Building your first Affiliate website
December 17, 2008 | No Comments | Affiliate Niches, Beginners Affiliate Marketing
With the pressures of work and long hours these days, people are looking to alternative forms of income to help them boost their lifestyle, extra cash for the weekend or to ultimately work from home. Affiliate Marketing appears to be a simple way for people to start out with this goal but inevitably most will be doomed to failure.
Affiliate Marketing requires patience, persistence and a lot (and I mean a lot) of hard work. When I first started out in affiliate marketing I was working a 40-hour a week job + around 40 hours per week on affiliate marketing. When starting out you ask yourself on many occasions if this is the right thing to be doing, but when that first commission cheque comes through ($80 in my case) i gives you the boost you need and the will to continue with your work.
So what is the best way to start out in Affiliate Marketing? There is no true answer to this, as your working and home-life will affect any outcome. But if you have a push in the right direction prior to starting it can save some heartache, frustration and more importantly CASH!
Choosing your website niche
The first step in creating an affiliate presence is choosing your niche. You’re going to be working with this project for a long time so I suggest choosing something that you are interested in so you keep motivated. Choosing a niche you think makes money although you have no interest in will ultimately get the better of you. As things slow and your motivation witters away so will your dedication to the project and you will most likely drop your plan.
Website Design
From a customers perspective, this is your first point of presence with the customer. Once they are on your site they will evaluate whether to continue with your website or not within the first second. If you homepage is not inviting or covered in advertising they will most likely hot the back button on their browser and go to a competitors website.
So where is the best place to start? If you are not technical (like myself) you can either learn how to design websites from scratch or as I did learn how to utilise web templates to form your web presence. There are many FREE web templates that you can use for your design including:
- www.freewebtemplates.com
- www.freewebsitetemplates.com
- www.steves-templates.com
Once you have decided on your website layout you will need a WYSIWYG (What you see if what you get) editor. There are a few free editors avaialbe on the web but if you can grab a copy of Dreamweaver it will make your life much easier!
