If you are thinking about creating your own website for Affiliate Marketing, congratulations! you are on the right path to success.
While some new affiliate marketers try to use other methods to avoid creating their websites, it is still one of the best models out there.
In this article I am going to show you why creating your own website for Affiliate Marketing is a great long-term strategy to build your passive income.
We will explore the best affiliate websites out there and how much they are making as well as some of the advantages and disadvantages of each model.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Before we go into the details of creating your own profitable website for Affiliate Marketing, let’s take a quick look at what exactly is Affiliate Marketing. (If you are quite familiar with it, feel free to skip this part).
To put it simply, Affiliate Marketing is a marketing strategy in which ‘affiliates’ promote a company’s product in exchange for a commission for every sale that is made through their referral.
In the world of digital marketing, affiliates use different techniques and platforms to promote their offers such as email campaigns, social media, and of course, websites.
Do you need a website for Affiliate Marketing?
This have to be one if the most asked questions new affiliates make and the answer is NO.
You don’t technically need a website for Affiliate Marketing in the same way as you don’t technically need one to make money online.
You can go around it and use traffic source that allow you to link directly to the affiliate offers but is a short-term ‘technique’ that will cause you long-term losses.
Having a website for your affiliate business means you can build an audience, optimize your conversions, build a mailing list, get organic traffic, etc.
So a most accurate answer would probably be, you don’t need one but you WANT to have one for long term success.
Benefits of using a website for Affiliate Marketing
- Creating your own website is the easiest way to build up trust and a good reputation which is essential to promote affiliate products. People are more likely to trust your recommendations if it looks like you know what you are talking about and they relate to your content.
- If you create valuable content that helps people with their problems, you will attract visitors who are ready to buy and will take your suggestion. The conversion rate on blogs and websites with content is much higher than that of PPC or social media ads.
- It allows you to easily build your email list of highly targeted prospects that you can use to further grow your business by sending traffic back to your site and promote other offers in the same niche.
- It is one of the cheapest ways to get started with Affiliate Marketing. I will detail the costs later on but, compared to other platforms and traffic sources, websites rely mostly on organic traffic generated by SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so all you will need to invest in are the costs of setting up your hosting and domain.
- Passive. Income. The coveted gem of the entrepreneur world is so misunderstood and misused that some people doubt it is possible. Well, building your own affiliate website is one of the legit ways to create it. After the time and work it needs at the beginning, it can become a recurrent source of revenue with very little managing.
Con’s of using a website for Affiliate Marketing
- Creating a website and gaining some traction takes some time upfront compared to other promotional methods. It is a long-term strategy, not a get-rich-scheme.
- If you are new to online marketing, you are going to need to learn a couple of skills but luckily there are platforms that are very intuitive and beginner-friendly.
Types of Affiliate Marketing Websites
Most (successful) affiliate website can be categorized in 5 types:
- Affiliate Marketing Blogs
- Affiliate Marketing Review Sites
- Affiliate Marketing Price Comparison Sites
- Affiliate Marketing Novelty Product Sites.
- Affiliate Marketing Discount Sites
While every model is very different from the other, what they have in common is that they offer some value to the visitor that is not found elsewhere or directly at the company’s site.
Providing value instead of trying to push a sale is key for affiliate marketing. The quote ‘people like to buy but don’t like being sold to’ works great for this case.
When people come to your site looking for a review, a discount, or a comparison, they already have the intention to buy so you just need to give a useful resource so they trust you enough to follow your recommendation.
Let’s take a deeper look at each type of affiliate marketing website:
1. Affiliate Marketing Blog
Using a blog for Affiliate Marketing is one of the most common website models. This site itself is a blog, which means it is an informational website where articles revolve around the same niche.
Building a blog with the goal of monetizing it through Affiliate Marketing takes some time and upfront work but it is worth it considering what some affiliate blogs can make over time.
Affiliate blogs promote their offer by creating relevant and useful content around them. This way they are helping visitors solve a specific problem or question while including a recommendation of a product that can benefit them.
In order to build a long-term relationship with your visitors so they trust your recommendations, it is essential to be transparent about your affiliate offers and only recommend products you would use and know will benefit them.
