How to Start Affiliate Marketing Business With WordPress Blog

Last Updated on 5 months by Go Review Rite

Affiliate marketing is fast becoming a very lucrative business for tons of people across the globe. 

With the surge in internet marketing on e-commerce, affiliate marketers are making thousands of dollars monthly by simply selling other people’s products.

The great advantage is that you do not need to have a product, handle delivery or customer service of any kind. 

All you have to do is to recommend great products to people who are most likely to buy them and earn a commission whenever a sale is made.

What is Affiliate Marketing Business? 

Affiliate marketing is a business model that has been around for a while where people get paid for referring buyers to a merchant.

So they are basically 3 parties to every affiliate marketing model. They are:

• The affiliate marketer
• The affiliate program or affiliate network
• The merchant

The Merchant: 

the merchant is the seller or creator of the goods or services. 

In a bid to make more sales and get more people referring others to his or her business. 

He creates an affiliate program where he would pay people a percentage of the sales he makes from someone they refer to his website.

The Affiliate Program or Affiliate Network

 This is the system that facilitates the transactions between the merchant and the affiliate marketer by tracking sales and referrals coming from the affiliate marketer.

The Affiliate Marketer

this basically any person that wants to promote someone else’s products for a commission. 

Step By Step Guide To How affiliate Marketing works

Here I am going to work you through all the steps you will need to start your affiliate marketing business with a WordPress blog.

Right from choosing a domain name for your website to building your website as well as choosing and promoting affiliate offers.

So without wasting any more time, let’s dive right into it 

Step 1:-  Choose a Niche

There are a lot of procedures on the web for choosing a niche for your affiliate marketing website.

While a lot of experts would agree you pick a niche you are passionate about, others would advise you to go for profits instead of passion.

So here is the truth about the subject, 

If you pick a niche you are not passionate about, you may not have the stamina and interest to keep on giving out qualified content over time.

Often than not, you will get fed up with the niche and start searching for someone to buy the website you have already built.

On the other hand, if you pick a niche that is not profitable just because you are passionate about it, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with the task involved.

Money motivates everyone I’m very sure, including me.

Therefore, I would advise you to go for something that overlaps. It should be something quite profitable and you got interested in.

Some of the most profitable niches today include:

• Business
• Marketing
• Weight loss
• Food
• Fashion
• Relationship 

How Small Should a Niche Be?

Talking about the size of a good niche, I usually advise newbies to go for something as small as possible.

Here is my guideline:

• Can you exhaust every popular question in your niche with just 95 articles with each one answering a particular question? If yes, then go for it.

• But if it will take less than that, you may want to consider widening it a little. 

• And if it will take 30% more than that, then it may be too wide for you.

Step 2:- Find a Website Name Related to Your Niche

When it comes to choosing a domain name for your affiliate marketing website, I would always advise you to get a domain name with a dot com domain extension.

So to get started, head straight to Hostinger or Namecheap and type your proposed domain name into the domain availability search bar

There is a very high tendency that you would have to search for more than four variations of your proposed name before you find one that is available.

How to Choose the Best Domain Name (4 Tips)

So these helpful tips will help you choose a good domain name include

Avoid hyphens and symbols:

Domain names are not just like brand names, and using hyphens and symbols can make you lose a lot of customers who may find it difficult to recall, type or trust your website.

Avoid double letters at all costs:

 Imagine a domain name like dockkey dot com, The double k actually reduces the value as one would most likely type dockey instead of dockkey.

Check out copyright issues: 

Try as much as possible to make sure that the name you pick to start your affiliate marketing blog is not registered. 

And also not related to any other business as that may lead to terrible legal issues down the road.

Use keywords in your domain: 

unless you are going for a completely branded domain name, you may want to add your major keyword to your domain name. 

For instance, if you are blogging about cats, your domain name could be catmanual dot com, catsdiary dot com etc.

Step 3:-  Sign Up for Web Hosting to Start Building your Website

Now you get your name ready, It is now time to get your web host ready and start building your website.

This process is absolutely straightforward and you can have it done even if you hate computers.

I recommend using Hostinger as they are one of the reputable guys in the industry, 

coupled with the fact that their services are top-notch and at a very affordable price and also recommended by WordPress itself.

