How To Create A Website For Affiliate Marketing

Create a website for affiliate marketing - today I'll show you how to. From scratch. It may sound daunting to you, but it really is not. Because this is how every niche affiliate marketer gets started (well...most of!) and if you follow the step-by-step below you'll find the whole process easy. Believe me, you'll soon be confident enough to publish posts after posts and promote as many affiliate products as you like. 

So today, you will be creating your own affiliate website using WordPress Gutenberg, the most popular website/blog builder;

Do This For Free!

So you can do this for absolutely free, using Siterubix subdomain, owned by Wealthy Affiliate. Subdomain means your website address will look like https://yourwebsite.siterubix.com. You can stay free forever, but in the future you will want a top-level domain (get rid of the name "siterubix" and make it https://yourwebsite.com) because it will get ranked higher in Google search. You'll have to pay for the domain and web hosting if you want a top-level domain, but for now it'll be free for as long as you like.

Step 1: Choose Your Domain Name

There are two types of domain names, and you might want to consider which type you should go for. Whether to choose a name that's closely related to your niche, or to choose a name that's personal to you.

Domain Name Closely Related

A domain name that's related to the niche is more beneficial, because users will recognize exactly what your whole website is about, and also search engines tend to rank your webpages higher than other pages with unrelated domain name. For example, you want to build a website about vegan leather products and promote related products as an affiliate, you can name it "veganleather.siterubix.com".

The only risk of choosing a niche-related domain name is, if you by any chance want to promote other products in the future. You named it "vegan leather" because you care about animals, and now you want to write about pet toys generally, for example. That'll be a little awkward. A domain name is not something that you should change for SERP (search engine ranking) purpose.

"Unrelated" Domain Name

You can choose an unrelated domain name, just like Amazon.com is not related to Amazon forest. In fact, you can choose any name as long as it's available. Just don't choose anything that's misleading or confusing against another brand (such as "amazons" "adddidas"), you'll get into trouble otherwise, you know what I mean.

You can still choose an unrelated domain name, and name the "website title" differently. For example;

• Domain name: ray-alexander.siterubix.com
• Site title: Vegan Leather For Men
• Tagline (site subtitle): I Don't Wear Dead Animals!

First step. Choose your domain name from here and see if it's available:  

Step 2: Build A Website In 30 Seconds

1. What kind of website do you want to build? - choose "On a free domain".
2. Choose a domain name for your website - I have chosen "veganleatherformen".
3. Enter a title for your website - "Vegan Leather For Men". It sounds kinda boring so I might change it later.
4. Choose a design for your website - select whichever one that you like. See, it doesn't take 30 seconds - or it might take you 1/2 day because there are thousands of designs to choose from. Just choose one, and you can change it at a later stage if you don't like it.

Click "Login Now" button to log in to your WordPress Admin dashboard. By the way your password will always be automatically set there - you'll never have to remember it, as long as you log in from this dashboard. "Reset Password" button will automatically replace your current password with a new secure one. You'll never have to confirm it by email, etc.

Step 3: WordPress Dashboard - Create 2 x Pages

There are "Posts" and "Pages" in WordPress, and there's a clear distinction in between these two functions. The difference is simple and you just need to understand it, so I'll quickly explain.

1. Posts: Your blog entries should be made from here. Every time you start writing a blog and promote your affiliate product(s), go to Posts > Add New Post.
2. Pages: Any "static" information - anything that's related to your whole website or yourself should be created in a "page". Whereas each of your blog post will be related to a specific subject, so it will be created in a "post." Typical "pages" are "About Me", "Contact Me", "Privacy Policy" and "Affiliate Disclaimer".

So firstly let's get the legal stuff done and out of the way - create "Privacy Policy" page and "Affiliate Disclaimer" page.

Page Templates

[1] Publish "Privacy Policy" Page

When you've taken the template and changed "YOURWEBSITE.com" to your own domain name, you'll publish it on your site. It won't be clearly visible to anyone just yet, but it's something that's legally required, so we'll do this first.

[2] Publish "Affiliate Disclosure" Page

Now take the template from the 2nd tab above, change "YOURWEBSITE.com" to your own domain name, and repeat what you've done with Privacy Policy page to publish Affiliate Disclosure page. 

