Step By Step Guide On How To Set Up Your Affiliate Marketing Business

caneasily August 3, 2023

54 9 minutes read

Affiliate marketing is a popular way to earn money online by promoting other people’s products or services and earning a commission for each sale you make.

For newbies, it’s often an overwhelming task to figure out where to start, and what steps to follow to build a successful affiliate marketing business.
To help go through the right process, In this blog post, I will show you how to start affiliate marketing step by step, from choosing a niche and finding affiliate programs to creating a website and generating traffic.
So let’s get started.

Step 1: Choose a niche

A niche is a specific topic or category that you want to focus on in your affiliate marketing business. For example, you could choose fitness, travel, beauty, gaming, or any other topic that interests you and has a large audience. Choosing a niche will help you narrow down your target market, find relevant affiliate products, and create content that attracts and converts your visitors. The more specific your niche is, the less you see the competition. Even though broad categories enhance your audience base, it takes you to tough competition.

When it comes to choosing the niche, it’s not as easy as it seems. Your affiliate business earnings depend on the niche you have chosen too. So, while you choose your niche, take time and choose the best fit for you.

To choose a niche, you should consider below mentioned points.

Your passion and expertise:

It’s easier and more enjoyable to work on something that you are passionate about and have some knowledge of. You will also be able to provide more value and credibility to your audience if you are an expert or have experience in your niche. That’s why it’s better to consider a niche that is a blend of your passion and expertise.
Another point that you should be focusing on is,

The demand and competition:

You want to choose a niche that has enough demand and potential customers, but not too much competition that makes it hard to stand out and rank well in search engines. You can use tools like Google Trends, Keyword Planner, or SEMrush to research the popularity and competition of different niches. You must choose a topic that is not overdone and not already saturated. That will make your journey harder.
The last one.

The profitability:

Yes, you must look at how much potential the niche has, that you are likely to choose. You want to choose a niche that has profitable affiliate products or services that you can promote and earn commissions from. You need to perform a deep analysis of that.

Let’s go ahead to

Step 2: Finding affiliate products or services

Once you have chosen a niche, the next step is to find affiliate products or services that you can promote on your website. You can either join an affiliate network or platform that connects you with multiple merchants and products in your niche, or you can directly apply to individual affiliate programs for the products or services that you want to promote. Both have their own pros and cons.
Below, I am mentioning both options and start with,

Some of the most popular affiliate networks:

CJ Affiliate:

A network of over 3,000 merchants in various niches that offer both physical and digital products. You can search their database and apply to the programs that interest you.
ShareASale: A network of over 4,000 merchants in various niches that offer both physical and digital products. You can browse their categories and find products that suit your niche and audience.

ClickBank:

A marketplace of digital products such as ebooks, courses, software, etc. that pay high commissions (up to 75%) per sale.

Amazon Associates:

Amazon is the largest online retailer that offers millions of products in almost every niche imaginable and Amazon Associates is its own affiliate network. You can earn up to 10% commission per sale depending on the product category.
These are the world’s biggest affiliate networks.
Now, let’s see some individual affiliate networks which are very popular and offer good commissions.

Web hosting and securities:

The web hosting industry is one of the flourishing industries in the world. Website is the modern-day identity for your businesses, and having it has become a must thing. To build a website and to make it available for visitors, web hosting is a must require part. The demand for a reputed and high-performing web hosting solution is ever-demanding.

So, as an affiliate marketer choosing a hosting niche would be a great one.

If you take HostGator, one of the biggest web hosting companies, offers $65 to $125 per sign-up to their affiliates.

Bluehost, another bigger name also offers the same.
Apart from the hosting industry, if you go for other software such as email marketing tools, social media manager tools, or analytical tools such as Semrush, and Ahrefs, they also offer excellent commissions.

The above one was to choose your affiliate niche. Right after selecting the niche, you need to select the product or service. There is a plethora of products or services in every category.

Some tips for choosing affiliate products or services are:

Select relevant products:

Choose products or services that are relevant to your niche and audience. You want to promote something that solves a problem, fulfills a need, or provides a benefit for your visitors.

Trusted and quality products should be chosen:

Choose products or services that are high-quality and trustworthy. You want to promote something that you have used yourself or have done enough research on. You don’t want to risk losing your reputation and trust by promoting something that is low-quality or scammy.

Select the product or service with a good reputation:

Choose products or services that have good reviews and testimonials. You want to promote something that has positive feedback from other customers or users. This will help you increase your conversion rate and earn more commissions.

Step 3: Create a website

The next step is to create a website where you will showcase your affiliate products or services and provide valuable content for your visitors. You will need a domain name, a web hosting service, and a content management system (CMS) to create your website. Now, many affiliates, promote their affiliate links through third-party channels such as YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram but, having a website is a must thing.
A website is something that you can be,
To make an affiliate website, you will need,

A domain name:

A domain name is the address of your website on the internet, such as www.yourwebsite.com. You can buy a domain name from a domain registrar like Namecheap, GoDaddy, or Bluehost for around $10-$15 per year.

