How to Build an Affiliate Marketing Website From Scratch
Learning how to build an affiliate marketing website could be one of the smartest ways to earn profit online and from home.
But how?
Well, let’s first learn the basics of how to create a website for affiliate marketing and then get to the detailed steps, and it goes as follows…
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a partnership between you (online shop owner, website owner, blogger, or influencer) and a retailer who has an affiliate program.
In a nutshell, an affiliate program is when you refer clients to an online retailer through a special link and you earn a specific commission per sale. So you only earn a commission when someone purchases from this retailer through your link.
How to Make an Affiliate Website for Free?
By using ExpandCart, it’s super easy to create your affiliate online shop.
All you need to do is just select the products or services from the retailers and start adding them to your store with your own product description, and request from ExpandCart development team to tweak your store design so that the (Add to Cart) button is redirecting your client to the product page at the retailer site using your affiliate link.
In other words, the “add to cart button” will be your affiliate special link for each product.
Asking How to Make an Affiliate Website for Free?
Ask no more! Building an affiliate store is easy on ExpandCart!
Create a free store on ExpandCart and add exclusive affiliate marketing integrations to your storeFree for life, no credit card, no hidden fee
- 2# Enter Your Business Data, Email Address, and more
- 4# Choose Your Products or Services Source
- 5# Choose Your Niche
- 6# Connect Your Selling Channels
- 7# Begin Your Marketing Journey
Read more in The Complete Guide for Affiliate Marketing with ExpandCart
Top Affiliate Sites for 2021 to Build a Successful Affiliate Site
For anyone who’s wondering how to create a website for affiliate marketing, the second step after building an affiliate website is sourcing your products or services.
Here is a list of affiliate sites that have the best affiliate programs for that purpose.
- ClickBank: A top retailer specialized in digital products and has a very powerful affiliate program.
- Rakuten: Top retailer, ranked among the top 3 eCommerce stores in the world, and has a very powerful affiliate program.
- CJ Affiliate: One of the affiliate networks that could be a great source for affiliate commissions.
- Amazon: One of the largest retailers in the world and they introduce a very good affiliate program.
- Share Sale: One of the largest affiliate sites in the world.
- eBay: A very famous and powerful retailer and they have great affiliate programs.
- Avangate: An affiliate site that specializes in digital goods and software sales.
- Flexoffers: One of the leading affiliate networks worldwide.
- Revenuewire: One of the affiliate networks specialized in digital products just like ClickBank.
- Affibank: A marketplace for different affiliate programs.
How to Make Affiliate Marketing Website Success Tips
- Pick a niche market
As it’s easy to find and add an unlimited number of products or services to your affiliate store. But this doesn’t mean to add everything you find. Pick a niche market and narrow it down, this will help you stand out over competitors and will make market targeting much easier and effective.
- Branding
Some merchants after learning how to build an affiliate website they wait for the affiliate sales to make themselves. Don’t be one of those people.
Although you are going to redirect your store visitors to another site (Retailer) this doesn’t mean that you can’t brand and market for your store. You should set a mission and a vision for your store, create your slogan, and provide a clear value for your visitors.
For example:
“We bring you the best deals from the world’s largest retailers.”
- Eliminated non-relevant outbound links
Your goal after building an affiliate store is to redirect your visitors to a specific retailer product page using your special affiliate links, so no need for any irrelevant outbound links.
- Send newsletters
Ok, let’s be honest here, as an affiliate store people won’t have a motive to create an account at your store as they will complete their purchase and registration at the retailer’s sites.
However, to build a successful affiliate store, you need to keep driving traffic back to your store, one of the easiest ways to do this is by sending a relevant and valuable newsletter.
Set a newsletter subscription section to collect the email address of any visitor with a motivating tagline.
For example
“Sign up and receive alerts for recent best deals in the world”
- Publish blog posts
Blog posts can be a great source of promotion to your affiliate products since you can work on creating content to assign affiliate ads in the middle of the sides of your blog that directs to your store.