Some affiliates prefer to keep their blog ‘link-free’ and only promote their offers via email but nowadays it is common to do both. As long as you are providing real value, your readers will be thankful to hear your recommendations.
Pro’s of Affiliate Blogs
- They are a great way to build authority and trust which is key to promote your affiliate offers and have a good conversion rate.
- By offering free lead magnets related to the topics you are talking about, you can build a highly targeted email list quite easily.
- You can create reviews and ‘how to’ articles that result in easy commissions.
- Assuming your content is good, you will get organic traffic from search engines which means you won’t need to invest in ads or other forms of paid traffic.
Con’s of Affiliate Marketing Blogs
- It takes time to research your niche, create great content and start ranking on Google. For the first few months it will be mostly an output of work with no much to show for but after 8-10 months you will start to see the fruit of your labor.
- When first starting, you’ll need to create your content based on how competitive is your niche and the keywords you can rank for. That means not every article you write will bring you commissions bit it will help bring traffic and in consequence grow your chances of conversions.
Examples of Affiliate Marketing Blogs
1. Making Sense of Cents
Making Sense of Cents is in the competitive niche of personal finance yet has managed to stand out and build a $100,000 monthly revenue.
Michelle Schroeder-started her blog without any knowledge of Affiliate Marketing. Her original goal was to share her personal story of how she managed to pay off her student loan and build a location independent life just by making intelligent money-related decisions.
She has now expanded her focus and covers more topics on the ‘Make Money Online’ niche as well.
By helping her visitors with tips on saving, becoming debt-free, and creating financial freedom, she makes 70% of her income by promoting different products and offers in these niches.
2. Nomadic Matt
Created by Matt Kepnes, the blog ‘Nomadic Matt’ is in the travel niche, a highly competitive but also a highly profitable one.
While it is now one of the biggest travel blogs making $750,000 a year, Kepnes started from zero as everyone.
The blog was launched in 2008 and by 2010 was generating $50,000 to $60,000 a year mostly from e-books he had written, sponsored posts and a little bit of affiliate marketing.
Now, Nomadic Matt has 1.5 million visitors a month, and grosses about $750,000 year, 70% being from Affiliate Marketing.
Nomadic Matt offers its reader unique and valuable content in the form of travel guides, tips, and recommendations for people who wishes to follow this lifestyle.
Its main affiliate offers are hotels, flights and travel insurance which allows him high earnings per visitor.
How to create your own Affiliate Blog?
Are you ready create your own affiliate blog? Congrats! Here is what you will need to do next:
1. Pick your niche
Most niches can be monetized through Affiliate Marketing. You don’t need to know the exact offers you are going to promote but you do need to have a broad idea of the type of programs you could join as an affiliate and make sure there’s enough demand in the market.
2. Get your host and domain
Choose a reputable hosting like Bluehost. It is the one I use and setting up WordPress is way easier than with other hosts. They’ll also include your domain for free so you won’t have to get it somewhere else and then go through the process of integrating it.
3. Create your content
You can use tools like ahref to do research on what topics and keywords to target. As a new blog, you need to go for keywords with easy or medium difficulty to have more chances to appear in the top results of Google.
You also want to choose topics with at least 1k in search volume so they have the chance of bringing significant traffic to your blog.
Creating content is the best investment you can make on your blog and the only one that will guarantee you results.
Finally, make sure to take a look at the current results on google and make your content is better than theirs so you actually have a chance to out-rank them.
4. Build your email list from the beginning
I am not sure why, but most new affiliates procrastinate on the task of building their email list. It is as if they think they to be big enough or have a certain amount of visitors to start collecting emails.
However, the truth is, visitor #3 on your blog doesn’t know he is visitor #3 so you want to have a subscription form in place from the start.
I have tried several autoresponders and none compare to Active Campaign. Get a 14-day trial here to increase your traffic and income.
2. Affiliate Marketing Review Sites
Review sites are probably the most common type of Affiliate website. There was a huge spike of them with the creation of the Amazon Affiliate Program and until recently, it was still one of the main monetization methods they would use.
As the name says, these websites are dedicated entirely to create in depth reviews of products in an specific niche. Their content is top notch and it is intended to provide unmatched value to its visitors in order to build trust and authority.
