AFFILIATE MARKETING
Create a website, put affiliate links on the website and make commissions every time someone buys from your link.
PROS
– Scalable passive income
– Work FROM anywhere
– Low overhead cost
– Independence
– No dealing with customers
– No special skills needed
CONS
– GETTING Easily DISTRACTED
– Takes time and work
HOW DOES AFFILIATE MARKETING WORK?
STEP ONE
Find a niche about something you are passionate about.
Step two
Build a website around the niche you chose and put affiliate links in it.
Step three
Attract visitors to your website and make them click on your links.
Step four
Collect revenue every time someone buys something from your links.
SIMPLIFIED VERSION
HOW TO START?
STEP ONE: SELECT NICHE
Choosing a niche will give focus to your business and help you with content. It’ll also make it easier to create targeted marketing campaigns. For some people, choosing their niche is the hardest part of starting their own business, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We recommend something you are passionate about. If you are into dogs, it’s better to sell/promote dog beds instead of something you are not passionate about. But you can do both. You can visit our guide how to select the right niche for you.
STEP TWO: BUILD A WEBSITE
Once you’ve found a profitable niche that you’re excited about, you’re ready to build a website and blog. The primary focus of your site is going to be your blog. It’s important to make sure that your policies are clear and upfront to avoid confusion and to build trust with your audience. We highly recommend building a website with WordPress and NameHero hosting. And don’t forget, building a website is extremely easy.
STEP THREE: CREATE QUALITY CONTENT
Some affiliate networks and affiliate programs require you to already have established content, site traffic, and monthly views at a certain level before they’ll accept you as an affiliate, so be sure to read the eligibility requirements for the specific networks and programs you’re considering before you apply. This doesn’t mean that you have to create million blog posts before you can even think about becoming an affiliate marketer, but you should have at least 5 strong posts already on your site with some visitors.
Creating quality content is the most important thing that will make you stand out.
STEP FOUR: CHOOSE AFFILIATE PRODUCTS TO PROMOTE
If you’ve done the work to choose a niche, choosing affiliate products to promote should be easy! Choose products that fit your niche and relate to your content. We recommend promoting something you already use. What do you already use and love? There’s probably an affiliate program for that. Make a list of all the products and services that you use and hit up Google to find their affiliate programs. Then, write reviews and plug in the affiliate links.
STEP FIVE: SET UP SEO AND BRING TRAFFIC
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. How SEO works? Google (or any search engine you’re using) has a crawler that goes out and gathers information about all the content they can find on the Internet. The crawlers bring all those 1s and 0s back to the search engine to build an index. That index is then fed through an algorithm that tries to match all that data with your query.
COMPLETE STEP-BY-STEP VERSION
HOW TO START?
STEP ONE: REGISTER DOMAIN NAME
Website for a price of cofee/month
First, you need to choose the niche, we have a guide that will help you with that. After choosing a niche, we can start with the work. First, you will need the hosting. Hosting is a service that stores data for you on a server to make your website accessible for everyone 24/7. You’ll need a name for your site and a web host to host it before you can install and use WordPress. It’s better to register your domain name and get web hosting from the same location, regardless of which hosting company you want. We’ll use NameHero hosting in this tutorial since they provide some of the lowest pricing and fastest uptime and load time in the industry.
Their service is operated by LiteSpeed and operates on a cloud-based server, making it one of the best and most cost-effective solutions available.
Hosting quality is based on: price, bandwidth, compatibility, reliability, security, speed, and uptime. And NameHero wins in every way above other hosting in this price range. (This website is hosted by NameHero)
1) CHOOSE HOSTING PLAN
If you’re on a budget and only need the essentials, the Starter Cloud will get you covered. But Turbo Cloud Offers huge bonuses for the money.
*prices may vary due to discounts
2) CHOOSE YOUR DOMAIN NAME
With NameHero hosting, you will get your domain name for free if you buy hosting for two or more years. We recommend using .com. Keep your domain name short and descriptive.
3) CHOOSE ADDITIONAL FEATURES
Choose some features you would like, we recommend getting a backup plan, just to make sure your website is saved in every way. But if you want to save money, you can download a plugin that does Backups for free, but remember, plugins may slow down a website for a little.
4) COMPLETE REGISTRATION AND CONFIRM YOUR ACCOUNT
Fill out your account information and remember your password. Once the process is complete, a confirmation email will be sent to your designated email address. Your registered email address must be verified in order for the domain name to be activated. Remember to check your email and spam folder for confirmation.
STEP TWO: INSTALL WORDPRESS
WordPress is a full-featured content management system that also happens to be the most popular website creation tool on the planet. FUN FACT: Did you know that WordPress is so popular that it powers more than 38% of all websites. You don’t need to know anything about HTML, CSS, or any of the other acronyms that professional web developers love to throw around. It is simple to create a professional-looking website with WordPress without writing a single line of code. WordPress can power almost any type of website, from a simple blog to a fully functional business website. Using the popular WooCommerce plugin, you can even use WordPress to create an online store and sell anything you offer. WordPress is simple enough for anyone to use. It’s also comprehensive enough that many web professionals use WordPress as the foundation for custom websites. WordPress is used to power some of the world’s most popular websites. WordPress is completely free to use and modify. WordPress is distributed under the GPL, which is an open-source software license. This license ensures that WordPress will remain free and that site owner will retain complete control and ownership over their web creations. WordPress may appear complicated at first glance, but trust us when we say it isn’t. You can learn where everything is by looking at your WordPress menu, or by watching a YouTube video that will show you around.
1) LOGIN TO YOUR ACCOUNT
Go to https://namehero.com and click “Account” in the top right corner of the page.
2) CLICK ON “MY CLOUD”
3) CLICK ON THE HOSTING PLAN YOU JUST BOUGHT
4) CLICK “LOGIN TO CPANEL”
5) SEARCH AND CLICK ON “WORDPRESS MANAGER BY SOFTACULOUS”
6) ENTER YOUR WORDPRESS ACCOUNT DETAILS
“Choose Installation URL” should be set as “https://www.” as it is most secure, and you will need it afterward for CDN (Content Delivery Network) for a faster website. Site Settings leave as it is as you can change it then in WordPress.
7) ENTER YOUR WORDPRESS LOGIN DETAILS
Input your Admin Username and Password. The admin email should be generated automatically and will be your first email address associated with your website. Or you can change it, but these details will be needed if you want to log in to WordPress.
You can choose a theme here, but we don’t recommend doing this. After the installation is complete, you will have access to the entire theme library at WordPress, which will be compatible with Page Builder. Simply click the “Install Now” button and we will choose a theme later on WordPress. This process could take up to 24 hours, but it usually takes a few minutes, you can take a short break and drink some water, that is important as you know.
8) LOG IN TO YOUR WORDPRESS ADMIN DASHBOARD
When the installation is finished, the installation details will be displayed. You can access your WordPress backend panel via the URL (https://www.yourwebsitename.com/wp-admin). It’s not a bad idea to save this page as a favorite.
Once logged in, you have complete control over your website’s themes, pages, posts, plugins, and much more.
WordPress’ installation is now complete and is ready for a theme.
ACTIVATE “SECRET” LITESPEED TECHNOLOGY WITH NAMEHERO
LiteSpeed Web Server is LiteSpeed Technologies’ leading high-performance, high-scalability web server. It can be used to replace an existing Apache server without requiring any changes to other programs or operating system settings. Best of all, it can be integrated without causing any problems. As a result, LiteSpeed Web Server can quickly replace a significant bottleneck in your current web hosting platform. LiteSpeed Web Server, with its extensive feature set and simple web administration console, can assist you in overcoming the challenges of deploying an effective web hosting infrastructure.
Why would you pay for an expensive hosting company, when you can use NameHero that offers free LiteSpeed technology. These settings are not set by default, that is the reason why we have to do this ourselves for our affiliate marketing website to be as fast as it could be. A faster website means a better user experience.
1) CLICK “LOGIN TO CPANEL”
Login to cPanel as you did before in your NameHero hosting account.
2) FIND “Select PHP Version”
Find or search for “PHP” and click “Select PHP Version”.
3) CLICK ON “EXTENSIONS”
4) CLICK ON “MEMCACHED” AND “REDIS”
These two settings are not checked by default, click only on “Memcached” and “Redis”, do not change anything else unless you know what are you doing. Yes only “Memcached” and not “memcache”.
DOWNLOAD THE “LITESPEED CACHING” PLUGIN
Before downloading LiteSpeed caching plugin, we recommend deactivating and delete all pre-downloaded plugins. They can cause problems, and you do not even know if you want to use them. If you would like, you can install them back later. Now you need to log in to your WordPress account to download your first plugin. This plugin will be your main speed optimization plugin. There are many types of plugins (speed optimization plugins, image optimization plugins, search engine optimization plugins, backup plugins, page builder plugins, security plugins, and many more). All the plugins you will need will be explained later. You can access your WordPress panel via the URL (https://www.”yourwebsitename”.com/wp-admin).
1) GO TO PLUGINS AND CLICK “ADD NEW”
If you just logged in for the first time to WordPress, there will be many sections on the left side, as you see in the picture. Search for the “Plugins” section and click on that. Then click on “add new” to add a new plugin, you will now add your first plugin for speed optimization of your affiliate marketing website.
2) SEARCH FOR “LITESPEED CACHE” AND INSTALL THE FIRST ONE
Install the LiteSpeed cache plugin by click on “Install now” and then click again on the same icon that will say “Activate”.
3) SETTINGS OF THE PLUGIN
The new section will appear after installing LiteSpeed Cache plugin on the left of your WordPress dashboard. Click on that to set up the plugin.
4) CLICK ON “CACHE”
To activate the LiteSpeed technology, you need to go to the “Cache” section and then click “[6] Object”.
5) CHANGE THE FOLLOWING SETTINGS
Set the “Object Cache” to ON. This setting will be turned off by default. Then switch the “Method” from “Memcached” to “Redis”. “Memcached is set by default. Do not change the localhost. The final change will be the “Port”. The default port number is 11211, delete this number and type in the number “6379” as shown under the Port type bar. Now click save changes and you are DONE! LiteSpeed technology is now activated!
STEP THREE: INSTALL A THEME
To begin designing and editing your WordPress website, you must first install a theme. The dashboard sidebar contains a link to a page where you can install free themes. We will be using Brizy Page Builder on this website, to make our website look phenomenal. (We use Brizy on this website). Here are themes compatible with Brizy: 1. Astra 2.Zakra 3. ColorMag 4. Spacious 5. Flash 6. Neve 7. Olsen 8. Ocean WP 9. Blocksy 10. Zita 11. Suki 12. Futurio 13. Customify 14. Esteem 15. Page Builder Framework
Our recommendation is Astra. Why? Their theme looks beautiful, and their layouts are really amazing. Even if you will not use any theme on your website, and you will design all the pages with Brizy builder as we did, you need a theme anyway, if you are sure that you will customize all the pages how you would like, download any theme you want. If you are not sure, just follow the tutorial.
1) DOWNLOAD ASTRA
Click on “Appearance” and select “Themes” on the side of your WordPress dashboard.
2) CLICK ON “ADD NEW”
3) SEARCH AND INSTALL “ASTRA”
Type “Astra” in the search bar and click the blue button saying “Install” after hovering a mouse on the Astra theme, then click on the same button that will change from “Install” to “Activate”. You may be using an official WordPress theme called “Twenty Twenty One” that is activated automatically after you Installed WordPress, feel free to deactivate this theme since you really will not use that theme. Now you have a theme activated, and if you visit your domain, the design should change.
STEP FOUR: DOWNLOAD BRIZY PAGE BUILDER
Brizy is a WordPress page builder plugin that allows you to create a website visually rather than through coding. Brizy, like other similar plugins, includes a visual editor with drag-and-drop functionality. Brizy allows you to create beautiful pages for your WordPress site without having to deal with CSS or HTML. Brizy page builder’s editor interface is simple, intuitive, and lightweight. It’s a lot of fun to make a page with Brizy. Brizy is a project created by the same team that creates ThemeFuse.
A lot of affiliate marketer uses simple and boring themes, and they are just lazy to design and create something special, that’s when you show up and step up the game with affiliate marketing with custom design pages.
This is a simple feature that may impress you. Brizy allows you to enable the dark mode when selecting a block template. When this mode is enabled, the background of the block templates is changed to black.
Brizy allows you to create a custom header, custom footer, custom single post template, and popups on your WordPress site in addition to pages. Brizy editor can be used to create anything. There are also features such as the ability to add dynamic content and integration with third-party services. Brizy page builder is available as a freemium plugin.
Brizy provides a distinct, one-of-a-kind experience when it comes to customizing the elements. The customization is done through the settings bar, which appears when you click a specific element on the canvas area. Depending on the element you want to customize, the settings options available on the settings bar vary. For example, if you want to customize the Text element, you will see some typography options. If you want to customize the Image element, you can do so by selecting an image, adjusting the width and height, and so on.
When it comes to page builder plugins, the availability of design elements is critical to consider because it determines the design process in general. Design elements are simply referred to like elements in Brizy.
Brizy lets you save a block as a global block for future use. If you want to add a slider element to your page, you can also convert a block into a slider. You have two options when adding a new block. To begin, you can use one of the available premade block templates (there are over 500 block templates offered by Brizy in total). A block template is made up of predefined elements as well as styling. Second, you can add the elements to the block and personalize them.
WHY DO WE RECOMMEND BRIZY?
Brizy is one of the most user-friendly WordPress page builders. Completely made for beginners to make building a website process extremely easy. If you want to step up the game with affiliate marketing and a beautiful website, just download Brizy.
We like the Brizy editor because it is straightforward and simple to use. It provides a new visual experience for creating a page
HOW TO DOWNLOAD BRIZY?
Choose FREE or PRO version, we are using the PRO version, but you can download the FREE version and upgrade any time later if you like this page building, and you would like to use PRO features like Pop-Ups which are very useful.
2) FILL OUT INFORMATION
Select the “To build a website for myself” and then fill in your email address, then download the Brizy plugin in the folder.
3) GO TO PLUGINS AND CLICK “ADD NEW”
Same thing as you did before with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. Just now, you will upload the folder that you downloaded from the Brizy.io website.
4) CLICK “UPLOAD PLUGIN” AND UPLOAD BRIZY FOLDER
Find and select the folder you downloaded from Brizy.io and upload the plugin. Then just click “activate” in plugins, and you have Brizy on your affiliate marketing website for FREE!
HOW TO CREATE A PAGE IN BRIZY?
You have just downloaded Brizy page builder, you are able to start creating your first page on your own website! Here is a tutorial on how to do this from the official Brizy YouTube channel.
BRIZY ALTERNATIVE
There are other page builders for WordPress, and one of the most known and most used is Elementor. Elementor has quite a bit learning curve and is not best for beginners, but there are more tutorials on YouTube about how to use it. If you want to try Elementor instead of Brizy, feel free to download it, installation process is almost same as with Brizy.
STEP FIVE: SETUP WORDPRESS SETTINGS
1) SETUP PERMALINKS
Choose post name, it’s cleanest and helpful for SEO.
2) SETUP GENERAL SETTINGS
Setup site title as your website name. You can make it look better by capitalizing on some letters. The tagline should be simple and specific about your website. WordPress Address and Site Address should be the same. Use https://www in front of your domain.“HTTPS” is most secure, and you need “WWW” for CDN to work properly. CDN increases your website speed by caching your website content and distributing it over multiple data centers around the world. When someone opens your website, the content is delivered to your visitor from geographically the closest server. It not only makes your site load much faster in every part of the world, but protects it as well, by analyzing your traffic and blocking suspicious visitors. We will set up that in the next steps.
STEP SIX: SET UP THE CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK (CDN)
HOW DOES THE CDN WORK?
One of the most effective ways to reduce page loading time is to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Content Delivery Network (CDN) serves as a middleman between a website and its visitors. Users can use this system to receive cached static content from nearby servers. The site can load faster if there is less physical distance between it and the user.
For example, an Australian visitor, who wishes to see content that originates on a US-based server that NameHero hosting company we are using to provide, will face slow loading times if the request must go for a longer distance. To overcome this, CDNs cache your website’s content at numerous geographical locations throughout the world, referred to as “points of presence” (PoPs). These PoPs will have their cache servers and will be able to deliver quality material to the user’s location from the nearest server.
WHY DO YOU NEED CDN?
Content protection: CDNs allow you to control access to content and prevent it from unauthorized downloading.
Load time reduction: Moving content to CDN servers reduces the load time.
WHICH CDN SHOULD I USE?
We cover two CDN providers in this tutorial, so you can choose which one you want to use. But what is the difference between QUIC.cloud and Cloudflare? The primary distinction between QUIC.cloud and Cloudflare is that the former caches not only static files, but also dynamic HTML pages. This is in direct contrast to Cloudflare, which only caches static files by default. QUIC.cloud communicates with the LiteSpeed extension on your backend to determine which pages have changed, and then purges them selectively from the cache. QUIC.cloud offers free APO (Automatic Platform Optimization) and Cloudflare offers APO for $5.
Overall, QUIC.cloud offers more features and is more deeply integrated into your site than the Cloudflare APO. Critical CSS generation is a great example. It is a manual process that requires keeping the critical CSS up to date whenever your site changes. Even with the APO functionality, Cloudflare is ineffective in this regard.
We cover only those two CDN provides because we think they are the best. What do we recommend? Despite all the benefits we recommend QUIC.cloud, we are using QUIC.cloud on this website, and we can not complain. But you will not regret using any of those CDN providers.
OPTION ONE: QUIC.CLOUD
1) REQUEST DOMAIN KEY
Click “Request Domain Key” on the LiteSpeed Cache → CDN on the sidebar of your WordPress menu. This could take a minute, so please be patient. After you’ve generated the key, go ahead and click “Link to QUIC.cloud.” This will take you to their website, where you can sign up for a free account. Thanks to the NameHero hosting we are using, we get 10Gb of CDN data per month instead of 1Gb per month.
2) WHITELIST SERVER IP
If you created an account and confirmed an email, now you need to turn on “Automatically Upgrade” as the picture shows above, and whitelist server IP. Just click “Check my public IP from DoAPI.us” and copy it to the “Server IP” bar.
3) ENABLE API FUNCIONALITY
Go to LiteSpeed Cache → CDN on the sidebar of your WordPress menu and turn ON the QUIC.cloud CDN.
4) ENABLE CDN
Return to https://my.quic.cloud and select your domain and CDN.
5) CLICK “Enable CDN”
6) MODIFY “CNAME”
There will be warning that say “Update CNAME records” in yellow box. Copy that CNAME.
7) GO TO ZONE EDITOR
Go to your NameHero account and go to cPanel. In cPanel, search for “Zone Editor” and click on it.
8) CLICK “MANAGE”
9) CHANGE CNAME
There you will have a few records. Find the one that has “WWW” in front of your domain name and “CNAME” Next to the CNAME record. Delete the record and paste the one you just copied and save it. This could take 10 minutes for CDN to be activated in the QUIC.cloud menu. Don’t worry about the SSL certificate, it will be generated in a few hours. You need to give a CDN some time to propagate. But you don’t need to worry since we have not created any page on the website yet.
CDN with QUIC.cloud is now set up you can now skip the Cloudflare setup and follow the guide from step seven.
OPTION TWO: CLOUDFLARE
1) CREATE CLOUDFLARE ACCOUNT
Click the sign-up button. Provide your email and password and then hit Create Account.
2) ADD DOMAIN NAME TO CLOUDFLARE
Navigate to the Cloudflare dashboard. Select the +Add Site button to the right of the notification that says “You currently do not have any websites” and select FREE plan. Add your website and change the nameservers.
3) CHANGE THE NAMESERVERS IN NAMEHERO
When you add your domain to Cloudflare, you will be asked to change the nameservers of your domain. This process is very easy in NameHero.
Go to your NameHero account and click on “Domains”. Then click on your domain name and click on “Nameservers” on the left. Then just use custom nameservers and delete the nameservers you have there, and change them to the Cloudflare nameservers you were asked to change.
4) CONNECT WITH API
Go to Settings and select Cloudflare. Click on “get your API Key from here”. A window displaying your Cloudflare account will appear. Navigate to the API Tokens tab, then select View from the Global API drop-down menu.
5) CONNECT CLOUDFLARE LITESPEED CACHE
Copy the provided API key after entering your Cloudflare password. Return to the LiteSpeed Cache and click on “CDN” section. Scroll all the way down and fill in the information and paste the Global API Key. Turn on “Cloudflare API” and then save changes. Connecting successfully to Cloudflare could take up to 24h. You can go on a follow the next steps in guide.
STEP SEVEN: CONNECT TO SEARCH CONSOLE
WHY DO YOU NEED A SEARCH CONSOLE?
Google’s free Search Console tool provides site owners with a plethora of tools for monitoring the performance of their website. It not only shows how your site is performing under the hood, but it also shows how searchers perceive your site in the search results. You’ll learn about the keywords and queries that drive traffic, which rich search results from your content have earned, and how your mobile site is performing. You can also see if Google can access your content.
1) ADD YOUR WEBSITE
Type “search console” to google and click the first result, then click “add property”.
2) CONNECT WITH API
Use the “URL prefix” to put your website link in there and finish the process. For this process, you will need a “sitemap”. Thankfully, the plugin you already installed (RankMath) has created a sitemap for you, and you can just copy the URL to Search Console. Your sitemap can be found at the sidebar of your WordPress menu: RankMath →> Sitemap Settings. You may need to create at least one page to be sure it is on the sitemap, the page can be blank. Remember, you have to verify that you are the owner of the website. Google Search Console will provide you with step-by-step guides how to verify your ownership of website.
STEP EIGHT: INSTALL GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Google Analytics is an essential tool for anyone working in marketing, including those who run their own online businesses. This is due to the fact that the Analytics tool provides free insight into the traffic patterns of your website.
To provide insight to marketers, the resource uses four distinct types of information from web users:
Users: The information provided is specific to each user’s actions.
Sessions: The information provided is for a single visitation session.
Events: This includes details such as video interactions and button presses.
Pageviews: Pageview data indicates which pages were visited.
You can use this tool to see who is visiting your content, how long they are staying on your website, where they go next on your website and other useful information.
1) SIGN TO YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT
Visit https://analytics.google.com
3) FILL INFORMATION
Fill in your information and connect with your website.
2) LOG IN WITH GOOGLE ACCOUNT
4) DOWNLOAD THE
“SITE KIT” PLUGIN
Official Google WordPress plugin that connects everything with everything.
5) CONNECT YOUR ACCOUNTS
Visit the plugin in WordPress and connect the accounts – how to do it will be in the plugin.
STEP NINE: DOWNLOAD USEFUL PLUGINS
A plugin is a piece of software that contains a set of functions that can be applied to your affiliate marketing website. They can extend the functionality of your WordPress websites or add new features. Plugins, like apps on your phone, are extensions of something that make it much better.
MUST HAVE PLUGINS
We recommend installing the following plugins on all WordPress websites. These plugins are extremely useful.
RankMath SEO
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is a very needed thing for your website, to be shown at Search Engines like Google and Bing, and people could visit organically your website for free. You can edit your Title, Description of every page right at RankMath. This will change your text at search engines. RankMath also helps Google to crawl your website and help Googlebot to read the content you have, and make everything easier. RankMath helps with 404 Monitor, Analytics, Image SEO, Structured Data, Redirections, SEO Analysis, Sitemap. You really want this plugin.
iThemes Security
WordPress itself is very secure, and you don’t exactly need this plugin, but extra safety and security are very helpful. iThemes Security protects your website from Bots, DDoS, Hackers, and helps you analyze and find when someone tries to log in to your website admin menu. They even offer an SSL configuration. By visiting the website with our affiliate link, you can buy the PRO version, but to be honest, the FREE version will be more than enough.
UpdraftPlus
Backups are the first layer of protection for any WordPress website. Aside from automated backups, you must also have an easy way to restore the backup if necessary. Data loss and security threats affect all websites on the internet. The best way to protect yourself from these threats is to back up your WordPress site on a regular basis. UpdraftPlus is a free plugin that will allow you to back up every single thing on your website to one folder, which you can even download