So the first step is to head straight to Hostinger.com

Pick a Hosting Plan

To get started, you have to pick a hosting plan that best matches your requirement and budget. 

A lot of internet marketers including me would recommend you go with the business plan because it has Free Domain worth of $15, Domain privacy and other added benefits.

The function of the domain privacy add-on would be to protect your personal information (your full name, email address, phone number and home address) from being published anywhere on the internet.

Enter your Billing Information

Just like every e-commerce website, all you have to do here is fill in your account details such as your name, and email address (do well to use a working email address that is only used by you.) 

 This is going to be the powerhouse of your website and if it gets into the wrong hands, your site could be taken down in minutes) and then, input your address.

For faster checkout, they also have their system integrated into their Google account. 

So all you have to do is connect your Hostinger account to your Google account using the sign up with Google button. 

And they will automatically derive all the needed information from your Google account. you don’t want to enter your information manually, 

Please note that Hostinger only offers billing options for you to pay 1, 2, 3 or 4 years upfront.

 You can choose based on your budget, but choosing a year helps you to save a lot of money 

Claim Your Choice Domain Name

Now, this is a part where you input the domain name you have chosen. The engine would run a search to confirm it is still available after which you can proceed.

Hostinger offers a free dot com domain name for one year, so you can take advantage of it.

Step 4. Build Your Website with WordPress

To get started building your website with WordPress, all you have to do is log in to your website Cpanel using the login details sent to your email address connected to your Hostinger Account.

You can access your cPanel backend by attaching a /Cpanel to the end of your domain name.

So if your domain name is domain.com, to access your cPanel, simply go to domain.com/cpanel

After successfully logging in, head straight to WordPress which appears under the software section click on it to install it.

5 Important Checklist Settings For Launching a WordPress Site

Leave all the settings default except the following parts:

• Website name: here input the name of your website

• Website description: a great description could help tell people what your website is all about. It should be too long.

• Username: this is the username you are going to use while login to your WordPress backend

• Password: Password to login to your WordPress backend

• Admin email address: I would advise you to use your current email address as your website can also be hacked if this is compromised.

Step 5. Choose the Best Theme for Affiliate Marketing Website.

The theme of your affiliate marketing website matters a lot.

This is because it is the theme of a website that dictates how user-friendly your website would be especially on the WordPress platform.

What You Should Consider Before Using The Best WordPress Themes

Always make sure your theme follows these guidelines so as to be safe and maximize your earnings.

Loading speed: using the wrong WordPress theme can reduce the loading speed of your website drastically. 

And this could have a really bad effect on your website’s ranking on search engines such as Google as well as user experience.

Minimal is better: the simplest themes on the internet are actually the best. Forget about the fancy and colour look of some theme, you will soon get tired of them.

Security: it is also very important to pick themes from reputable vendors and also ignore nulled themes for the safety of your website.

Some of the best themes you can start using today include:

• Astra
• Generatepress
• Genesis
• Newspaper
• Bimber

Step 6. Install a WordPress Plugin

You need to install, activate and configure the settings for some plugins that will add helpful features to your site.

Some of these add security, some help with site speed, some add on-page SEO and some will aid in adding required pages to your site.

It’s most likely recommended that you start with a WordPress website because WordPress is a very simple-to-use solution for creating powerful affiliate websites.

It ranks faster and is also able to save monthly subscriptions on those expensive landing page builders such as Clickfunnels, GrooveFunnels and Builderall etc.

The best part about WordPress is all the plugins that are almost free to use. Even paid WordPress plugins are very cheap while it offers yearly premium plans at very affordable prices.

For the purpose of this affiliate marketing tutorial, we recommend you get the following affiliate marketing tools

For Collecting Lead and Builder Landing Pages –

For Email Marketing and Automation –

Step 7:- Choose an Affiliate Program

When it comes to choosing an affiliate program, there are a few notable points you should always put into consideration. These include:

• Relevance
• Conversion Rate
• Payout options
• Cookie lifespan

Let’s take a deeper look into those qualities.

Relevance: The affiliate program you choose to sign up for has to offer products and services that your audience is going to be interested in.

For instance, if you have the means to reach an audience interested in blogging, there would be actually no point recommending pressing iron to them.

Although you may make some sales, the conversion rate would be very low compared to you promoting blogging themes, plugins and web hosting 

Conversion Rate Not all products geared towards your audience are a good fit. 

Before you sign up to promote any product, always make sure you confirm that the company has an offer and mechanism that would efficiently convert the traffic you send to them into customers and therefore affiliate commission.

If you keep on sending qualified traffic to a merchant’s website and the conversion is close to 0, you may want to change to another merchant.

Payout Options: while a majority of affiliate programs offer direct bank transfers, you would always want to confirm that the payment methods they provide are convenient for you.

Cookie Lifespan: a cookie in this context is a web tracker placed on the web browser of anyone who clicks on your affiliate link.

This ensures that even if they don’t make a purchase immediately, you still get paid passive income whenever they make a purchase within the lifespan of the cookie.

A majority of affiliate programs offer a 60 days cookie and you would want to confirm. 

The Top Affiliate Marketing Networks

So now we have concluded that, let us take a look at some of the most popular and reliable affiliate networks you can sign up for right now and start promoting a variety of offers

1. ClickBank Affiliate Marketing Networks

Clickbank is a great affiliate network with years of unbeatable reputation. If you have ever searched on terms related to how to make money online on YouTube, you should have heard of it.

It has a huge catalogue of products available and covers almost every market ranging from health to marketing and even up to digital services.  There are thousands of products you can promote as soon as you’ve signed up.

Like I always say, you can make a whole lot of commission by promoting digital products compared to physical products. 

Why? because the merchant can pay you up to 70% of every sale you bring in because digital products usually come with a 100% profit margin.

As a newbie, products with affiliate commission from 50% to 70% is a good fit.

2. Amazon Affiliate Network

 Amazon is one of the largest e-commerce stores in the world and houses a ton of products across almost every category in the world on its website.

As a marketing medium to get more sales, they have an affiliate program known as Amazon associates where you can earn a commission for every sale they make from someone you recommend within the cookie lifespan.

The main problem that comes with promoting offers from e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon is the extremely low commission.

You typically earn 2% – 10% of the total sale they make from your referral and that will not be something worth the traffic.

if you are not sending over a ton of buyers to their website.

3. JVzoo Affiliate Program

 The JVZoo affiliate program is similar to both Clickbank and Warrior plus and in fact, ranks among the top affiliate programs in the world.

JVZoo is known for the variety of digital products it has to offer to both buyers and Affiliate marketers. 

Signing up is very straightforward and easy as you can sign-up now and get accepted immediately.

So if you are looking to make high commissions, as high as 75% from promoting products such as

• E-book sales
• Private label rights (PLR) products
• Softwares
• Courses
• Worksheet etc.

Then JVzoo is going to be a good fit for you. They have a variety of payout options that you may want to consider taking a look at.

4. WarriorPlus Affiliate Networks

 WarriorPlus is one of the most popular affiliate networks among internet marketers across the globe and they currently accept affiliates from any part of the world.

It’s a platform for buying, selling and promoting digital products such as software, ebooks and courses which are mostly related to internet marketing. 

You can choose to promote a merchant’s offer as an affiliate or equally list your products too for other affiliate marketers to promote.

Step 8:-  Get Your Affiliate Links

Your affiliate link is a unique link given to you alone in an affiliate program to track every visitor or sales you refer.

They take various forms and you can find them by logging in to your affiliate dashboard for a particular affiliate dashboard and copying them

Step 9. Create Content Marketing Strategies To Promote Affiliate link

Creating a content strategy to promote Affiliate links is one of the most important parts that can actually determine the success of your affiliate marketing website.

There are basically 2 types of content that convert visitors into affiliate sales at a reasonable rate and they include

How-to Guides: 

These are long and in-depth articles that work your readers through all the necessary steps needed to get something done. 

It is very important to make sure to post as detailed as possible and make use of visual illustrations.

For instance, if you want to promote software that helps remove the background of a picture. 

You can write a detailed article on “How to remove the background of an image in 7 steps“.