Pro’s Of Review Sites
- By creating high-quality content that your readers can trust, they allow you to build a long term brand that’s recognized by the niche’s audience.
- Visitors become long-time readers since you will be constantly putting out content about new launches and products in the category.
- It can be expanded to cover new categories and products so there is no limit to how much you can make with them.
- Content can be trendy so it can draw traffic from social media and forums.
Con’s Of Review Sites
- They need constant updating of new products to stay relevant, more in some niches than others. For example a review site about smartphones will need a lot more updating than one about strollers since they tend to stay in force for longers.
- To be able to create high-quality content and reviews you need a lot of knowledge and experience in the market.
- They are very competitive so it can be hard to establish yourself and rank against sites that are older or have already some authority.
Example of Affiliate Marketing Review Sites
The Wire Cutter
The Wire Cutter is one of the biggest review affiliate websites for electronics, gadgets and consumer goods.
It was started by Brian Lam, the former editorial director of Gizmodo, in 2011 and in its first five years, the company generated $150 million in revenue from affiliate commissions.
The site is known for reviewing products through strenuous and innovative tests and focusing on incessantly on finding the best product in each category.
In 2016 the site was bought by The New York Time for about $30 million.
How to create your own Affiliate Review Website?
1. Pick your niche
You can use Google Trends to make sure your niche is evergreen and is not in decline.
2. Get your host and domain
Choose a reputable hosting like Bluehost. It is the one I use and setting up WordPress is way easier than with other hosts. They’ll also include your domain for free so you won’t have to get it somewhere else and then go through the process of integrating it.
3. Get your theme
Choose one created specially for review sites like this one.
4. Create your content
If you are an expert in the niche, then you can create the content yourself. On the other side, if you are not so familiar with it, you should consider hiring writers that are in places like Upwork or Freelancer.
5. Get some traffic in
Besides waiting for organic traffic you can get some traction by creating social media account in Facebook and Pinterest and start sharing your articles. You never know when one of them can go viral.
Make sure to build your email list from the beginning so you can let people know when you have a new or updated review.
A 14-day trial of Active Campaign is available here to increase your traffic and income.
3. Affiliate Price Comparison Website
Price Comparison Sites are very common in the travel niche for products like hotels, flights, and insurance.
As the name says, these are the type of sites visitors use when there are different companies selling the exact same (or a very similar) product or service and they are looking for the one with the best offer. Think of websites like Trivago, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, etc.
The price comparison site will feature all the options and redirect to the seller webpage when the visitor clicks on the button (containing the affiliate link).
But creating a successful price comparison site is not only about showing the price. You need to offer real value and information like detailed comparisons, special deals, and additional content not found in the retailer’s site.
Despite the fact that these sites can be VERY profitable, there isn’t that much competition or outstanding examples outside these markets. It might be because they are a bit harder to create on the technological site.
Pro’s of Price Comparison Affiliate Sites:
- You need to invest less time creating content like articles and reviews so it is a good idea if you don’t like writing.
- Litte competition outside some markets (insurance, credit, travel, technology, etc).
Con’s of Price Comparison Affiliate Sites:
- Since they have less content by nature, they are harder to rank in search engines. It can be countered by getting traffic from blogs, forums, and social media.
- Very hard to get into the already established markets like flight, hotels, credit cards, insurance.
- You will need to differentiate yourself by offering value and additional content in order to create a reputable and memorable brand.
Examples of Affiliate Marketing Price Comparison Sites
1. Skyscanner
If you have ever looked for a flight ticket, you have probably used Skyscanner. The site was founded in 2001 by 3 university graduates with the main focus of helping users saver money on their trips.
They continued to do that for years while making a LOT of money until 2016 when they were acquired by Ctrip, the largest travel company in China, for $1.9 Billion.
Thanks to their blog content with hundreds of detailed travel guides, they get most of their traffic from Google. This goes to show that having great content is key to rank any type of website if you are aiming for organic traffic.
2. Nerdwallet
Nerdwallet is a hybrid of review site, blog, and price comparison site but for this example we will focus on its price comparison part.
Despite being in the financial products nice, one of the most competitive, they do an amazing job and have managed to get top ranking for most of its keywords.
They offer comparisons for everything from credit cards to mortgages to insurances.
