Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative ways of making money online but it is a competitive space. So how do you get started?

Choosing Web Hosting
The first step, if you haven’t already done so, is to get a website. You’ll need to buy the web space, and there are hundreds of companies that can sell you space or in other words, host your site as well as support you as you get started. The price of web space can vary from as a little as £1 a year for a very limited, basic hosting package right up to hundreds of pounds a month for an all singing, all dancing service; it all depends on what your site will offer and what you actually need. The cost of the production of the site itself will of course be determined by what you want it to do. More on this in a moment.

You’ll also need to find and pay for a domain name. When sign up for your web space, the hosting provider may point you in the direction of where to get one or you can do some research and find one yourself. Many hosts will offer domain registration services but do be careful that in using these, you are not tied into the host in question for a protracted period — there are some sneaky tricks out there! Equally spend some time researching web hosting – offerings range from the good through to the bad and the cosmetically challenged.

Choosing a Domain Name
The choice of domain name can be a little trickier than choosing hosting services. Choosing the right domain name can assist in optimising your site and thus in developing your reputation. Google, in particular, still seems sensitive to the presence of keywords in the domain name which is why some sites of questionable value are still appearing high up in the rankings. In general terms, it’s a good idea to choose a name which is short and easy to remember. Don’t choose one that is too similar to another company, especially one that offers similar services to you. You can check Companies House online to ensure you are not registering a domain name that matches an existing company name. Similarly, don’t choose a name which contains words that people struggle to spell. Doing your research into your competitors’ services and domain names should, in the long term, greatly help in building the popularity of your site. When considering keywords, it is worth using the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool to identify terms the are both relevant and actually searched for — an essential activity in any search engine optimisation (SEO) exercise.

Creating the Site
The type of site you need and are able to produce will be determined by your budget and / or web development skills and of course the required functionality. There are endless templates out there, some of them are free. However, most are unlikely to be particularly search engine friendly so you may want to shop around for a developer to produce the site. Whatever you do, get several quotes and ALWAYS get references from happy clients. If you are tempted by off-shore developers, you need to accept that there will be a management overhead, time difference and language barrier – whatever you are told during the sales pitch! That said, many off-shore developers are of good quality and can provide significant savings.

Many successful sites also have a blog. Blogs are an extension of your site, providing you with yet another platform to sell from, post content and reach audiences who may not otherwise find you via the search engines, especially in the early days. Using a pre-built solution such as WordPress to create your site can help you get started and, with many plug-ins, the options are almost infinite. The more people who read your blog and click through to the sales areas of the website the more chance of making money via affiliate referrals. Furthermore, by pushing more clicks through your site the better your ranking on Google will be, and the higher up the list you go – a virtuous circle.

Choosing Affiliate Networks and Programmes
Once your site and blog is up and running the best route to take, especially when you’re starting out, is to join one or more affiliate networks such as Affiliate Window, Affiliate Future, Paid on Results or DGM. These established networks act as middlemen, connecting affiliate publishers with merchants and providing tracking, reporting and marketing support to both parties. Once you are established and are driving significant traffic, you may decide to enter into some direct merchant relationships but in the early days, the networks make it easy (ish!) to get the relevant code or indeed data feeds if you are set up for those, so that you can publish relevant products or services on your shiny new site which will monetise when visitors click through. Most affiliate programmes are pay per sale (PPS) although a few will still pay for leads and, far less frequently these days, clicks. The major affiliate networks provide plenty of statistics so you can work out the average earnings per hundred (EPC) or per thousand (EPM) click-throughs and thus determine which is likely to work best for you.

Content Content Content
Once all of this is set up you need to start filling your pages with relevant and unique content. The more relevant and unique your content the better your search engine ranking. Whilst other SEO factors such as links and the basic code optimisation of your site are also essential (see some of the other posts here at lammo.net for more on these subjects), content is absolutely essential. Product or service content from affiliate programmes doesn’t count as unique content (all of the affiliates and the merchant will have it for starters!). Content needs to be handwritten – if you can’t do this yourself, pay someone decent to do it and make sure you use Copyscape to check that the content they provide is indeed unique. Predictions are that content affiliates — i.e. affiliates with content-rich sites — will thrive over the next few years. Those with little or no unique content are likely to struggle. With the right content, your site should gradually feature ever higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and thus drive visitor numbers. This will in turn increase your chances of converting your carefully chosen affiliate links into real money.

Arguably the best part of becoming an affiliate publisher is that you don’t need any particular expertise or previous knowledge. Anyone from butchers to lorry drivers to call centre staff can make money online; all you need is a bit of patience and a lot of passion. You don’t even have to quit your day job to do it. By joining the right affiliate networks, choosing the right programmes, building a decent content-rich site under a well-chosen domain name and putting your back into learning and practising good SEO techniques (and avoiding the bad ones!), you really can start on the road to becoming master – or mistress – of your own destiny.

Just don’t expect it to happen overnight.

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