Using a website for affiliate marketing, you have full control over its content, design, and functionality. This control allows you to create a brand identity. A website for affiliate marketing gives you stability, long-term control over your marketing strategy, credibility, and trust. Unlike social networks or advertising platforms where algorithms can change frequently.
Affiliate marketers have many different ways to promote the products they select and make money. One of the best ways is to create a website for affiliate marketing. A website for affiliate marketing can be a hub for all your affiliate marketing efforts. You can use social networks like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn and incorporate those leads into your website’s email marketing campaigns. Affiliate marketing without a website is possible, but think carefully before proceeding.
Benefits of a Website for Affiliate Marketing
Having a website for affiliate marketing is a great way for an affiliate marketer to start their business and doing so has several important benefits. For example, as you build your affiliate marketing business using a website for affiliate marketing, you are also creating an asset that you can then sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars (if your business plans change or a website simply doesn’t hold your interest). There are many ways to make money when you have a website for affiliate marketing.
Additionally, you own the platform on which you are building your affiliate business. Owning the platform puts you in the driver’s seat. You make the rules. (Of course, you must follow some legal guidelines.)
With your own website for affiliate marketing, you have control over your business in a way you wouldn’t if you used only social media marketing. If you only use Facebook, X, LinkedIn, or other social networks to promote your affiliate marketing business, they own the platform and if they decide to change some of the conditions in their terms of service (TOS), you are at their mercy. They can dictate what they will and will not allow you to do as they see fit. If your account and/or page are incorrectly tagged during one of their mass deletions due to security issues, inappropriate content, etc., all your work will be gone in an instant.
Control and Ownership: The Advantages of Having Your Own Platform
We’re not saying you shouldn’t use social media to promote your affiliate marketing business. You should. They are great places to help develop your business. What we are saying is that you have to diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket on which your financial income depends. In addition to promoting your products and affiliate businesses, you should use your social media efforts to collect your visitors’ emails and drive people to your website for affiliate marketing.
Use free advanced marketing features. If you are using YouTube to help build your affiliate marketing business, include your email and/or website for affiliate marketing in the video. You can use similar techniques in other social marketing mediums to do the same thing: collect emails and drive people to your website for affiliate marketing.
If you start building your email list right away, you will not only be amazed at how quickly it will grow, but you will also build a base of operations from which you can repeatedly contact your visitors with new informative posts, special offers, and the latest news. Your email list is your gold mine and the sooner you start building that list, the faster your affiliate business will grow.
Risks of Losing Your Account
According to a Forbes article published on May 24, 2019, Facebook removed more than two billion accounts in the first quarter of 2019. This information came from Facebook’s own Community Standards Enforcement Report. Facebook periodically does mass deletions, so you know more are coming. How many people reading this think that Facebook’s algorithms got it 100 percent right and that no innocent accounts were caught in the raid?
That wasn’t the only mass removal announced by one of the social media giants. According to the Washington Post, Twitter removed 70 million fake accounts in May 2019 and has continued to remove fake accounts at a rate of 1 million per day since then. How many of you believe Twitter’s algorithms got it 100 percent right? Do you think that while you delete 1 million accounts a day they will take the time to listen to your cry of “I am innocent” and restore your account? Please note that if you build your affiliate marketing business solely on Facebook and/or X and your account is deleted or suspended, you will be out of business and will not make any profit.
Set a Domain Name for your Website for Affiliate Marketing
A domain name is the first thing you need to create a website and it is the unique web address that you type into the address bar of a web browser to visit a website. Some examples of domain names are WordPress.org and Google.com.
Choose a name
The goal is to choose a short, memorable domain name with a .com extension that is rich in keywords for your particular niche. The use of hyphens is not recommended.
