Step By Step Guide to Setting Up Your Own Affiliate Site
While I work on my niche site, week before last week, I was able to create a mini-website based around an affiliate product. In order to achieve my goal of passive income, I will have to succeed at creating affiliate sites.
While I won’t share what the exact product is, I will tell you that it is an online application. If you are having trouble choosing a product, then start by writing down all the items you use or even the software/web applications you use online. A good number of products you use have a referral or an affiliate program. At the very least, you can join the Amazon Associates program and promote a single product by creating a mini-site around it. Let’s go through what I did step by step to get my affiliate mini-site up and running and how I’m faring so far in the search engines.
Step 1: Choose a Product
It’s funny how long it can take beginners (including me) to choose a product. I tend to over-complicate things and my morals play a huge role. For a lot of people, selling products online can conflict with their morals which prevents them from finding and promoting products. I have finally come to terms with how I can make money online without feeling dirty about it. At the very least, tell yourself that you’re only experimenting so you can get over this obstacle.
You can choose your favourite tv series dvd, products you use online, whatever the hell you want! Whatever you choose, it is essential that you do some research before delving into this project. This research involves using the Google Keyword Tool. If you don’t understand the basics of this tool or don’t know what makes for a good product to choose, please read Understanding the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool. The only thing differently that I’ve done from that post is that I chose a keyphrase that gets around 1000-2000 broad queries a month. It’s not a lot of traffic but it’s highly targeted traffic which is exactly what you need to make some sales. Why care about a general keyword when you can focus on a highly targeted keyphrase which will convert higher?
Step 2. Make Sure You Choose a Decent Affiliate Program
Now that you have chosen your product that you will create the mini-site around, read through the affiliate program. While it’s important not to get hung up on choosing a product, I have a basic guideline that I use. For instance, I want no less than $20.00 resulting from a sale. In fact, the product I chose varies due to the options, so I will make anywhere from $20.00-$80.00 depending on what plan the client signs up for.
While I have these basic guidelines, I won’t refrain from using something like Amazon Associates which has low commission rates. Before you say, “Psssh, screw 4%!”, take a look at this amazing post: How Much Did We Make on Amazon This Month.
With Amazon or other big retailers like Target, you have an established trust between the potential buyer and the retailer. In fact, something that’s amazing about the Amazon Associates program is that if the buyer clicks on your link and decides not to buy the referred item but buys other products, you still earn a commission. When I’m on Amazon, I don’t just buy one product. I tend to bundle items to save on shipping costs.
Definite pros and cons to consider but nothing to sweat over. Decide and keep moving!
Step 3. Consider What Angle To Approach Potential Buyer From
Personally, there is nothing worse than being excited about a product only to land on the sales page and encounter a sleezy sales page. You don’t have to show me money raining from the sky or 3 different sales prices.
If it’s a software product or a web application, you can provide a review for the reader by showing them screen-shots. If it’s a product you use at home, why not create a video and show how easy it is to use? If you’re promoting a dvd set, you can talk about the show in detail, various dvd sets that have been released, character dissection, and so on.
There are a million ways to convert a reader to a buyer but the worst one is screaming, “buy me, buy me” at the top of your lungs. This is where keywords are essential.
Step 4. Choose a Buying Keyphrase
Choose a buying keyword/keyphrase that is helpful to the reader and indicates a sale. For instance, “[product] review” usually indicates a reader is on the fence. If you can convince them that the product has helped you and is indeed something they need, then they will also buy it from the link(s) you offer. This isn’t the only powerful buying keyphrase, there are many others. Be creative!
Step 5. Create a Mini-Site
Don’t get lost in whether you should use WordPress or an html, self-coded mini-site. Use whatever you are comfortable with. I’m using a website template that was provided with Cloud Living by Glen (Note: affiliate link). Make sure not to get lost in the code or how to make the cleanest… that’s not the point here! Create content for your site. Choose nice colour schemes, decent screen shots, videos, whatever you want. Insert your links gracefully. It doesn’t have to be the nicest website but make it look decent. Don’t worry about it not being perfect, you’ll have plenty of time to tweak it.
