How to Build a Successful Affiliate Marketing Website

Have you’ve ever wanted to build a successful affiliate marketing website but don’t know how? Have a profitable idea to create a blog around such that you can monetize to fetch you money on autopilot?

Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable online business models you can build if you’re looking for a way to make a good income online. Apart from being rewarding, it’s one of the business models that has helped lots of people make huge money online.

Meaning of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of business model where an individual or a company promotes the products or services of another company or individual in exchange for a commission. This way, the affiliate earns a reward by sending traffic or buyers to the company or the individual’s business.

Today, most webmasters and digital marketers’ dream is to build a business where they can be earning an income on autopilot even while they’re asleep. And fortunately, affiliate marketing is one such business model. When built properly, affiliate marketing can be a cool way of making passive income.

In the case of affiliate marketing, income made from the business model is referred to as passive income because you can make money by doing almost nothing. By this, you can simply add an affiliate link to your website or blog, and start making money off it without actively adding much input.

However, the harsh truth about affiliate marketing is that you need quality traffic to convert. Otherwise, you may not earn anything if you can’t attract quality traffic to your site and then convert them to buyers and if possible repeat buyers. So the point here is that though affiliate marketing is a popular way of making money for most digital marketers without investing a huge amount of money you need to be ready to add some input. With the little effort added and commitment, you can turn it into a full-time source of earning a living in no time.   

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Now, you’re willing to get started with affiliate marketing but don’t have an idea of how it works. Don’t panic! Let’s walk you through the steps involved in this business model.

Basically, there are 3 parties involved in affiliate marketing namely, the merchant, the publisher, and the customer. How affiliate marketing works is that one person called the publisher promotes and markets a company’s or another individual’s products or services via his/her blog. S/he adds the merchant’s link to strategic places on his blog and persuades the customer to click on this affiliate link, which takes the customer to the merchant’s website. Once the customer buys the recommended product or service, the publisher receives a commission based on the percentage already attached to that particular product the customer buys at the merchant’s site.

3 Parties of Affiliate Marketing

Merchant

This party is the person or the company selling the product. A merchant isn’t necessarily the company producing or creating the product or services alone but it includes every individual or company that has the responsibility of selling the products or services. Different names can be used in referring to this party including the seller, the vendor, the creator, the retail, etc.

A typical example of a merchant could involve a person buying a product from the Hershey Company and becoming the individual behind the affiliate program recruiting affiliate marketers to sell the goods for him/her. 

Publisher

A publisher in affiliate marketing is that affiliate marketer who is ready to join the affiliate program to help it to promote and sell the product in exchange for a commission. An affiliate marketer generates income from the sale of the merchant’s product using different channels and techniques. Some of the channels an affiliate marketer used include the use of social networks, search engine, and online billboards.   

Customer   

Earning affiliate income requires attracting the right traffic that can be easily converted to buyers. Without sales, you can’t make money as an affiliate marketer. A good affiliate marketer understands this very well and also understands the need to choose the right product that can be targeted at the right market (customers).

A customer is the third party in the affiliate marketing value chain. S/he is the person who buys the products or services being promoted by the publisher (affiliate marketers).

A customer is the third party in the affiliate marketing value chain. S/he is the person who buys the products or services being promoted by the publisher (affiliate marketers).    

Becoming Affiliate Marketers: 5 Steps Involved

After all said and done, the talk wouldn’t be complete without touching on the most important part: how to become an affiliate marketer. There are several steps you can take to become an affiliate marketer but we decided to narrow it down to 5 basic steps. The following are the 5 most essential steps to becoming an affiliate marketer:

Choosing a Profitable and Ever-Green Niche

The first step in becoming an affiliate marketer or building a successful affiliate marketing website is by choosing a niche. What is a niche in business, if I may ask? A business niche is defined by Business News Daily as “a specialized or focused area of a broader market that businesses can serve to differentiate themselves from the competition.” They went further to identify certain niche strategies such as selecting the right audience, defining their needs, researching your customer base, create a business plan, and marketing to your chosen audience.

While choosing the right niche goes beyond the profitability of the niche, it’s important you blog about something you’re passionate about. For example, if you’re a traveler or tourism-enthusiast, it might do you much better to write about that than choosing a topic you know nothing about or have any flair for. Doing this, you could start off by looking at the best flight options for travelers or the best tourist centers to visit in the world for people under a tight budget, etc. And, if yoga is your thing, there are so many options to explore in it that you can’t even exhaust it. The most important thing is to don’t choose a topic or niche because of its profitability alone, consider your interest in it. This will help you write valuable and unique content easily and set you apart from the crowd.

