Getting your website to rank in Google can quickly become a long-drawn-out process. If you are someone who has a newer website then you know what I mean. It feels like you are constantly fighting against the search engine just to give your webpage a little exposure.

There are many Search Engine Optimization(SEO) posts out there that will give you an “in-depth guide” to improve your site’s ranking. This isn’t one of those posts.

Instead, this a quick, actionable SEO guide that will give you a snapshot of your website performance and ways to improve it.

If you want to read one of those blogs that provide a full SEO analysis, I suggest you do so. But only do it after following these 8 simple steps; as I’m going to show you how to improve your website ranking without the need for expensive tools.

After we are done here, you’ll be able to determine your website’s health, hone in on how your competitors are doing, and discover what needs to be done to improve your SEO.

How to Improve Website Ranking In 8 Simple Steps

Let’s first take a look at the 8 steps we will be covering in this post. I like to call them my 8 “dummy-proof steps.” This has more to do with me than it does with you because, if I can implement these steps, then anyone can:

Step 1: Find your domain authority.

Step 2: Determine your site’s load time.

Step 3: Check for a sitemap.

Step 4: Check for robots.txt.

Step 5: Check for meta content.

Step 6: Check for H-tags.

Step 7: Check for onsite content.

Step 8: Test keywords.

Step 1: Find your domain authority

Did you know that Google considers over 200 factors when it determines how sites are ranked on the search engine results page(SERP)? Unfortunately, this means that even your best on-page SEO efforts won’t easily get you ranked.

Although this can be a bummer, you can still optimize your site for one of the search engine’s most important ranking factors — domain authority.

What’s Domain Authority?

Developed by the SEO software company Moz, domain authority(DA) is a search engine ranking score that indicates your website’s ability to rank on search engine results pages. 

Domain authority ranges from a score of 1 to 100. Obviously, the higher your score, the more authoritative your site is considered. Often, sites with a higher domain authority get better search results. 

If your website is new, however, you’ll likely have low domain authority. Don’t throw in the towel just yet, though. With more time, SEO implementation, and authoritative backlinks, your domain authority will increase. 

To check your domain authority, all you have to do is go to Moz’s Open Site Explorer, type in your site’s URL, and click “search.”

Your score will most likely not be what you were expecting. To help you make sense of your score, here is a chart that will help you understand how your site fares from a DA perspective.

Once again, don’t freak out over your DA if your site is new. Yes, it is important to your rank but use it to get insight into whether you need to do more SEO work.

Step 2: Determine your site load time

You’ve heard it before (and if you haven’t, you are hearing it now), site speed is everything when it comes to SEO. 

It’s true. If you hope to boost your site’s rank, you need to optimize it for speed. If you aren’t sure how to do that, don’t worry. I’ll show you a few tricks that should immediately help your site speed. 

First, you should head to Pingdom to test your site’s load speed. Once there, type in your URL, and click “test now.”

In a matter of seconds, Pingdom analyzes your site’s load time and gives you an instant performance report. In order to understand the score assigned to your website, check out this chart as well.

If your site speed is from 0-1 seconds, congratulations you are performing better than most sites. However, if your site happens to be a bit slower, try implementing these few tips and see whether it makes a difference:

1.Enable compression

The smaller your files, the faster your pages will load. Compressing files is one of the easiest ways to reduce load times, and today, enabling compression with Gzip is considered standard practice.

If you want to compress your files I recommend you watch this video that walks you through the steps.

2. Reduce image sizes

If you are someone like me who loves to use images in your content, then you probably also suffer from slower site speeds. Because images are often very large, they can play a major role in your load speed. 

Removing them altogether isn’t an option so you’ll have to reduce their size without sacrificing their look. 

One of the easiest ways to reduce image file sizes is by cropping them to the correct size. For example, if you want an image to appear as 570px wide, resize the image to that width.

If you don’t want to crop your carefully picked images, you can also use plugins like WP Smush (assuming you are on WordPress) to compress your image files.

This is a matter of downloading the WP Smush plugin and selecting “bulk smush” in the menu.

You can also use this plugin to automatically resize all future files you upload. Set a maximum width and height, and any images that exceed them will be “smushed.”

3. Enable browser caching

Whenever someone visits a website, they have to download page elements (HTML documents, stylesheets, javascript files, and images) before being able to use your page. 

Once the page has been loaded, the different elements get stored in the user’s fast, accessible, memory. This is known as a cache.

A cache is important because it reduces the number of components that need to be downloaded for subsequent visits.

Simply put, it can shave off a significant amount of time for your returning visitors and provide a better user experience.

I use the WordPress Hummingbird plugin to seamlessly handle my website caching. It offers a full caching suite to include full-page, browser, and Gravatar cache options.

4. Reduce the number of plugins you use on your site

This might sound pretty hypocritical of me. Here I am telling you to download plugins and yet telling you to reduce the number you have. 

The truth is, plugins can do a lot to improve your website. They add custom functionality, clean up your code, improve user experience, and more. Plus, they’re extremely easy to install.

  However, because of all this, it’s easy to get carried away with adding and installing plugins, without considering the amount of storage they are taking up.

Having too many plugins installed can become counterproductive at a certain point because they can slow down your site and create technical difficulties.

When choosing plugins, only keep those that are essential to your website’s function. Those that you no longer use, delete. This will go a long way towards improving your site’s overall speed.

Step 3: Check for a sitemap

Sitemaps are an important aspect of your technical SEO and therefore your site rank.

A sitemap is a blueprint of your website that helps search engines find, crawl and index all of your website’s content.

Although Google claims its web crawlers have become very efficient at finding and navigating websites, a sitemap is still an extra precaution you should take in your SEO efforts. Not to mention, sitemaps are a sign of an organized and easily indexable site, which is always good for SEO and site ranking.

If you want to see whether you have a sitemap or not, go into the Google query, enter the URL of your website, followed by a space, then “sitemap.xml.” 

If the search still doesn’t return any results try typing the full version of your URL with “www” included. ( www.example.com sitemap.xml)

At that point, if you still don’t see a sitemap, there is a chance there isn’t one. In that case, you’ll need to create a sitemap, which believe it or not is an easy process.

When creating my sitemap, I did so through my SEO plugin, Rankmath. During the setup process, you will be directed to create your sitemap and after the install, it will become easily accessible. 

The last thing you need to do after creating your sitemap is to make sure it is added to Google Search Console. This makes sure Google has the blueprint of your website so it knows how to properly crawl and index it. Follow along with the video below; it shows you how to easily submit your sitemap to Google.

Step 4: Check the robots.txt

In addition to having a sitemap, you also want to make sure your site has a robots.txt file with no major disallows.

I know this sounds technical but trust me it’s simple. A robots.txt file merely tells the search engines how to crawl your website. It does this by using “disallow” and “allow” statements that direct the search engines to where they can and can’t crawl on your site. 

To see your site’s robots.txt, type in [yourdomain]/robots.txt in your web browser. The results should look something like this.

As you can see, I have a robots.txt file that disallows the web crawlers from indexing the “wp-admin” portion of my website. Because this section of my site does nothing for my SEO and ranking, I don’t need crawlers on it.

Make sure on your site that the robots.txt is there and that nothing major is disallowed. If your site lacks the robots.txt or disallows content crawling on major areas of it, you likely have an SEO problem.

Step 5: Check for meta content

Meta tags provide information about the webpage in the HTML of the document. This information is called “metadata” and while it is not displayed on the page itself, it can be read by search engines and web crawlers.

Google uses metadata from meta tags to understand additional information about a webpage. They can use this information for ranking purposes, to display snippets in search results or sometimes they can ignore the met tags altogether.

However, there are two meta tags you want to make sure you have in place. Check your website for the following:

<Title> Tag

A title tag specifies the title of a web page and is displayed on SERPs as the clickable headline for a given result. These tags are important for usability, SEO, and social sharing. To see how your site appears on the Google result’s page, first go to your site’s homepage.

View the source code. If you use a Mac, you should be able to use the “tools” or “view” menu to view the source.

Once you bring up your source code you’ll want to search it for <title> tag. You can do this easily by pressing CTRL + F, then typing <title>. The page title, if you have one, will be displayed.

<Description> Tag 

Under every title tag you’ll find the meta description, which provides a brief summary of a web page. In the search engines, meta descriptions can often influence your site’s click-through rate.

The same concept can be applied when searching for your meta description. Use CTRL+F to type in “meta name=’ description content=”. 

At the very least you should have these two particular meta tags on your site. You can add or update your title tag and meta description using Rankmath. You’ll find them in the “Title & Meta” menu. 

Step 6: Check for H-tags

 Although header tags (H-tags) aren’t as influential to your site rankings as they used to be, they still serve an important function. H- tags indirectly influence your rankings by making your content easier and more enjoyable for visitors to read.

It’s often considered good SEO practice to have at least one H1 tag that includes your keyword within it. But, with how competitive search ranking is nowadays, I’d suggest you go way beyond that. Your goal should be to optimize your pages as best as possible , without stuffing too many keywords.

This is yet another reason why I use Rankmath. It tells me how well my post and pages are utilizing header tags and the effect it has on my SEO.

To double check behind Rankmath, also look at your source code to see what header tags are rendered.

Remember, header tags provide structure and context for your website. Each header should give your readers (and Google crawlers) an idea of the information that’s included in your content.

Use these tags wisely and you should definitely see improvement in your SEO performance.

Step 7: Check for onsite content

Now, let’s shift gears from technical SEO solutions to more content-driven SEO. 

Content SEO is the practice of creating content that helps your web pages rank high in the search engines. Because Google reads your website like anyone else, you must write and structure your content in such a way that gets it ranked in the search results. 

For new websites, your first goal should be actually creating content. Without continual and sustainable content output, it’s hard to sustain good SEO or get website ranking.

If you have yet to see a return on your SEO efforts, it’s likely due to the lack of content you currently have on your website. No need to fret. Keep putting out content over time to show Google your website is active and continuously being updated with fresh content.

To see whether your competitors have am ongoing content SEO strategy, search Google for “inurl:[competitors URL] Blog.”

It can be helpful to see what your competitors post about and how frequently they do so. If their articles are recent and consistent, this is a sign of a healthy blog, which means you got some work to do.

Step 8: Test keywords

The final way to improve your website ranking is by seeing how it fares for the current keywords it’s trying to rank for. 

To do this, simply perform a search for your site’s targeted long-tail keywords. 

For example, if I want to see how my website ranks for “fruitful income blog,” I’d type this in the results:

Ideally, you want your site to show on the front page for the keywords specific to it. If you aren’t on the top of the results for a particular keyword, then you still have more website optimization to do.

Test your target keywords as much as possible, preferably on a list of keywords that you or your competitors are targeting. Work through them one by one and see where you can improve. The seven previous steps might be a good place to start .

Conclusion

I hope this post gave you a better understanding of your website’s current SEO condition and the simple actions needed to quickly improve your site rank. Most of these steps are actionable and don’t require any special tools or expensive subscriptions. 

Take a moment to implement these steps to see some improvement in your SEO. I recommend you take advantage of these strategies in your competitive research as well.

A little digging can tell you a lot about competitors in your niche, allowing you to see whether they are using proper SEO strategies. Pay attention to those sites within your niche that are ranked at the top of the SERP. They are there for a reason and, therefore, are worth analyzing.

With these 8 actionable steps, you should be ready to improve your SEO efforts and ,more specifically, your website ranking.

P.S If you are really serious about improving your site rank and don’t mind spending some money, I recommend you get the SEMRush tool. Although it’s known for being the best keyword research tool available, it’s much more than that. It’s an all-in-one internet marketing tool that has the potential to improve all aspects of your website. You can click below for a free 7-day trial.

The idea of not having to wake up every morning to a demanding nine to five job has always been attractive to me. I mean honestly, who would willingly want to work for someone else if they didn’t absolutely have to? 

For me, I knew not being in control of my time, my income, and ultimately my work, would slowly drain me. That’s what led me to start looking for opportunities to make money online. 

I knew there were tons of methods out there; however, I didn’t quite know where to begin my search. I looked into opportunities such as freelancing, Amazon FBA, domain flipping, etc. All of these are legitimate ways to make money in their own right but they weren’t what I was looking for.

The more I searched the more frustrated I became, nothing seemed to stick. That is until I found a cool little opportunity that quite frankly sounded too good to be true.

This opportunity is known as affiliate marketing and, out of all my searches, it’s perhaps the best way to make money online.

Although I’m in the midst of my affiliate marketing journey, learning more about it day-by-day, I have seen how it has been life-changing for thousands of people.

In this post I want to introduce you to the world of affiliate marketing: showing you how it works, the potential it presents, and how you can make money online for free with affiliate marketing.

I’m doing this because I wish someone would have introduced me to affiliate marketing way earlier. Hopefully, by the end of this post, you will be inspired to start your own affiliate marketing business and take ahold of this opportunity.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

To someone who has never heard of “affiliate marketing” before, it can sound like a complex business. My main concern when I started was whether I had the right education, experience, and skills to get started.

To be honest, though, affiliate marketing is relatively simple and no you don’t need any prior education to begin.

So, what is affiliate marketing and how the heck does it work?

As the name might indicate, affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing where you earn an income every time you promote someone else’s products or services. 

When potential customers purchase these said products or services, they’re not charged extra. Instead, the company or business gives you, the affiliate, a commission from whatever the sale is. 

“It’s that easy?” That’s what I was thinking when I first heard about this opportunity. But, it really is that easy. As the person referring customers, you play a vital role in the sales process. You’ll be surprised how generous businesses payout to those who send new clients and customers their way.

Depending on which companies and businesses you partner with, you can receive a percentage per sale or earn a commission on a recurring basis. Some affiliate programs even offer extra incentives depending on the number of new clients you bring.

The best example of this is ClickFunnels. This company generously offers its affiliates a 40% recurring commission for every customer they refer. With each ClickFunnels account being worth $97, I’m sure you can do the math. 

On top of that, in the past Clickfunnels has been known to give its top affiliates, who reach 100 active referrals, the money to purchase their very own dream car. As crazy as that sounds, affiliate programs do this all too often and it’s all because you referred someone to their new product or service.

The 3 Ways Affiliates Generate Income

There are actually 3 different ways to generate income as affiliates. Some may call them the different classes of affiliate marketing, but regardless each method has its own advantages and is often chosen based on preference: 

• Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small websites and it is often considered the easiest way to make money. In PPC marketing, the merchant (business or company) pays the affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to their site, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant’s banner or text ads. 

Even if the person doesn’t make a purchase once they reach the merchant’s website, the affiliate still gets paid a commission. Because this is much easier than getting someone to make a purchase, typical payouts for PPC are quite small, usually not exceeding a dollar for every click. Yet, gain enough clicks from customers and the money can quickly build up.

• Pay Per Sale (PPS)

Out of the three marketing types, Pay-per-sale affiliate marketing provides the best win-win scenario. 

In pay-per-sale, the merchant pays the affiliate a certain fee whenever they refer a visitor, who makes a purchase, on the merchant’s site. Affiliates are often paid on a commission basis, although other merchants might opt to pay a fixed fee.

As an affiliate, you can expect commissions much higher than what you’d make through PPC. Most affiliates generate 20% to 30% (sometimes even higher) of the purchase price. This starts to sound even better when the price ranges hit the three and four figures. 

• Pay Per Lead (PPL)

Pay-per-lead affiliate marketing is simply a variation of PPS and is often used by insurance and finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their business. 

In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever they direct a customer to a business, where they fill out a form or application or sign up for an email list.

By customers taking the desired action, they prove they are interested in a business’ service. This is extremely important in the eyes of the merchant and it reflects in the amount they pay their affiliates.

 Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates are similar to that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

As you can see, affiliate marketing is a very lucrative business model, one that requires no physical inventory like your normal brick and mortar business. I can’t think of many other businesses where you actually don’t even need to sell anything to make money.

Affiliate Marketing: Best Practices

Affiliate marketing is often considered the wild wild west of online marketing due to its limited restrictions. With that, however, comes those who try to abuse it. 

Unfortunately, affiliates are historically known to use less than honest methods, when promoting products and services. 

However, I strongly discourage anyone from taking these approaches. If you truly want to make money or even a living from affiliate marketing, you should engage in the following good business practices:

Be honest 

 When choosing affiliate products to promote it can be tempting to pick those that will earn you the highest commission. This may work for a little bit but ultimately it will hurt you in the long run. 

Don’t simply promote products just to make a sale; instead, promote products you like and truly believe in. Customers are smart and can tell when someone isn’t honest or genuine. And once they figure it out, it will be nearly impossible to gain back their trust.

Whatever products or services you advertise, make sure they are relevant and helpful to your audience. Affiliate marketing, at its core, is about helping people by providing products or services they will resonate with. Too many affiliates forget this and it’s worth remembering if you wish to get into this business.

Don’t Spam

There are many ways to promote affiliate products, some of which I cover in another post. But, there is also the right way and the wrong way to go about it. 

For example, if you’ve scrolled Facebook and seen someone post a link promoting some new “six-figures in six weeks” program then you know what I’m talking about. Affiliate marketers have been known for spamming their links across the internet, on social media, and through emails, in hopes of getting a sale. Not only is this bad practice, but it’s also the most inefficient way of affiliate marketing.

If you want to get the most out of affiliate marketing you need a platform where you can reach an audience. This can be a blog, Youtube channel, podcast, heck, even a Facebook group. Anything is better than simply posting your links and praying for a sale.

Focus On Quality

Those that are most successful in affiliate marketing all seem to share one thing in common, they focus on quality. They do this in all aspects of their business. If they have an affiliate website, they make sure that it looks professional and includes a compelling design.

If they run an affiliate blog, they make sure the content they produce is quality and insightful to their audience.