On top of my head, this also could be a part of a passive income from Google Ads, since Google has a cost-per-click program, you can earn passive income from blog posts whilst people are clicking on the ads, you earn more money.
In short, here are some traits for using blog posts for EVERY business:
- Use it to collect the email address of every user.
- Use it to assign Google ads and earn passive income.
- Include a CTA that drives traffic to your store.
- Engage customers through your blog posts and gain their loyalty and trust.
- Creating content that aims at promoting your affiliate products
How to Create an Amazon Affiliate Store
Sure Amazon is one of the top affiliate sites one would consider doing affiliate with. That’s why we simplified the answer to how to make an amazon affiliate store and in a few tips for your future affiliate commissions.
Here’s a step by step guide on how to build a successful affiliate site and driving traffic to increase affiliate sales.
1# Sign Up For Amazon Affiliate Program
Go to Amazon Associates and click on the yellow button to sign up and enter your data and email address.
The whole process will take 5 minutes of your time, but the approval will take from 24 hours to a full business day.
Confirm your email address and log in to your ExpandCart affiliates dashboard, where you can track your affiliate sales, income, and most importantly, clicks.
If you, however, decide to create your affiliate account on ExpandCart, it’ll only take 5 minutes to be up and running, no waiting for confirmation or validation so you can start your business and start earning profits right away.
2# Choose Your Products
You need to adopt a very strategic mindset at this step as you can’t select all products and then screw your brand persona later on.
Choose your products wisely.
Read more about choosing products here: How to Find Trending Products 2021 and Market for Them
Hint:
Try to use affiliate products that you can later sell with your own brand.
3# Create Your Online Affiliate Store
Utilize Our Affiliate Marketing Solutions
Create a free affiliate store on ExpandCart
with a secured web hosting or start promoting products on Amazon to earn affiliate commissionFree for life, no credit card, no hidden fees
Because there’s a free package, ExpandCart is the leading eCommerce enabler in the Middle East.
The best part is that ExpandCart uses WordPress, the most trusted content management platform. Therefore, merging your WordPress blog with ExpandCart will be super easy.
The platform offers stunning and smooth online stores with an affiliate program that’s worth your time.
Here is a list of The Only Affiliate Marketing Tools You’ll Need in 2021
4# Complete Your Product Listings
Once your free ExpandCart store is launched and running, let’s try creating our first product listing.
If you’re up to completing your affiliate store on Amazon, then log in to the Amazon associates dashboard and browse the products on Amazon until you choose the first one to promote and get its link.
After that, head to your ExpandCart dashboard and select “Add Product” to add your product details like the below image:
Expert Advice:
When you reach this step of writing product descriptions and uploading photos and details. Make sure not to copy the words from Amazon. Avoid copyright violations by writing your own product descriptions and using your own product pictures
Here’s an article that would help you at this step: SEO for Product Descriptions Best Practices in 2021
5# Integrate your Amazon Store with ExpandCart
Go to “other channels” on the left panel in your dashboard and install the “Sell on Amazon” app.
Through the app’s dashboard on ExpandCart, you can manage to automatically import products on Amazon, manage your price rules, sync your customers between the two platforms, and more!
We’ll leave you to explore all the features and if you ever get stuck, you can visit our support center!
Final Words 💬
Today we talked about the definition of affiliate marketing, went step by step through the top affiliate enabling sites, and discussed how to make affiliate website for free, we also didn’t forget about how to create an Amazon affiliate store and the ways of driving traffic in the last section of this article.
To build a successful affiliate shop is a low-cost and low-risk business compared to traditional online shops or dropshipping stores.
However don’t forget that you are running a business so be aware of all business aspects, pick a niche market, brand your store, provide value, and stay connected with your clients.
Also, use e-marketing channels and social media techniques just like a traditional online shop would do to keep driving traffic and increase affiliate sales.
