One of the most common things people are curious about when they start getting into affiliate marketing is how to start a website. In this article I will walk you through a general step by step guide on how to start a website.
Step 1
First, you will need web hosting. Basically, in lamens terms, web hosting is like a house to put your content in. Without a house you have nowhere to put your things. So first things first let’s check out some different hosting providers and what benefits they offer.
GoDaddy, the big fish in the hosting industry. Many benefits, including stellar support.
HostGator, the fairly new guy that’s built a great reputation.
BlueHost, not well known but, a tremendous value.
Step 2
Second, domain name to start a website. It is the address to your house.
Picking a name is important. You want to stay away from long names and keep your site memorable.
Step 3
Third web design. Should you build your website yourself or hire somebody?
Pros and Cons.
Step 4
Fourth content is king.
Make sure your site is worth visiting and worth bringing people back. Granted this site may not have a lot of content, the quality of the content will continue to bring readers back because the information that is provided is useful and they may even tell their friends to check it out as well.
Step 5
Last but not least to start a website you will need to do SEO. I won’t go too far into SEO right now as it is a very extensive subject. What I will say right now is that you need to make sure that your site is quality and you need to start bookmarking it with social media. Share it on Facebook and Twitter and also make sure that you have submitted articles from your site to article directories so that search engines will crawl your site.
There you have it folks, a general guide on how to start a website. Now go and get some hosting and build yourself a wonderful site! Believe it or not, this is the hard part and it can all be done in a few hours!
When you’re getting into ways to make good money on a passive income there are different ways to go about it. I personally like to think of passive income in two ways passive income and smart passive income. Both are good but smart passive income is just that, smarter.
An example of passive income would be a website that has something for sale such as an e-book or a website that has affiliate programs associated with it that have a one time payout. This is a great way to generate passive income but it could be improved. Although you are getting paid for a minimal amount of work you are still only generating a one time payment. In the end that one payment is nice but it would be better if you could paid over and over again for the same sale. This is a way to maximize your profit over time. It’s not as instantly gratifying as a large up front amount but in the long term it is a way to build smart passive income.
Smart passive income is very similar to the examples above, however there is an addition. Instead of having products or affiliate programs that only have a one time payout you have a service with a monthly recurring fee or affiliate programs that provide ongoing royalties. For example instead of having an affiliate program that pays you $50 for a sale of a service a better idea for smart passive income would be an affiliate program that offers you a percentage of the sales for a customer for the life of the account. Although the percentage may be smaller at first, after a while when you build your pipeline you will have more money coming to you on a consistent basis.
| By building a pipeline and getting more of the smaller commissions you set yourself up for a more consistent and stable means of passive income. By creating a smart passive income you don’t have to worry as much about certain things that other affiliates have to worry about. For example, if you get a charge back then you can lose commissions. If you are getting a percentage of an ongoing customer’s revenue than it is a lot easier to deal with short term. If you get a charge back on a $150 commission and you only have 3 sales, then that can hurt your bottom line pretty badly. If you get a charge back and lose $10 a month, well that’s a little easier to deal with short term and can easily be made up. |
Always make sure that you are building towards the Goal of getting many customers and income streams to build up your overall pipeline and your income will be virtually free money every month. Building smart passive income takes a little longer than just generating revenue from large sales but it is definitley worth it in the long run.
Think about it, 10 sales at a $50 commission would mean $500 1 time only. 10 sales at $10 a month would be $100 a month, if those customers remain customers for 12 months you’ve already MORE THAN DOUBLED your money!
Since this is the first article that I’m posting on the subject of affiliate marketing, I thought that it would only be appropriate that it is about getting started with affiliate marketing. I have put together a checklist of things you will need and I will go into detail about what each item on the list is and how to use them properly. This article will cover the basics of what you need along with a few tips to get the most out of your new affiliate marketing website. All of the items on the checklist can be purchased for under $20 and will cost you less than $12 a month on average to keep up and running. Now that’s a business with low overhead!
The way that affiliate marketing works is much different than other businesses. You do not keep any inventory. You do not have to worry about taking orders or proccessing. You simply get the referrals to your affiliate program and they will take care of the rest. This very reason is why so many people call affiliate marketing passive income. I personally beleive that there is no such thing as a 100% passive income system. In my opinion to be truly successful you don’t have to overwork yourself but you should still be able to dedicate at least an hour a day to your website(s) and affiliate program research. Now let’s get started.
The Affiliate Marketing Checklist
If you’re going to get started in affiliate marketing make sure that you go through this checklist first. It will make sure that you have all the resources you need to get started the right way. A lot of affiliate marketing sites out there will want you to just buy an automated package that will “do the work for you” but without the proper time and attention you might as well be buying a pet rock. It’s nice to say that you have it, but it won’t do much for you.
1) Domain Name
A good domain name will contain not only keywords on the subject manner that you will be covering in your content, it will also be short and relevant. Picking keywords in a domain name is a great way to help you out in the last part of the checklist so keep this in mind. If you haven’t already decided what your domain name is going to be, try brainstorming about different keywords that you can use in different combinations. After you have picked your domain name then you will need to register it. This can be done separately or in combination with web hosting. Most web hosting companies will include a free domain name with your web hosting package which we will cover next.