If it’s Youtube or a podcast that they have, they ensure their video and podcast provide nothing but top quality information.

Focusing on quality will help you propel your affiliate marketing business to a whole new level. You’ll find that visitors will view you as more professional and will essentially trust you and your recommendations much more, making it far easier to become successful as an affiliate marketer.

Bear in mind, these are only a few out of the multiple things you can do to enhance your affiliate marketing business. If you want more affiliate marketing best practices, you can read my post where I go into the top mistakes to avoid as an affiliate marketer.

Still, sounds too good to be true?

You are probably still waiting for the other shoe to drop. What’s the catch, right? There honestly is no catch, affiliate marketing can be easy but…(uh oh there it is) it isn’t going to make you rich overnight. 

You see, most people who start affiliate marketing do so under the assumption they will get rich quick. I hate to burst any bubbles but there is no such thing in affiliate marketing, or in any business for that matter. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is lying to you, unfortunately.

Successful affiliate marketers make money online because they put in the time to learn the business and are incredibly patient in the process. If that’s something you’re not capable of doing then perhaps this isn’t the business model for you. 

How To make money online for free with Affiliate Marketing?

Okay, now that realistic expectations have been set, I’ll tell you how you can make money online for free with affiliate marketing. 

A quick disclaimer though, this will require you to have a website at the very least. I know for some people the idea of creating a website is scary but trust me, it is one of the best ways to start an affiliate marketing business. 

In the past, I have given ways to start affiliate marketing without a website, but even there I still recommend that you have one if possible. With a website, you’re creating something that has a long-term value that will if done correctly, generate income for years to come.

However, most websites will cost you monthly, for the domain name and web hosting at the very least. But, if you wish to get your first affiliate website running completely free, you should do so with Wealthy Affiliate.

When I first got started with affiliate marketing, I fooled myself into believing you needed to spend money to get started. That simply isn’t true and Wealthy Affiliate is an example of that. This affiliate marketing platform provides beginners with the training needed to learn affiliate marketing and they also provide the tools to build your first affiliate website for free.

By the time I discovered Wealthy Affiliate, I already owned my own website; but, had I discovered them earlier, I would have gotten set up with them first. Even if you don’t want to take advantage of their hosting platform, you can use their free training course to better understand affiliate marketing.

Essentially, with this program, you are getting a business in a box and with a little effort on your part, it can become fully functional.

Final Thoughts

I truly mean it when I say affiliate marketing is perhaps the best way to make money online. It provides the flexibility and time that most people wish they had in their regular jobs. 

No, it will not make you rich tomorrow but it will provide you with the opportunity to become financially free. Just remember, with any job or business, it takes time and patience.

I hope I have sold you on the idea of affiliate marketing. Like I said before, I wish someone would have introduced it to me years ago because there is no opportunity like it. 

If you still aren’t quite sure about affiliate marketing or simply need more information, do yourself a favor and check out Wealthy Affiliate. When it comes to making money online for free, they are the best option.

If you take what you’ve learned in this post and put it into action, you’ll be happy you did. That I can promise.

You are more than capable of making money online, you just have to be willing to go after it.

I’ll admit, one of the scariest times in my affiliate marketing journey was when I created my first website. Building a website can feel like a daunting process and, with the many website platforms available, it can be confusing when trying to choose the best one.

If you are on this page then you are likely on the same part of your affiliate marketing journey as I was. Because I know how difficult this can be, I want to help you save time and effort by showing you how to make an affiliate website with WordPress.

As I said, there are many platforms available, from the tried-and-tested to the easy done-for-you systems. WordPress, however, is the only platform you should consider using for your affiliate website. In this post, I’ll explain why that is and then I’ll give you the steps to set up your first website in no time at all.

Note: In this post, I will use the name WordPress quite often. This is in reference to WordPress.org, not to be confused with WordPress.com. WordPress.org is the self-hosted option that allows full control of the site’s backend. In comparison the “.com” version is limited.

Why WordPress is the best website builder

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS). Simply put, it’s free software that helps users create, manage, and modify content on a website, without the need for specialized technical knowledge.

However, there are many CMS platforms out there, some of which are actually easier to use than WordPress.

Some CMSs that might sound familiar are Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix, to name a few.

So, if there are easier options out there, why would I recommend WordPress?

You see, there will be a point in your affiliate marketing business where you’ll need to customize certain aspects of your website. This can vary between theme, layout, pages and such.

With these easier, done-for-you platforms, you’ll likely be met with difficult code or restrictions if you try to customize certain things. Yes, these sites are easier to set up but they are also not built for full personalization. What you see is what you get.

Not to mention, with WordPress being the most popular platform out there, you can find answers to virtually any issue you encounter. Chances are someone somewhere has had the same exact issue and either posted how to solve it or posted why it can’t be done.

Another reason you’ll want to use WordPress is its plugin selection. With WordPress, you get a vast library of plugins to install.
Plugins are little pieces of software that give you full control over the design and function of your website. Although plugins are available for other platforms, WordPress’ selection is unrivaled in terms of number, variety, and quality.

Lastly, as an affiliate marketer, you are definitely going to want to expand your blog and monetize it. WordPress allows you to do that. Ultimately, if you ever hope to build a profitable affiliate marketing business, WordPress is the way to go.

How To Build Your WordPress Website

Now that we agree that WordPress is the only platform you should choose, let’s get into how you can set up your website.
The following steps are here to give you the proper order in which to set up your website. Yet, how you decide to set up your website is still up to you.

Be excited. The next choices you make are what make your website unique. And this puts you one step closer to establishing your brand.
Shall we get started?

Step 1: Set Up Your Website Hosting

The first step in building your own website is finding a web host to house your website’s files.

Without web hosting, your website won’t be visible to everyone on the World Wide Web. When someone types in your web address, the internet connects to the webserver where your website is and then displays the contents back to their computer through their browser.

Like CSMs, there is no shortage of web host providers out there. The two I recommend, however, are Bluehost and SIteGround.

When it comes to hosting, these two are both compatible with the WordPress interface which is important to how your site functions. Although I personally use Bluehost I have heard nothing but good things about SiteGround.

Essentially, you can’t go wrong with either. That’s why I’ll walk you through the simple steps of setting up both Bluehost and SiteGround hosting.

Bluehost

To get started with Bluehost, you’ll want to follow these simple steps:

1.Go to the Bluehost Home page

2. Click the “get started now” button

3. Select your pricing plan: access the needs and function of your website when choosing a plan. If this is your first website, chances are you’ll only need the basic plan, which is more than enough.

4. Choose a domain name: if you already know the domain name you want to choose for your website, this is where you can enter it. I suggest you skip this step for now because I will cover it more in-depth in step 2

Enter your account and payment info: This is where you enter your personal information that gets saved by Bluehost. You’ll also notice for the payment plan you have a 12,24, and 36-month option; the choice is up to you and determines how long you have till your next payment. It’s important to note that WordPress will try to automatically include “Package Extras” in the pricing, these aren’t needed, so make sure they aren’t checked.

Submit your payment and just like that, you are set up with Bluehost!

SiteGround

Similar to Bluehost, the step for setting up SiteGround are as follows

1.Go to the Siteground Home page

2. Click “get started” button: You will see three options, for what we want to accomplish, though, simply select “Managed WordPress Hosting”

3. Select your pricing plan: Again, this is based on your website goals. The Startup plan is probably the best choice for your needs.

4. Choose a domain name: You won’t have the option to skip this step so, put in a domain if you already have one in mind. If not, pause until we cover the domain portion in step 2.

5. Enter your account and payment info: SiteGround gives you a 1-month trial and 3-month payment option on top of the standard 12,24, and 36-month ones. The choice is yours.

Step 2: Choose a Domain

I had you pause for this step because choosing a domain is pretty important yet, not enough people take the process seriously. Your domain is the address of your website and ultimately your brand moving forward. Here are some criteria to consider when selecting a domain:

-Make it brandable:

Even though you might like the name “DestroyerEliteKillerPlus.com” for your website, it’s probably not the best choice. Your domain name should relate to your niche even if it doesn’t describe it explicitly.

If you are in a competitive niche, you definitely want your name to stand out. The more creative you get the better.

-Use Broad Keywords:

When choosing a website name, consider how people will search for it if they were trying to find it. You want your audience to have an idea of what your website is about before they see it. It’s also important to not go too specific with your name because this can make it difficult when producing content in the future. It’s all about creating a name that has long-term value.

-Make it memorable:

You’ll want to keep your name down to 1 to 2 words, 3 maximum. Having a concise domain name helps in branding and determines how easily people will remember it. If your name is easy to spell, type, say, and remember, then the likelihood of it being shared goes up. As long as your name ticks those boxes, it should be okay.

-Don’t include hyphens, numbers, or special characters:

Again, this balls down to having a name that is easy to spell, type, and say. Make sure not to use text speak in your domain name. Imagine having to explain to someone how to spell “h8rs-gunna-h8.com.” Save you and your audience the hassle.

-Use ” .com” extension:

When it comes to domain extension, “.com” is still the best option to choose from. Why? Because it’s what people automatically assume when they hear a website name. It can be tough to find “.com” extensions for certain names but, try your best. Having a short and memorable “.com” name is worth its weight in gold, seriously.

Okay, now that you know the criteria for choosing your name go ahead and see if the one you like is available. You can check by using the name searcher above. If it’s available don’t sit on it too long because hundreds of new domains are registered every day. Now is the time to enter your new domain into your Bluehost or SiteGround hosting page.

Step 3: Install WordPress

As I said earlier, WordPress is the recommended platform for both Bluehost and SiteGround which means installing it is a breeze on either platform.

If you have followed the above steps and simply purchased hosting + a free domain name from Bluehost or SiteGround, then WordPress will be installed automatically. Congratulations!

Now, if for some reason you delete your existing WordPress installation or want to install WordPress on a new domain (Addon domain), you can follow these manual set-up steps.

Login to your Bluehost Hosting Dashboard

Click on Marketplace

Click on Add Website

Enter details

Click on next and select the domain on which you want WordPress to be installed.

Click on next and WordPress will be installed on your selected domain within 5 minutes. That’s it!

For SIteGround, the process is equally as simple. After you sign up with the “WordPress hosting package” you will receive all the necessary information you need to log in.

Once you login to your Customer Area for the first time, you will see a pop-up asking you if you want to “start a new website” on your account. Select that option and click on the “WordPress” button.

A new section would appear where you should enter the login information for your new WordPress application. Once you are ready click on the “Confirm” button.

Next, you will be asked if you wish to set up Enhancements on your account, I wouldn’t recommend you do so. When you are ready with this step – click on the “Complete Setup” button.

You can now go to the front page of your site and check out your newly installed WordPress application.

Step 4: Choose a Design

After you get logged into WordPress, you will be directed to your WordPress dashboard. This is the back-end of your website where your mad genius takes control.

For right now though, it is the place you need to be in order to complete the final step in your website setup, choosing your theme.
Although the theme is important, because it heavily dictates your website design, don’t allow this selection to become an all-consuming task.

All too often when people create their first website, they get hung up on choosing the perfect theme. You’ll want to avoid this because doing so will sacrifice crucial time that can be better spent on other aspects of your website, like creating content.

When selecting your theme, what matters most is choosing one that is clean, easy to navigate, and mobile responsive.

Two of the most popular WordPress themes you should consider choosing are Astra and Divi. These themes are multi-functional, meaning they can be used to build all kinds of websites whether it is a blog, a business website, an eCommerce store, etc.

How to Install and Activate a WordPress Theme

To give you an example, I’ll walk you through installing the Astra theme. This will be the same process for any theme you choose.

First, click on the “Appearance” menu option on the left-hand side of your WordPress Dashboard, then click “Themes.”
This action will navigate to the “Themes” page where you can install and activate themes.

To add a theme to your WordPress site, click “Wordpress.org Themes” to access the “Add Themes” page. This is where all the available themes can be previewed, selected, and installed on your site.

In this scenario, I’m going to type the theme I want in the “search themes…” area. However, you can browse all the available themes if you want.

Once you find the theme you will click “install” and “activate.” The theme will now be live on your WordPress website.

Checking to see if your theme is mobile responsive

With the growing amount of mobile searches taking place today, having a site that is mobile responsive is more important than ever. A site that is mobile responsive will adjust accordingly to any device screen.

When visitors encounter your site on a mobile phone and find that it’s not mobile-responsive, they will more than likely click away.

So, how do you check if the theme you like is mobile responsive?

The easiest way to check if your theme is responsive on mobile devices is by resizing the browser you’re using to examine the theme.
Simply drag the corner of the browser window until it’s resized to tablet or mobile phone proportions.

If the theme layout adjusts according to the window size, meaning the page elements rearrange so that you don’t need to scroll horizontally, then it is responsive.

It’s also good practice to see how your site looks on your personal mobile device. Just type in the URL into your phone’s browser to see how it looks.

Must-Have WordPress Plugins

Your WordPress website is now up and running but before you celebrate we should briefly discuss the plugins you absolutely need for your website.

Plugins are to your WordPress site what apps are to your iPhone.

In other words, they extend the standard functionality of your site by adding some much-needed features. If this is your first website, you’ll quickly realize how awesome plugins can be. They are what allow us non-technical folk to get the most out of our website without knowing any coding.

Here are some of my favorite free plugins that are available:

1.Revive Old Post

Social media is capable of driving a massive amount of traffic to your website. This plugin keeps your social media presence active by posting your site’s new and old publications and automatically shares them with Twitter and Facebook. If you want to increase the chance of your website being reached, then this plugin is worth your time.

2. Rank Math

SEO is the most consistent source of traffic for any website. Rank Math is a WordPress SEO plugin, to help every website owner get access to the SEO tools they need to improve their SEO and attract more traffic to their website.

3. Google Analytics for WordPress

In order to track your website visitors, it’s important to integrate a traffic analysis tool like Google Analytics. It will give you insight into how your website is performing and who your audience is at any given time.

4. UpdraftPlus

Backing up your website is often overlooked by most website owners. However, A single recent backup can save you a ton of headaches, whether you’ve been attacked, encounter a compatibility issue, or simply want to migrate your site. This is where UpdraftPlus comes into play. It provides automatic backups to your website on a recurring schedule.

5. Optimole

Images take up more than 50% of the average web page size which is why optimizing your WordPress images is a key component of improving your page load times. Optimole takes every graphic you upload to WordPress, auto-detects the screen size, and resizes images to provide a fast loading, responsive experience to your users.

6. WPForms

Rather than simply leaving your email address on your website’s page, WPForms lets you add interactive contact forms to any page on your WordPress website. It’s an easy drag & drop form builder that allows you to create contact forms in just a few minutes without writing any code.

Installing any of these plugins is equally as simple.

Go to your WordPress dashboard and then to Plugins → Add New. From there, input the name of the plugin that you want into the search field, and then click on “Install” and “Activate.”

Final Thoughts

That’s all there is to it! At this point, you should now know how to set up your very own WordPress website.

Creating a website with WordPress is perhaps the most beginner-friendly and budget-friendly option for new website creators and, As you can see, there are virtually no technical skills required.

Let it be known though that the journey is just beginning. You will be met with many challenges as you progress your affiliate marketing business. I ask that you stay motivated and positive throughout this process. Many people have been where you are and have created success for themselves; let that inspire you.

If you want to learn more about what to do with your website once it’s launched – like promoting your website or monetizing it – I recommend you check out the training available at WealthyAffiliate.com

This is the training platform I used when I got started online. They will walk you through all aspects of creating a thriving website, including tips and tricks that will help you be successful.

If you have any further questions about how to build a website or if you need any additional help, ask away in the comments below!

With that being said, good luck with creating your first website.

I’m no genie but something tells me you have been struggling to get traffic from Google to your website or blog, right?

Chances are this is due to all the “best” keywords being taken and dominated by authoritative websites in your niche.

I understand how frustrating this can be. Sometimes it feels like an uphill battle just to get a few to your website page. 

I have some good news, though. You don’t have to continue struggling to gain website attention.

Why? Because I have two (and a half) words that will solve your problem… Long-tail keywords.

In this post, I’m going to give you the only strategy you need to find and rank for long-tail keywords.

If done correctly, this long-tail keyword research strategy (say that 10 times fast) will help you target the best keywords for your website’s content. Not only that, but it will also show you how to rank for content that both satisfies your audience and search engines.

I get it, the process of doing keyword research for SEO can be intimidating–which is why some people prefer to use paid traffic–but, this strategy is so simple it can be applied by a complete beginner.

Stick with me and by the end of this post, you’ll be able to harness the power of long-tail keywords to boost your site’s ranking. 

Let’s get started.

What are long-tail keywords?

If your site is brand new or if you want to focus on keywords that aren’t competitive, then you definitely want to target long-tail keywords.

I’m sure you have heard the importance of long-tail keywords in the past. But, for some, this might be a completely foreign term.

So, what are long-tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases that are very specific to whatever you are selling. Whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be doing so using long-tail keywords.

To give you a practical example, let’s look at the keywords I’m using for this post, “keyword research” and “long-tail keywords.”

The terms I plugged into my keyword research tool are considered “Seed Keywords”, they are the main keywords that form the foundation of keyword research.

 However, looking at the generated list of suggestions, you’ll find longer terms with the seed keyword plus a modifier. These are the beautiful long-tail keywords we are looking for.

why use long-tail keywords?

Now that you have a better understanding of long-tail keywords, you should also know why long-tail keywords are so Important for SEO.

Here are two reasons you should be focusing on long-tail keywords in your keyword research.

1. Long-tail keywords aren’t as competitive

Whether it’s pay-per-click advertising or search engine optimization, marketers aren’t usually optimizing for long-tail keywords as much as short-tail keywords. This makes long-tail keywords easier to rank for because there is less competition.

