How to Make an Affiliate Marketing Website. A 2020 Guide.

While affiliate marketing is not the only way to make a profit on the internet, it is still one of the more popular directions you can take, even in 2020.

In fact, this specific type of online business is still growing and I will show you, from scratch how one can build a website through this means ONLY. 

But there’s 3 things I wish to mention before I begin this guide:

1) Affiliate marketing is still a huge business. I still do it full time and it is the main income generator for me personally. Affiliate marketing has made me over $1 million for at least 10 years if you need proof, that link will provide it. And it is all done through this one style of making money on the internet.

2) I like this type of business because there is little hassle on your part as you don’t have to handle things like shipping and customer service, referring people to buy something after you give them a reason to buy it essentially all you have to do. For example, drop shipping is another type of business people can do online, but compared to affiliate marketing, I find it less beneficial.

In fact, here’s a bunch differences between dropshipping and affiliate marketing and I basically show why the latter option works better for most people.

3) The beauty though is that any site that is already an affiliate marketing website, that is getting traffic and generating sales can easily switch to another means of monetization at will.

Suppose I get tired of promoting other people’s stuff and wish to make my own product, collect an email list and/or do something other than promote other people’s things, well with this guide, you can easily make that switch with your existing/future site without having to start a new one. As long as your site gets traffic, the ability to move into another way of making money through it is easy, very easy in fact.

There is one guide that I’ve ALWAYS recommended people read in order to understand how to create an affiliate marketing website and this is it. In fact, I will refer and recommend you read that guide in addition to this one.

How it all begins: What exactly is an affiliate marketing website?

You own a website, but on it promote products that aren’t yours.

You link to the product/s by getting and providing your customers with your own personal identification link which records your sales and pays you if one is made.

There are essentially 2 types of websites you can have that implement this type of business: Blog and eCommerce.

I will recommend you go with a blog because my whole opinion on this business is that the ones which thrive best are the ones who inform best and eCommerce websites usually don’t do that. They just provide checkout carts and sometimes a short description of what is being sold + maybe customer reviews.

While that works, a blog post WITH comments about a product you’re promoting can hold far more value to someone who is exploring or considering buying something in my experience and I’ve made a ton of that approach which is why this guide reflects that strategy.

So where does one start? 

Every time I’ve started an affiliate marketing website, it has been by doing the following:

1) I picked my niche topic out which was always based on something I liked, hated, but at least had experience in.

This is the planning stage, but it is the most important starting point so really think about this. Here’s help on finding niches.

2) I purchased a domain name.

Before it would be through Godaddy, now every single domain I get is through Wealthy Affiliate because it’s cheap, a flat annual fee (most registrars bump up prices every year, but not with this program) and the hosting, provided you’re a premium member of theirs is included.

To someone like myself who has multiple domains, having access to this program is extremely cost effective. I have about 10 domains hosted there. For hosting alone, I’d be spending $100’s every year, but there it’s free. I also recommend you go through there because it has even more detailed training than I’m going to give you here on making your affiliate website.

Anyway…

3) With a niche and domain name set up:

Your “last” missing link is signing up with programs that’ll let you sell their stuff. There are at least 2 I recommend everyone sign up with:

Clickbank because it has high commission rates for most of it’s products and Amazon Associates which has many different products to choose from to promote, usually for a small commission, but there are options.

4) Find products on both those networks that are niche relevant and write a blog post for each product you find.

Essentially the more products you have to review, the more content you can crank out. And this guide to what to blog about will help you find and do that correctly.

Now the goal isn’t to review and sell everything you can find. The goal is to:

A) Review and really help people make a smart decision on what product in the niche topic suites them best. 

B) Utilize the popularity of the product/s you review in order to push the one or several products you like. If I am reviewing 100 different hair solution products for example, I will tend to stick to promoting 1 or 2 vs all 100 because let’s face it, in every market, most products suck.