I've explained how to copy & paste contents from a word-processing document and publish your page, because I wanted to show you the principle of it. But Siterubix/Wealthy Affiliate has a wonderful "Site Content" feature that offers you these templates and allows you to upload contents directly to your WordPress. When you're in, you'll find it (if not, I can show you where it is!). So you actually won't have to do all the copying & pasting. This super-easy feature is very popular among the users.

Step 4 (At Last!): Create Your First Affiliate Post

Now create your first post!

It's your first blog post and frankly, you can write anything you want (I don't mean offensive or illegal!). As you keep writing your blog posts, you'll gradually learn about "Search Engine Optimization". For now, the main thing is for you to know how simple it is to create a website for affiliate marketing.

My example website is about "vegan leather for men", so I decided to pick a few vegan wallets from Amazon and promote it in my first blog.

1. From the left-hand menu, go to Posts (instead of Pages because now you're writing a blog), then Add New.
2. Add a title of the post. You will learn the keyword and copywriting technique along the way, but for now just try a phrase that's related to the post. Keep it under 60 characters long max.
3. And start writing. 

Step 5: Embed An Image From Amazon

In order to place an affiliate link from Amazon, you have to join Amazon Associates program. It's entirely free and joining is fairly easy. Check my post "How To Make Money As Amazon Affiliate" - there are essential information including things to avoid doing, so that you won't breach Amazon's affiliate policy agreement. (If you do, you'll be banned!)

Once you've become an Amazon Associate, here's the easiest way to get your affiliate link and place it on your webpage.

For my example, I have picked a vegan wallet. When you've become an Amazon associate (affiliate), a special link bar called SiteStripe will appear at the top of every Amazon product page.

• Text link, which you can use it over a text or for your button,
• Image link, which you can embed in your post, or
• Text & Image link which you can also embed in your post.

Firstly I will embed the image link in my post - believe me, it's easy. Click the image link and a small box window will appear. You will then;

The code behind the image is your affiliate link. So when a user clicks this image, they'll be directed to Amazon website, and when they make a purchase you'll receive a commission. Yes, that's the idea!

Step 6: Place A "Buy Now" Button In Your Post

It gets easier - a button is a new feature that WordPress Gutenberg has introduced. And it is one of the most effective way to direct your visitor to another page - a sales page, retailer's product page, or in this example, Amazon's product page.

This is it. Now when a user clicks the button, they'll be directed to Amazon page, and you'll receive a commission if they make a purchase!

Step 7: Where Are My Pages!?

You have published and your pages are there, but not visible from your homepage - because you haven't set up menus. Adding a menu is not too difficult - from the left-side menu of your WordPress admin, go to Appearance > Menu to set it up.

I have explained how to set your navigate menu bars (Main Menu and Footer Menu) - take a look if you ever get stuck: How To Add A Menu In WordPress

Step 8: Play Around With Other Features

You would have seen many other features when you clicked Add Block "+" sign - such as gallery, table, separator, social share, quotes, video embedding, etc, etc.

Create a dummy page (from Page menu > Add New, and title it "My Test Page" or "Dummy Page"), add these blocks and preview. The best way to learn what they do, how they look and how differently you can change the look, is to play around with them and witness yourself.

The Contents!

I assumed it was obvious and have totally omitted to mention the contents, but this is a blog post page, so you need to write about the products that you're promoting. You can't just embed an Amazon image, place a button link in the center of the page and expect your visitors to click it. Write a good description of each product, that's what you should always do. 

The description (material, size, features, etc) can be taken from the Amazon product page, but the key is to let users know why you're recommending it. If a watch is "shock resistant" - you can explain why it's beneficial and in what kind of situation - it's ideal for sports, for example.

Does that make sense?

How To Create A Website For Affiliate Marketing

I hope you've managed to create your first website following these step-by-step on Siterubix. Wealthy Affiliate will allow you to build up to 2 websites for absolutely free, plus the first set of video and text training courses. Keep going with it - we will take you through, and make your affiliate commissions the main source of income, just like I've made it in the past 2 years!