2. Long-tail keywords have a better conversion rate

Take a look at these two results for the seed keyword “, money.”

Right away, I’m sure you can spot some differences in the results.

Although “make money online scams” has a significantly lower search volume than “money,” it is way more specific. This is good because it allows us to see the exact search intent behind the word.

If you were to target a person searching for “money,” you would be no closer to understanding their intent because it’s so broad. With the long-tail keyword, we know the other person is looking for make money online scams. Therefore, you can target this keyword better by producing content relevant to it.

Long-tail keywords with lower search volume often convert better, because searchers are more specific and intentional in their searches.

how to find long-tail keywords?

I think you are starting to realize the potential there is in using long-tail keywords. That is nice and all but, how do we find these keywords in the first place?

There are several ways you can go about long-tail keywords but, here are the 4 ways I like to do so:

1.Google Autocomplete

This is perhaps my favorite method of finding long-tail keywords. Unless you are new to searching the internet then you have seen Google Autocomplete in action.

What makes this method so awesome is that the suggestions come straight from Google, which is the search engine we are all trying to rank for. 

With Google Autocomplete all you have to do is type in the keyword you want to target and let Google do the rest, providing you with multiple suggestions.

If you want to get the most out of this method, I recommend you use “The Alphabet Soup” approach, which is where you type a single letter before or after your desired keyword to see what Google returns.

The only problem with this approach is that typing “{keyword} a”, “{keyword} b”, “{keyword} c”, etc. can be a hassle. 

It’s still well worth it, though.

2. Google “Searches Related To…”

When browsing Google’s search engine result page, have you ever noticed, when you scroll to the bottom, there’s a section called, “Searches related to…”?.

This is another great place to find long-tail keywords related to your topic.

Next time you are performing keyword research, simply type in the keyword you want to rank for and check out the related searches that Google provides.

If you want to truly maximize the approach, once you find a long-tail keyword you like, click on it, and see what searches are related to that result.

You can keep doing this over and over again, letting Google take you down the rabbit hole of endless topics related to your keyword.

3. Google’s “People Also Ask..” Boxes

Yet, another easy way to find long-tail keyword ideas is through Google’s “People Also Ask..” feature. 

I’m sure you guess how it works already. Just like the other methods, type in your desired keyword and allow Google to show you questions that people ask around that keyword.

You can use this method the same way as the one above. Once you find your desired suggestion, click on it and then look at the “People Also Ask..” section of that term. It’s literally too easy.

Quick Tip:  You will notice that when you click the down arrow to expand on a question, you get the answer, plus Google will show you more questions. If you click the down arrow multiple times on a suggestion, the search page will give you a long list of long-tail keywords

4. Keyword Research Tools

Of course, you can’t mention keyword research without including the dozens of keyword research tools available to use, right?

Although keyword tools are the preferred method of finding keyword ideas, I suggest you only use them after you have exhausted the three methods above.

With that being said, there is no denying the amount of time you save by using keyword tools.

Here are a few of my favorite tools to find long-tail keywords:

4a) AnswerThePublic

If you are trying to condense all your Google search efforts into one place, AnswerThePublic is extremely helpful. It’s a simple keyword research tool that generates hundreds of results based on keyword related questions.

To use this tool, type a seed keyword into the search field and click “Get Questions.” 

The tool will then show you questions that people tend to ask about your topic. 

You’ll realize that the questions are broken down in “who, what, when, where” format, making them easier to navigate.

Personally, I like the visualization format used when the results are produced but, you have the option to turn this feature off.

Because this tool provides mainly question-based results, you will have a dense list of long-tail keywords in a few short minutes.

4b) Ubersuggest

Originally created as a tool that scraped “Google Suggest” terms, Ubersuggest is a free SEO tool that specializes in generating new keyword ideas.

To use it, type in a keyword and Ubersuggest will get to work to find long-tail versions of the term that you typed.

This tool also gives you important data for each keyword including monthly search volume, average CPC, PPC competition and SEO competition. These stats can serve as a high-level overview you can scan through when deciding on keywords.

I recommend using this tool when you already know the specific topic you want to cover.

Ubersuggest provides results that are based closely on the original keyword you enter on the home screen; therefore, it’s not great for brainstorming completely new keywords and content ideas. 

4c) Google Keyword Planner

When it comes to SEO-focused keyword research, the Google Keyword Planner is an awesome tool, capable of generating thousands of potential keywords.

The only catch is to use this tool you need to have a Google Ads account. 

If you don’t have an Adwords account already, you can set one up in a few minutes. And yes, it’s free.

It’s important to know, however, this tool was designed with PPC advertisers in mind, There are many features that won’t be useful if you’re using it to find long-tail keywords for SEO.

Regardless, the Google Keyword Planner is still great for finding new keywords. All you have to do is simply plug in the keyword(s) related to your product or business and allow Google to go to work.

Google will search its internal database of keywords, specific to different industries, and return thousands of results. 

When using the Google Keyword Planner, the value you get from it is largely based on the information that you enter.  So, you want to be very strategic about what you enter into the search field.

I have found the best use for this tool is inputting the URL of competitors within my niche and seeing what keywords they rank for. This gives me an idea of the keywords I should and shouldn’t target.

4d) Jaaxy

Lastly, the most straightforward and effective tool I use for long-tail keyword research is Jaaxy. 

This tool makes it easy to get thousands of related keyword ideas, some of which you won’t find in most other keyword tools.

Jaaxy also gives helpful data on every keyword that it generates like competition, search volume, and potential traffic.

Perhaps the most helpful feature though is the Quoted Search Result (QSR) section, which indicates how many other sites are trying to rank for the exact same keywords as me.

This gives me an idea of which long-tail keywords I have a better chance of ranking for on the search results page.

Although there are more advanced options when it comes to keyword tools (SEMRush and Ahrefs), Jaaxy is still a powerful, yet cheaper, option.

Choosing the Right Long Tail Keyword

At this point, I hope you understand that not all keywords are created equal which makes choosing the right ones that much more important. 

Choosing the right long-tail keywords can make all the difference in how much revenue you make or where you rank in the search engines. 

 In order to find the right keywords to target, you need to stick to four main criteria:

4 main criteria:

1.Search Volume:

Very straightforward. As a general rule, the higher the search volume, the better. Now, with that being said, you also need to consider the competition. Usually, if a keyword has a large amount of traffic, there are more people competing for that term. 

In Jaaxy, I pay close attention to the average amount of monthly searches a keyword gets and the potential amount of traffic it would generate if I ranked on Google’s first page.

2. Organic SEO Competition:

Evaluating keyword competition is where you get an idea of what you are up against. If you are a new website owner, you’ll want to aim for the keywords with less competition, at least until your site gets more domain authority. This is important even when targeting long-tail keywords.

In the Jaaxy tool, I only aim for QSR scores less than 100, which means there are less competing websites. I also go for SEO scores in the 90’s which indicates the likelihood of my content ranking on the first page.

3. Grammatically Correct:

Even if a keyword fits the two criteria above, it has to be grammatically correct. This is important because if your results appear in the search engine, you want it to be clear and understandable to your audience. 

By only targeting grammatically correct keywords you are more likely to present yourself as an authority in your niche.

4. Commercial Intent:

You can get all the traffic in the world and still not make a sale if your keywords have no commercial intent.

Commercial intent is the process of evaluating the likelihood that someone searching for a keyword becomes a lead or customer. Determining the commercial intent of a keyword is more of an art than a science. 

Typically, if a keyword has a high “suggested bid” in the Google Keyword Planner or has a higher competition volume, it likely has commercial intent.

Final Thoughts

Less competitive, yet highly specific, this is what makes long-tail keywords so awesome. If you were able to stick with me through this entire post then you should now have a clear understanding of long-tail keywords and how to leverage them in your SEO efforts.

I’m confident that if you use these strategies, you’ll find yourself ranking for keywords sooner than you ever thought. And who knows, over time, you might begin to rank for the same keywords as your top competitors. Better yet, you might even outperform them.

If you are looking for a keyword tool that is both powerful and user friendly, take Jaaxy for a whirl.

Of course, with the strategies gained from this post, you are more than capable of performing keyword research without a tool. But, I say you can never be over-prepared on the SEO battlefield.

I look forward to hearing how well you are crushing it in the days to come.

Before we dive into this post, let me first ask you a simple question.  

Why is it that you are here?

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that you’ve decided to join me today. But, what is the real reason you want to learn more about affiliate marketing?

Perhaps you have had enough of your current job and you are looking for a way out. Maybe you want to generate some extra money to pay off debt or you want to take that long-overdue family vacation. Even better, maybe you want to start your own business and be your own boss.

Whatever the reason that brought you here, it doesn’t matter, because affiliate marketing can help you reach your desired goal.

You see, in the past, affiliate marketing has received a bad rap with people considering it a scam. 

 I completely understand given the tons of misinformation that surrounds it. Most people have experienced affiliate marketing in the form of a get-rich-quick scheme. 

Please, understand, this is one thing it is not. 

Rather, consider Affiliate marketing a long-standing marketing avenue and a perfectly legitimate way for you to make money online.

In this post I want to do two things: 1) give you a quick understanding of what is affiliate marketing and 2) show you the benefits of affiliate marketing.

By the end of this post, I hope you’ll see the massive amount of potential there is in affiliate marketing and join thousands of individuals who have been able to use it to set themselves free. 

But first, What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing, where a business rewards you for each visitor or customer you bring to their offers. This makes it a great opportunity to earn money by promoting products and services created by someone else.

In order to promote products, though, the affiliate marketer has to create content that attracts the attention of potential customers. This is no small task, which is why some businesses reward affiliates generously for their efforts.

If taken seriously, affiliate marketing can be a real opportunity, one that allows you to get started in the online world and create an online business that will bring in a sustainable income. 

Of course, there are more moving parts in affiliate marketing than what I just explained. If you want a full breakdown of how affiliate marketing works, you can check out my affiliate marketing step-by-step guide.

But, you came here to find out the benefits of affiliate marketing and I intend to deliver on that; so, without further ado

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Now, when weighing the benefits of an opportunity, like affiliate marketing, it is important to understand that they can vary depending on your personal situation and or circumstances. What does this mean? 

It means that the benefits can vary depending on who you are. Just as everyone is unique in their own way, affiliate marketing will benefit each person differently.

With that being said, there are a few universal benefits offered by affiliate marketing that everyone, regardless of circumstance, has access to.

Top 8 Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

1. You work for yourself

When you first start affiliate marketing, it is a great way to make an extra income on the side. Yet, once you see its massive potential, I promise you won’t want to stop there. Most people don’t.

Instead, they strive to get to the point where it becomes their full-time job, allowing them to work for themself. 

As soon as you develop a proper strategy, you too can know how it feels to be your own boss. This is one of the most promising benefits of affiliate marketing. 

Imagine it. Working for yourself means you are also making money for yourself. No more sitting around in a 9 to 5 job making someone else rich with your hard work.

To some this can be a double-edged sword because working for yourself also means that you will be on your own; there will be no one to hold you accountable. I get it, this can feel daunting, like you are stepping into the unknown.

But the rewards, when you succeed, will definitely make it all worthwhile.  Remember, people before you have been where you are at and succeeded. As long as you make a plan and stick to it consistently, you will reach success

2. You set your own working hours

I don’t know about you, but for me, the worst feeling is rolling over in bed in the morning to turn off the alarm clock and start the day. Sometimes you need just five extra minutes but doing so means you’ll likely cut into the time of your other morning routines.

With affiliate marketing, you won’t have to worry about that because it allows you to set your own working hours. If you find it more comfortable to work in the evening, then work in the evening. If you’re a morning person (unlike me) then work in the morning. 

You see, with affiliate marketing, your work schedule can be as flexible as you choose. 

Now, with that being said, It is important to realize that this benefit comes with a lot of responsibility as well. When it is time to work you should be as productive as possible or else the result won’t be what you had hoped. 

 However, provided that you keep to a set schedule and complete enough work daily, you should have no issue. The point is with affiliate marketing you can choose the hours that suit you best.

3. You have the freedom to choose your work

We are hardwired as humans to want freedom. It is something we’re all searching for, especially in the workplace. 

Unfortunately, many people are stuck in job positions where they have no freedom over the kind of work they do. You could have excellent ideas but don’t get acknowledged because they don’t adhere to some policy or SOP. The best thing for you to do is to “keep doing your job the way your contract states you should.”

If you are someone who is naturally creative and thinks outside the box, this can be a tough pill to swallow. 

Now, picture if you were able to run a business the way you see fit. With affiliate marketing, this is completely possible. You have complete freedom over how you want to run your online business. 

You get to decide what products you want to sell, how you want to sell them, and to whom you want to sell them. Not to mention, you can express yourself however you feel through your website and your content. 

Almost all elements of your business are completely in your hands; this is something invaluable that many people don’t get from their 9 to 5 jobs.

4. You decide how much money you make

Because affiliate marketing is performance-based, there will likely be a period where you fail several times before you succeed.

Don’t worry too much though, all affiliates go through this period. The way to not get stuck there is by capitalizing on those failures and learn from your previous efforts.

As a beginner, you might go months without seeing your first sale. However, once your affiliate marketing career starts to take off, there is really no limit to the amount of money you can make. The only person who has control over how much you bring in at the end of the month is you. 

 Of course, there are still a few things that determine the amount of money you make:

• Your marketing strategy
• Your business model
• The products you choose to promote

But, these are all elements of your business you have complete control over.

This limitless potential of affiliate marketing is what makes it such a viable business model. The more time you can invest in it, the more potential you have to make more money.

If you work smart and hard and you won’t be sorry.

5. More time to spend with your family and loved ones

Let’s face it, we all know the feeling of working long hours and making it home at the end of the day with zero energy left. Your family may want your attention, but you have nothing else to give because work took it all out of you. 

This is the worst thing about working a full-time job; it seems like all aspects of your life revolve around it. 

But, why should life take a backseat to your work?

The simple answer is that it shouldn’t. This is another benefit of affiliate marketing. It affords you the opportunity to take your time back and spend as much of it with your loved ones.

Instead of life revolving around your work schedule, you can make your work schedule fit your life’s activities. This is how work should be and affiliate marketing can make that possible.

6. The ability to work from anywhere

In today’s society, the idea of working from anywhere has become very popular. More and more people prefer working remotely from foreign countries, coffee shops, public libraries, co-working spaces, you name it. 

This is perhaps the most powerful benefit of affiliate marketing. You can work from the comfort and convenience of your own home or anywhere you have internet access. This allows you the flexibility to travel the world while you get your work done without being tied to a specific location, an office or a boss.

The possibilities are endless and with affiliate marketing, you have an opportunity to go mobile with your online business.

7. More than one income stream

Next is perhaps, my favorite benefit affiliate marketing has to offer.

As I explained earlier, your job as an affiliate marketer is to promote different products and services. The beautiful thing, however, is you are not limited to how many products you can promote at any given time. 

In fact, It’s not uncommon for an affiliate to specialize in promoting more than one product in more than one niche. When you do this you are creating multiple income streams.

Although at the start of your business it’s best to focus your efforts on one single product. But with more experience, you can easily scale and expand your reach, using different avenues to generate income.

 Once you build a sound strategy, you can keep rinsing and repeating this process of scaling and expanding different products, essentially writing your own paychecks.  

Affiliate marketing puts you in control of the amount of money you make.

8. Networking with people worldwide

Not only is networking a core element of being a successful affiliate marketer, but it is a huge benefit as well. 

If you’re a socialite and love networking, then this benefit will definitely be attractive to you. Because, during your career as an affiliate marketer, you will need to network with fellow affiliate marketers and build up an audience of followers and buyers. 

Affiliate marketing forums are the best places to accomplish this. Here, you can network with other people who share similar interests. I recommend leveraging forums and discussion areas to promote products and also by-pass roadblocks in your affiliate marketing journey.

Not to mention, It’s places like forums and discussion areas where you find valuable information, get help, learn about affiliate conferences, and find business partners.  

Ultimately, this allows you to see the whole picture of affiliate marketing as an industry.

Networking provides the support, motivation, and inspiration you need to improve your work. 

This, with the added benefit of being able to meet new people from all over the world, is a unique aspect of affiliate marketing.

Conclusion: Are the Benefits of Affiliate Marketing worth it?

Are these benefits enough to inspire you to start an affiliate marketing business? 

If so, let me be frank. Your journey is just beginning. In order to truly experience the benefits of affiliate marketing, it will take motivation and persistence. You will likely fail more often in the beginning than you will succeed.

Just remember, though, thousands of individuals before you have been able to use affiliate marketing to set themselves free. From helping to pay the bills to being able to go on a well-deserved vacation, affiliate marketing is an opportunity that can be grabbed by any person who wants it bad enough. 

If you are serious about starting your affiliate marketing business, It is important you learn everything you can. There are plenty of free resources out there, but here links to three are my favorite

• Wealthy Affiliate
• Affilorama
• Free Internet Marketing Project

If you learn from these resources and apply what they teach, you will be miles ahead of others when it comes to building an online business. I owe it to these programs for setting me up on the right path in my own affiliate marketing journey. I hope they are as useful to you as they are for me. 

Let me know whether you are new to affiliate marketing, been in the game for a while or are simply just curious about the idea of it. Also, let me know if you got any value from this post or have any further questions.

Now, it’s your time to create your online business and reach financial freedom.

Odds are you are here because you are interested in getting started with affiliate marketing. You recognize how lucrative it is as a business model and now you want your shot at earning affiliate commissions. 

Well done! I stand behind your decision and I think you are well on the right track. The only thing left is finding you the right affiliate marketing course, one that will put you in the right direction and maximize your success. But, I must say you have narrowed it down to two very popular courses.