Using a Register
Domain names can be obtained for the registration fee, which is usually between $10 and $20. Then you can go to a registrar like Hostgator, Bluehost and Hostinger among many others and register a domain name. Some hosting companies may offer you a free domain name if you purchase their hosting package. Learn more about domain name registration and hosting in the Post titled “Create a Website – Key Elements to Consider Before Starting”.
Thousands of domains “drop” every day and become available for someone else to register. They fall because people decided not to renew them, they changed their plans, they forgot to renew them or any of a thousand other reasons. The ocean of domain names that can possibly be registered is constantly changing. Go to your favorite register to try registering a domain name that fits the niche you plan to pursue. As we explained above, an ideal domain name is short, easy to remember, and preferably has a .com domain extension.
The competition for good domain names has become really intense. Domain ownership, which is the buying and selling of domain names, is a big and highly competitive business. Therefore, it can be difficult to choose the domain name you want and one that will help you in your affiliate marketing business.
Check out the Aftermarket
A better strategy than spending hours trying to find a good domain name directly from a registrar may be to purchase a domain name on the secondary market. Some Web Hosting Providers have free lists of domain names offers and clearances but they also have auctions. Paying for one membership a year gives you access to great low-cost domain names, as well as some pretty comprehensive filters you can use to find and sort the domain you want. The domain auction member lists are much larger than those you get with free access and have more comprehensive filtering, making it easier to find a suitable domain for your website for affiliate marketing.
The prices at these auctions are usually attractive, and sometimes you can find a good bargain. However, sometimes there is a reason why a domain is priced low. It may have been used by a spammer to send spam. His reputation has been destroyed and search engines still view him with suspicion. It may have been years ago, but a damaged reputation is something that is difficult to recover from on the Internet. So if you were to purchase one of those domain names for your website for affiliate marketing, it would take you a lot of time and effort to overcome its damaged past.
You can check the history of a domain name by going to the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/), entering the domain name, and seeing if any snapshots were taken of the domain. Clicking on those snapshots will show the domain’s past.
Using Domain Auction Sites
You can also find domain names available on domain auction sites like Sedo (www.sedo.com) and Afternic (www.afternic.com). However, these are usually higher priced domains ranging from about $100 to several hundred thousand dollars.
Another great alternative for finding low-cost domains is Flippa (www.flippa.com/), which sells domain names and starter sites. These are basic sites that someone else started but whose plans later changed and they decided to sell the sites. Since the sites already have a domain name, you can sometimes find a good deal on a starter site.
If you are spending a significant amount of money on a domain name or starter site, be sure to use an escrow service. You don’t want to waste your money and end up without the promised domain name. Basically, an escrow company stands between you and the domain seller to protect both of you. You send the money to the escrow company. They hold the payment and the seller transfers the domain to the escrow company. Once the escrow company has both ends of the transaction in its hands, it transfers the domain name to the buyer and the money to the seller.
Of course, there is a fee for the escrow company that usually varies depending on the price of the domain and whether the seller is willing to split the fee or require the buyer to pay the full fee. When selling a domain name, the seller may split the fee with the buyer to make the deal easier, but other sellers may not. Typically, the fee ranges from 5 to 15 percent of the sales price. We think it’s worth the cost to avoid the risk of not getting the domain you paid for. A recommended service for this type of transaction is Escrow.com (www.escrow.com).
Evaluating the Value of a Domain Name
Let’s say you are thinking of purchasing a domain name for a good amount of money. You have checked to make sure you are not blacklisted. But how do you know it’s worth the price? If you are purchasing a starter site, you may be able to get some statistics on sales and number of visits, which will give you an indication of its potential value. If it is a bare domain (no website or statistics), how do you know? There are many sites where you can pay between $10 and $250 to have your domain evaluated. But you’re just getting started and trying to get over acquiring the domain to start your affiliate marketing business.
There are many free domain evaluation sites that will give you a very high evaluation because they want you to list your domains on them. But we have found a site where you can evaluate one domain name at a time and get a reasonable valuation. That site is EstiBot (www.estibot.com/). Type in your domain name and hit the rating button, and it will give you a rating based on an algorithm it uses. It may not use all the factors that an expensive human evaluation would, but it provides a rough estimate.
