How to setup your affIliate website: Step-by-step guide

AffIliate marketing is all about finding people who want a product and referring them to where they can get the product.

That said,the best place to start your affIliate marketing business is search engines.

Search engines are the most important platforms to leverage in your affiliate marketing business.

Not any social media site, search engines .

Basically because when people hope to buy something online,they always go to search for a term related to what they want to buy.They usually make such searches on search engines like Google or bing never TikTok.

Some search for the product directly,others search for reviews to find out which company has the best of what they are looking for while the rest search for tutorials related to the product like how to set it up,use it and stuff.And search engines are the only way they can do this.

Making search engines very important for successful affIliate marketing.

So how can you take advantage of search engines to make affIliate revenue? It’s simple, setup an affiliate website.

In this article, we will be taking you step by step through the journey of creating an affiliate website of your own that will enable you to drive affIliate revenue.

Your affIliate website should be able to:

Attract visitors
Convert them to affIliate sales
And keep them returning each time they would like to purchase something related to what you promote

In this guide,you will find out how to build an affiliate website that will enable you to achieve the above.

What is an affiliate website?

An affIliate website is basically a website built basically to promote products.They provide affIliates with a chance to grab their fair share of search traffic and convert them to affIliate sales.

Such websites are usually in two forms: blogs and incentive sites.

Blogs

Blogs are basically sites that broaden search data.They usually provide deep tutorials and oftentimes,reviews about events, places, companies and products.

They are basically information shops online.Whenever people want to learn stuff quickly about any subject,they will most likely find themselves on a blog that discusses stuff related to that subject.

Earlier in this article,I mentioned how people who are looking to buy a product online either search for the product directly,or search for reviews about companies that offer the product or for tutorials on how to set up or use the product to achieve a certain goal.

The first group mentioned here-the ones that search for the product directly,forget about them.You can absolutely not make any form of affIliate revenue from those.If a person searches for Bluehost web hosting directly,Bluehost is going to show up not your affIliate website so take your mind off those.

The second and third groups-those that search for tutorials and reviews are where affIliate marketing money can be made.These are the ones you should focus on.

The best way to take advantage of the second and third group of searches is to create a blog of your own.

On your blog,you will be able to give value adding content in the form of tutorials or reviews and place your affIliate links where visitors can find them.

If you have a burning passion for writing and you hope to make some affIliate money doing so,you can create a blog as your affIliate website.

Blogs are the best for long term recurring affIliate revenue.Mostly because they allow you to earn affIliate revenue while creating some form of content.

Incentive sites

Incentive sites are sites that offer incentives to users each time they purchase products.These incentives could be cashbacks, coupon codes or other premium benefits.

These incentives go a long way in ensuring that not only do people purchase a product with a certain affIliate’s link,they purchase the products as soon as possible and gain extra satisfaction from their purchase.

My favourite thing about these types of sites is that you will really not need to spend long hours creating content and editing articles.Leaving you with enough time to focus on SEO and promoting your website.

They also give you the chance to step away from your laptop for a few days,hangout with friends and family and still not miss out on your monthly revenue.Sounds like passive income to me.

How to build your affIliate website

Down to the practical aspect of building your affiliate website.To build your affIliate website here are some of the things you will need:

Step 1:Launch your website

A domain name

A domain name is the name of your website plus an extension.It usually has the format yoursitename.com.

It gives the first impression of your website so we advise that you take some time to choose the name and domain extension of your new website.

We would also like you to note that once you give your website a name you will NOT be unable to change it so choose the name wisely.

We recommend you get a .com domain extension as they are the easiest to remember and most popular.

You can get your domain name with Truehost.The platform is one of the best and reliable web hosting platforms in the world.You can get your active domain name on the platform for only about $9.99 per year.

You can also check out our step by step guide on how to get domain name and web hosting from Truehost.