Wealthy Affiliate vs. Clickbank University 2.0? Clickbank University 2.0 vs Wealthy Affiliate? No matter how you slice it, the choice can be pretty difficult, especially with all the biased reviews online.

However, in this post, I hope to clear up any misinformation you might have received. Ultimately, I want to give you the information you need to make the most informed decision when deciding which affiliate marketing course to choose. That is, assuming you choose any. 

If you stick with me throughout the entirety of this review, you’ll get my honest, unbiased, opinion of each program. On top of that, I’ll include some important stats to help you out as well. Bear in mind I intend to first and foremost inform, I think I owe you that. 

So, without further ado, let’s get into my Wealthy Affiliate vs. Clickbank University 2.0 full review.

A general overview of Wealthy Affiliate and ClickBank University 2.0

What is Wealthy Affiliate?

Before anything else, Wealthy affiliate is an affiliate program. However, it also serves as an online platform and community for Internet and affiliate marketers and provides a combination of training, software, and website hosting all in one package.

What is ClickBank University 2.0?

ClickBank University 2.0 is the second edition of the original Clickbank University, an internet marketing training program that is hosted on the ClickBank affiliate network.

Simply, it was created to help customers find more success with the Clickbank platform as both an affiliate and as a vendor.

Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank University 2.0: Meet The Founders

To get a better understanding of these two programs, I think it is only appropriate to know the minds behind the training. After all, Credibility is everything. The last thing you’d ever want to do is learn from someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about, right?

Kyle Loudon: you will find him working on many of the training platforms/courses within Wealthy Affiliate. Kyle, more or less the figurehead of the program, graduated college with a degree in computer science; yet, he has a passion for business. 

Carson Lim: is the other co-founder of the Wealthy Affiliate community and also the program’s design chief. He plays a critical role in taking ideas from the rawest of stages and architecting them into a real-world business application.

Justin Atlan is an entrepreneur and internet marketing consultant. Besides being a partner at Clickbank University, he is also a partner at SJA Media Partners. He’s consulted companies from 6 figures to 9 figures in revenue.

Adam Horiwitz is also an entrepreneur and has a background in producing internet-based products. Mobile Monopoly V2.0 was one of his first programs where he taught business owners how to generate leads for their small business.

Wealthy Affiliate vs. Clickbank University 2.0: Teaching Methods

When looking into an affiliate marketing course, you want to make sure the methods taught align with where you are in your business. The same can be said for both Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank university 2.0.

The courses are vastly different in their approaches to affiliate marketing. Yet, this doesn’t mean that one is necessarily better than the other. Let’s take a look at how each course approaches affiliate marketing.

Wealthy Affiliate

Wealthy Affiliate definitely has the beginner affiliate marketer in mind and it shows through their course. Their platform is designed to teach you the fundamental skills necessary to become a successful affiliate marketer.

The program starts from the beginning, teaching you every aspect of internet marketing and making money through a website.

Why a website? Wealthy affiliate prioritizes this method because it has worked for countless affiliate marketers in the past. 

Wealthy Affiliate teaches you the process of making money online, how to build and monetize a website, and how to drive tons of visitors to your site each day.

Wealthy Affiliate teaches you not only the basics of affiliate marketing but how affiliate marketing fits into the online ecosystem. Throughout the training, you learn key affiliate marketing skills such as niche and keyword research, industry competition, content marketing, social media marketing, paid advertising. This is to name a few.

At the end of each lesson, you’ll get related assignments that encourage you to take action. This is so you can implement that stuff you learn to build your business. 

If you find yourself overwhelmed or stuck, Wealthy Affiliate also provides a community of people where you can ask for help along the way.

With this teaching approach, the idea is not to make money quickly. In fact, Wealthy Affiliate encourages you to let go of this mind frame. Rather, Wealthy Affiliate teaches you how to build an SEO website that creates residual income over a long time. 

If you are looking for fast money making methods, you won’t find it at Wealthy Affiliate. Their approach, although slower, is completely practical and more ethical in comparison to other courses. 

Those that choose to stay throughout the training have a better chance of reaching long term success with Wealthy Affiliate’s marketing business.

ClickBank University 2.0

Although Clickbank University 2.0 is also geared toward new affiliate marketers, it takes quite a different approach from Wealthy Affiliate.
The course includes two sections, one for vendors and another for affiliate marketers. 

Vendor Section:

What’s a vendor? A vendor is anyone who owns and sells his or her own products on an affiliate network (in this case Clickbank).

CBU 2.0 will provide the information and training needed to help you create and sell your own digital product. 

You will learn everything from coming up with a winning product, structuring a sales funnel, scaling your profits through joint ventures, split testings, and turning cold traffic into customers.

If this sounds confusing, don’t worry, ClickBank University 2.0 will show you everything you need to know along the way. 

The goal of the Vendor section is to get your sales funnel properly mapped out with the relevant upsells and downsells, as well as setting up a logical re-marketing sequence. By the end of this course, you’ll ideally have your first product created and ready to make you money.

Affiliate Section:

If you don’t want to create your own product then you can decide to promote other people’s products in the affiliate section. 

This section of the course actually goes hand-in-hand with the Vendor portion. Here, you’ll learn how to perform product research to see which products in specific niches are performing well. 

Once you find highly profitable products to promote, the course teaches how to build, again, sales funnels, create landing pages, write copy, and drive traffic to offers.

Also, Clickbank University places a great emphasis on building your email lists and how to effectively make more money out of it, which is better than other affiliate marketing courses that simply suggest you send your traffic to a landing page and that’s all.

In comparison to Wealthy Affiliate, Clickbank uses a more aggressive approach to affiliate marketing, one that can potentially make you money quickly. 

Clickbank University advocates paid advertising through platforms like Instagram and Facebook ads; these ad platforms are ideal because you aren’t competing for keywords like you would if you were to advertise on Google Ads.

How are the courses delivered?

I hope the above section helped you understand a bit more how each course approaches affiliate marketing. However, I also want to tell you the format in which these courses are delivered.

Let’s face it, educational material can easily become boring after a while. That is why it’s so important the course content is delivered in a way that will keep you engaged.  

I don’t know about you, but I am a visual learner, I need tons of images and videos to fully grasp a concept.

If you are like me, then you should know Wealthy Affiliate contains a lot of text as opposed to videos. Sure, there are videos included, but you’ll find the good majority of the course requires reading.

With that being said, the written material is still easy to follow and laid out nicely. You can definitely tell a lot of attention went into it which makes it that much better to read. 

Clickbank University 2.0, on the other hand, contains mainly videos. For some who simply want to gloss over specific parts of the course, you won’t be able to do that here. 

Yet, the video contains a ton of information and provides a more personal connection with the instructors.  

Both courses, however, give you access to a comment section below each lesson where you can ask questions and submit comments. That way, regardless of your learning style, you can get a quick clarification on any topic you struggle with.

Wealthy Affiliate vs. Clickbank University 2.0: Course Structure

I know I briefly talked about the material included in both Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank University. Here, I want to give you the full breakdown of each course so you can know what to expect if you choose one.

Wealthy Affiliate Course Structure:

Wealthy Affiliate provides comprehensive affiliate marketing training condensed into two courses. There is the “Online Entrepreneur Certification” and the “WA Affiliate Bootcamp.” You can choose to start with one or the other, it doesn’t really matter. With that being said, here is what you can expect to learn.

1.Online Entrepreneur Certification

Best for getting started, the “Online Entrepreneur Certification” (OEC) course is a 5 level (50 lessons) series walking you through the process of creating and growing a business within absolutely any niche you choose.

Online Entrepreneur Certification – Getting Started (level 1)

This 10-lesson course provides the introduction to Wealthy Affiliate’s “Online Entrepreneur Certification.” It will walk you through the steps of creating a successful online business that generates revenue. This getting started course is your first step to realizing your potential as an online business owner.

• Lesson 1: Getting Rolling!
• Lesson 2: Understanding How to Make Money Online
• Lesson 3: Choose a Niche
• Lesson 4: Building Your OWN Niche Website
• Lesson 5: Setting Up Your Website
• Lesson 6: Getting Your Site Ready for Search Engines
• Lesson 7: Creating Your Initial Website Content
• Lesson 8: Creating Custom Menus on Your Website
• Lesson 9: Understanding Keywords, The Start of Your…
• Lesson 10: Congratulations and Your Next Steps

Online Entrepreneur Certification – Building Your Own Traffic Producing Website (Level 2)

Traffic, regardless of the nature of your online business, is the root of all success. If you can learn how to effectively get traffic to your website, you can accomplish an extraordinary amount of success. This 10 lesson training is going to walk you through no-cost traffic generation techniques that will allow you to capture highly relevant traffic in any niche.

• Lesson 1: Your Brand And Your Domain 
• Lesson 2: Theme-Based Content 
• Lesson 3: Domain-Specific Email 
• Lesson 4: The Traffic Breakdown 
• Lesson 5: Making Use Of Visuals 
• Lesson 6: Getting Crafty With The WordPress Editor
• Lesson 7: Understanding The Low Hanging Fruit 
• Lesson 8: Adding Trust To Your Content 
• Lesson 9: Google Authorship Lesson 10 Wealthy Affiliate Rankings

Online Entrepreneur Certification – Making Money! (Level 3)

Once you have your website created, you know how to create content, and you know how to get traffic, it’s time to make some money. This course goes over the many ways in which you can earn revenue. In level three, Wealthy Affiliate walks you through a number of ways you can earn money through your site.

• Lesson 1: Understanding How Money Is Made Online
• Lesson 2: Affiliate Marketing 101
• Lesson 3: Uncovering The Best Affiliate Programs 
• Lesson 4: The Truth About Affiliate Links 
• Lesson 5: The Biggest Affiliate Program 
• Lesson 6: Leveraging Product Reviews
• Lesson 7: Profiting From Ads On Your Site
• Lesson 8: Earning Pennies or Dollars 
• Lesson 9: Understanding Your Traffic 
• Lesson 10: 4 Steps To Making Money
  

Online Entrepreneur Certification – Mastering Social Engagement (Level 4)

This course is dedicated to all aspects of social engagement. From social media, social marketing, and social networks. Ultimately any success within the social world is the result of social engagement.

• Lesson 1: What Does Social Engagement Mean To Your Business
• Lesson 2: Making Your Website A Place To Engage
• Lesson 3: Using Facebook The Right Way
• Lesson 4: The Visual World and Pinterest 
• Lesson 5: Twitter and The Right Tweeting Campaign 
• Lesson 6: Google Plus or Minus 
• Lesson 7: Google Authorship Plus Wealthy Affiliate 
• Lesson 8: Making Your Campaigns Social Branding Animals 
• Lesson 9: Using The WA Social Community 
• Lesson 10: You Cannot Be Master Of All
  

Online Entrepreneur Certification – Achieving Maximum Success Through Content Creation (Level 5)

Now that you have a sound foundation for creating a successful business online, this course elaborates on the content aspect of your business.

Here, you learn how to extend your skills and knowledge in everything from the initial research process, the content layout/architecture/structuring, creating high engagement through your content, effective techniques for boosting conversions, and scaling your content through proper goal setting and outsourcing.

By the end of this training, you should understand how to scale your business through content in the most effective and efficient way.

• Lesson 1: Content IS Your Business 
• Lesson 2: Google Webmaster Tools 
• Lesson 3: Improved Indexing and Times
• Lesson 4: Keywords and People
• Lesson 5: The Potential Of Your Business 
• Lesson 6: Writing Within A Planned Architecture 
• Lesson 7: Writing With Intent 
• Lesson 8: Injecting Comments With Intent
• Lesson 9: Bing and Yahoo 33% 
• Lesson 10: Beyond 12 Months
  

2. WA Affiliate Bootcamp

Best for getting started in the affiliate marketing niche, The WA Affiliate Bootcamp training is a 7 phase (70 lessons) series walking you through the process of creating and establishing a business in a niche related to the promotion of Wealthy Affiliate.

WA Affiliate Bootcamp – Getting Your Business Rolling (PHASE 1)

In the first phase, Wealthy Affiliate introduces you to affiliate marketing and helps get your business built on a solid foundation. All long term businesses start with a vision and a brand and they help you get this in place in the first phase of the Affiliate Bootcamp training.

This course is 10 lessons and by the time you have finished, you will have your foundation for a long term and very lucrative business online set out.

• Lesson 1: Getting Rollin
• Lesson 2: Domain Website Set Up And Identifying Your Audience
• Lesson 3: Preparing Your Website For Visitors 
• Lesson 4: Creating A Scalable Idea Friendly Site
• Lesson 5: Confirmation and Catch Up 
• Lesson 6: Content Content Content
• Lesson 7: Getting Your Comment Engine Ready 
• Lesson 8: Adding Reviews To Your Site 
• Lesson 9: Using WA Content To Help Your Site 
• Lesson 10: Putting The Idea Engines To Work
  

WA Affiliate Bootcamp – Content Keywords and Conversions (PHASE 2)

In phase 2 of the WA Affiliate Bootcamp, the main focus is going to be on content. This includes the actual creation of content on your site, how to make it presentable and readable, how to leverage “keywords” to create content that ranks, and how to make your content convert.

There is a big difference between just creating content and creating quality content that carries a substantial benefit. Upon completing this course, you are going to be prepared for a world of success with your content.

• Lesson 1: Create Content That Converts 
• Lesson 2: Properly Using Affiliate Links 
• Lesson 3: Understanding Keywords
• Lesson 4: Targeted Product Keywords and Reviews
• Lesson 5: Catch Up Day
• Lesson 6: Backing Up Your Website 
• Lesson 7: Enhancing Your Website Experience 
• Lesson 8: Creating More Content Through Internal Links 
• Lesson 9: Writing And Sharing Your First Product Review
• Lesson 10: Offering Bonuses The Easy Way
  

WA Affiliate Bootcamp – Giving Your Site Social Value (PHASE 3)

Once you have a website that has quality content, you need to make sure that your visitors can share that content. In this phase, you are going to be discussing a variety of social aspects that you can incorporate into your site to make it more social, more engaging, and that you can use to get more traffic.

• Lesson 1: The plugins to use help visitors help you 
• Lesson 2: Branding Your Social Profiles 
• Lesson 3: How To Create Socially Engaging Content
• Lesson 4: Google Authorship 
• Lesson 5: Break Day
• Lesson 6: Power Writing 
• Lesson 7: Adding Google Analytics 
• Lesson 8: Leveraging The Jaaxy Affiliate Program 
• Lesson 9: Making Promotional Use Of Your Sidebar 
• Lesson 10: Build Build Build
  

WA Affiliate Bootcamp – Get Visual. Get Aesthetic. Get a Brand Through Media. (PHASE 4)

In this phase, you will be focusing on the appearance of your website. This includes utilizing media and design concepts to provide the best experience to your website visitors. You’ll also learn how to incorporate powerful elements– media, imagery, videos–into your day to day marketing activities.

• Lesson 1: Introduction to Website Design
• Lesson 2: An Image Says a THOUSAND things.
• Lesson 3: Leveraging Wealthy Affiliate Videos for…
• Lesson 4: Creating Logos & Images
• Lesson 5: Give yourself a break!
• Lesson 6: Creating an Effective Jaaxy Review
• Lesson 7: Research Jaaxy Keywords, Then Show & Tell
• Lesson 8: Pinning Habits Lead to Pinterest Power
• Lesson 9: Creating Your Own Videos
• Lesson 10: A Lesson on Customer Perspective
  

WA Affiliate Bootcamp – Knowing Your Audiences & Catapulting Your Referrals. (PHASE 5)

In this phase of Bootcamp, you are going to be covering a variety of topics, but at its core, this training is going to lead you to a better understanding of your audiences and having improved skills in respect to converting a visitor on your website to an invite, and eventually to a referral.

• Lesson 1: Creating Content With INTENT
• Lesson 2: Getting Your Comments to Convert!
• Lesson 3: Video, a HUGE Source of Traffic
• Lesson 4: From Keywords to LIVE on YouTube
• Lesson 5: A Discussion on Reviews (and a Break)
• Lesson 6: The Ultimate Referral Tool!
• Lesson 7: Incorporating Your Custom Sign-up Forms…
• Lesson 8: Helping Folks is Critical!
• Lesson 9: Create a Custom Video Sign-up Pages
• Lesson 10: Creating a 6 Week Plan of Attack!
  

WA Affiliate Bootcamp – Bing, Yahoo, & The Power of PPC. (PHASE 6)

Most people emphasize using Google Search for your marketing efforts; however, Wealthy Affiliate shows you how to leverage other sources. Regardless of your niche, this training lesson will teach you how to maximize your potential traffic using Bing and Yahoo. You’ll be surprised how much this can lead to an incredible amount of traffic to your business.

• Lesson 1: An Introduction to PPC on Bing Ads
• Lesson 2: Letting Bing & Yahoo Know About Your Site
• Lesson 3: Paying for Traffic on Bing & Yahoo
• Lesson 4: Setting Up Your First PPC Campaign
• Lesson 5: Take a Break, Do a Little Math
• Lesson 6: Creating Small, Bite-Size Review Ad Groups
• Lesson 7: Setting Up Conversion Tracking
• Lesson 8: Capitalizing on Hidden PPC Landing Pages
• Lesson 9: Getting REAL Creative With Keywords
• Lesson 10: Refining Your PPC Campaign & Your Journey…
  

WA Affiliate Bootcamp – How to Scale Successful PPC Campaigns. (PHASE 7)

In this lesson, you are going to be going through the process of scaling PPC campaigns in a way that leads to profitability and long term success.