Comparison of Self Hosting vs Free Hosting
When we talk about self-hosting versus free hosting, we are generally not referring to installing web servers in your home or small business. Doing that would involve a lot of work: since you don’t want access to your website to go down, you would have to build in redundancy, that is, at least two T-1 lines from different providers or newer and more advanced technologies. You would have to provide redundancy on servers and other equipment. You would also have to spend a lot of your time managing their servers. That is technically possible but not really economically viable unless it is a Big Corporation with a Big Budget.
Self-hosting means in the internet world that you must pay a company to host your domain and the associated content management system (CMS) (such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, among others), themes, plugins and other files so that Internet users have access to your website.
Free hosting is a type of web hosting service where users can host their websites without incurring any costs. This service typically comes with limitations, such as limited storage space, bandwidth, and features. Free hosting often includes advertisements on the user’s site, reduced customer support, and may have restrictions on custom domain usage. It is suitable for personal projects, small blogs, or hobby sites but may not be ideal for professional or high-traffic websites.
Self Hosting
When you start your affiliate marketing business, your website will not place much demand on your hosting companies’ servers, so your site can be hosted on a relatively low-cost shared server. Many companies like Hostinger, Bluehost, and HostGator, among others, charge an initial fee that starts at a few dollars per month. They have many accounts on a single server and because most of the time most servers have little use, most of the time their site works fine.
Before hiring a Hosting service, you should look for reviews of the host you are considering. About your uptime, downtime, performance and support statistics. The problem on a shared server is that when a website starts using the server very intensively, the server resources decrease.
Nowadays, the speed of your website is important in how Google ranks your website. Slow sites do not rank highly. Today’s users also want speed. If your site doesn’t load quickly, they will click on another website to get information and perhaps make the purchase that would have earned you an affiliate commission.
As your website grows and your email list and visitor numbers increase, your demand on your host’s shared server can become a problem. Your visitors may receive slow service and simply leave and visit another site. That’s money lost for you. Typically, your current hosting provider has different levels of hosting, so as your business grows, you can upgrade when demand from your visitors shows it’s necessary.
Different Levels of Hosting
- Virtual Private Server (VPS): This is the next step up from a shared server. With this hosting you have your own dedicated server resources. Your performance won’t be affected by what another site is doing. Although it may physically be the same server as your computer, you have your own virtual server. Therefore, another user cannot hog the server’s resources and take them away from you, since your resources are dedicated solely to you. There are several levels of VPS hosting, but the monthly cost is generally logically higher than the shared server case.
- Dedicated hosting: In dedicated hosting you have a server whose resources are completely yours. You don’t have to worry about anyone else holding you back. However, this is a significant increase in the monthly cost. Dedicated hosting usually costs between $100 or more per month.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): Delivering digital content such as images, videos, and audio, Content Delivery Network was developed to increase speed, reduce latency, and increase redundancy. Latency is the delay in the delivery of your web pages to your web visitor.
Enhancing Website Speed with Content Delivery Networks
In a traditional server setup, a server is located somewhere; say, for example, in Los Angeles. This server serves your website to your web visitors wherever they are. Distance makes a difference in the latency (delay) in delivering those files to the visitor. A web visitor to your site who is located in Texas would access your website fairly quickly and with little latency. Your New York web visitor would see a little more latency, since the distance the files must travel means greater distance. A British web visitor would see a bit more latency. It’s just a matter of physics. Even at the lightning speed of the Internet, distance makes a difference.
A content delivery network is a completely different setup. Instead of a single server in a particular location, a content delivery network is a network of servers located across the country and around the world. These edge servers contain multiple copies of your static web content. When your web visitor visits your website and requests content, it is delivered from the nearest edge server. This reduces the time it takes to load your website and its content as it comes from the nearest web server.