They also do have a great interface with visually appealing and user-friendly comparisons of every feature relevant to the consumer.
How to create your own Affiliate Price Comparison Site?
1. Pick your niche
You don’t need to compete in the big markets to be successful. While that would required some expensive coding to create a personalized theme, you target an untapped niche and get started with the basics.
2. Get your host and domain
Choose a reputable hosting like Bluehost. It is the one I use and setting up WordPress is way easier than with other hosts. They’ll also include your domain for free so you won’t have to get it somewhere else and then go through the process of integrating it.
3. Set up your theme
You will need a specific theme like this one for a price comparison site. You will also need this comparison plugin for your site to run.
If you are confused just by reading this you can always hire one of these Fiverr gigs to have someone do it for you.
Or if you wish to see a detailed step by step make sure to check out this video
4. Offer Value
Focus on giving extra information and tips your audience would find useful and not in selling the option with the highest payout. .
5. Get some traffic rolling
Get people to sign up to your list by offering to notify them about the best new deals every week.
You can get a 14-day trial of my favorite email software here. At the same time, reach out to the top blogs, forums and social media groups in your niche to start networking with them and get some early traffic.
4. Novelty Product Sites for Affiliate Marketing
As the name suggests, this type of sites work by featuring a collection of unusual, attention-catching, weird and usually usuelless products that most people will never want to buy.
The focus of these sites is not to find the a-bit-weird but somewhat-buyable products. Their purpose and the way they get famous is by finding the weirdest, I-should-share-this-on-social-media ones.
Of course, they make a lot of money because people end up buying some of these products but in order to build their reputation and have people coming back they focus on having the more random and weirder products first.
Due to the nature of the products people are inclined to share them giving the sites a natural viral effect. People don’t visit wanting to buy the latest “weird” invention, they do because they want to be entertained and find something cool to share with their friends.
Pro’s of Affiliate Novelty Product Sites
- They have a viral nature that promotes visitors to share the product, allowing for most of the traffic to happen on autopilot.
- It requires less content creation. If you don’t like writing, this model is ideal since all you need to write is a couple sentences for each product description.
- A limitless supply of ideas. Thanks to random inventors of the world, you will never run out of weird products to publish.
- You won’t need to “sell” your links since people will get naturally curious and buy the products just by their novelty factor.
Con’s of Affiliate Novelty Product Sites
- There are some big and already established sites in the general ‘weird-products-niche’. However, there are still lots of sub-niches with no competition you could explore.
- It can be difficult to get traffic at the beginning so building your social media audience is essential.
- The buying intent is low so you required more traffic to get sales.
- You need to differentiate yourself from other sites by niching down or finding unique products.
Examples of Affiliate Novelty Sites
1. ThisiswhyIambroke
This Is Why I’m Broke (TIWIB) is the biggest player in this type of affiliate site. It was created in 2011 by Adam Freedman who had previously struggled to make money online with many failed ventures (Source).
By 2019 the site was making $40k/month from affiliate commission alone. I am sure Adam is very glad he didn’t gave up when he didn’t succeed in his first attempt.
It was NOT the first one in the category but it was the first one to focus on making its user experience more engaging wit features like infinite scrolling and added humor in the descriptions.
They select products carefully to make sure they are truly weird ones and add an extra touch of randomness with the distribution of what products are shown next to each other.
2. Shutupandtakemymoney
This site is similar to the previous one but has managed to gain a lot of traffic and popularity thanks to its catchy name inspired by this viral meme.
Other similar websites in the general weird- product are marketdudeiwantthat.com and www.walletburn.com, or Mommyiwantthis.com and BornCute.com in smaller niches.
How to create your own Affiliate Novelty Product Site?
1. Pick your niche
While it is not impossible to gain a piece of the pie as a general site, you’d have to do something really original to stand out among the established players.
If you can find a unique new angle then definitely go for it. Otherwise find a sub-niche among the thousands still untapped ones.
2. Get your host and domain
Choose a reputable hosting like Bluehost. It is the one I use and setting up WordPress is way easier than with other hosts. They’ll also include your domain for free so you won’t have to get it somewhere else and then go through the process of integrating it.