• Lesson 1: Blasting Your WA Affiliate Earnings With…
• Lesson 2: Understanding the Google Adwords Opportunity
• Lesson 3: Maximizing Review Pages With PPC
• Lesson 4: You, the Affiliate, Are Responsible for…
• Lesson 5: Mastering the Flow of Relevance
• Lesson 6: The “Double Down” Approach to PPC
• Lesson 7: To Direct Link or Not to Direct Link
• Lesson 8: The Mathematical Business Model of PPC
• Lesson 9: Using Concise Pages for PPC
• Lesson 10: Creating a Long Term, Scalable PPC Campaign
  

Overwhelmed yet? This is what you can expect from Wealthy Affiliate. Bear in mind, you only have access to all the pieces of training if you have the premium membership. With the free version, you get The first 10 lessons in Level 1 of the Online Entrepreneur Certification.

Regardless, Wealthy Affiliate has more than enough material to get you started and keep you occupied.

Clickbank University 2.0 Course Structure:

Okay, we’ve seen all that Wealthy Affiliate has to offer. I’m sure you want to see what you can expect from ClickBank University. As I stated earlier, this course is a bit different, in that it offers two paths, one for affiliates and another for vendors. First, we’ll check out what is inside the Vendor’s course.

Venders Course

The Vendors Section in C​BU is broken down into 12 weeks worth of lessons, taking you from start to finish on how to launch your own successful product on Clickbank.

Week 1: How everything Works and Setup for Success

In this first week, Justin goes over the 12-week plan to success. Here you are introduced to the world of vendors , those that create their own products. 

The first week is broken down into four video models that include:

• Introduction [3:36]
• Mindset for Success [6:30]
• Product Perfect Plan [6:13]
• Creating Goal Fuel [7:07]

Week 2 – Finding Your Perfect Product

In this module, Justin explains what’s needed to find the “perfect product.” this is the process of blending your passions and your experiences with what’s profitable on ClickBank. Here, you will get the exact insight needed to find your perfect product.

You will find four more, slightly longer, video modules, that include

• Introduction [3:04]
• Discovering Your Passion [24:02]
• Analyzing Your Market [25:16]
• Learning From Your Competition [7:07]

Week 3 – Creating Your Avatar

This week’s course is dedicated to getting to know your customers. Creating an avatar helps you give your customers exactly what they need and places you in their frame of mind.

You will find the answers to certain questions such as: What are the customer’s interests? What are the demographics? what is their problem and how is your product going to solve it? 

This will be covered over four more video modules which include

• Introduction [2:38]
• Finding Your Avatar’s Desires and Fears [6:19]
• Creating Your Elevator Pitch and USP [6:12]
• Choosing a Name and Domain [12:30]

Week 4 – Course Content Creation & Outsourcing

It is important when creating a product, you know exactly how to format it. Week four teaches you the proven blueprint that leads to successful product creation on

ClickBank. If you don’t wish to create your own product, you’ll also learn how to outsource your product creation so you don’t even have to write it!

The video modules are broken down as follows

• Introduction [2:47]
• The Ultimate Outline [12:09]
• Product Formats [7:46]
• The Content Structure Blueprint [10:38]

Week 5 – Your Perfect Upsell to Maximize Sales

Personally, I am not a fan of upselling, but I can’t deny the fact that it maximizes the value of each customer. In this week you will learn all about upselling and their importance in attracting affiliates. This lesson encourages to offer products that add more value to your customers by further helping them solve their problems.

Her is the order in which the video modules will be presented in this week

• Introduction [1:49]
• Understanding the Numbers [5:29]
• Upsell Types & Faster, Easier or Better Formula [7:46]
• Upsell Sales Copy & Pricing [11:40]

Week 6 – High Converting Sales Copy

You can have the best product in the world yet not see any revenue if your sales pitch is terrible. That is why this week, you’ll learn the secrets to create a successful sales copy. This module deserves special attention because a good sales copy can be the difference between success and failure in online marketing.

 This section will be covered over three video modules that include:

• Basics of Copy [15:4]
• The Big Idea [10:27]
• A Copy Template [29:11]

Week 7 – The “EASY” VSL

You’ll notice that a lot of digital products include a video sales letter, where someone talks about the product’s features. In this week’s lesson, you will learn the secrets of creating your own high value and effective video sales letters. 

Instead of getting in front of the camera, however, you’re going to learn how to do “text” VSL, where you see text on a screen that moves while being narrated.

This lesson also provides an outsourcing lesson for those who don’t want to make their own VSL. You can see it, along with all the video modules, included below: 

• Introduction [4:43]
• PowerPoint Process [27:35]
• Camtasia Tech Training [10:05]
• Outsourcing Slide Creation, Voiceover, Video [12:19]

Week 8 – Finalizing Your Product Via Clickbank Builder, etc

In week 8 you are going to put the finishing touches on your product, using your own program or the Clickbank Builder. Here, You’ll learn the importance of getting someone to your page and converting them into a customer. 

The ultimate goal of this lesson is to correct any errors and make sure all of the elements of your product are sound so that you can reach your final goal, making a sale.

The video modules in this section are broken down as such:

• Introduction [3:00]
• Customer Experience Flow [7:45]
• Sales Page Creation [29:09]
• Product Page Creation [8:49

Week 9 – Getting up on Clickbank

This week’s lesson is a rather easy one. You’ll learn step-by-step how to set up your Clickbank account so you can get your product set up on the Clickbank Marketplace.

You can also look forward to learning how to set up your website and integrating your website on the Clickbank platform. Finally, the lesson will cover test purchases just to make sure everything is up and running once you’re finally done.

The video modules in week 9 will look like this:

• Introduction [1:12]
• Setting Up Your Website and Items [9:30]
• Making a Test Purchase [19:03]
• Creating Your Marketplace Listing [9:15]

Week 10 – JV Managing

To get your product the attention it deserves, you need to have affiliates and Joint Ventures (JV’s) willing to promote it. But, how do you even do that? This is one of the easiest ways to become successful on ClickBank; you have to know what affiliates want first.

Learn how to get the trust and support of affiliates with this lesson. It explains the process to help you get out there and grab affiliates and JV partners to sell your product for you. The concept here is to gain the interest of others, so they are willing to work for you and make you a ton of money. 

The video modules are broken down into four sections, which you can see below:

• Introduction [3:12]
• Affiliate Mentality and Approach [11:57]
• Creating Affiliate Tools [3:54]
• Getting Into the Affiliate Circle [14:26]

Week 11 – Split Testing

In week 11 you’ll be gaging which of your pages is performing well through split testing. You also are provided with a “Testing Blueprint” that teaches you how to test different languages, ads, and funnels.

 This is a skill that can be easily overlooked, yet it can dramatically increase conversions. One thing with split testing is you’ll have to wait for enough data before you can interpret your results. In other words, you’re going to need some sales first. 

This lesson also provides you with a case study on previous successful split tests so you can get a better idea of how it is done.

Here are the video modules that are included as well:

• Introduction [3:31]
• The Testing Blueprint [8:12]
• How to Test Using Tools [25:54]
• The ClickBank University Case Study [17:44]

Week 12 – How to Scale

Once your business has traction you will next want to scale it up to increase profits. That is where week 12 comes into play. In this week you’ll learn how to scale your business through ways like expanding your traffic.

This strategy includes promoting related products to previous customers as well. This is done through funnels and email marketing programs like GetResponse.

The more you are able to drive initial sales the more traffic you’ll create for massive success. 

Here’s a look at the last four video modules in this section:

• Introduction [2:06]
• Funnel Creation with Affiliate Offers [7:13]
• Creating a Product Line [5:23]
• Coaching, Consulting, Speaking [10:52]

So, what do you think? Does the vendor section seem more your speed? 

I know this portion of the training may seem intimidating and may not be for everybody. After all, becoming a vendor is a bit more advanced than becoming an affiliate marketer. 

Personally, I’d rather just focus on being an affiliate, instead of creating my own product, finding JV’s to work with, hiring a graphics guy, copywriter, etc. There is less of an overhead expense with that method.

Regardless of whether product creation is your thing or not, don’t let this portion of C​BU hold you back from learning because there is still valuable information at hand.

Affiliate Course

You are probably asking yourself “what in the world did I get myself into?” Don’t worry, the affiliate course is shorter than the vendors; however, this doesn’t mean it lacks information. The Affiliate portion is 8 weeks, and broken down like this:

Week 1: Affiliate Marketing on CB 

​The first week is a short one that gives a general introduction to the world of affiliate marketing with Clickbank. There are three videos that run at approximately 18 minutes total. 

• Affiliate Profit Plan [4:25}
• Setting yourself up for success [5:24] 
• Setting Goals – how goals & mindset can help you achieve results [8:10]

Week 2: Understanding Affiliate Marketing

Week two once again does not include any groundbreaking information. If you know the basics of affiliate marketing and have a general understanding of Clickbank, then this section might bore you. 

You’ll receive some information on product selection secrets ( that aren’t actually secrets). When it comes to selecting products it’s a combination of your passions and what sells, easy. 

The video modules in week two look like this:

• Introduction [1:32]
• Affiliate Basics [6:07]
• Navigating Through the CB Marketplace [13:07]
• Secrets of the Top CB Products [5:20]

Week 3: Finding Your Passion​

Section three goes more in-depth on product research.in this module, you are going to learn all about why promoting a product you are passionate about will help you with your success. 

You’ll also learn how to choose the right products and know which ones to stay away from, mainly those within competitive niches.

This information is covered relatively quickly in these video modules:

• Introduction [1:31]
• Discovering Your Passion [3:03]
• Researching Products in Your Niche [4:59]
• Picking the Perfect Product [5:36]

Week 4: The Ultimate Affiliate Funnel

It might seem like common sense to drive traffic straight to your affiliate offer but that is actually bad practice. In week four you’ll learn how to build a proper sales funnel, one that sends traffic to a landing page first so you can collect emails and market to customers over and over again. 

You’ll also learn how to generate lead magnets and build squeeze pages, which are just fancy terms for a “free gift” and email opt-in page. Be aware that in this section, you will be enticed to buy “the Clickbank Builder,” this is ClickBank’s very own funnel builder.

There are better and cheaper options available; I would recommend doing your research and look elsewhere. 

The video modules in this section are as follows:

• Introduction [1:03]
• The Truth About Traffic [4:22
• Affiliate Funnel 101 [5:44]
• Building Squeeze Pages [14:38]

Week 5: Free, Free, Free – Always Over Deliver

Week 5 is all about providing tons of value to your customer for free, also known as “over-delivering”. This section highlights the importance of building a relationship with your email list and creating content to offer to them. 

Here, you’ll also learn how to outsource this stuff so someone else does it for you. The recommended option is to use Elance (aka Upwork) but personally, I would suggest Fiverr.

Section five’s video modules will be provided to you in this order: 

• Introduction [1:19]
• Building a Relationship with Your List [4:02]
• Different Ways to Deliver Free Content [6:28]
• Outsourcing Your Content [5:44]

Week 6: Writing the Perfect Swipe​

Once you understand the importance of having an email list, week six will show you how to give yourself the best chance of your customer’s opening your emails. Although you have no control over this, the right subject line and trigger words can help. 

Because you have no control over which emails your customers open, most of the information provided in this section is theoretical rather than practical instructions. However, it’s still worth knowing.

The video modules within this section will follow this format:

• Introduction [1:28]
• Getting Them to Open the Email [6:04]
• Making Sure They Click [6:17]
• Offering Bonuses [5:26]

Week 7: The Email Blueprint

Week seven gives you a basic over-the-shoulder video walkthrough of how to send a broadcast email to all your subscribers. Then, you’ll learn how to set up an autoresponder where emails are sent based on intervals you set. 

Bear in mind, this method of email marketing isn’t the most current. There are now better ways to go about it. However, for beginners, this is the perfect introduction you need to construct your first email sequence

Here is what you can expect from the video modules in this section:

• Introduction [1:17]
• Using Broadcasts [12:30]
• Automating Your Emails [8:11]
• Creating Quality Content [5:44]

Week 8: Scaling and Expanding

Week 8 is brief in that it only gives you an introduction to driving traffic (Facebook and Instagram mainly). Consider this a general overview and preparation for the separate traffic course ClickBank University offers.

If you decide to watch week 8’s videos, here is what you can expect to see

• Introduction [1:53]
• Toolkit Traffic Area [2:30]
• Opening the Flood Gates [5:30]
• Creating a Product [6:34]

Bonus Section: Traffic

The last (bonus) section in ClickBank University is dedicated to traffic generation. This section is important because, you can have the best-looking website or funnel in the world, but if you’re not reaching your target audience, it’s all for nothing.

In this section, the most successful traffic methods from the founders are revealed. Although They admit they don’t list all the traffic methods they go into a few different types of traffic you really should understand.

Here are some of the video modules you can expect to see in the traffic section:

• Youtube Ads
• Facebook Ads Introduction
• Set up Your Facebook ads with Robby Blanchard
• Paid Search Ads with Fred Lam
• Instagram Shout-Outs by Adam Horwitz

You’ll notice again that the traffic methods mentioned are all paid. You won’t find the same SEO training and keyword research suggestions here as you do in Wealthy Affiliate. Not that one particular method is right, it just comes down to preference. 

Clickbank University’s traffic training is powerful; yet Simple enough to easily learn how to generate super targeted traffic. I think from a new affiliate marketer’s perspective, they get it right.

If you don’t mind spending money upfront, the paid traffic methods taught here is a great way to make quick money.

Click HERE if you want to read more on My Top 5 Paid Traiffic Sources

One thing to know before committing to Clickbank University 2.0 is that all the courses are drip-delivered to you over the weeks. This means, if you want to try to complete the entire course in one sitting, you won’t be able to, at least not in the beginning. You won’t be able to skip ahead until you complete the first 3 weeks.

The course is set up this way to encourage you to take your time when going through the training. Ideally, you’ll want to Do everything one week at a time, watching and re-watching the training to make sure you understand it. After you do that, then try putting it into practice. This is how you get the most out of the training.

Anyways, that is it for the course structure of both Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank university. As you can see, each course has more than enough information to help you start learning how to become an affiliate marketer.

Wealthy Affiliate vs. Clickbank University 2.0: Bonus Features

This wouldn’t be a proper in-depth comparison if I didn’t mention the bonus features of each of these two courses. Without giving too much away I also want to provide a quick glimpse at the bonus features of both Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank university.

ClickBank University 2.0 Includes:

1.CBU 2.0 Live Q/A & Expert Interviews

This is the weekly live Q&A session held by Justin or Adam. Usually ranging between 1-2 hours in length, the sessions will try to revolve around a certain theme each week, to try to keep the sessions focused. 

All previous sessions are uploaded and can be accessed at any time if you can’t make the live events. Also, there are many years worth of Q&A sessions archived that members can access.

Perhaps the best feature, though, is the expert interview section where you get Tips, Tricks, and Insights from the most successful marketers in the game. Bonnie Reisland, Barry Plaskow & Roger D, Tim Rodriguez, Jim Yang, Mike Whitfield, Gary Vaynerchuk, Thanh Pham, are a few of the people who you get to learn from. 

This part of the training is extremely valuable because to be successful, you need to surround yourself with successful people!

2. CBU Forum

In addition to the Q&A sessions, members also have access to the Clickbank University forum. There, You can browse through thousands of threads organized by tags and categories. If you have a question, this should be the first place you go because Chances are someone has asked the question before.

3. Toolkit Section

The toolkit area covers some of the technical skills that you will need to go along with everything else the course teaches. You can consider this the supplemental information needed to go alongside the modules.

You learn a range of skills in this section, including:

• Setting up domains.
• Video editing for sales videos and instructional videos.
• Designing artwork, banners, promotional material.
• Setting up sales funnels with ClickBank Builder.
• Using Optimonk to increase conversions.
• Using Hootsuite to boost social media accounts.
• Outsourcing content creation.
• Split testing.
• Setting up email marketing software and autoresponders.
  

4. Support

This might not be considered a bonus feature but ClickBank University offers several different ways to get help. They have live chat, phone, and email support, along with Q&A sessions and the ClickBank University Forum.

5. Clickbank Builder

This is the primary upsell that Clickbank University offers, and it’s a pricey one at that.  

ClickBank Builder is a landing page and sales funnel building platform. It also is a hosting solution, so you don’t need your own website because your pages will be located on a ClickBank Builder subdomain.

Wealthy Affiliate Includes:

1.Education

This is what we already covered in detail above. Wealthy Affiliate’s training program includes hours of affiliate marketing training, enough to set you on the right path. 

2. Support

As a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you have access to the live chat feature, where you can ask questions and utilize the site Help Center. This section includes site support for technical issues, private massaging with other members, and more.

3. Jaxxy

Built into the Wealthy Affiliate platform is the Jaxxy keyword research tool. If you are a premium member you get unlimited search with the tool, which a keyword offers accurate traffic, competition, and domain insights into billions of keywords. 

4. Websites

Wealthy Affiliate also allows you to build two free websites with the free version or 50 websites with the premium version. In either case, you have access to customizable websites with over 3000 different design themes to choose from.

5. Hosting 

Another feature you won’t find with other affiliate marketing programs, that Wealthy Affiliate includes, is free web hosting for your website. Wealthy affiliate uses SiteRubix hosting and enables you to check site performance and speed from one central location.

6. Network

Lastly, in addition to the support provided by Wealthy Affiliate, there is a network of affiliate marketers within your reach. You will have access to a network of people who are there to help and inspire you in your affiliate marketing journey.

Wealthy Affiliate vs. Clickbank University 2.0: Price Comparison

This is perhaps the moment you have been waiting for. If so, then I want to thank you for being so patient. But, I think you have waited long enough to know the price of each course. 

I understand that this can either make or break your decision which is why I wanted to leave it for the end. But, alas, let’s talk price!

