Affiliate website Set up: Once you have decided which products and/or services you are going to promote as an affiliate marketer, it’s time to get your advertisements out there on the web. In order to do this, you will need to set up a website, blog, social media page, or all three. The majority of affiliate marketers start off with a website, since the majority of affiliate programs will provide HTML codes for the advertisements which you will be displaying to your users.
Choosing a Domain Name
These days, setting up a website for the purpose of affiliate marketing is easy. Before you set up your website, however, it’s important to come up with a good domain name which your site will be known by. When choosing a domain name for an affiliate site, it’s important to choose one which is both easy to remember, pronounce, and spell. Your domain name should also reflect the type of items which you are promoting on the site. For ex- ample, if you are creating an affiliate site to market online casinos, you could choose something like ‘toponlinecasinos’ or ‘bestonlinecasinogames’. This not only makes it easy for your visitors to quickly determine what the site is about, but it is also relevant, easy to remember, spell and pronounce, and good for SEO.
Coming up with a domain name can be trickier than you think, especially when there are limited domain names available with .com. When choosing a domain name it is always important to go for .com rather than any other
top-level domain. This is because not only do many people still assume that there is only .com available, it’s also easier to remember, harder to confuse your site with others, and opens up your site to global visits from search engine results.
Setting Up Your Website
Once you have chosen your domain name, it’s time to set up your website. It’s vital that this stage is given a huge amount of thought, planning and effort as after all, it is your website where your affiliate ads will be displayed. To get the best results from your site, it needs to be not only appealing to visitors, but also easy to navigate and quick to load. You can use site-making software, for example WordPress, to easily create your site if you have no prior knowledge of coding or HTML. In this case, it’s advisable to purchase a premium WordPress – or other site-creator – package so that you have more freedom when it comes to using themes or making customized edits to your site.
You may also want to speak with an experienced, professional web design- er about getting your site up and running. For many affiliate marketers, it’s a good idea to pay a professional to design and set up your website, as they will have a good idea of the types of web designs which are the best for affiliate marketing and also how to design your website in such a way that it is beneficial for search engine optimization.
Web Hosting
If you do not choose to use software such as WordPress to host your site, you will need to find a web host. When it comes to choosing a web hosting provider, there are many different options to choose from and each of these must be taken into consideration. These include:
Free Hosting Shared Hosting Cloud Hosting VPS Hosting Dedicated Hosting
Free hosting, no matter how appealing, should be avoided at all costs. This is because even though it will not cost you, the actual cost of hosting your website is often subsidized with advertisements, which could interfere with the advertisements that you post on behalf of affiliate programs. Websites hosted with free hosting providers also tend to be slow to load along with a number of other potential issues which could cause problems for your business.
Shared hosting is usually quite affordable, and is a popular choice for affiliate marketers. With shared hosting, your website will share a server with others. However, bear in mind that if you choose this option, there is always the danger of your site being slow, or even unreachable, during peak times.
On the other hand, opting for cloud hosting, which often costs around the same as shared hosting, is a better option as your site will be hosted on a number of virtual servers, meaning that there is little chance of server over- load.
VPS hosting, or virtual private server hosting, is a type of hosting which is similar to both shared and dedicated hosting. It allows for more space than standard hosting, but is less costly than dedicated hosting, where your website essentially has a server to itself. This type of hosting usually costs more, and is only ideal if you expect to expand significantly, therefore needing extra server space, in the future.
Whichever type of hosting service you decide to go for, it’s important to keep a few main factors in mind. This includes customer service – it’s absolutely vital to go for a hosting provider which provides excellent, round-the- clock customer service so that you know for sure that if anything goes wrong with your website, you can get in touch and have it fixed straight away.