Step 6. Follow Basic SEO Guidelines
For my affiliate site, I defined meta keywords and meta descriptions for each page of the site. I used my keyphrase throughout the pages, tastefully. The goal is to make my mini-site rank in main search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing). Just following these guidelines, I have started seeing results:
Step 7. Choose Domain And Upload Files
Choose a domain that is relevant to what your website will be about. You should select a domain that contains the keywords you are trying to rank for as search engines like that. I selected my domain name to be “[product] software” since I noticed that people were looking for the product with that keyphrase. A word of caution though: Something’s not sitting right with me about using the product’s name for my domain and this is something I won’t be doing again. For this reason alone, the next mini-site I create will have a domain that doesn’t contain the name of the product in it. Be cautious! You don’t want to lose the fruits of your labor over something that could have been avoided from the start.
Now that you’ve registered the domain and have created your mini-site (template or WordPress), it’s time to upload the files.
Step 8. Submit Your Site to Search Engines
This is really easy to do. In fact, here:
- To submit website to Google, click here.
- To submit website to Yahoo, click here.
To submit website to Bing, click here.
It should take you less than 5 minutes to submit your site to all of these 3 main search engines. As easy as that seems, the next step is extremely hard: waiting patiently for the site to be added. There is no set time after which your site will be submitted. It could take a couple of days or a few weeks and each search engine varies. To see if your site has been successfully added to a search engine, pull up the search engine in the browser and enter search term “http://[sitename]“. If you see it in the results, you’re game.
Bing was the first to pick up my affiliate site and did so within 4 or 5 days. Google just picked it up a day ago and Yahoo still hasn’t (refer to above image).
What’s Next?
To help the site rank better, I will be adding more content to it and maybe even another page. Currently, the site is constructed of 3 pages: main, about and why. I absolutely plan on adding a few back links and then see if that strategy is helping with the search engine rankings.
Remember that if all of this was super-easy, then everyone you know would be doing it. Passive income requires a lot of work up front, so role up your sleeves and get to it. Use this guide as a start.
I hope that this helps you create your own mini-site. Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments section. If this has helped you in any way, I would love a comment and a re-tweet. Have fun creating your own mini-site!
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Well laid out, Moon. Can you tell what you can do to improve your ranking in search engines besides SEO and submitting your website to the big search engines? For example, in your opinion, what are good methods to create back links to your mini site without spamming? Forums? Commenting on blogs like this is good for promoting your blog, but it’s not really appropriate for promoting a mini site. Any ideas?
Bart Jacobs´s last blog ..Do Not Expect Excellence If You Aim For Mediocre
Thanks Bart, took me a bit to put together. I’m in the process of exploring what the best method is that helps with ranking in search engines. Here’s my plan for my own affiliate site: Add another page of content with the keywords sprinkled in and create 5-10 articles to submit to Ezine Articles that will point to my mini-site.
After that, I might try checking out forums, etc., but that always makes me feel like I’m spamming. Like you mentioned, it’s not something I want to promote on this blog. When I cross this road, I will give you more input.
Nice post, Moon. I’ll be asking you for help soon.
I have to say, not in reference to you, but Cloud Living. I followed Glen and read his case study (which is very well put together). But when I bought his book, I was highly dissapointed as I spent money to have all that information reiderated. There was no need to buy the book. I think he wrote his book more to promote his affiliate links. *sigh*
I followed suit, with the same template, to promote a diet supplement. Unfortunately, it didn’t do so well and took the site down. But the lesson that I could have learned was to figure out what I did wrong and fix it. Actually, I think I picked to big of a market and was strictly trying to rely off keywords. Now it’s off to my raw vegan business… super excited. Been scibbling up in my notebook!
Keep your motivation, Moon. You will, no doubt, make it big!
Money Funk´s last blog ..Great Giveaways by PF bloggers
Hey Christine,
That’s the thing: I was new to making money on online so all the information in Cloud Living was new to me, hence valuable. Then soon, The 4 HWW blew me away.