Wealthy Affiliate

The good thing about Wealthy Affiliate is that you can join for free. No credit card needed! During that time you will be encouraged to become a premium member where your first month will be discounted to $19. You will, however, be charged $49/month after that, which is the normal rate. 

If you never decide to become a premium member that is completely fine, just realize you will have limited access to the program. With that being said, the free version is a nice way to perform a trial run before becoming a premium member. Not many programs out there give you that option. 

In terms of upsells, the only one Wealthy Affiliate offers is their Jaaxy membership, for keyword research. This is an extra $19/month, but you can opt-out of this and use the free version as part of your membership.

ClickBank University 2.0

With Clickbank University, there’s no free version, however, they do have a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Clickbank University’s starting price is set at $47/month. You’ll find, though, once you join this program, there are other products offered that can make the price add up quickly.

ClickBank university offers upsells such as the ClickBank Builder which is a two-time payment of $297 or $594 single payment. Clickbank University also offers an advanced training course totally separate that costs an extra $97. 

If you opt-out of the Clickbank builder (which I recommend you do) you’ll still need hosting, which you can get for relatively cheap, $10/month.

 But for a website that earns money and gets loads of traffic, you’ll need better hosting which can cost $50 – $250/month for multiple websites

Therefore, if you buy everything offered to you from CBU, you’re looking at $738 upfront, and $57 -$97 recurring (depending on hosting). 

With upsells set aside, Clickbank University and Wealthy Affiliate will cost you relatively the same price. Throw in the upsells and the price difference is massive. At the end of the day, it comes down to what you find most useful for you.

Wealthy Affiliate vs. Clickbank University 2.0: Data and Statistics

Although I have compiled a lot of information in this one post this is still information you can easily find in other similar reviews. One thing I promised at the start of this post though was to give you an unbiased comparison.

Where this post differs from the many others you’ll find on the internet, is I have decided to give you the stats on each of these courses.

Why?

Because I can give recommendations and provide suggestions all day but nothing compares to having the cold hard data to prove it.

That is where this section comes into play. I ran a Similarweb comparison between both Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank University 2.0 in an attempt to provide you with the final information you need to make the most informed decision.

Ranking

Rank is a website traffic scoring method developed by SimilarWeb to determine a website’s rank. It calculates the number of monthly unique visitors together with the number of page views across desktop and mobile traffic.

Traffic and Engagement

Marketing Channels

Direct: Traffic sent from users that directly entered a URL into a browser saved bookmarks or any links from outside the browser

Email: Traffic sent from web-based mail clients such as Gmail.

Referrals: Traffic sent from one website to another, through a direct link. This kind of traffic includes affiliates, content partners and traffic from direct media buying or news coverage.

Social: Traffic sent from social media sites such as Facebook or Reddit (organic and paid). 

Organic Search: Traffic sent via organic (non-paid) results on search engines such as Google or Bing.

Paid Search: Traffic sent from paid search ads on a search engine such as Google or Bing.

Display and Video Ads: Traffic sent from Display and Video ads via a known ad-serving platform

Geography

Ad Monetization

Social

Social Traffic: leading social networks that drove traffic to these sites via desktop

I hope there are enough statistics here to put things more into perspective. If you ask me it looks pretty one-sided in favor of Wealthy Affiliate. Use what you have learned here to make a more informed decision.

Final Thoughts and Wrap Up

There you have it, my full analysis of Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank University. You are probably sitting here questioning why I never gave you the pros, the cons, and other biased opinions of mine. It’s because I think you should not be influenced by what I say. You should make the decision based on what you have learned.

The reality of the matter is, both of these courses provide there own set of advantages and disadvantages. I don’t say this to be vague but to simply state the truth. If you are a new affiliate marketer, both courses will aid you in your journey. 

The choice comes down to budget and the number of features you get for the amount you spend. 

As much as I would like to tell you to choose one over the other, that wouldn’t be fair to you. Because in order to tell you which one to pick, I’d have to know your level of commitment and drive to actually become an affiliate marketer.

Remember, the best course in the world won’t be helpful if you don’t apply what it teaches.

 If you are someone who likes the idea of building your own website from start to finish then perhaps Wealthy Affiliate is the way to go. You will receive more than enough training and the tools you need to get started.

However, if you like the idea of creating your own product or promoting products through paid traffic methods, like funnels and landing pages, then Clickbank University can show you how.

Whichever affiliate marketing course you choose, though, commit to it. Don’t start strong only to give up at the first roadblock you meet. That is a surefire way to not get results.

Anyways, I hope this post provided you with all the information you needed on Wealthy Affiliate and Clickbank University. If I was able to help you decide on either one of these courses, I’d like to know. Leave a comment, stating which one you decided on.

As always, your comments and suggestions for future posts are welcomed. I look forward to hearing about your success.

• Click HERE if you are team Wealthy Affiliate
• Click HERE if you are team Clickbank University

Disclosure: Bear in mind that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you

One of the questions I frequently see on the internet is “How to make more money with affiliate marketing?”

It’s a solid question that requires a sound answer but, I feel like the motive behind the question is all wrong. You see, most people who aspire to get into affiliate marketing want to know how they can get “more.”

Whether that be more sales, more conversions, more traffic, more leads, most are concerned with the monetary aspect of their business.

Not that this isn’t an important aspect of affiliate marketing but, it isn’t the most important part of running your affiliate marketing business.

Instead, as an affiliate marketer, your main concern should be creating valuable content. You know, the type of content that keeps your audience coming back day after day, week after week?

This is truly the heartbeat of any business because without great content nothing else really matters.

In today’s post, I want to show you how to write killer content for an affiliate marketing blog, content that keeps your audience engaged and ultimately drives more conversions. Hopefully, these methods will help improve all forms of content you create, whether it be a video or written.

I believe if you stick with me till the end of this post you will see a drastic improvement in all the other aspects of your affiliate marketing business.

With that being said, I hope you enjoy it. Let’s get right into it.

Why is it important to have a blog content strategy in affiliate marketing?

You might see all of these successful affiliate marketers out there and wonder how they are able to generate so much income. The answer is simple.

Every good affiliate marketer has an incredibly valuable blog content strategy.

Without educational or entertaining content, you’ll have a difficult time capturing the attention of your visitor. Without that attention, you can’t build the trust you need from your audience in order to convert them into affiliate sales.

Your main goal behind creating content should be to enhance the reader’s perception of you (the content creator) and increase their interest in your products or services.

The reason why most affiliate marketers harp so heavily on creating content is that it opens a conversation with your current and prospective customers.

If you want to see the statistical importance of creating good content, check this out.

Businesses who own blogs get 126% more lead growth than businesses that do not have a blog content strategy. This comes as no surprise because Customers want to feel connected to your business and your brand.

As an affiliate marketer, it pays to invest time and energy into creating highly educational and valuable content.

The steps to create a perfect blog content strategy.

I hope I have convinced you, at least a little bit, of the importance of good content.

But, you are still probably wondering at this point, what does good content entail? After all, content in the broad sense of the word can be anything.

However, I’m going to show you what good content looks like in the method I use so frequently, blogging.

Here are the steps to creating a well written, blog content strategy.

1. Use Your Own Experiences

If you browse the internet you will see hundreds if not thousands of affiliate websites with product reviews. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In all honesty, reviews are a great way to promote affiliate products.

The issue is when these affiliates are promoting products they know nothing about or have no personal experience with. Instead of giving their own thoughts about the product they give a generalized, half-hearted, review that basically leaves the reader no better informed from when they started.

This is the first mistake when writing content, and I encourage you not to follow in that direction. Instead, make it your goal to write your truth, your whole truth, and nothing but your truth.

Now, I don’t want to completely discourage you from reviewing products you haven’t used because it is possible to do so. But, with that being said, you need to go the extra mile in your research of that said product.

Find out what others have said about it: watch videos, read case studies, know it as if you have used it. That way, when you do provide your own opinion, it is a well informed one. (If you would like examples of how I write my own review blogs, click HERE, HERE, or HERE)

In addition, don’t promote products simply because of the commission. Your audience will be able to see right through it and you’ll lose credibility and readers.

Overall, the best practice is to inform your readers exactly what you loved about a given product. Go the extra mile to point out how it benefited your life, improved your outlook, or provided you with something special they’ll take interest in.

This comes off a lot less salesman-like and instead you become a trusted friend commending a product that your audience can benefit from.

2. Think About Your Reader First

If you want your content to have any type of effect on your audience you must first know who your audience is.

This was a difficult concept for me at first because I always thought I knew who I was targeting with my writing? Sometimes, though, your reader can be someone you never anticipated reaching and that is why it’s so important to take it under consideration.

Before you even begin producing content, know your reader and what they want.

A common mistake that even I have been susceptible to, is creating content for my own benefit rather than for my reader.

Instead of truly knowing what my reader wanted I assumed what they wanted and produced content accordingly. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of wasted time and effort.

The reality is, no matter how enticing your product is, if your reader isn’t concerned about it, they will not buy.

Fortunately, understanding your customer can be very simple. Instead of guessing about what they like. You can always search or even ask them directly.

Methods I find useful are asking around in forums or relevant Facebook groups. This gives you an idea of your audiences’ questions and frustrations within your niche.

Once you get to know your reader better, you can then create content focused on their needs.

By doing this, you will notice how much more effective your content becomes and you will also notice how grateful your reader will be for addressing their concerns.

3. Be honest

In addition to writing content from your own personal experience, you also should write content that is honest as well.

What I mean by this is it is okay to let your readers know when a product is sub-par or bad. Don’t oversell a bad product simply to get a sale. Yes, you might get the sale but this can be detrimental to your credibility and trust in the long run.

Think of it this way. You wouldn’t want someone to knowingly recommend a bad product to you, right?

So, treat your audience with the same respect by providing them with honest recommendations.

It is also important that you are honest with your affiliate commissions as well. Most people are reluctant when Disclosing their affiliation with a product because they think it will greatly impact sales.

You will be surprised, however, how little this matters to your readers. If anything, some might go out of their way to give you a sale.

Once again, this all comes back to building the trust of your readers. Being honest in all aspects of your content is how you build a business that becomes sustainable.

4. Naturally, Incorporate your Affiliate Links In your Content

One thing that makes me cringe when reading some of the other blogs out there, is how direct the author is when promoting their affiliate links. My issue isn’t the fact that they are promoting their product, it’s the fashion in which they do it.

An easy way to turn your reader away from your content and therefore your affiliate offer is by being obvious with your promotions.

When promoting your affiliate offers within your content, you should do so in a way that is natural. You should never tailor your writing simply to promote your product. Rather your offer should seamlessly flow with your writing.

In its simplest form affiliate marketing is referring someone to a product; therefore, it shouldn’t ever feel like affiliate marketing. When writing your content treat it as a natural recommendation issued by a friend to a friend.

A good way to incorporate your offers within your writing is by building a story behind it. Using anecdotes makes your product more appealing and exciting to your readers and goes a long way toward building their trust.

Showcasing your product, letting your readers see it in action, is a lot more natural and way more compelling tactic.

After all, The last thing you want is for your readers to feel like they are being sold to every time they read your content.

The first few steps in this post were, more or less, general techniques to improve your blog content strategy. The next several steps are more technical and can leave a long term impact on how well your content is ranked in search engines, like Google.

5. Create Good structured Content

Believe it or not, having great content isn’t simply about what you write. It also has to do with how well your writing is structured.

If your content is well written but structured in a way that is difficult to understand, then your reader will likely go somewhere else.

What makes well-structured content?

For starters, you should always try to include an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. This might seem pretty obvious to you, but you would be surprised how many people forget this simple step.

Good structured content also includes using short, clear paragraphs for your reader. Gone are the days where you write 5-6 sentence paragraphs. Doing so will turn your writing into an intimidating wall of text that your reader won’t likely finish.

Breaking your paragraphs off into smaller, more manageable chunks helps make it flow more easily for the reader.

It’s also good for you to include images, special lists and bullet points when appropriate. This keeps your readers engaged throughout the entirety of your post.

6. Add Data To Your Content

Most of the time, when people come to read your content, they are searching for an answer to their question.

A good way to add to your credibility and present yourself as an authority on your topic is by adding data to your content.

Like images, including statistics and data in your writing helps the reader to digest your content. But, more importantly, it provides evidence and social proof, which is extremely important to readers.

Of course, the data you choose should still be relevant to your topic and should draw interest from your reader. Simply adding some random charts and graphs won’t do.

When you include data in your content, readers perceive your content to be more valuable, more authoritative and more trustworthy.

Try including at least some data in your content and watch how it increases user engagement, generates more social shares, increases click-through, and drives sales.

7. Search Engine Optimize Your Content

Without sacrificing the quality of your content, another good strategy is tweaking and fine-tuning your writing to the specific demands of the search engines. This is where the power of SEO and keyword research comes into play.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of SEO, it is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

SEO essentially begins and ends with the quality of your content. You should write content in such a manner that it begins to rank higher for the related keyword searches. Most people understand the importance of keyword research yet they don’t know how to effectively perform it. So, here are the three steps to get you started:

A) Know The Mission Behind Your Content

Every time you construct new content, you should ask yourself what your mission is. In other words, know what you want to accomplish with your content and how you plan on making it stand out. each new piece of content you produce should add value to the overall mission of your website.

B) Make a list of relevant keywords

Once you have identified your mission, you can then start making a list of all the search terms you want your content to be found for. Make sure, however, that your search terms apply to your niche market and your unique selling points.

In order to find valuable search terms, you once again should understand your audience. Knowing what they commonly search for and how they search for it in Google will help you out tremendously.

By the time you finish your keyword research, you should have a list of all the relevant search terms your audience might use. To maximize your efforts, you can always use keyword research tools that make research easier.

Note: Some awesome Keyword Research Tools include: SEMrush, AnswerThePublic, Long Tail Pro, Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, and more.

C) Understand Your Audience’s search intent

Good SEO content, nowadays, focuses on answering the questions your audience search for on the internet. If you wish to provide the most value to your audience you must understand the intent behind their search. There are 4 kinds of intent searchers to recognize:

• Informational intent: to find information on a specific topic.
• Navigational intent: to access a specific website by entering the term in a search engine.
• Commercial intent: to buy something sometime soon and are doing the research before making a purchase.
• Transactional intent: to buy something after doing their commercial intent searches.

Recognizing what intent your keywords apply to and creating your content accordingly will enable you to reach your audience more effectively. In addition, It also helps you identify what stage of the buyer’s journey your customer is in when they read your content. You, therefore, can tailor your writing to where it is providing the most value to them.

Long-Tail Keywords

One final thing you must do when performing keyword research for your content is target long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords, as opposed to regular keywords, are more specific and less common. They are typically three to four words long and highly targeted on whatever you are selling.

You will find that whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, such as with long-tail keywords, they are looking for exactly what they are going to buy.

Long Tail keywords become even more crucial if you are in a highly competitive market, with large companies dominating the search results. Ranking in markets, such as travel, can be difficult because your budget won’t be able to compete with other big businesses for popular keywords.

Make it your goal to rank for specific terms, ones that most companies aren’t targeting. You will soon realize it can be quite profitable, as long as this specific term closely resembles the product you’re offering.

8. Post Your Content Frequently

Once you have become more established with your content creation, next it is important to decide on the frequency of posting. In order to create an authoritative affiliate marketing website, you will want your readers to register to receive updates about your new content. By deciding on a posting interval and actually sticking to it, you help your readers anticipate whenever your new content comes out.

If you are just starting off with your blog, I recommend you write no more than three posts a week, unless you truly feel like you can do more. Remember, quality content is your first objective. Such content can take a few days to be written.

With regular posting, however, you will notice how it becomes easier to write valuable content over time. At some point, you’ll be able to gradually increase the amount of information you provide. By then you will have an established audience who loves your content and you can expect it to only increase from there.

The truth about writing killer affiliate marketing content.

While there are many people out there that dabble in affiliate marketing, the hard truth is most of them can’t get their business to gain traction. This is largely due to either their inability to write great content or their lack of drive to do so.

It is important that you understand that–

regardless of how fantastic your website looks,

regardless of how much traffic you generate,

regardless of how active and professional your social media accounts are–

if your content is poor then you aren’t going to make many sales at all. Because, in the end, it is your content that sells your affiliate products, which is why it is vital you take the time to get your blog content strategy right.

However, I’m confident that if you implement these few steps we went over in this post, you will put yourself ahead of most people in the affiliate marketing business.

Now that you know how to write killer content for an affiliate marketing blog, remember to: always keep your readers in mind, promote products you’ve used and loved, be honest about a product’s flaws, and incorporate product stories into everyday content.

With content writing, it becomes easier over time and once you get used to it you’ll be that much closer to building a solid blog content strategy that benefits you and your customers.

If you have made it to this post, chances are you are interested in starting your very own affiliate marketing business. If that’s the case, then I want to congratulate you on making such a wise decision.

Affiliate marketing is perhaps one of the best business models for those who wish to make money online and obtain a passive income. If done correctly, affiliate marketing can also be the gateway to financial freedom, allowing you to work from virtually anywhere.

However, you will find that most people recommend you create a website or blog when starting your affiliate marketing business. 

Even in my step-by-step guide to affiliate marketing, I provide my methods on how to begin affiliate marketing, focused on the idea of creating a website.

But, can you start affiliate marketing without a website?

The short answer is Yes.

You don’t need a website or blog to succeed as an affiliate marketer, and if you stick with me through this post, I will provide you with my top 7 ways to start affiliate marketing without a website.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? 

Before we dive into the different ways you can begin affiliate marketing without a website, let’s take a quick look at how affiliate marketing works. 

