Before we tackle how to start an affiliate website, it’s important to understand a little about affiliate marketing first. I wasted a lot of time building website after website and nothing ever happened! I followed one of the first training courses I bought online which taught me how to build a website and rank it on Google. The trouble was, most of the websites I built failed. A couple of them got some modest traffic, but the rest of them failed miserably.
So before you rush off in high hopes of building a website and getting a sudden rush of sales, lets get things in perspective!
How To Start An Affiliate Website – Groundwork
Most posts, articles and videos will tell you to pick a niche, build a site, then drive traffic. Or, build a site with traffic in mind, and target your keywords which will bring in the traffic and the sales. However, I’ve found this much harder to achieve than most are telling. So before you rush in, as I did, there’s some groundwork to do first. Most websites won’t rank on the top of Google for starters. There’s simply too many competing websites up there for so many keywords. Particularly if you’re going after a popular niche, you shouldn’t expect your website to be visible to your audience.
There’s over 600 million blogs on the internet and the ones which rank up top of Google have been there a long time. So a brand new website which is thin on content isn’t going to rank. You’ll need to drive traffic yourself using some other strategy other than organically. This is usually done with paid advertising, and this can be expensive. So it’s worth choosing a niche that’s going to pay you well.
If you want a modicum of free traffic organically you’ll need to be prepared to build content and work hard at it for some time. Otherwise you’ll have to pay for it.
How To Start An Affiliate Website – Weebly.com
Weebly.com is where I first ventured to build a website and it’s totally free. The downside of Weebly is that the search engines won’t usually rank it very well (if at all) because it’s a free website template. But since this is difficult to do anyway, even with your own hosting and domain name, it’s a good place to start.
Start by finding a keyword which is suitable for your particular topic. I find a keyword based domain name helps a little with organic traffic, or at least it can. Here’s one of my Weebly websites I built to help with backlinks to another website: https://leedswingchun.weebly.com/.
To help decide on a keyword to use, go to Google’s keyword planner and type in your main “seed” keyword. This is usually connected to the product or topic of your product.
I know people who have built websites using Weebly who have them ranked on Google for their main keywords – although this is more difficult in a competitive topic/niche. Still, you can also drive traffic to your website once it’s up and running using other methods. So I wouldn’t rely on organic traffic.
Once you have a basic page up and running, you have a website. You can then place affiliate links on your website. See how to get affiliate links on your website.
Driving Traffic To An Affiliate Website
So you’re up and running and have now got an website with your affiliate links on it! It’s worth placing some banners and content on your website too, to make it look as professional as possible. Once you’ve done this, it’s time to send some traffic to your site. A good place to start is with Microsoft Ads, or Google Adwords. Set up an account and run an advert targeting specific keywords which are related to your product. I find Microsoft is an easier platform to use, (with less red tape), than Adwords.
It’s also cheaper than Adwords running an advertising campaign.
Before you set up an advertising campaign, it’s worth noting that most affiliates will send paid traffic to a “sign up” offer, rather than an affiliate link. The reason for this is that most of your traffic will click away once they land on your website, wasting your advertising budget. But with an offer, you’ll get people to sign up on your email list. With an email list, you can follow up with subscribers and promote your products through you list.
Create A Landing Page
A landing page is a page on your website which is specifically set up to get visitors to opt in to your email list. This helps you collect email subscribers and build a large list of interested parties. With an email list you can follow up daily with information pertaining to the issue you are covering. See one of my landing pages here and sign up for info about affiliate marketing.
This is the basics of a landing page. It gives a visitor only two options: sign up or leave. With a blog website, visitors have many more options. They can click on your content and browse around. But with a landing page there’s only two.
By using a landing page and sending paid traffic to it to collect email addresses, you can build a large database of subscribers who are interested in what you are selling. Then, when the decide to buy, they will often buy from you if you’ve been communicating to them in your email messages.
Value Driven Messages
The key with selling affiliate products online is to build trust over time. It’s a buyers marketplace, the online world. Customers can always go elsewhere so the “hard sell” isn’t going to work! It’s much better to build trust over time. When the time comes for buying a product, you’ll buy from someone who has spent the time and effort in helping you with a problem, not the one who’s shoving it down your throat.
So use your email list to deliver information and value and to build trust. I’ve make sales through my email list even after someone has been on it for 2 -5 years! Of course some people will buy straight away, but with an email list you are giving yourself more opportunities to sell to someone. If you send traffic directly to an affiliate link, or a website with links on it, they only have one opportunity to buy. When statistics show that most online consumers need between 6 and 8 touch points before they buy something online, you know it pays to use email marketing!
Summary
So even though this article has been about how to start an affiliate website, the starting of an affiliate website is the easy part. It only takes a little bit of effort to build a website using Weebly.com and place your affiliate links on it! The more difficult part is driving traffic to your website and actually making a sale.
I spent years trying multiple affiliate marketing strategies with little to no results. It was only after I joined an online community who helped me did things change for me. That’s why I recommend accessing this free video series to learn some of the best types of products to sell online, before rushing in.