There is no need to configure CDN from the beginning. Your website will work fine without it. CDN is an improvement that will speed up access to your site. Our recommendation for new affiliate marketers is to set up a site now with a shared host. Get everything working for your affiliate marketing business and then, if necessary and budget allows, add a CDN host.
Free Hosting
We strongly recommend that you start with a low-cost shared paid server. The cost can be as low as a few dollars a month. But if you must start with a free server because finances are tight, we recommend that you switch to a paid shared server as soon as you can.
The biggest drawback of free hosting is that your domain is a subdomain of the main domain. If you pay for your own domain and use a domain hosting company (paid hosting), all your hard work as an affiliate marketer increases your reputation in the eyes of Google.
Instead, if you use free hosting and your domain is hosted on a subdomain of the “free hosting” provider, your hard work as an affiliate marketer goes into building the reputation and value of the provider’s site since that domain is experiencing everything this growth. Some free hosting providers include WordPress.com (not the same as WordPress.org), Wix, Weebly, and SquareSpace, among others.
If you review all the TOS (terms of service) of all the free hosting plans, you will probably find that they are very similar. Below are some common features:
- Free plans add host-provided ads to your site.
- The themes and plugins you can use are limited to their approved list.
- They can shut down your site if they believe you have violated their TOS (terms of service).
- Most free sites do not allow e-commerce. You must upgrade to their paid plan.
Why Free Hosting Could Cost You Money and Damage Your Affiliate Marketing Business
The advertising added to your website by those free hosting providers means competition with yours and could divert part of the affiliate money that you were receiving, that way, instead of actually being free, you could actually be losing money. with that supposed “free hosting plan”.
Another negative aspect is that support is poor or non-existent. When your website is down, your affiliate marketing business goes out of business. Not only does money from potential sales not arrive during the time your site is down, but your site also gets a black mark for being untrustworthy in the eyes of your visitors or customers and in the eyes of Google. Web visitors may conclude that your site is permanently down and simply click to make purchases on some other website and never return. Google simply directs its users to another website that answers the requests that your site should have answered.
Whenever you are offered something for free on the Internet, you should ask yourself why the company is doing this, what their motivation is and what you are giving up because in life, nothing is free. In the case of free hosting plans, you are likely giving up support and a quick response to fix issues that may be causing your website problems. You are also giving up the increase in value that your domain may see over time as a result of your affiliate marketing efforts. Plus, you’re potentially giving up some of your affiliate marketing income to the free hosting company’s competing ads. Is it worth it to you? Make your own decision. In this case we conclude that free is not worth it.
Website for Affiliate Marketing with WordPress
WordPress is the most used CMS (content management system) in the world today. As it is an open source software, you can download it for free. Most hosting companies have a one-click installer. According to W3Techs, it is currently used by 64.1% of all websites that use a content management system to function, and 42.9% of all websites in the world are made on WordPress. Many major corporations use WordPress to run their websites. What is the reason for this incredible popularity?
- It is open source. It has been developed by the Internet community and is free to use. More importantly, people are free to write plugins and improvements to the WordPress core. There are over 60 thousand free plugins available for WordPress users to improve the functionality of their websites. The fact that WordPress is open source has unleashed the incredible creativity of the Internet community, which has developed thousands of ways to extend the functionality of the core WordPress code.
- It’s free. There is no doubt that people are attracted to free things. Since WordPress is open source and GNU licensed, anyone can use it for free.
- It is robust. There are many hackers who try to hack sites and steal data. The WordPress platform is very robust and has a large community of developers who look after its well-being and ensure that it remains solidly and constantly ahead of hackers.
- It’s easy to use. You don’t need to know HTML, CSS, JavaScript or other programming techniques. With today’s modern page builders like Elementor, it’s as easy as drag and drop to create beautiful Websites.