Here are a few domain registrars you can look into, for more information on domain name registration please visit our Web Hosting Resource Page.
Dream Host Domain Names - DuoServers Domain Names
2) Web Hosting
So you have your domain name, or at least have a name picked out, it’s time to find a place to put it. Web hosting is like a virtual building for your business. You need one that it large enough to handle your needs, but not so big that it increases your overhead unreasonably. For most people’s needs shared hosting is all that is really required. You will see offers for VPS hosting or dedicated servers. My suggestions is to start out with shared hosting and as you grow move in to the next “building” as you need it. That’s the best part about affiliate marketing, you can start small and work your way up. This allows you to get started with minimal investment and keep your overhead to a minimum so you can keep the most profit.
Here is a list of some web hosting providers you may be interested in. If you would like additional information and a full list of web hosting providers with more details, please visit our Web Hosting Resources page.
Business Hosting from $9.99 Duo Servers – Dream Host Web Hosting
Bluehost Web Hosting – HostGator Web Hosting 1 cent
3) Content
On the internet, nothing rings more true than the old phrase that “content is king”. If you don’t have content then you really have nothing. The most important content on your website is going to be your text. Videos are a great way to entertain your visitors but they are hard to get listed on search engines and without text you probably won’t get any vistitors. Pictures are also very similar to videos in this way. You can have a page with a picture but it’s really not worth a thousand words. You need to be able to engage your visitors and keep them coming back.
This is why I always tell people that there is not much truth behind websites or people that say you can make a 100% passive income. 90% is a figure that I could beleive but a 100% passive income is quite a stretch. You need to keep your site up to date to stay relevant. Why would people go to the same website repeatedly if it always has the same information on it? I’m sure somebody with a case of amnesia might, but you are really limiting your audience in that case. Your content needs to be new and relevant to your audience as well as your ads.
When writing content having content produced you need to make sure that it is related to your affiliate programs or visa versa. It won’t do you any good to advertise a Porsche on a site about saving money on grocery shopping. If people are looking for a certain type of information you will get a much better click through rate and conversion rate if your ads are relevant. One way to automate this process is to use programs such as Google Ads which will base advertisements not only on the content of your website but also on the preferences of your visitors. This directed advertising will give you a much needed leg up when you are getting started and a continued advantage when your site grows.
If you need some help getting content written for your site you can always outsource. Here are a few sites that provide these services for a nominal fee. Textbroker.com provides authors for as low as $1.20 for 100 words for example.
4) Web Design
Web design can be as easy or as difficult as you make it. A very simple way to get started that is great for traffic is to start using a blog such as WordPress. I personally beleive in the power of WordPress and highly recommend it as a way to get started. There are many themes that will make your site look proffessional with minimal effort and it is easy to post new content and manage your advertisements with plugins. Since there are so many options for web design I would really just like to stick to the DIY webdesign since that is going to be the most cost effective and relativley painless way of getting things done. If you want to learn more about wordpress or want a wordpress site setup for you so that you can get started without having to worry about design then I would recommend the foloowing sites to get up and running.
WordSkool - Full WordPress Administration - WordSkool is a great resource for learning about WordPress and they also offer hosting, design and full administration, allowing you to just update your page and leave the rest to the pros.
DreamHost Web Hosting – Automated WordPress Install Included just add designer.
5) SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the fertilizer to your new website. It will help your business grow and help people find you. What use is the best website on the planet if nobody knows where it is? SEO can be a very in depth and confusing subject matter but it is a neccessity in today’s online enviroment. I have included some links referring to places to get more information on SEO since there is so much information on the subject so I will stick to the basics and provide some great resources that you can get more information from.
Ice Block Media – Ice Block Media offers design, hosting and administration of your website, consulting and SEO services.
6) Affiliate Programs
Last but certainly the most important part of affiliate marketing is getting into a good affiliate program. There are so many affiliate programs out there I just want to focus on an example an affiliate program. After you see how it works and then you can pick and choose which ones will best fit your business model and your needs.
Let’s say you are going to be reviewing products, then perhaps Amazon and eBay are great way to monetize your traffic. You can provide direct links to your recommended items for sale and get a commission when they are sold.
For example, let’s say that I’m writing a review on diamond rings and I want to monetize the traffic that I receive from the article. I could make a recommendation and include a link like this.
“To buy this Diamond Ring check it out here on Amazon :
”
Or, the other option is to just simply link to the affiliate’s website separately and just leave it by itself as a stand alone advertisement like this.
Either way you choose to go about doing it the most important part of the whole process is just that “doing it”. If you want to catch fish you have to at least have a couple of hooks out in the water. They don’t do any good sitting in your boat.
For more information on Affiliate Programs please visit our affilaite program resource page for a list of great affiliate programs with good payouts.
That pretty much wraps up how to get started. For greater detail on any of these subjects I recommend looking into the different resource pages on this site. Also the following books and websites may be of great use: