If you are new to affiliate marketing, there are some basic things you will need. These are …
A Niche – Before anything, you must decide on the niche you want to promote. For example, dog toys, golf gadgets, home security products, etc. This will serve as the foundation upon which to build a successful affiliate marketing venture.
A Domain Name – You should get a domain name. A domain name is yourwebsite.com name. Your domain name should contain – if possible – the keyword(s) of your niche. For example, homesecurityworld.com. We recommend brainstorming and searching for available domain names from host providers such as Bluehost. Why brainstorm? Because almost all of the names in the dictionary are taken. It will take lots of imagination to snag a good domain name.
It is important to understand that a domain is not your website. It is the domain where your website files will reside. Thus, when a person enters your domain name in their web browsers, your website files display your website content.
A Web Host Provider – Above, we mentioned host providers such as Bluehost. Web Host Providers are companies who have very powerful servers (special computers) that are connected to the Internet backbone. These providers rent you server space on their servers. Your website files are hosted on that rented space. In other words, you upload your website files (html, php, images, media, etc) to the space rented and the web host provider makes sure that when persons visit your domain, those files are properly served up to them.
There are many Web Host Providers, but not all are the same and neither are all reliable. We like Bluehost because they have been around for a very long time and they have a very good reputation. Plus the price of their hosting packages is very reasonable.
You can both search for an available domain and select a hosting package from Bluehost. Convenient.
Also, with Bluehost, you get FREE SSL with your package. What is that? SSL is a certificate that secures your website. https as opposed to http. if you collect data from your website visitors or have forms where visitors have to enter in personal data such as credit cards, addresses, emails, etc, you will want SSL. If visitors to your website see that it is secure (SSL), they are more likely to hang around.
A Web Site – The reason why you go through the process of getting a domain name and a web host provider is so that you can build a website. You can build it Do It Yourself (DIY) or hire someone to build one for you.
For the DIY’ers, WordPress is a very popular Content Management System (CMS) to build and maintain beautiful and responsive websites. We recommend learning WordPress as being able to build your own websites will save you lots of money and gives you the satisfaction of owning a new skill.
Here is a course we highly recommend WP101. Once you complete it, you will know everything there is to know about WordPress. You will be at expert-level.
Well, that is all you need to get started. This is the foundation. Upon this foundation, you can build a successful affiliate venture.
An experienced Internet Marketer who has been there from the beginning. I remember the first affiliate program I joined back in 1998 called Netdetective. It paid $10/sale. I made a lot of money with it because I ranked in the top 10 in all of the many search engines back then. There was no Google.
I joined many affiliate programs and made a decent monthly income from them collectively. SEO was very easy way back then. Not anymore. SEO is much more challenging today.
I am also a WordPress expert and I love the platform. I love stock and crypto investing, Heikin-Ashi candles, the Ichimoku indicator, and exponential moving averages.
While I am bragging about myself, I love teaching. As a hobby, I am a drone pilot.
I am a USAF Veteran (20 years – Communications/Navigations/Instructional Systems Developer/Master Technical Instructor) and a retired Federal employee (22 years – IT Specialist, Instructional Systems Developer, and Foreign Service Officer)
Enjoy the ride!