Reviews 

 These are targeted at those who are in the buy now or consideration stage. 

All you need to do is write an honest review of a product including the advantages and disadvantages of buying them. 

And also if they are recommended by you, you can attach an affiliate link to the relevant keywords.

You can check out the top 5 highly converting content marketing templates that have been proven to effectively convert traffic into cool affiliate commissions.

Step 10. Get Traffic to Your Content

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxTHmh29Geo

Now you got your affiliate marketing website ready with the content needed to push some sales.

That alone would not work. Forget what they tell you, if you build it, they will come, that is total bullshit.

There is work that is involved in driving traffic to your website contents and until traffic comes, you would not make a dime of it.

Remember, the way your affiliate marketing website works is by converting qualified traffic into cash by recommending products and services to them.

 The bottom line here is that No traffic, No Money.

Proven and Best Traffic Sources for Affiliate Marketing

You can basically drive traffic to your website using two methods

• The paid approach
• The free approach

Whatever method you choose, you are actually going to spend a lot of resources ranging from your time to your money.

Paid Method

If you have some money to spend, you can fast-track your success by running some ads on social media such as Facebook to get your first set of readers.

But before you do this, make sure to have an email capturing mechanism so that you can always reach out to them for free using email marketing.

Free method

This includes Search Engine Optimization as well as driving traffic from other websites to your website.

This usually takes some time to start seeing tangible results and you absolutely can’t predict it.

Any way you get your first sale as an affiliate on ClickBank and other affiliate networks without spending a dime on adverts. 

Using these untapped free traffic sources to promote your affiliate links or offers. 

Step 11:-  Mistakes Affiliate Marketers You Should Avoid 

As to every venture, there are certainly a whole lot of mistakes newbies may make that would either kill their success or delay it.

 I don’t want you to fall into any of them, so I will be giving you 3 of the most common mistakes you can make as an affiliate marketer.

Not Building An Email List

This is the biggest mistake you would ever make as an affiliate marketer. I would advise you to start collecting emails from day one

Promoting Products You Can’t Use

Affiliate marketing is a game of trust. If your audience doesn’t trust you, they will not follow your recommendations and become buyers. 

The best way to gain their trust is to be transparent when communicating with them and only recommend what you can use.

Chasing The Money:

 Many people dive into this business and right from day one, they are trying everything possible to start making money.

Let’s get this clear. In the affiliate marketing business, only those who offer value catch the money.

If you start by chasing money, there is a very huge possibility that you would be frustrated very soon when money doesn’t come.

Recap of How to Start Affiliate Marketing Business With WordPress Blog… 

• Step 1. Choose a profitable niche that catches your interest. 

• Step 2. Find and register an SEO-optimized domain name related to your niche. 

• Step 3. Buy a website hosting and set it with your domain. 

• Step 4. Build an SEO-optimized website with the best plugin and theme. 

• Step 5. Choose an affiliate network that fits your niche and website. 

• Step 6. Generate and copy your affiliate link from the affiliate network and start promotion. 

• Step 7. Create the best content marketing strategy plan, to promote your affiliate offers or link. 

• Step 8 Send buyer traffic to your affiliate links to start getting those sales and commissions. 

Finally try as much as possible as affiliate marketers to help people out, examine your audience’s problems and find a way to solve the problem. 

Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, you should avoid promoting products because of money’s sake, provide value and recommend products to them. 

Conclusion 

I have been into online marketing for several years. I tried a lot of business models like dropshipping, eCommerce, freelancing, Amazon FBA, crypto, etc. 

Some worked while some didn’t work, so I came to realize that the only business model that can stand the taste of time is affiliate marketing. 

Right now, I make passive income to make a living with affiliate marketing… So, what are we still waiting for? It’s not too late to start your own affiliate marketing business. 

The affiliate marketing space is wide open for new marketers. So get into affiliate marketing in the right way today!  You know we take our time, effort and resources to come up with this affiliate marketing for beginners guide. 

You can support us by sharing it with love once on your social media platforms and also if you have any questions drop them in the comments below. We took our time to respond to your questions or queries. 

Finally, you can continue reading how to start affiliate marketing without a website step-by-step guide. 

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