As an affiliate you need to have an affiliate website and your challenge might be how to make one especially when you are a beginner. However, it is important to know how to create an affiliate website for free because it is possible, you just need to learn how… which can be free also.
How to Build Your First Affiliate Website
In order to do any kind of online business, you will want to have a website. It is time for your business to reach the next level — presence on the internet. Now that you are ready to create a website for your business, where do you begin?
However, building your first website in order to make money online can feel a bit overwhelming. After all, there are so many choices. We will take you through a few basic steps to get you going on your first website. Here’s how to build your first website.
Determine your website’s purpose
What are you going to do on the website? How are you going to make money? This is important because some website languages, templates and platforms are more effective for certain business models.
For example, if you’re building a theme-based website, you may want to use a website building service like SiteBuildIt. Also to get more ideas look for affiliate website examples that can help you with what to come up with.
Or when building an affiliate website you should know basic niche selection strategies so that you may choose a fitting template for the niche such that the purpose of the website may stand out. You do not want to choose a theme designed for an Adsense based website for an Amazon based product!
Choose A Platform
This is just what the name implies; it is the base on which your website will stand. Once you know what you want to accomplish with your website, it’s time to choose your website platform. There are a number of options here. You can use website design software like DreamWeaver or FrontPage. Other options include Joomla and Drupal.
There are online courses and books to show you how to use these platforms. It might take you some time to build your website; however, you’ll be able to create it one hundred percent on your own. With just online help you can know how to make an affiliate website for free especially if the budget is tight. You will just have to spend time.
Another option is to use your website host’s predesigned templates. These templates are often customizable and are a pretty quick and easy way to get a website up. You can also learn a website design format like Joomla which is a content management system written in PHP, a design language.
You can also use site building services that offer wizards and templates to help you customize a website for your business.
For newbies and even those with some knowledge of websites and coding, WordPress is the most popular choice for a platform. It is used by over 50 percent of all websites. It is easy to use and most of the work has been done for you by a host of developers and web designers. For the beginner, though, WordPress.org is the recommended choice.
And if all of this just seems like too much, you can design your website with a pencil and paper and then hire someone to create it. Preferably, if you want to be a successful affiliate it is best to learn how to build an affiliate website using WordPress. Become familiar with WordPress.
Choose A Domain Name
What will your site be called? What is your business niche? What is your focus? Use these answers to come up with a name. Write down several and then check online to see if the one you want is available. It may take a few tries to find one you like that no one has taken. Keep it as short as possible and also easy to associate with your business. Buying a domain name may cost a few bucks, but it’s worth it to have your own business name.
Find A Web Hosting Service
You can’t have a website without a host. The hosting service is where your data will be stored, on their servers. Depending on how much space you need now and in the future, it might be worth a few more bucks a month to ensure that your site won’t crash or get turned off. Free web hosting services usually don’t provide enough bandwidth for a major business website.
Create A Sitemap
Creating a Site Map for your new website is the same as making a plan for your house before building it. It will also make it easy for navigation and format. Before you create your website or hire someone to do it for you, you’ll want to draft your website on paper. Decide what starter pages, categories, etc. you want your website to have. An affiliate marketing website needs to be properly setup to be appealing both to your visitors and search engines.
As you begin to put together your website in cyberspace by first putting it together on paper use a simple design. In addition to above sketch out your pages: headers, content, images and positioning of these elements. Also, include which pages will link to other pages, how they will link, pulldown menu options and the like. Knowing roughly how you want it to look goes a long way to getting the focused finished product you want for your business.
How are people going to find what they need? How will they navigate your website? What categories or buttons will you have? How will you share your information and how will you promote the affiliate products or services? Figuring all of this out before you begin creating your website will help ensure it is a success.
Creating your first website is a strategic process. However, much of the work will be done on paper as you plan the purpose and layout of your website.
Once you know exactly what you’re creating, you can find the best tools to create your site and make it a reality. Running an affiliate website is often regarded as less important once the website is live. Most affiliate marketers neglect the maintenance part of adding more content, tweaking the existing, etc.
Install The Platform Of Choice
Since we highly recommend using WordPress for your affiliate website, we are going to look at adopting WordPress as a platform of choice. WordPress.org makes it easy to install their website platform on your hosting account. One-click installation is offered. You can then log into the content management system and look around to see how to set up pages, edit and upload content and more. There are many options with WordPress.
Design Your Website
For those who know coding, they can use HTML or CSS to change the pages to look like you want them to. HTML can be used in a simple text editor to get your content to show up the way that you want it. WordPress offers options for free themes for design templates to begin with. A variety of options are available, so take some time to peruse them. If you don’t like it, you can always change it.
Earlier we mentioned that we strongly recommend use of WordPress is your platform for creating an affiliate website. Let us briefly look at why it is advantageous to use WordPress.
Using WordPress to Build an Affiliate Website
When it comes to building a website, there are several options like mentioned above. For most of thems some of the work won’t be easy. There’s a learning curve. For the smallest learning curve and also fun during the process, we suggest building your website using WordPress.
What Is WordPress?
For those who don’t know, WordPress is open source software that can be used to start a blog (WordPress.com) or a self-hosted website or blog (WordPress.org). We’ll be speaking about the latter today. While there is some coding knowledge required, it can all be learned as you set up the website.
WordPress comes with everything you need. In fact, it is the most popular content management system around, with almost 60 percent of business websites using WordPress as their platform. Better still, a lot of the themes and the plugins are free to download.
The Advantages of Using WordPress
WordPress has been worked on by hundreds of designers and programmers for years to build a competent platform for anyone to use. It is versatile, expandable, flexible and can grow in any direction that your business wants to grow.
In today’s world of responsive design, WordPress makes it easy to kill two birds with one stone (figuratively speaking). Each website you create is mobile ready. You don’t have to adapt your website later.
The WordPress content management system makes it easy to upload, edit, share and schedule content for your website. Integrating needed plugins is also easier here. And, when you get stuck, there is a community of professionals and novices ready to help with their experiences.
So, What Are You Waiting For?
Before you can get started you will need a name. Your domain name is your address in cyberspace. The name needs to communicate something about your business and be relevant. Register that domain name with your web hosting company. Depending on the size of your website and what it will be used for, choose a hosting company with enough server space to accommodate you now and in the future.
Now it’s time to install WordPress. WordPress.org can walk you through the installation process step-by-step. And, support is always available at any time.
You are ready to begin creating that site. One important feature of WordPress is its plugins. Plugins are like performance enhancers. While frowned upon in sports, they are heavily recruited in website usage. Thousands of plugins can be found in the WordPress directory for download. Here are a few of the many available:
* Contact Form 7 — Easy form for use on your website
* Google XML Sitemaps — Generate a sitemap to help search engines index your site better
* Akismet — Check comments for spam
* Yoast SEO — Improve SEO of your content on the site
* Jetpack — Protect yourself from hackers, check stats and load your website faster
* WooCommerce — Add an e-commerce component to your site seamlessly
Using WordPress as your platform and CMS provides a lot of power and functionality in one place.
So there you have it… when you want to create an affiliate website those are the basic steps to follow before going deeper into how to build an affiliate website using WordPress…
