a great traffic strategy if you’re part of a high-paying affiliate program and can make the numbers work.
But if you’re completely new to paid marketing and have no marketing budget (or are working with lower commission programs like Amazon Associates), then it might not be such a great idea.
B. Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is the practice of optimizing pages to rank high in search engines like Google.
For as long as you can rank high in the search engines for your target keywords, you’ll get consistent and passive traffic.
On the most basic level SEO is about:
- Understanding what your target customers are searching for;
- Creating content around those topics (blog posts, product pages, etc.);
- Taking care of the “technical” stuff to push these pages higher in the search engines (which includes link building).
Learn the basics in this video or read beginner guide to SEO
Email lists allow you to communicate with your readers anytime.
Use them to tell fans about new content and keep them coming back to your site for more. This leads to more affiliate clicks and sales.
You can even send affiliate email promotions to your list directly:
To build an email list, you need to persuade the readers on your site to sign up. That means offering something valuable.
At Ahrefs, we show a slide-in box at the end of every article:
Some websites like Gear Patrol also have a “subscribe” link on their navigation bar:
But there are plenty of ways to do this. You can also offer a free eBook, an email course, etc.
All you need is some creativity.
6. GET CLICKS ON YOUR AFFILIATE LINKS
Just because you have an amazing piece of content doesn’t mean people will click on your affiliate links.
There are a few things you need to consider.
A. Link placement
If all your affiliate links are at the bottom of the page where people rarely scroll, clicks will be few and far between.
On the other hand, make every other word a link in your introduction, and your content will look spammy.
You need to balance link placement with the other factors below.
B. Context
Let’s say you were writing an article on the best kitchen knives for under $50.
Your introduction probably shouldn’t look like this:
Today, I'm reviewing the best chef knives
The links look out of context and spammy.
This would make more sense:
Today, I’m reviewing three different chef knives you can buy on Amazon for under $50. These are, product name 1, product name 2, and product name 3
C. Callouts
Using callouts like buttons, tables, and boxes can help attract your readers’ attention and make the post more skimmable.
For example, the Wirecutter uses eye-catching boxes with product links anytime they share a top pick.
PC Mag takes a different approach and uses a comparison table with buttons:
7. CONVERT CLICK TO SALES
In affiliate marketing, two conversions need to take place for you to make money.
The first conversion is the click to the product page.
You’re 100% in control of this action. Use the tactics above to improve your chances of getting that click.
The second conversion is the visitor purchasing the product. In the case of affiliate marketing, the merchant controls the checkout, and their conversion rates are out of your control.
The trick is to play the game to your advantage and look for merchants with programs that convert well.
Here are a few ways to find them:
A. Public income reports
If people are making decent money from an affiliate program, then it’s likely that the product converts well.
How do you know if people are making money?
Look at public income reports where bloggers publicly reveal how much money they’re making from their affiliate deals.
You can find these reports on Google.
For example, if you search for “income report amazon affiliate”, you’ll see a few blog posts showing how bloggers have made money from Amazon Affiliates.
B. Ask questions
If there isn’t much information available about an affiliate program you want to join, sign up and ask questions.
For example, you might want to find out what their average conversion rates are, or a ballpark figure of their top earners’ monthly commissions.
This can help you figure out if the affiliate program is worth promoting.
C. Use your intuition
Sometimes, it’s best to go with your gut feeling.
If the program or product you’re checking out feels “off,” or if you would personally never recommend the product to a friend or family member, then don’t promote it.
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