Furthermore, the longer your content is the better when it comes to ranking on Google. And, if you’re choosing a subject, make sure you go for a niche within broader subjects. The good thing about this is that it will help you in terms of content marketing.

You will have more than enough content ideas to create content around and you’ll be eager to create it because it is what you’re passionate about.

However, you can still choose a niche in a subject you’re not so familiar with but you must be ready to do deep research. Otherwise, you may not be able to offer the value which people landing on your page are looking for. The truth is that readers don’t land on any page by accident and if they do, they can only stay if they find the page worth their time.

Monetize the Blog and Grow Your Income

So you have got an idea about the niche you’re going to create your blog around and now it is time to think about the meat of affiliate marketing – generating and growing your income. How do you go about this?

Of course, you’re most likely into affiliate marketing because you heard it’s rewarding and so want to confirm it. The truth is there is money in affiliate marketing and you can actualize the dream your dream of making money online, too. But before anything, here is what you need to start generating income in affiliate marketing:

a. Joining the Right Affiliate Program

Today, there are so many affiliate programs available in the industry, and while some are worth the time a good number of them are a complete waste of time. So you must wary of the one you join to not waste your precious time. Be sure to visit our Top 10 Affiliate Programs and find the one suited for you.

There are two ways to find affiliate programs to join, which include going through the affiliate programs directly or by finding one through an affiliate network. You can run a search on Google for terms relating to your niche to find affiliate programs within your industry. You can also search within an affiliate network for a product to promote. So an affiliate network is like a marketplace for affiliate programs whereby site owners or publishers go to and sign up with an affiliate program of their choice. Examples of common affiliate networks include Amazon Associates, Awin, ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, Rakuten Advertising, etc.

b. Choosing the Right Products

This is the trickiest part of this business model where most people fail especially beginners who are just starting.  They think they can promote all products that come their way and so tend to swallow more than they can chew and fail woefully in the end. Instead of promoting all products, focus your effort on one product where you can easily become an authority and grow your income.

Types of Affiliate Marketing Compensation

Cost-per-action – This is a type of affiliate marketing commission in which a marketer is expected to complete an action. In most cases, this type of commission doesn’t require you to sell any product. For example, to get paid, you may be required to influence a user or a visitor to carry out an action. Such actions could include filling out a form, sign up for a newsletter, answering a survey, testing a product, among others.

Cost-per-click – This type of compensation, on the other hand, requires getting a user to click on an affiliate link. Examples here include Google AdWords, etc.

c. Creating a Successful Website or Blog Around the Niche

According to a DC web design company, this is one of the steps you want to take to start making money from affiliate marketing. Although it is not compulsory to have a blog or website before starting an affiliate marketing business, it’ll go a long way to saving you cost.  There are many platforms you can use to create a website free of cost but we recommended you use WordPress.   

d. Creating the Right Content

Content is vital for you to make money in affiliate marketing. When you’re thinking about building an affiliate marketing website, you should consider the consistency and quality of the content to be created. By publishing a useful blog post, product reviews, and guides on your blog, you can easily drive an avalanche of traffic to the site. And, with more sites, you can keep generating and growing your income on autopilot.

e. Driving Traffic and Getting Rankings

Last but not least is generating traffic for your website or blog. Traffic refers to the visitors to your website or blog. In generating traffic to a website, there are many techniques to employ. In this section, we are going to look at the different ways by which affiliate marketers drive traffic to their websites. The following are some of the ways by which you generate traffic for your website:

By Building an Email List – The biggest mistake anyone can make is to ignore email list of subscribers.  By collecting email list of subscribers within your niche, you are creating a foundation for building lasting relationship with your customers. You can leverage this for growing your business income in the future.

By Leveraging Search Engines – This is the most enduring traffic source you can afford to miss. By leveraging SEO techniques, you can generate an avalanche of traffic to your traffic. SEO, when properly done, helps improve a site’s visibility in search engines. And, the good thing about this type of traffic is that it’s free and rewarding over time. This means, the result isn’t immediate but lasts longer once implemented the right way.

By Going Social – With every business going social, you can’t afford to neglect the power of social media in growing your business traffic. There are many social platforms to use including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram but you need to research deeply on where readers in your industry love to hang out. And then start engaging with your customers via the platform.

Wrapping Up

So you have learned the basics of affiliate marketing and now understand what it takes to build a successful affiliate marketing website. Don’t forget there are different affiliate programs out there and not all of them are as promising as they claim. So take your time, choose the right program and think about the right niche in which you’re most passionate. And finally, don’t joke with content as it is key to making money in affiliate marketing.