How to Set Up an Affiliate Website

Maintaining an affiliate website is a marketing and promotional method in which the website owner gets paid for referring prospective customers to a specific product or website. The method of payment varies from a PPC (pay-per-click) system--in which you get paid every time somebody clicks on one of your advertising links--to commission-based systems.

Many people try to set up affiliate websites, but not everyone is successful at it. People forgo research and market targeting in favor of getting up the maximum number of sites with the maximum number of affiliate links, as quickly as possible. But the most successful affiliate websites take time to research, create and develop. 

Instructions

1.    Finding Your Niche and Building Your Site

1.    Brainstorm ideas for your the topic of your website. A topic can be something you have interest or experience in, or it could be something you know is popular or have heard people talking about. What you choose as your topic is completely up to you, although you will find that certain areas provide more solid earnings potential.

2.    Narrow down your topic into a true niche. A niche is a smaller scope within a topic, and it deals specifically with one area. Your topic may have been youth sports, but your niche could be coaching techniques for youth soccer leagues. It's important to research your niche to find out what keywords and phrases are being searched for, how much competition the niche has, and what kinds of affiliate-marketing opportunities it will be able to provide.

3.    Purchase your own domain name. The name should ideally deal directly with your niche. If possible, it should contain a related keyword phrase, while remaining short and memorable. You'll also need to purchase website hosting to go along with the domain.

4.    Sign up for different affiliate programs, to use links from them. There are several large affiliate warehouses, such as Commission Junction, that will allow you to join hundreds of affiliate programs. You first must sign up for the website service itself, through which you will get paid and gain access. You can then search for and request membership with the many varied affiliate partners the site has.

5.    Set up your website, inserting the advertiser's links in appropriate spots. Someone new to website development should use a straightforward service like Wordpress, which has hundreds of templates to choose from and designated areas reserved for ad space.

6.    Create content for your site that is targeted toward both the visitors and the search engines. Your content is the key way in which you draw people into your site and become placed within popular search engines.

2.     Promoting and Improving Your Affiliate Website

7.    Promote your site through social networks and article directories. Both of these techniques will increase direct traffic to your site, while also upping indirect traffic by raising your site's standing within the major search engines.

8.    Follow through with other traffic strategies, including proper keyword placement, targeted content and the submission of site maps that help search-engine spiders crawl and index your site. Your site's target keywords should appear in internal site links, page titles and page content.

9.    Continue updating your site, finding new avenues of promotion and creating new content. The more new content that is created, the more people will find your site, and the more reason people will have to become return visitors.

10.           Keep track of your results and tweak your programs, content and website structure to maximize your success. You'll find that not all affiliate marketing is created equally. Different ads, in different places, showing different things, can all perform in different ways. Finding out what advertising and content methods work best for your site is one of the most challenging but rewarding elements to Internet marketing.