The affiliate marketing equation typically involves four main parties:

• The affiliate
• The merchant (or seller)
• The customer
• The Affiliate Network

So, how does this equation come together? The affiliate (you), who is interested in promoting a product browses a platform known as an affiliate network.

The affiliate network works as an intermediary between the affiliate and the merchant. It also serves as a database for products, where the affiliate marketer can choose which to promote.

Once an affiliate finds a merchant’s product they wish to promote, they receive a personalized affiliate link. 

This link has a special code that notifies the merchant every time a customer clicks on it and is sent to their website. If a customer happens to purchase the product you are promoting then you get a commission of the sale.

Your affiliate link is the primary factor in the equation. It can be placed virtually anywhere online, as long as you are not spamming it across the internet.

As long as customers are purchasing products through your affiliate links, you can be profitable. No requirement says a website has to be used.

Now, I will show you different ways to promote your link so you can still be successful with affiliate marketing.

 7 Ways To Start Affiliate Marketing Without A Website

1.Posting Links in Forums

A great way to start affiliate marketing without a website is by leveraging the power of internet forums. 

Internet forums are online communities where like-minded people come together. These can be great places to promote your affiliate products, as long as you join forums that relate to your product or niche.

Be aware, however, that some forums disagree with promoting your affiliate links. They consider it spamming and have been known to ban users who try to do it.  

It is always good practice to check the forum guidelines to make sure they allow affiliate links before you begin posting. 

Even if a forum does allow affiliate links, you should always make sure your post and comments provide value. Also, You want your content to be deemed useful, relevant, and interesting to those within the forum community.

This is important because proving useful information helps you become an authority in your niche. 

When you are seen as an authority, you gain the respect of other users and you are more likely to attract visitors to your content and, therefore, potentially get clicks to your affiliate products.

A good example of a forum to join is Quora. There you will find thousands of questions from other people, on your niche. Before you start promoting your products, I recommend you answer other people’s questions regularly to build a relationship and establish trust with your audience. 

Over time people will trust you and will be happy to click on the links you have provided. 

2. Create an ebook

This next method of affiliate marketing without a website requires a lot of work on your part, at least on the front end. Ebooks in the past few years have become a popular way of sharing information.

You can take advantage of this by creating your very own ebook on a hot topic on your niche.

For this method to work you will need to conduct comprehensive research to find a topic people want to read about and invest a lot of time to create quality content. 

A good way of finding what is trending in your niche is by using Google Trends to find topics and questions your audience most frequently search. Typically, the higher the search volume a search receives, the more interested people are in that said topic.

Once you find what you want to write about, construct a 10-15 page ebook that provides a wealth of information and embed your affiliate links within it.

Just like when posting in forums, you should aim to provide value within the book and recommend products that solve your readers’ problems.

Do not just add affiliate links for the sake of adding links.

If you focus on providing value first, People will appreciate that and will be more than likely to trust your recommendation and click on your affiliate links.

If writing isn’t necessarily one of your strong suits, you can always use a freelancing website like Fiverr and have someone write an ebook for you. 

The benefit of this method is you can offer your ebook for free or you can charge a price for it. If you do decide to charge for it, having customers click your links within your ebook will simply be a bonus.

3. Start a YouTube Channel

Have you ever watch a YouTube video where the person asks you “to click the link in the description” or have you ever watched a product review/unboxing video. These are examples of affiliate marketing through YouTube and it can be extremely profitable.

Behind Google, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, making it a great place to earn affiliate commissions without a website.

With that being said, you still want to make sure you perform keyword research for your videos because it gives you the potential to have your content display on the YouTube carousel on the first page of the Google search results.

And although keyword research is important, none of that matters if your content isn’t interesting or your video quality is poor. 

With YouTube, you need to build a pretty hefty subscriber base if you want to be truly successful, but this all depends on how people connect with your content. Create video content that gets you traffic!

Now, the major drawback of using YouTube as your affiliate marketing platform is that there is always the potential for your channel to get terminated.

YouTube moderators have the power to terminate channels if they even mistakenly think you’ve done anything wrong.

This means if your channel is flagged for any reason, you can lose your whole channel and therefore, your entire affiliate marketing income in a second. 

This doesn’t happen too often but to avoid this disaster, focus on producing original content that is appropriate for your viewers. 

4. Solo Ads

Solo ads are another method affiliate marketers use to promote their products without a website. If used properly, solo ads can be a very lucrative business model that yields high returns.

But first, what are solo ads? A solo ad is a type of email advertisement where you pay someone to use their email list to promote your affiliate offer. 

Say, for example, you are promoting an affiliate product in internet marketing/ make money online niche and you contact an influencer who has a huge presence within that niche. You can ask for them to send out an email on your behalf, promoting your affiliate offer. 

Because the influencer is in the internet marketing/ making money online niche also, you know your email will be sent to people who are interested in your products. 

In other words, the traffic you receive in return is highly targeted and more likely to convert.

This is what makes solo ads so popular and profitable. Out of all the methods, solo ads have the greatest potential of yielding instant commission.

With that being said, solo ads can still be a bit tricky because not all solo ads providers are equal. The real task is finding ad lenders who send high-quality traffic to your offers. Some, will, unfortunately, send poor quality traffic or fake click to your offer that does not convert. 

A good place to start searching for reputable solo ad sellers is at a solo ad network. Udimi is perhaps the most popular ad network where advertisers and publishers can trade specifically for solo ads. 

Currently, there is no other major network similar to Udimi where any individuals are free to join. 

Because You will be dealing with the solo ad sellers directly it is crucial to make sure you are spending your money on the right person.

Make sure to read reviews about the sellers to get a sense of how trustworthy they are. Before you choose your seller it’s also good practice to Join the seller’s email list. Doing so is like performing undercover research. You’ll want to analyze things like email quality, product quality, and email frequency.

This will give you a fair idea of the quality of clicks that your own offers will receive. 

Sellers to avoid are those that send multiple emails in a day to their list. Although it might sound ideal, if a seller sends 2 to 3 emails a day to his list, odds are they are using their list strictly for solo ads, and therefore your email will be ignored by his list.

Choose a solo ad seller who sends emails periodically throughout the week, without spamming their inbox.

Once you find a solo ads seller that brings you a good return on your investment, keep going back to them over and over again with different niche related offers. 

5. Social Media 

Social media can be an excellent channel to succeed in affiliate marketing without a website. But I would be lying if I told you it will be easy. 

Although social media platforms are a great way to promote your affiliate offers, you will need a large following base to see huge results. 

You will have to invest time in building your audience to see high engagement when you promote your affiliate offers. However, be aware that some platforms like Instagram don’t allow you to direct links in your post. When creating posts promoting your offer, instruct users to check out the ”link in bio.” 

As always, focus on creating good content. Post that get lots of feedback, likes, and shares, will definitely help grow your following. 

Having said that, I know this method can take some time before you see results. Here are two other ways to use social media to your favor:

Influencer Marketing:

Influencer Marketing involves the same concept as solo ads. You can pay large influencers (like Instagrammers) to promote your products to their followers. Once again, you want to make sure the influencer is someone related to your niche. 

Most Instagrammers with a large follower base, leave their emails in their bio for business inquiries. Try reaching out to them and find out if they would be interested in your affiliate offer. 

This method can work exceptionally well because people are more willing to purchase a product that is being recommended by a trustworthy source.

Facebook Groups:

Another great way to promote affiliate products through social media is by harnessing the power of Facebook groups. A Facebook group, like forums, allows people with similar interests to come to a central place to discuss a particular topic. 

With Facebook groups, you also have the option of joining a group in your niche or simply starting your own group. Businesses do this all the time, using Facebook groups to interact with their customers, inform about their products, promote affiliate products, or even post relevant industry updates.

As an affiliate marketer, this can help you promote your products while creating a community around them. 

This is a good way to portray your expertise and offer value to your group. Doing so will help you build a loyal following, one that keeps people coming back to you. 

6. PPC Advertisement

In terms of how quickly you can see results, pay-per-click advertising is probably the fastest way to convert traffic into buyers.

However, this form of paid advertising can come at an extreme price to affiliates who don’t know what they are doing. 

When you direct link to your affiliate product through PPC advertisements you are likely to lose a lot more money than you make.

Why?

Because, when you are an affiliate using PPC advertising, you are likely directing traffic directly to the merchants landing page. These pages often provide a large bounce back rate because they are unattractive or of low quality.

Imagine you are a customer searching on the internet and you click an ad, either purposely or by mistake, and you are immediately offered a product to buy.

You are likely to click back out because of how abruptly you were approached or you simply aren’t in the mind frame to buy.

If you are using an advertising platform like Google Ads they take the ads landing page and the customer’s experience into consideration. 

For poor experiences, your ad will get assigned a low-quality score which means you will end up paying more for your paid ads.

Even more, if the content of your ad (this includes the merchant’s landing page) violates any of Google’s advertising policies, your account can get suspended. Google and Facebook both have been known to have strict rules when it comes to compliance.  

As the affiliate, you have no control over the merchant’s landing page so there is no way to circumvent this issue without the use of your website or personal landing page.  

For the PPC method to work, you will need to create a squeeze (or lead) page for your customers to land on before they are directed to the merchant’s page. 

With a squeeze page, you can collect the viewer’s email so if they don’t buy your product on the first run, you can then follow up with them by email to remind them of the product.

This way does require a few other tools to ensure that you get the highest conversions. You’ll need:

• A lead capture page builder

Although not quite a website, a squeeze page is designed to capture opt-in email addresses from potential subscribers. Unfortunately, these pages don’t build themselves, so you will have to use a page builder. There are higher-end drag and drop builders like ClickFunnels or more affordable options like Leadpages. Both programs provide templates for you to use, making page building that much more simple.

• Email Autoresponder

Along with your page builder, you will need software that automatically captures and emails potential customers. Luckily most page builders have autoresponders built into the platform already so using an autoresponder is merely a matter of setting it up.

When considering PPC, I ask you to do so with caution. Although it provides the opportunity for instant traffic and commission, you need to know what you are doing.

If you aren’t willing to spend money on your own website then you definitely won’t be willing to pay the amount it takes to run a profitable ad campaign. 

7. Email marketing

Notice how I mentioned for you to be successful with PPC, you need to capture viewers emails in case they don’t purchase. Well, believe it or not, this act of capturing emails is its own form of marketing all by itself, and it’s a valuable one at that.

Email marketing is perhaps the best tool when it comes to affiliate marketing with or without a website. The crazy part is it all balls down to one key asset, your email list. 

The first step of email marketing is building up a list of subscribers that are interested in hearing from you and then recommending them products. 

So how do you build an email list?

You have two options when building your email list: build it yourself or simply buy one.

Yet, I would strongly encourage you to build your list because a purchased list will likely leave you disappointed. 

To get people to provide you with their email addresses, you will have to offer them something in exchange, usually something with value. This item of value is what we call a lead magnet and can be anything from a free guide to a free course or resource.

Because you won’t be using a website, you will need a place for people to go to input their email and receive your offer. Once again, this is where page building software becomes so useful. Page builders like Leadpages also include simple form builders as well.

After you’ve built your form and created your offer, you need to direct traffic to your sign up form. You can do this through free methods such as posting on social media or you can even use paid advertisements if you want to speed up the process.

Once you have gathered enough email subscribers you can send out emails weekly promoting your affiliate offers. 

Now, I know the process of email marketing is pretty straightforward, but don’t underestimate the importance of writing a good email copy. 

If you are going to succeed at email marketing, you’ll need to be a strong copywriter. Like all the other methods we’ve talked about today, your main goal should be to provide valuable and helpful information to your email list. You’ll want to pack in as much value as possible, providing all the necessary information to convince your audience to purchase your offers.

And even after you convert people into buyers, you will still have to work non-stop to keep your email list engaged, while also building the size of your subscriber list. 

This can quickly turn into a full-time job but luckily there are tools available that automate this entire process. 

Remember the autoresponder I mentioned above? This is the way you truly put your email marketing on cruise control. As long as you create enough email copies, in the beginning, you can schedule them to be sent to your subscribers automatically over some time. This is known as a drip-email campaign and its a potent marketing strategy.

If you want to find out more about how to build an email list in-depth, you can read my blog on it. 

So can you start affiliate marketing without a website?

After reading this post, I hope you now realize that it is completely possible to start affiliate marketing without a website. There are plenty of ways of doing it, seven of which we covered today. 

I reiterated the importance of providing value several times in this post because it is vital if you ever hope to get offers to your affiliate products.

With all things considered, I want you to understand that, although you are not required to build a website, having one will help you tremendously in your affiliate marketing journey.

When you create an affiliate website, you are building a business that is your own, one that can become an asset over time.

You will also find that when you sign up for most affiliate programs, they will want to see an online place that explains how you will promote their business, therefore, having at least a one-page website is always better than having none at all.

Before you completely shut out the idea of creating a website, I ask you to read my step-by-step affiliate marketing guide, where I explain how to start affiliate marketing with a website.

As always, your comments and suggestions for future posts are welcomed.

Until then, keep hustling.

Considering how much we talk about affiliate marketing on this blog, I can’t believe it has taken me this long to come up with this post. I guess I just assumed that most people already had a general knowledge of affiliate marketing or else they wouldn’t be reading my content.

The reality of the matter is people are still, very much confused by the idea of affiliate marketing. They question “What is affiliate marketing?” or “How does affiliate marketing work?”

After taking a second to think about it, I can understand why people have these questions. I accept some of the blame, as I have repeatedly talked about affiliate marketing but have not discussed the various ways to approach it.

I get it. Affiliate marketing, as a concept is very simple, but the process of actually doing it can be much harder.

That is why, in today’s post, I want to start at ground zero.

I know the title says “affiliate marketing for dummies; “but I rather you consider this a comprehensive guide. One that answers your most general questions about affiliate marketing.

I want to give you the basics when it comes to affiliate marketing. Hopefully, by the end of this post, you’ll have a solid foundation for you to finally start your affiliate marketing journey.

So, let’s jump straight into it.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

I have answered this question in another post already. But, as I said, we are establishing a foundation so it never hurts to cover it again.

Affiliate marketing, in its most basic form, is the process of referring. As an affiliate marketer, you earn a commission for referring new clients and customers to other businesses, products, or services.

What makes affiliate marketing so attractive is how simple it can be. The sales model is logical and flexible and doesn’t require a person to produce, stock, or ship product inventory.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing has several moving parts that have to come together for it to work smoothly. Before we discuss those moving parts, let’s take a look at some of the key players involved in affiliate marketing:

The Seller:

The seller can go by many names (vendor, merchant, retailer, product creator) but don’t let that confuse you. The seller’s sole mission is to maximize sales or leads by allowing affiliates to promote their products and services.

The Affiliate:

Also known as a publisher, the affiliate is the one that promotes the seller’s product in a way that gets the attention of potential customers. If the affiliate can attract buyers to the seller’s offer, then they receive a portion of the revenue made.

The Customer:

Without customers, affiliate marketing is as good as useless. When consumers buy a product, the seller and the affiliate share the profits. This is also at no extra cost to the customer. In fact, oftentimes the customer is completely unaware of their role in the affiliate marketing equation. 

Affiliate Network:

Affiliate networks are platforms where affiliates and sellers can connect. The seller lists their products on these platforms where affiliates go to choose them. Affiliate networks typically handle all tracking, reporting, and payment to affiliates. 

Some of the most popular affiliate networks include ShareASale, ClickBank, Amazon Associates, Digistore, and tons more. 

Okay, now that we’ve taken a look at the key players of affiliate marketing, I want to give you an actual example of how everything comes together.

Step 1: Affiliate Joins An affiliate network

In this example, I am going to stick to one of the most popular Affiliate Networks, ClickBank.

All of the red links are different products offered by different sellers. ClickBank’s Affiliate Marketplace is where affiliates go to choose the products they wish to promote.

Step 2: The Affiliate Marketer Finds A Product related to their niche

Let’s imagine I am an affiliate for the Health and Fitness niche. I want to choose a product that I think will benefit my audience, so I choose the weightloss product above. 

Because people are always trying to lose extra weight, this product solves a problem that people encounter. Two Important stats to consider when choosing a ClickBank product are Grav and Avg %/sale. 

Avg %/sale: the average commission rate earned for all sales of a vendor’s products, including one-time purchases, rebills, and upsell purchases. 

Grav: Short for gravity, this is a performance statistic that represents the number of different affiliates who have earned a commission by promoting a product over the past 12 weeks. 

Overall, these two statistics show how profitable a product is.

Step 3: Affiliate Marketer Creates Some Content

The affiliate marketer then starts to create content around the particular product they wish to promote. This can be done in multiple ways, but written reviews or video reviews seem to be the most popular methods. 

Each time the affiliate mentions the seller’s products they add their affiliate link, which a customer can make a purchase through.

Step 4: Customers in your niche start Searching For related products

Our customer (let’s call her Hannah) is interested in losing weight so she looks for supplement reviews on Google. Eventually, she lands on your review blog.

After reading your review Hannah decides that this product is for her.

Step 5: Customer Clicks On Affiliate Link

Once Hannah clicks on your affiliate link and an affiliate tracking cookie is dropped onto her laptop, which tracks that she was directed to the seller’s website through your link.

Step 6: Customer Makes A Purchase

By Clicking on your link, Hannah is directed to an alternate page. 

This is the product’s sales page. Considering that Hannah likes what she sees on the sales page she will decide to make a purchase.

Step 7: Merchant Credits You With A Sale And Pays You Commission

After her purchase, the cookie informs the seller (in this example, Leptitiox) that Hannah came to their website via your link.

The seller then logs the sale and the credit is given to you, the affiliate, because your link was used.

This process can repeat for an affiliate over the course of a month. Once the month is over, the affiliate receives payment for all the sales they made.

