Affiliate Marketing Step 3a: Setting Up Your Website

By now you should have a good idea of a product or two that you’d like to promote. We have looked at Step 1, and Step 2.

So now is time to set up our affiliate marketing machine on autopilot and (hopefully) watch the money come in.  I’ve decided to write this step in a few parts, so here is step 3A.

The most effective method that I have found for promoting affiliate offers is to use a simple two page website with your autoresponder.

While you can get away with using free hosting (such as a blog or squidoo lens), and also by using a free autoresponder account, if you are really serious about making money online then you need to get yourself a hosting account, a domain name and an autoresponder account.

So what do you need them all for?

1. Hosting Account

Your hosting account is where you will store your web pages that your visitors will come to. You won’t have any trouble finding a host provider – there are literally hundreds of webhosting companies online. Some are cheap, some are expensive.

I use 1&1 as my webhost. They are ok and I’ve never had a problem with them and their prices are reasonable so I’m happy.

If you are choosing a hosting company, make sure that you can add as many domains to the one account as possible (I can add unlimited domains to my host plan) that way you’ll only ever pay the one cost for hosting multiple websites.

2. A Domain Name

Having your own domain name makes things so much easier when you are affiliate marketing. For starters you have complete control over what your visitor sees and if you ever decide to chance promotions, you can easily change your website or promotion quickly.

It’s a good idea to try and get a domain name that fits with the theme of the product you will be promoting, in fact the closer the name, the better.

For example, if you wanted to promote Fat Loss 4 Idiots (again I’m only using this product as an example), you could try putting dashes in the name: fat-loss-4-idiots.com, changing a word or two: fatlossforidiots.com or even dropping a word fatlossidiots.com. (These were just off the top of my head and I have no idea if they are available or not).

I also use 1&1 for buying domains. I think each domain name costs me around $9 or something for 1 year – you only need to make one sale within that year to recoup your costs.

Ok, in the next post I’ll continue Affiliate Marketing Step 3b with more tools that you’ll need to get your webpage set up to start your affiliate marketing empire ..