Here are some things you should take note of when choosing a domain name:

Always opt for a .com as such domains are the easiest to remember and best for SEO.
Avoid hyphens and other punctuation marks in your domain name.
Keep it short,simple and easy to spell, pronounce and remember.
Avoid using numbers within your domain name.
Avoid using names that sound very similar to other existing and somewhat popular domains.
Avoid using names that are too specific and give away too much information about your site.

With all these tips you are off to get a great brand new domain name.Visit Truehost official site.

Web hosting

Web hosting which will be the space your website will be placed on the internet.

You can also get your domain hosted with Truehost at only $1 per month and $10 per year.

You can also take the guide on how to get your domain name with Truehost.

The entire process of getting your domain name and website hosting should cost you about $20-$25.

Once you have gotten your domain name and web hosting,the next thing you will need to do is to install a software called WordPress.

WordPress is a free open source software that allows people to easily create websites without knowing a single bit of code.

It comes with the best themes to beautify your website and the best plugins to enable you to add specialised features to it.

One of my favourite things about truehost web hosting is one-click wordpress installation.This means that you can get wordpress on your new website in minutes if not seconds.

After purchasing a domain name and web hosting from Truehost,keep an eye on your email inbox.Truehost will be sending you your website hosting control panel logging details soon(usually within one hour).

Once you have gotten your login details,you can go ahead and log into Cpanel.

Your truehost Cpanel dashboard should look like this once you have logged in.

Once on your cPanel dashboard,scroll to the bottom of the page where you should find various php scripts.Click on WordPress (wordpress is the script with the ‘W’ icon).

On the next screen,you will be asked to choose the domain in which you would like to install wordpress,click your new domain name.

Next,you can add your admin login details and then click install.(Do take note of the login details as you will use them to login to your admin dashboard).

The installation process should be completed in a few seconds.

At this point,you have successfully created your new affIliate website.You can go ahead visit your new website using your domain name to see the result.

Step 2: Setting the basics

Theme installation

After successfully creating your affIliate website,the next thing you should do is install a gorgeous wordpress theme.

This theme will give your site a nice look making it more appealing to visitors.

WordPress has a wide variety of the most beautiful free themes you can make use of.You can start by checking the wordpress themes list.

We recommend Kadencewp wordpress theme.The theme is a free lightweight yet absolutely gorgeous wordpress theme.

The theme also comes with a ton of starter templates to give you a headstart on your website building journey.

You can start by simply replacing the dummy text with customised text and get familiar with the dashboard later.

Kadence Wp also has a support forum where you can ask questions whenever you experience any issue customising the wordpress theme.See Kadence support forum.

Page creation

Every website is characterised by various web pages so after creating your website,you should go ahead and create the basic web pages.

If you use Kadence Wp theme,a few pages will already be created for you,you can go ahead to customise them to suit your taste.

If you don’t use the kadence theme,you will have to create the pages yourself.You can check out this guide on how to create wordpress pages.

Recommend:

Step 3: Optimising your new website

Plugin installation

After creating your website,you will find that your website is simply a collection of webpages.

You will have to install some plugins to get your site functioning properly.

Here are some of the plugins you may need:

Registration form plugin

We recommend Ultimate member plugin for registration forms.The free plugin enables you to create beautiful registration forms that adapt to your wordpress theme and font.The plugin is also built to work well with the cashback plugin.

Link cloaking plugin

Since affiliate marketing is all about getting clicks on your affIliate link,it is important you make use of a link cloaking plugin.

Such plugins enable you to cloak long and ugly URLs and turn them into short URLs.

They are also efficient in tracking the number of clicks on your affIliate link each day.

A good link cloaking plugin is Better links plugin.The plugin allows you to add,cloak, track and manage your affIliate links easily.

The plugin has a free version for starters and a premium version if you intend to make use of more advanced features.

Site kit by Google

Site kit is a free plugin crafted by Google that enables website owners to track the performance of their website in terms of speed, traffic,search presence and user experience.

Simply put,the plugin will enable you to monitor your affIliate website and know how well you’re doing.