Pick an unforgettable domain like the examples mentioned to make sure it is memorable and “brandable”
3. Get some traffic rolling
Build up your social media profiles and traffic through Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. The first two work great since they are visual platforms.
Get people to sign up to your list from day one. This is essential for a site like this to continually drive traffic back to the site, show people new products, and keep them coming back.
You can get a 14-day trial of my favorite email software here. At the same time, reach out to the top blogs, forums and social media groups in your niche to start networking with them and get hopefully get featured.
5. Affiliate Marketing Discount Sites
As the name implies, Affiliate Discount or also called Coupon sites, offer discount codes you can use when buying products and services online.
They make their money by showing you the discount code and getting you to click on their affiliate link to go to the retailer and use it.
While in the last years, coupon sites have proliferated there’s very few worth mentioning outside of the big markets and retailers. RetailMeNot.com is the biggest player in the industry with a net worth of $1.8BN (Source).
Whilst the big players have a monopoly on the markets of technology, fashion, travel and beauty, there are still lots of untapped niches you could take over.
Pro’s Of Discount Affiliate Sites
- You don’t need to create a lot of content on content so it is a good idea if you don’t like writing blog posts or copy.
- As long as you are getting the user the discounts, you are giving them content that is going to make them satisfied and happy to come back.
- Works for almost any niche.
- Outside of the main industries (fashion, travel, technology, etc) there are a lot of opportunities for niche coupon sites.
- A lot of sites that are currently ranking high for google searches are infested with junk links. This means that if you can get links from popular websites you have a high chance of taking the rankings.
Con’s Of Discount Affiliate Sites
- The big markets are saturated but there are very few niche coupon sites around.
- They rely on traffic from search engines mainly since people tend to only seek out coupon codes just before purchasing.
- You would need to develop additional features to diversify the traffic and don’t rely only on Google.
Examples Of Discount Affiliate Sites
1. RetailMeNot
RetailMeNot is the biggest player in the category making $210 million a year. Not bad huh?They have grown to feature discounts in the markets of fashion, food, travel, electronics, beauty and home.
They also have an app now which would be something to consider for a second phase if you are planning on starting your Discount Affiliate Site.
2. TravelCoupons
A site that niched-down into the travel market is TravelCoupons.com, offering same-day hotel deals. They also have an app with location recognition that shows the deals near to you so it seems like the app trend is a constant among the coupon sites and something worth considering.
How to create your own Affiliate Discount Site?
1. Pick your niche
There is a lot of markets to target without having to compete with the already established players.
Go for a niche with high demand and high prices so people are always on the hunt for a promo code. It could be anything from flights, web hosting, sports, hobbies, hotels, etc.
2. Get your host and domain
Choose a reputable hosting like Bluehost. It is the one I use and setting up WordPress is way easier than with other hosts. They’ll also include your domain for free so you won’t have to get it somewhere else and then go through the process of integrating it.
A catchy domain that relates to your niche will also make it easier for visitors to remember it and come back.
3. Get your deals
Make a list of the best coupons deals to start featuring on your site. Even if you don’t get a commission yet, this will start bringing customers and help you create a relationship with the retailers.
You can use Smash Deals and For Me to Coupon to find out the latest deals.
You don’t need to add much content besides the coupons themselves but adding a few blog posts could help bring people organically to the site.
4. Get some traffic rolling
Since ranking on Google takes some time, you’re going to have to come up with alternative strategies for early traffic. You could try targeting niche fan pages through Facebook ads and sharing codes in Facebook groups and forums where your potential user hangs out.
Get people to sign up to your list from day one by offering to send them daily deals. You can get a 14-day trial of my favorite email software here.
At the same time, reach out to the top blogs, forums and social media groups in your niche and share your deals with the potential of getting featured.
Conclusion
There are 5 main types of affiliate marketing sites. There might be new models appearing out there but these have shown to be the most successful over time.
By following their recipe and improving on their weak factors, you could create your own millionaire successful site.
The one thing all successful affiliate sites have in common, no matter the model, is that they provide some sort value customers wouldn’t get by going to the store directly.
Either by helping the customer make a decision, giving them information, entertaining them or saving them money with a discount, caring for your user goes a long way in affiliate marketing.
What do you think of these models? Is there one you are going to try or maybe already have? Let us know in the comments!