Affiliates can track their sales through an affiliate dashboard set up on the affiliate network they are a part of. Here is an example of what payments can look like.  

In a nutshell, this is how affiliate marketing works. Not too difficult, right?

How to actually start affiliate marketing

Now that you know how affiliate marketing works as a business model, you are probably wondering how to start. This can be tough to explain because there is more than one way to approach affiliate marketing. 

Ask a number of affiliates, they will all likely give you different methods and strategies for getting started.

I, however, am going to give you what I believe to be the simplest, most straightforward, way to start. I hope you are ready. 

Step 1. Choose a Niche

No matter what way you decide to approach affiliate marketing, choosing a niche is the universal practice. 

For those who don’t know, a niche is any “product, service, or interest that appeals to a small, specialized section of the population”(Thanks Google). In other words, a niche is simply a highly-specialized market.

Although picking your niche is an important step, new affiliates sometimes allow the decision to paralyze them. My advice is to not overthink it.

Many worry about picking the perfect niche the first time, but I have often found that slows you down. 

But, if you want to know some of the best niches to get into, check out my post where I go over the best niches for affiliate marketing.

At any rate, if you just want a quick list of niche to choose from, here are a few profitable ones to consider

Step 2. Find an Available Website-Name Related to Your Niche

This step is often overlooked, but it’s extremely important. Choosing the name of your website/ company is the start of building your brand.

You should want your company’s name to be A) relevant to the niche you select and B) trustworthy and professional. Your brand name is what your customers will remember so make sure it leaves an impact.  

It’s also important you choose a Top-Level Domain; these are any names that end in “.com” “.net” “.co” “.org” “.io” extensions.

Of course, you should aim to get a “.com” extension if it’s available because it is what people search for the most.

Believe it or not, choosing the right website name can also be helpful if you want to sell your website in the future. Some websites with good names can go for tens of thousands of dollars on domain auction sites like GoDaddy. 

If you already have a domain in mind already, use the tool below to see if it’s available.

Step 3. Sign Up for Web Hosting to Start Building your Website

You can indeed do affiliate marketing without a website but, I strongly recommend against it. With a website, you are building an asset that can make you money years down the road.

In order to start building your website, you first need web hosting. 

What is web hosting? A web host is simply the business that provides the technologies and services needed for your website to be viewed on the Internet. Without web hosting, there is no way for your website to get viewed by the public.

There are many web hosting companies out there, but these are the two I recommend.

Easily the most popular web hosting company around, Bluehost powers more than 2 million websites and employs over 750 people. Over the years Bluehost continues to grow and I don’t foresee them going away anytime soon. If you want to get an idea of the experience Bluehost provides, click around this website because it uses Bluehost. 

Even though I don’t use SiteGround personally, I have heard great things about this web hosting site. They are a bit smaller than Bluehost yet, they still have over 400 employees and hosts more than 2 million domain names at the moment. 

Perhaps the best feature of SiteGround is there hosting speed. It is, hands down, the best in the game, not even Bluehost can match it.

For some people, this makes all the difference because hosting speed is important when providing a good user experience.

Either way, you can’t go wrong with these two companies. Both are Official WordPress-recommended Web Hosting companies, which is crucial (as you’ll see in step 4)

Step 4. Build Your Website with WordPress

Once you get hosting, it will then be time for you to build your website or blog. The simplest, most popular website builder to use is WordPress.

If you think of the majority of websites you visit on the internet, chances are they are powered by WordPress. In fact, more than one in four websites that you visit are likely powered by WordPress.

WordPress is ideal for those who have never built a website before. With this program, you don’t need any coding or design skills to create a professional-looking site. As a user, you get access to thousands of free site designs which makes building your first website a breeze.

To make the process even easier, I recommend you use the Elementor plugin, which is 100% WordPress compatible. Elementor provides Easy Drag-and-Drop Editing so that newbies like me can build websites like this one.

The best part is that it’s completely free so you don’t have an excuse to not have it in your arsenal

Step 5. Add Email Marketing to Your Website and Collect Customer Emails

To engage with your audience and update them whenever you create new content, you need to incorporate email marketing into your business. 

No, despite what you might have thought, emailing is not a thing of the past. It’s actually a vital part of staying connected with your followers.

I go into the fine details of email marketing in this post but, for the sake of time, I want to introduce you to the best email marketing software to use, ConvertKit.

ConvertKit is an extremely powerful tool that has helped me grow my business. It makes creating attractive emails and forms look simple. Not to mention, it tracks email data for you while also providing useful automation features.

If that doesn’t sound exciting to you its because you have yet to deal with the hassles of email marketing. Trust me, ConvertKit is an all-in-one email marketing software that you’ll want at your disposal.

The only downside is that it isn’t free. So, If you arent ready to pay ConvertKit’s $.29.00/ month subscription, there are still other emailing software available. 

Nevertheless, Convertkit can still be a great future investment once your business grows.

Step 6. Get a Logo Made for Your Brand

Like your website name, a logo is also important in building your brand. I can’t tell you how many times I have been on a website where it looks like they chose a clipart image for their logo. It’s rather tragic.

If you aren’t a digital artist, the best option for getting a professional logo designed is by hiring a freelancer. 

You can easily go on freelance sites like Fiverr and have an awesome logo created for your brand within a couple of days.

Getting a logo designed is perhaps the best affordable investment you can make for your business.

Step 7. Choose an Affiliate Network 

This is where things get a bit more serious. After your website is up and running, it’s now time for you to select the business you want to partner with. You can go about this two ways:

Sign up to an Affiliate Network:

As I said earlier, an affiliate network is a platform where affiliates and sellers connect. The thing is, there are numerous affiliate networks out there and not all of them have the same potential.

The type of products you wish to promote ultimately determines which network you should join. 

Say you want to promote mainly physical products, Then Amazon’s associate is the best choice for you. As you know Amazon sells virtually everything. As one of their affiliates, you have the entire Amazon marketplace to choose from

Now, if you want to promote products from large Name brands such as Nike, Bose, Columbia, Samsung, etc, then CJ Affiliate is a great network to join. 

But, if you are someone like me who likes promoting digital products, like courses and software, then ClickBank is the right place for you. Even though the products on ClickBank are less well-known, many of the commissions are higher for affiliates.

Choosing the right affiliate network is a matter of picking the one that most aligns with your business. However, I recommend only choosing one network to start with so you aren’t too overwhelmed in the beginning

Sign up directly to an affiliate program: 

If you don’t want to join an affiliate network you can always go directly to a company and sign up for their affiliate program. This method allows you to choose exactly who you want to partner with instead of picking from the list of sellers a network provides. 

Most of the world’s biggest companies have an affiliate program so there isn’t a shortage to choose from. However, this route requires more leg work on your end. I’d honestly recommend you do this after you’ve gotten your feet wet first.  

Step 8. Create Content and Include Affiliate Links

Content creation is where all the fun is and, if you ask me, it is the best part of affiliate marketing. 

Creating content is where you as the affiliate express your ideas and opinions about your product and niche. Your content is what ultimately attracts your audience and determines whether they buy or not. 

Content creation came come in many forms, but the best (and not to mention the easiest) forms are writing and video recording.

Written Content

This comes in the form of a blog post. With written content, you are free to write about anything you want: a problem in your niche, product reviews, top ten list. As long as your written content is relevant and interesting to your audience, it is yours for the taking. 

Video Content

If you don’t mind being in front of the camera, then perhaps you should create video content. Just like written content, you have many ways to go about it. As a beginner, all you need is a decent camera (or even a smartphone) to get started.

Regardless of whether it’s a video or written, content creation comes at no cost to you. All you have to do is spend your time and energy to build something worthwhile.

Step 9. Get Traffic to Your Content

Once all the previous steps are completed, it’s finally time to put your foot on the gas. You do this by driving traffic to your content and your affiliate products.

And although there are thousands of articles written on the topic of driving traffic, I just want to focus on the two main types:

Free Traffic

Believed to be “The best form of traffic,” free traffic is generated mainly through a method called “Search Engine Optimization”(SEO).

To keep things simple, the goal of SEO is to get your content ranked in the search engines (Google, Bing, Youtube,etc.) One gets ranked by using relevant keywords in their content that relates to what customers type in the search results.

There are many ways to “optimize” your content for better search ranking but that is a topic for a future post. If you want to know how SEO works and how to rank in the search engines, I suggest you check out this video.

Paid Traffic

The thing about free traffic is that it takes time and patience. You can’t expect to see immediate results. People that want to see results in little time use paid traffic, which pretty much guarantees you’ll get views. 

If you have heard of Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or Bing Ads, then you are already familiar with paid traffic sources. The amount you pay depends on a few factors but essentially balls down to how wide of a reach you want to make.

Even though using paid traffic seems easier, there is definitely an art to it. If you want to learn how to set up paid traffic, watch this video below.

Where to learn more about affiliate marketing

If you have made it this far, then you might be feeling a little overwhelmed at this point. Don’t worry, I’d be more concerned if you weren’t.

Besides, that’s why I included this last section, to leave you with some extra resources to aid you in your affiliate marketing journey.

If you still have questions or if you want to understand affiliate marketing even further, I recommend you try these sites.

If used together these three websites will provide you with more than enough information to turn you from a beginner into an expert affiliate marketer. They are free to use and are invaluable sources I still use today.

Final Thoughts On Affiliate Marketing

Well, that is all for my step-by-step guide to affiliate marketing. If you follow these steps, you’ll be well on your way to starting your affiliate marketing business.

I hope this guide provided answers to most of your questions related to affiliate marketing. Even more, I hope it becomes a resource that you commonly refer back to when needed.

The only thing left for you to do at this point is to take action. Now that you know the steps you need to take, there is no reason for you not to begin immediately. 

This doesn’t mean I expect you to get your website up and running by the end of the day. At the very least, start thinking about the niche you want to choose. It can seem like a lot at first but gradually over time, it becomes easier. 

I look forward to hearing from your success.

As always, If you have comments are suggestions for a future post, don’t hesitate to contact me.

It’s a question I see in the search results whenever a new year rolls around: “Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?” Although pretty vague, it seems to be an honest question, one that people want the answer to.

Instead of asking whether affiliate marketing is dead as if it were a long lost relative, we should be asking “is affiliate marketing still worth it?”

That is what I want to discuss in today’s blog post. Because, believe it or not, Affiliate marketing is not worth it for certain people.

It takes a particular kind of attitude and mindset to get into affiliate marketing.

I’m going to describe the exact person that affiliate marketing is not for and also the type of person it is for. Hopefully, by the end of this post, you will know which party you fall under.

I ask you not to be discouraged if affiliate marketing isn’t for you. It’s better that you know it now so you can save yourself time, energy, and future headaches.

And for those who are cut out for affiliate marketing, I hope this post will guide you in the right direction, providing the next steps to take so you can create a business that is scalable for the future.

So, without wasting any more time

The Future of Affiliate Marketing

Are you new to Affiliate marketing and questioning whether it will be viable in the future?

The short answer is yes! But, “why will it be viable?”

Well, to answer that, let’s first check out this Google Trend.

As you can see, since 2004, affiliate marketing has been a wide search topic. Of course, there are phases where it’s been low, but overall, the popularity of affiliate marketing continues to rise.

If you consider this and people’s desire for searching passive income (the blue trend) then you will realize that the future is looking bright for affiliate marketing.

This is due to the fact that affiliate marketing is everywhere.

Think about it. Essentially, any product can become an affiliate product and there are millions of affiliate programs available to join.

Most of the biggest companies in the world have affiliate programs, I’m talking about companies like

• Google

• Amazon

• Apple

• Nike

• Adidas

This is only to name a few. New companies pop up every year and therefore new affiliate programs continue popping up as well.

So, as you can see, there is a massive amount of potential when it comes to affiliate marketing.

So, What’s the Catch?

Now, the problem with affiliate marketing having so much potential is that it invites more competition. At the time of this post, affiliate marketing is still a viable business model to jump into, but there is no telling how long it will stay that way.

Although there is competition, it is still not at the point where new affiliate marketers can’t succeed.

 The competition is increasing year after year. So, if you are contemplating on whether to start, you need to decide quickly.

The longer you wait the harder it may be for you in the future.

Who is Affiliate Marketing NOT for?

I’m going to be completely honest and tell you that affiliate marketing is not for most people. That is the hard reality. Many people start affiliate marketing and fail because of several reasons:

They don’t want to put in the work:

People who want to take shortcuts in this business will ultimately not succeed. Despite what most may have you believe, affiliate marketing is hard work.

Yet, most people rather find the easy way around things instead of putting forth effort and time. Those who want instant gratification from affiliate marketing soon find there is no such thing and quit.

If you aren’t willing to invest your time and your money (which most people aren’t) then I suggest you look elsewhere because affiliate marketing isn’t for you.

They Lack Focus

To be successful at affiliate marketing, you have to be focused. This pertains to many aspects of this business but most importantly you need focus to

• Come up with a good niche

• visualize your target audience

• Create valuable content

All too often, people start off affiliate marketing with drive and focus, but at some point allow it to slip. The content becomes half-hearted, keyword research is thrown by the wayside, promoting takes a backseat, and then they wonder why they aren’t seeing results.

Those that Remain focused realize how much it pays off in the end.

They are unwilling to Learn

It doesn’t matter whether you are new or a veteran affiliate marketer, you should always want to learn new information. The playing field in this business changes so often that there is always a new topic to become familiar with.

However, people reach a point where they feel like they know “everything there is to know.” If this mentality doesn’t end your business it will definitely stagnate its growth.

For those who are just starting, accept the fact that there is a learning curve In this business. Yet, also take comfort in knowing you live in a world where knowledge is at your fingertips. Some programs and courses have more than enough information to get you started, you just have to put in the time and effort.

Unfortunately, this can be a huge mental block for some people and it becomes the reason why they fail.

If you fall into any of these categories then perhaps affiliate marketing isn’t right for you. As you can see, it takes hard work to be successful in this business. If you aren’t prepared to put forth that hard work at the moment, then don’t waste your time.

Note: If you want to see the common mistakes most affilaite marketers make, check out my post on The Top 7 Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers Make & How To Avoid?

Who is Affiliate Marketing For?

So, if we were to flip the script on what was just mentioned above then we would have those people that affiliate marketing is for. In this game of affiliate marketing, you have to be able to

Practice patience

Want a $5000 profit in your very first month? Odds are that won’t happen. You must understand that.

If you are willing to accept the fact that affiliate marketing is a learning process, one that takes time, then you will be better off.

Expecting money to fall at your feet within the first day, is unrealistic and sets you up for disappointment.

Affiliate marketing is a science at its core. You have to understand the psychology of your customers, understand their behaviors and practice a lot. You also have to understand marketing in all its different forms.

These things take time, sometimes weeks or months, depending on how quickly you pick up new things. You have heard time and time again that” patience is key ” this is especially true in affiliate marketing.

Have the desire to learn

This directly applies to what I just touched on and it’s an extremely important quality of any affiliate. However, When I say “learn” I mean it in two different ways.

You should want to learn from people who have been where you are. There are plenty of people out there to emulate, the key is choosing the right ones.

Find someone who resonates with you, whether it be their methods or their personality, and copy how they do things. Learning what they did successfully and what they struggled with will provide invaluable insight into how you should grow your business.

If you aren’t sure where to find people to learn from, you can check affiliate marketing related groups on Facebook or search on different internet forums.

Another thing that affiliate marketers neglect learning is their products. This is sad to see because your product is what generates your profit.

You should never promote a product you have no idea about. Always do your research, so you can understand your products advantages and disadvantages, and how your audience can benefit from it.

Learning about your product also entails learning about your competition as well. How can you expect to sell something if you don’t know what makes it better than the competitor? Learn what product features are available, which are not available in competitor products, how is your product better, and why customers should buy it over the competition.

It sounds simple, right? Have the desire to learn and be able to practice patience. Unfortunately, if it were that simple there would be fewer people failing at affiliate marketing. 

Something tells me that won’t be the case with you. 

What is the Affiliate Marketing Mindset?

To truly become a successful affiliate marketer you have to have the right mindset. I like to compare it to pro baller, Kobe Bryant’s “Mamba Mentality”

“Mamba mentality is a constant quest to find answers. It’s that infinite curiosity to want to be better, to figure things out. Mamba mentality is you’re going, you’re competing, you’re not worried about the end result. You’re not worried about what people may say. You’re not worried about disappointing others. You’re not worried about any of that, you’re just focused on being in the moment. That’s what mamba mentality truly is,”

– Kobe Bryant

Half the battle in this business is simply showing up and not letting failures get you down or hinder your path to success.

It’s important for you to understand that the Failures are what make you successful. So instead of giving up, get up again and try figuring out where you went wrong and correct yourself.

is affiliate marketing right for you?

If you have made it this far without completely being turned off to the idea of affiliate marketing then it is definitely right for you.

As I said in the beginning, this business is only ideal for a certain type of person. But if you love the idea of building a business that’s your own, one that will grow into an asset, then affiliate marketing is still a beautiful opportunity.

Yet, have an open mind and a humble perspective because ego only slows you down. You will realize, as you grow personally your business will grow as well.

With that being said, I hope you found this post helpful and hope it helped you realize for the right person, affiliate marketing is very much alive.

Perhaps it got you motivated and excited about starting your affiliate marketing journey today. If that’s the case, the perfect place to start is with a website and hosting.

Yes, It’s true affiliate marketing can be done without one, but if you are trying to build a business for the long term, a website is crucial. It was my first step in showing I was serious about my business.

And like I said, learning is important to your growth. So, you might want to utilize these free learning resources available to you.

• Affilorama

• Wealthy Affiliate

As always leave comments or suggestions for future posts. I’m looking forward to hearing about your success.