Being the person who explains to people through their affiliate marketing website which of those products suck and which ones are good is one of the best way to funnel traffic and interest from the bad products to the good ones and make profits. 

C) Find the highest selling products in your category and frankly, Amazon is one of the BEST places to do it in. 

If we use hair loss as the example again, do a search on all the creams, shampoos, pills and other products that are said to help people with this. You’ll have 1,000’s of product reviews just laying around waiting for you to write blog posts on them. 

But find the 1 or very few that work and promote those and the rest you find that aren’t good, write about and then link them to the products that are good. That way, you’re helping people get the thing that’ll make them happy about their purchase.

Now one “hack” way to find the best selling items is to use this fantastic Amazon strategy I accidentally stumbled upon and through utilizing it even to 10% of what it could have been, one of my niche sites generated close to $7,000 in revenue in 2016 for it.

Keep in mind, I said 10% of it’s potential…

And by the way, here are Amazon success stories (they are all affiliate success stories).

5) Now for every product you find to blog about, review and possibly recommend, make sure your review has these things:

A) You use keywords that have the product name and generally the term “review” in it and you make those your blog titles. 

Every single product out there that sells in high volumes generally has a group of people who go on Google and type that product name with the word review next to it. Furthermore, with the added word “review”, your keyword becomes what’s known as a long tailed keywords and has lesser competition for you to rank for.

In short, by doing product reviews under this strategy, you will get higher rankings on Google and more traffic to your actual review. 

B) Really make sure you do a good review, not a cheap one that only has links to the product and a short explanation of it. Too many who do affiliate marketing tend to make horrendous reviews that look like this. Here is a strategy for writing product reviews for making your product reviews high quality and easier chances of selling.

6) There are going to be 2 types of links you have on your site:

A) Affiliate links that go to the product page itself. 

B) Links from reviews you do on horrible/average products that link to pages where you recommend products and on those pages you will then do strategy A (link to the product’s page where they can buy).

Wait, hold on a second, why would I review horrible products? Well because many horrible products get traffic and people looking for them. 

If you write about them on your blog, rank for them and get traffic for them, that’s just extra potential customers you can funnel to the good products they can benefit from. 

It literally pays to talk about bad products for the popularity they have in order to sell the good products.

How do you know which products are popular or not?

Well I look for keyword stats on what the said product gets in searches monthly. The tool that’s great for this is Jaaxy. I simply type the product name and it let’s me know if the product gets searches or not. If it gets anything above a 100 searches a month, I will review it, good or bad.

7) You can also include YouTube with this!

And you should since affiliate marketing has a lot of potential to be improved with if you add YouTube to your website. Here’s how to use YouTube and you can use this site to add to your affiliate earnings. You can use videos on your site or even start a channel and keep the videos you make separate.

Want to see real examples of successful affiliate marketing websites? 

Then look at this post on 10 different niche topics and examples I have personally researched that can work. Each of these can be made into an affiliate website.

My own website is also an example.

I also have a weight loss site that is FULLY affiliate marketing integrated and I have written about how I monetize it through the steps above right here. 

Here’s another report, of an affiliate marketing success story, but in it, I don’t use myself, but instead another marketer who succeeds with this.

Are these pages making money? Yep, a full time income in some cases and I’m using the strategies above to further improve upon my other “plan B” websites so they also get to that point.

Ok so I read all of this, but still don’t know how to start, what would you recommend Vitaliy?

This article is not meant to be a meticulous guide, but it is meant to give you a broad idea of how to begin and make a successful affiliate marketing website.

For truly meticulous steps which is what 99% of you really need to have in order to succeed, I’d have to write a whole novel on this (or actually novels), but the good news is, I don’t have to and you don’t have to worry about figuring out the details on your own.

Just check out the Wealthy Affiliate program for the entire meticulous steps to making these type of websites and you’ll be using all of the tips I indicated above and more. 

Absolutely ANYONE can start these types of website/s, but not everyone can make it work unless they have the right guidance. With Wealthy Affiliate, you will be absolutely fine!