Soon after reading CL, I launched an affiliate site that didn’t do too well. Looking back, I can pick off exactly why (way too crowded for that market!) Seems like you made the same mistake. Give it another shot, it will only take you a few hours to setup a site and see what happens. Feel free to ask me any questions.
Ranking in these search engines is quickly becoming an obsession of mine, so let’s hope I can do something with it. I’d love to read more about your raw vegan business
Hey Moon,
This is awesome. Can’t wait to hear more about your progress.
I’m hoping to set up some niche sites one day. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Clark,
Try to delve into it asap. Your first project will teach you a LOT. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Feel free to pass it along
Holy cow, you put a LOT of effort into this post, Moon! This is solid gold – hopefully your readers realize that you’ve just given them the same information for FREE that other people are selling.
I’ve tooled around with niche sites, but have mostly monetized them with Adsense rather than affiliate links. That said, Amazon is worth the effort, as somebody recently bought a box set DVD (about $60) through a link of mine, even though the link sent them to a $5 hair product – goes to show how good Amazon is at making people buy
Your post has inspired me – as I’m thinking I might have to build a micro affiliate site or two myself
Rock on
Lee | Search Engine Viking´s last blog ..Writing For Other People’s Blogs: My First Guest Post
Lee,
It’s definitely worth experimenting and learning from, as you’ll can use these techniques for whatever purpose you’d like later. Just imagine if (rather, “when”) you get to page 1 of Google and finally are in the top 3 searches for that keyword. That would be awesome and I can feel it!
I’m glad you liked the content. Took me a few hours to put it together. Let us know what you’re upto
Totally! I’m thinking about chronicling an affiliate micro site in the near future on my blog. But I’ve got to stay focused on my Boise project first. I’ve been brainstorming some big ideas for the whole project from a blog perspective… My online ADD makes me want to try new things all the time rather than stick to things until they’re done… argh!
Lee | Search Engine Viking´s last blog ..Boise Website Series Part 2: Setting Money Goals
Lee,
Think of your Boise project as a mini-site. You’ll need it to rank well in search engines. The lessons learned with this project will serve you well for your next one.
In fact, if I were you, I’d register a domain and focus on Boise v1.0 because it’ll take a little while for search engines to pick it up. You can keep updating it as you make progress
Yeah, I’m really excited about the Boise site project. I’ve got a million little blog posts in my head that I want to “show” before I actually start building the site, and knowing my short attention span, if I build it first THEN talk about how I do it, I’ll skip steps. So I’m forcing myself to take each step one at at time and explain the whole process.
p.s. To answer the question you left me on my site, the Adsense plugin I use is “All In One Adsense and YPN.” It’s got its limitations (what plugin doesn’t?), but I’ve been using it for a long time. Hope that helps
Lee | Search Engine Viking´s last blog ..Boise Website Series Part 2: Setting Money Goals
I recently decided to give it a shot as well, I won’t focus on one product though. It’ll be fun to see the results in a few (lots) of months.
So you create articles that link back to your product, is that so that you don’t do the “selling” part twice?
Experimently´s last blog ..30 days rewind
Experimently,
I suppose you could do it either way: give direct affiliate link or send them to your page. My mini-site is a product review, so for the articles I”m submitting, I’m pointing them to my site to check out the review. Then if they want to buy the product, they can do so from my review site.
Make sense?
Oh, I’d love to see how you’re multi-product site does. Give us some details
Hi Moon,
great article. You are so right about the amount of hard work this takes. I always find that writing the promotional articles to get backlinks is where I start to lose steam, but you just have to keep plodding away until you get it all done.
Des @ Affiliate Progress´s last blog ..Finding the Best Affiliate Networks
Writing articles can be the drag part. You write an article, then edit it, make sure it has a nice amount of keywords but not too much, then submit it, and so on over and over.
My least favourite part and this is where most people will sizzle. I have to make it a point to push through this
Thanks!
Great instructional article, Moon.
