How To Joining Affiliate Networks and Setup Website

How To Joining Affiliate Networks

Joining any affiliate network is easy. All you need is go to any network’s website, click on the sign up link and add the details they need. Most of the networks would ask for your contact details and website URL.

Some networks do not ask for website URL but for networks that do, it means you have to have a website before you can apply.

For Clickbank, just add your details as demanded above and then you will get a response if you have been approved or not. Some sites don’t accept affiliates from India and that include Clickbank.

There is not even India on their list which means you either not sign up or you sign up as a National of another country.

For Clickbank, you can sign up as an American or a UK resident. All you need to do is get any address of the country you want to use and apply. You can get an address off a yellow page of that country. You don’t even need to use a VPN to login or anything. Just sign up and you will be accepted.

For networks that required you to have a website, you have a higher chance of getting approved if you have a good website and a custom email address that goes with your website.

For example xyzi.com and the custom email makemoney@xyz.com makes you really look like a professional and that’s what they love.

Setting Up Your Website

You need a website or blog to actually make good money doing affiliate marketing. While you can make money with affiliate marketing without a website, having a website is essential if you want to be really successful doing this.

You can get a free website on web 2.0 sites blogger.com or you can host your own website yourself. If you want to use a free software/host like blogger, then all you need to do is get a domain name for under $10 at Namecheap. They accept your Naira MasterCard or any debit card in India.

Don’t use a free domain name like makemoney@blogspot.com. That’s not professional and most people don’t to see a review site with a name like that.

If you want to host your own website, then use WordPress to design your website. Why I love WordPress is that it has many plugins you can use to boost affiliate sales.

Then get a hosting account from a host like Namecheap or Hostgator. Namecheap is way cheaper and they have good flexible plans. I don’t advice you go with local host when building affiliate sites. They are just not reliable.

Get a host that you can contact on live support to deal with any problems you might have with your hosting account. Namecheap and Hostgator have good support and your websites is safe with any of them.

Install WordPress on your host server and get a quality theme to give your site a nice neat appearance.

Types of Affiliate Websites

There are 3 types of affiliate sites to build for yourself and that depends on your niche and what you can handle.

Micro-Niche & Single Niche Website

This is site built to target one specific item and nothing more. For example you can build a site to promote a single product like Sony air conditioner. That kind of site is meant for Sony air conditioner and nothing more.

Some affiliates who build this kind of site buy a domain name with the main keyword in it like XYZairconditioner.com. Few years ago that domain is enough to get your website get ranked for that keyword.

That has changed since Google Panda and the other algorithm changes that followed. But what I am trying to let you know is that, that site was bought to target Sony air conditioners and nothing more. Its a single product micro-niche website.

You can also build a site for all air conditioners which means you can promote any air conditioner of all brands.  This kinds of websites are good for promoting Amazon products. Its easy to maintain a site like this because you are tightly focused on a specific or group of products.

Multiple-Product Single-Niche Website

You can also set up a website promoting multiple products in a niche. Lets say you decide to go a little further and you want to promote electronics. This means a website that promotes air conditioners, TVs, Home theater, DVD players instead of focusing on one item only.

Its just like a site on make money promoting any make money products be it software, eBooks, internet programs etc. A website that targets multiple products in a single niche. This is the best kinds of website to build.

Multiple-Products Multiple-Niches Website

Example of a website like this is Cnet.com. You can set up your website to promote items in different niches.

This kind of website is not easy to maintain. Only corporations can handle this kinds of website. I made a mistake of trying to build a site like this when I started.

After months of build this website, I gave up cause I just could not compete.

If you can manage a site like this, then go ahead and build one.

Although I advice you to build a website you can manage well. A website built to cater for one niche is okay. You can promote many products on it but tightly focused on one niche.

Adding Content to Your Website

Adding content to you site is easy with WordPress. All you need is create a post or if you  prefer a static appearance, create a page.

All you basically will be doing is writing reviews of products you want to promote. For example, if you are promoting Affiliate Code System, all you need to do is write a review of the product.

Talk about the program, what it is about, the pros, cons, features, benefits etc. Your job is to convince a reader to buy the product. Your ability to make the visitor on your website believe that the program is the solution to their online success, he buys and you get a commission.

Just read about the program sales page and then summarize the whole copy in your own words. You have to bring your copywriting skills to bear here and that will help you a lot to convince your leads to buy.

The word count does not matter. If you can put across your message in 200 words, no problem and if it takes 2,000 words for you to do that, its okay.

Sometimes its okay to buy a product just to see how it works then test it and write a review on it. This is good if the product you are promoting is a software. You can buy it, use and have a better things to write about the product.

I buy most tools that I need and if its just too good, I will create a video on how to use it, post it on YouTube or on my video review website. I make lots of commissions this way because people like to see how things like this works before they buy.

After writing the reviews, then you will add your unique affiliate links somewhere on the page.

How to Add Affiliate Links to Your Website

Its just the same way you would add any link to a website or blog. You will get an affiliate link like XYZ.com?=123. Copy that and add it to where you want it on your site.

Highlight any word or keyword you want to link to the site, then click on the hyperlink icon. In this example lets say the anchor text we want to use is “Aweber’s Autoresponder”. Highlight the word and then click on the hyperlinked icon.

  

Then in the pop up that comes up, add your affiliate link in the URL space, add title, click “add link” and you are done. The words will be hyperlinked and clickable.

That’s all you need to do and you have successfully added your affiliate link to your review page.

Your keyword will appear as clickable and if your visitors click on the anchor text, it will lead them to aweber.com and your unique ID will be attached to that lead. If he buys you get commission for the sale.

There is also banners provided by the merchants for you to use. You can link to the landing page with the banners.

But at times its good to hide your affiliate links so that some people don’t remove your affiliate ID and deny your the credit. I don’t why people do that but I guess some are just bitter and feels like just denying your that commission.

How to Hide Affiliate Links

I don’t do all the time but at times I do. You can hide your affiliate link so that your lead does not see your affiliate ID. You can hide or cloak your links with many tools. There are free link cloaking plugins like Pretty link or Simple URLs.

The lite version of Pretty link is free and very effective. Once installed on your website, you can use it to hide links. So instead of them seeing something like xyz.com/promotion, all they will see is xyz.com/w7yu or some random numbers generated by the link cloaking tool.

There are also paid online based tools like linktrackr, LinkShield, Improvely. They are good web based tools that create professional-looking links and make your links cleaner, shorter, and branded to your website.