This post provides just a brief introduction to WordPress basics. For a detailed and complete tutorial, see the Post “WordPress Website Design – Build and Launch Your First Website from Scratch“.
Installation
The installation is really simple. Most hosting companies will install WordPress for free, or you can simply go to your cPanel (control panel) and click install on the WordPress icon. Enter some details like your username and password, database name, etc. It is really very easy to install.
On the unlikely chance that your hosting provider doesn’t have a WordPress script that you can simply click to install, you can always use an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program to transfer the compressed WordPress files that you would download from WordPress. org to your computer. Then you upload them to your account on the server by going to cPanel to unzip them. However, we don’t really think anyone needs to go the FTP route because every web hosting we know of already has WordPress installation covered.
WordPress Themes
You can think of a theme as a set of clothes that you place on top of the WordPress framework. Each theme can almost completely change the look and feel of your website.
A big advantage of WordPress is that there are thousands of themes available. You may have two different websites that look completely different, but once you get under the hood, they work almost the same in the admin panel.
It’s like driving a car. If you get into a Nissan, you can basically expect to have the steering wheel in front of you, where your arms are, and the brake and gas pedals on the floor. Then you go on a trip and have to drive a rental car. It’s a Chevy; It looks completely different, but basically works the same. WordPress and themes work like this. Themes change the look and feel, but it’s still WordPress under the hood.
Choosing the Right WordPress Theme
Initially, a WordPress theme has nothing to do with your niche or keywords. You choose your theme and then you can start customizing it with your keywords and content to make it your unique site. Some themes have been called “starter sites” with a lot more customization, images, etc. For example, Astra theme is a popular WordPress theme known for being lightweight, fast, and highly customizable. It includes a wide variety of pre-designed templates that can be imported and used as a starting point to create a variety of websites. Fully compatible with page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg, and others, allowing the creation of custom layouts easily.
One consideration when choosing a theme is support. There are too many security attacks and the theme site should have staff to address those risks. So the only free themes we trust are those offered by major developers like WordPress, Astra and the like.
Another must-have in today’s web world is mobile responsiveness, which means that a web page adjusts to the size of the screen on which it is displayed. For example, if your website is viewed on a smartphone, a mobile responsive theme adjusts so that the site can be viewed on a small screen. You can’t just take a website that normally looks good on a computer screen and scale it down completely – you’d end up with tiny letters and the site would be unreadable on a mobile device.
WordPress Plugins
Plugins extend the functionality of the basic WordPress platform in many different ways. Simply go to the WordPress plugins menu, find the plugin you want and click “add new”.
The WordPress repository reportedly has over 60 thousand plugins. The repository is an area where WordPress collects and curates plugins submitted by thousands of developers. All plugins in the WordPress repository are free. Many have an upgrade that improves what they do for a fee. There are also many strictly paid plugins that are not part of the repository.
Some plugins are written more efficiently than others. So while all plugins affect the speed of your website, some pose a bigger hurdle to web speed than others. It is important that you keep the number of plugins you use low and monitor your website to see if its speed is significantly affected after adding a plugin.
Some programmers are more skilled than others, so we suggest that before installing a plugin, look at the number of people who have installed it and read the comments to see if anyone has experienced any major problems. We suggest using only well-recognized plugins with a relatively large installed base. This suggests that the supplement has been well tested and has proven its value. We also suggest that you only use plugins from a larger plugin developer that offers a paid upgrade. This tells you that the plugin developer has a continuous source of income and can afford the staff needed to keep the plugin constantly updated.
Essential Plugin Maintenance for WordPress Security
Plugins often turn out to be the route hackers use to break into a site, and keeping them up to date to protect yourself from the latest threat is an ongoing battle. If you have the Wordfence plugin installed (which we’ll cover later), you’ll receive emails every time you need to update your plugins, usually because there’s a new security threat.