Hosting to host your website:

A web hosting service is a service that stores your website files and makes them accessible on the internet. You can buy a web hosting service from a web hosting provider like Bluehost, HostGator, or SiteGround for around $3-$10 per month.

CMS or content management system:

A content management system (CMS) is software that allows you to create and manage your website content without coding. The most popular CMS is WordPress, which is free, easy to use, and has thousands of themes and plugins that you can use to customize your website.

Creating and managing your website in WordPress is super easy and anyone with little design knowledge and proceed to do so. Here you do not need any coding knowledge either. Everything is drag and drop.
To create your website with WordPress, you need to follow these steps.

Install WordPress on your web hosting service. Most web hosting providers offer one-click installation of WordPress on their dashboards.
Choose a theme for your website. A theme is the design and layout of your website. You can choose from thousands of free or premium themes on WordPress.org or other websites like ThemeForest, Elegant Themes, or StudioPress.

Install plugins for your website. Plugins are additional features and functionalities that you can add to your website. You can choose from thousands of free or premium plugins on WordPress.org or other websites like CodeCanyon, WPBakery, or Elementor.
Create pages and posts for your website. Pages are static pages that contain information about your website, such as your home page, about page, contact page, etc. Posts are dynamic pages that contain your blog content, such as your articles, reviews, tutorials, etc.

Step 4: Generate traffic

Once you create your website, the next important thing is driving traffic to your platform. Without the traffic, to whom you are going to refer your affiliate links?
You need to generate traffic to your website and attract visitors who are interested in your niche and affiliate products or services. There are a couple of billion internet users worldwide, but driving them to your affiliate is a tough job. It requires solid strategies and vision.

There are many ways to generate traffic, but some of the most effective and common ones are:

Search engine optimization (SEO):

SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content for search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. The goal is to rank high on the search results for keywords that are relevant to your niche and audience. To do SEO, you will need to:

Do keyword research:

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing the words and phrases that your potential customers use to search for information, products, or services in your niche. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find keywords that have high search volume and low competition. Google keywords planner is a free and widely used tool while the others charge according to your requirements.

Optimize your website:

Website optimization is the process of improving the technical aspects of your website, such as speed, security, mobile-friendliness, etc. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom to test and improve your website performance.
Optimize your website content:
Content optimization is the process of improving the quality and relevance of your content for your keywords and audience. You can use tools like Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or All in One SEO to optimize your content for SEO.

Don’t forget Social media:

Social media marketing is the process of using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. to promote your website and content and engage with your audience.

To do social media marketing, you will need to:

Create a profile or page for your website on each platform. You can use tools like Canva, PicMonkey, or Adobe Spark to create attractive graphics and images for your profile or page.
Share your content and affiliate links on each platform. You can use tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, or CoSchedule to schedule and automate your posts.
Interact with your followers and other users on each platform. You can use tools like Mention, Sprout Social, to monitor and respond to comments, messages, mentions, etc.

Email marketing:

Email marketing is the process of using email to communicate with your audience and promote your website and affiliate products or services. However, email marketing is something that you can’t start without having a considerable number of traffic to your website. Once, someone visits to your website and is impressed by the information you share and then the visitor provides his email address. Then you market with the email list.

To do email marketing, you will need to:

Build an email list:

An email list is a collection of email addresses of people who have subscribed to receive updates from you. You can build an email list by offering a freebie or incentive (such as an ebook, a course, a cheat sheet, etc.) in exchange for their email address. You can use tools like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or AWeber to create and manage your email list.

Send newsletters and promotional emails:

Newsletters are regular emails that contain valuable content for your subscribers, such as tips, advice, news, etc. Promotional emails are occasional emails that contain offers or discounts for your affiliate products or services. You can use tools like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or AWeber to create and send newsletters and promotional emails.

Also, in the early stages of your website, you can do something better

Steps 5: Track your affiliate journey:

Once you start getting traffic to your website, now it’s your turn to check your efforts. You need to consistently monitor your efforts.

How many clicks you are getting, on your affiliate links?
How many people have purchased through your affiliate URL?
Which contents are driving the most sales?
How your content strategy is working.

You can track your affiliate sales through the company which you have joined.
Many affiliate networks have their own tracking mechanism, while others rely on third-party affiliate tracking systems. To get detailed insights into your website, Google Analytics will help you with this. This is a free tool offered by Google. However, there are various other tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and others that give you more precise information about your website site performance on search engines.

These are the main steps to start your affiliate marketing journey. Affiliate marketing is not a quick-rich formula anyway. You need to keep patience and work consistently to achieve success in this field. So what are you waiting for? Happy affiliate marketing.

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