An email marketing plugin

Affiliate marketing success is characterised by recurring traffic to your affIliate link each month.On your affIliate website,it means getting repeat visitors that will purchase products using your affiliate link.

And how exactly can you get previous visitors to come back to your site? That’s simple email them.

Email marketing is one of the best ways of promoting your brand online and the best way of getting repeat visitors to your site.

Email marketing is also known to return $42 for every one dollar spent.

We recommend that you make use of the Email subscribers plugin.The plugin allows you to create email broadcasts and workflows easily and convert all registered users to subscribers instantly.

This way,once a new user is registered on your site they are added to your mailing list and you can mail them later on to let them know when new deals and offers are available.

An SEO plugin

For your website to be successful,you will need to grab as much search traffic as you can and to do this(as a beginner),you will need an SEO plugin.

These types of plugins help you know where you should place your keywords,how to structure your posts and how long each post should be.

We recommend All-in-one SEO plugin.The plugin has all you need and more from an SEO plugin.

The plugin has a free version which is fairly good for beginners use but if you would like to make use of more advanced features,you should opt for the paid version.

With those steps,your new incentive affIliate website would be completely set up and ready to receive visitors.

Bonus tips to help you grow your affIliate website

Do some SEO…or SEM

The whole point of creating an affiliate website is to be able to take advantage of search traffic and convert it into affIliate sales.Which is why you must do some SEO…or SEM.

SEO is search engine optimization.It involves all the steps you can take to improve your site’s ranking on Google.

It covers text and voice search optimisation, link building and keyword optimisation.

SEM is search engine marketing.It simply means improving your site’s ranking by using paid promotions.It involves finding keywords to rank for,and then paying for your site to show up when those keywords are searched.

If you’re new to the digital marketing world and have little to no money for a startup,you should opt for SEO not SEM.SEM, although fast and efficient, can sometimes take a ton of money to do.

On your affIliate website,doing SEO simply means ensuring that your site and all the pages are indexed,and using the right keywords to ensure that they are placed at a much better vantage point to actually get search traffic.

It isn’t enough to be indexed,it is important to be indexed on the first page of google.Because the first page is where all the traffic goes.Most users don’t even know that there’s a second page.

First,you need to find out if your site has been indexed by google.To do this simply search site:your domain.com.Since the website is quite new,it may not have been indexed immediately but if it has, that’s good news.

Here’s the first thing you should do,go to the site kit dashboard from your wordpress dashboard.From the site kit dashboard visit search console.

Click the menu icon on the search console screen and then click URL inspection.

Then type in your sitename into the URL box and click enter.In a few seconds,you will see a message that will tell you that the URL you put in is on Google or the URL is NOT on Google.

If your site URL is on Google,then you should go ahead and start putting in the URLs of other pages on your site.

If the URL is not on Google,you should click ‘request indexing’ and an indexing request will be sent.Your site should be indexed within 2-14 days after that.

After indexing the link to your homepage,go ahead and request indexing for all other pages on your site.

The next step you will have to take is to optimise your pages with the right keywords because not everyone is going to search your sitename.

You can start by checking free keyword tools like Wordstream to find out which keywords you can rank for and then subtly including the keywords within your posts and pages.

You can check out this SEO guide on how to rank for certain keywords on your website.

Scale your business with ads

Whether it’s social media ads or PPC advertising,running paid ads is the fastest way of driving more traffic to your affIliate link.

It is also the easiest way to make your very first affIliate sales that will serve as a huge motivation for you to continue your affIliate marketing journey.

But in this case,you want to be able to email those who visited the site without buying anything and notify them of available deals and also notify the ones who made purchases of new deals.

So instead of you paying to drive the traffic right to your affIliate link,the traffic will be driven to your affIliate website instead.

This is done only to enable you to continuously reach out to the visitors you gained by running the ads.

Ads are definitely worth it when it comes to any form of marketing in 2022.They help give you a quick boost for success on your journey.

How to setup your affIliate website: Step-by-step guide