Be very careful to update plugins frequently. Just because a plugin doesn’t have an update doesn’t mean it doesn’t need one. If you go to the plugins menu and click on the details tab for each plugin, some plugins you are using may no longer be compatible with the current version of WordPress. Some haven’t been updated in a year or more; some have been abandoned by their developers. Therefore, periodically review the details of your plugins and remove any that are out of date. They present a threat to the security of your site.
The following plugins are the ones we initially consider essential for the health and security of your website.
Akismet
Akismet is from Automattic (the force behind WordPress.com) and is open source software, so it is (and will remain) free. It is updated frequently and you can trust that it will be up to date with the current version of WordPress. It has an installed base of more than 5 million users.
This is an anti-spam plugin. It checks the content and comments left by your users against a global spam database to prevent your site from publishing inappropriate or malicious content. This is important so that Google does not identify your site as a source of spam. Requires an API key, which is free for personal sites; you need a paid version for commercial sites.
API (application programming interface) is a way for one program to communicate with another. An alphanumeric key is sent that authorizes one program to access another. A beginner affiliate marketer should choose a personal key, but as they earn income, they should switch to a business key.
Wordfence
Wordfence is an essential security plugin that also has an installed user base of over 5 million users. You can set it to send you email alerts about security issues, such as plugins that need updating, attacks on your site, and suspicious activity.
You can configure it to limit login attempts. Often, hackers will attempt to log in hundreds or thousands of times using random, automatically generated passwords until they gain entry. If you’ve set it to limit login attempts to, say, five and then apply a 15-minute timeout period, you’ve defeated this type of hacker. You can also set up IP blocks, so that if you see a lot of fraudulent attempts to log in from a particular IP, you can block them.
The free version is fine for beginners in affiliate marketing. A paid version offers other features such as the ability to block countries and faster updating of its security threat database.
Yoast
It is a comprehensive SEO (search engine optimization) plugin. Yoast has an installed user base of more than 5 million users. It guides you as you draft your content to write it in an SEO-friendly way. Being SEO friendly helps you get more visitors from Google. Yoast makes suggestions to improve your SEO. Even if at this point you don’t fully understand what SEO means, why it’s important for your site, and how to implement it, the Yoast plugin will guide you along the way.
Yoast has a paid version, which offers more features and will help you make your site even more SEO friendly. But the free version suits the needs of the beginner affiliate marketer.
UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is a backup and restore plugin. The free version is all the beginner affiliate marketer needs, but paid upgrades are available. You can set it to automatically backup your website weekly or daily. You can set it to backup locally or to Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. If you ever have a server failure that deletes your domain files, you’ll be glad you have an off-site backup.
Elementor
Elementor is one of the most powerful and widely used WordPress plugins. It is a drag and release pages builder that provides an intuitive and easy to use interface, whether you are a beginner or an experienced developer. It offers the necessary tools and flexibility to create spectacular and functional websites.
Lite Speed Cache
The LiteSpeed Cache plugin is a powerful caching and optimization tool for WordPress. It is designed to significantly to improve the performance and speed of WordPress websites by implementing various caching mechanisms, optimizing resources, and reducing load times. This leads to a better user experience and can positively impact SEO rankings.
Email and Contact Form Plugins
We recommend that one of the first things you do when setting up your new website is to install an email plugin and contact form (like WPForms Lite) so that you can collect the email addresses of your web visitors. Once you have them, you can stay in touch and develop a relationship by sending your website visitors information they can use. Keep in mind that your first goal is to satisfy the needs of your website visitors; As you develop your relationship, you can send information about your affiliate products.
There are many email plugin options. One we suggest for beginners in affiliate marketing is a Mailchimp account. It’s free up to 500 contacts/month, 1000 emails/month or 500/day on your email list. As your list grows, you’ll be prompted to update your Mailchimp account. It doesn’t have as many features as Constant Contact, Getresponse, ActiveCampaign among others, but Mailchimp has everything you need to get started and discover what’s important to you in an email.