I’m going to have to bookmark this one because it’s something that I’m interested in but am not ready to follow-through on yet. Let us know how it all works out for your new affiliate product site. Good luck! It sounds like you really know what you’re talking about, which is why I come read you
Karen
Karen´s last blog ..Warning: Following These 5 Tips May Get You Out Of Your Rut
Karen, sure
One thing to remember though: your first or second try will probably fail. Don’t mean to sound harsh, just mean that beginners in general will. I failed the first time and then put away the whole ‘making money online’ thing on the backburner.
I’ve come back with a vengeance and have made up my mind to be successful with this. Let me know if you have any questions.
Super cool! Thanks for the walk through. I have a couple of blogger.com sites I started last month and want to turn them into sole affiliate sites.
Ms. Freeman@Baby Steps of an Internet Entrepreneur´s last blog ..Why I Created a Squidoo Page
Good luck with this Moon! I’ll be watching closely and hopefully picking up a few tricks along the way. I’ve definitely found that maintaining simplicity is one of the keys to making an affiliate site work. As soon as we over-complicate the process, it becomes very easy to lose our way.
Earl´s last blog ..3 Best Kept Travel Secrets
Yeah, over-complicating is a specialty of mine. I will be creating massive content for the niche and affiliate sites this weekend. Here’s hoping for even better results!
Great article Moon! Question…
When you said “A word of caution though: Something’s not sitting right with me about using the product’s name for my domain and this is something I won’t be doing again. For this reason alone, the next mini-site I create will have a domain that doesn’t contain the name of the product in it. Be cautious! You don’t want to lose the fruits of your labor over something that could have been avoided from the start.” – what are you worried about? Are you concerned about using a trademarked or copyrighted name? I just want to be clear why we should not use the produt name in our URL. I assume, if we want to be on page 1 for Google and we are targeting a product name – it would be best to use the name in our URL. I would love your feedback on this!
Best of luck with everything!
Michael-John Wolfe
Michael-John Wolfe´s last blog ..My First Amazon Associates Store is Live – and I’m Not Sharing It!
Michael,
I’m confused about using a product name in a URL. As you know, it’s quite the bonus to have the keyword/keyphrase in your URL that you’re trying to rank for. For example, is it okay to have a domain name like:
ps3forme.com if you’re trying to rank for keyword PS3?
Is there harm in doing this whether trademarked/copyrighted? I don’t have the answer to this and would love an expert’s opinion on it!
I wish I was an expert! If I was not sure, I would not risk it – imagine buiding hundreds of backlinks to a website and finally getting to page 1 of Google only to get a call from PS3′s legal department instructing you to take down the site! That would suck!
MJ
Michael-John Wolfe´s last blog ..My First Amazon Associates Store is Live – and I’m Not Sharing It!
I should pose this question to someone who is making successful bucks in the affiliate arena! I will definitely seek out an answer. You’ve got me on a mission, Michael!
I’d also like to know the answer to that question. Can you include the product name in the web address? In this case you might just go seek the company’s consent after the fact. You are after all promoting their product. If the name is real words and not a made up word than you are in a better position.
I see domains all the time that use a product or celebrity name in the URL. Like http://www.theBritneySpearsFanClub.com (I just made that up). So long as you are not representing yourself as BEING the company you can refer to the company/product all day long I think.
JadeDragon@innovativepassiveincome´s last blog ..Mechanical Turk Strategy
I have yet to contact someone who knows more about this issue. I like your idea of contacting the the company and seeking their permission–the cleanest way to go about it. Perhaps I should present a disclaimer saying I’m not the product company, though it should be clear that I’m reviewing the product.
Thanks Jade.
Hey Moon,
I’m new to this whole passive income deal and i love this post. Is it okay if I publish it on my site? I guess it would be like a guest post or something…
Let me know because it’s a great post!
Rob, contact me through email for details. Glad you found something you liked!
Great article on how to help new affiliates get into affiliate marketing, how to pick a product, and hosting company.
Thanks Ken! Do you have any niche sites making money or are you getting started?