Mailchimp Free has easy-to-use drag-and-drop email templates that make your emails look professional. You can include videos, images, posts and texts. You can set it to automatically send an email with your latest post. You can also run some simple A-B tests and segment your audience and email list.
Higher priced upgrades and more expensive email marketing companies like Constant Contact give you more features like more templates, autoresponder email series, and transactional emails. As you grow and learn, you’ll be able to use those more complex features and be able to value the monthly cost of a higher-priced email and marketing service.
WPForms Lite
Ideal for users who need basic forms like Contact Forms, feedback forms, or simple surveys.
WooCommerce
Transforms your WordPress site into a fully functional e-commerce platform, allowing you to sell products and services online.
Smush
Optimizes images to reduce file size without losing quality, improving site speed and performance.
Monitoring the Website for Affiliate Marketing
You can’t see your website 24/7, so how can you tell if your hosting provider is serving its customers well? If your website visitor cannot access your site and make a purchase, then you are losing affiliate commissions. The best way to find out is to hire a monitoring service to keep an eye on your site. Most services simply say that your site is up or down, along with times. That’s great to know because the notification is almost instantaneous. When your site goes down, you know almost immediately and can contact the hosting company.
Netumo
We recommend Netumo’s free tier for affiliate marketing beginners. Your website is checked every 15 minutes. If you want it to be checked every 2 minutes, you will have to pay for the update. However, every 15 minutes is enough.
Additionally, the speed of your website (how quickly it loads and provides data to your visitors) is very important to your wallet. Slow speed negatively affects your income. Your hosting company is only one factor in determining the speed of your website. Many other factors affect the speed of your website (such as themes, plugins, PHP version, coding, images, optimizations, etc.) and you have control over these factors.
GTmetrix
A great site that will help you diagnose the factors slowing down your site and suggest solutions is GTmetrix. You can also set it up to monitor your website and send you weekly reports. This is great for allowing you to see if your host is performing as it should and gives you more information than a simple up/down warning. If you are willing to pay for a professional level of service at GTmetrix, you will get more features and reports. But we think the free tier will meet the needs of the beginner affiliate marketer for some time.
Total Costs of Starting a Website for Affiliate Marketing
There are some costs to setting up and running a website for affiliate marketing. They are relatively modest because at first, as you build your audience, your server and email needs are also modest.
We know there are times when your money is better spent than your time. We’ve tried to make most of our recommendations for the free versions where applicable. But there are times when it is better to spend some money, although we also understand that there may be times when it is not possible.
Approximate startup costs for starting a website include the following:
- Domain registration: $15 per year.
- Hosting: As little as $2.95 per month; Significant discounts are usually offered if paid annually. (You can start with free hosting if necessary, but we don’t recommend it).
- MailChimp: free (optional upgrade).
- Yoast: FREE (optional paid upgrade).
- WordFence: FREE (optional paid upgrade).
- Ezazon: Optional, but makes life easier by making Amazon links easy to create.
- WP Robot: Optional. It is an automated content generation plugin for WordPress. Helps create posts, pages, and other content for affiliate marketing on your WordPress site.
As an Owner of a Website for Affiliate Marketing you should ask yourself some Questions
There are some important questions about websites that you should ask yourself but may not have thought of:
Are all your plugins the latest version and have they been tested with the current version of WordPress? Check it out by clicking on the details on the WordPress plugin page.
Are you committed to an ongoing process of learning about websites? The Internet is constantly changing and evolving, and your affiliate marketing strategies and techniques will need to evolve as well.
Does your hosting company offer free Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) https://? If you don’t have one installed, Google will show your site as not secure. You don’t want that to scare away visitors from your website, right? Most hosting companies now offer free certificates.
Did you remember to make your disclaimer notice and follow the TOS of the affiliated companies you work with?
Is your site compliant with the GPPR (General Data Protection Regulation)?