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How to Make an Affiliate Marketing Website (That Makes Money)

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Affiliate marketing is a popular way to make money without having to create a product of your own. You can promote physical as well as digital products and there’s plenty of them to choose from.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you step by step how to create an affiliate WordPress website using a free theme and a free plugin. I’ll also share the video tutorial below that walks you through the entire process and also talks about coming up with content ideas and promoting your affiliate website. Let’s begin!

Getting Started With Your Affiliate WordPress Website

To get started with your affiliate website, you’ll need to purchase a domain name and a hosting plan. In this part of the tutorial, we’ll go through the following steps:

  • Getting a domain name and hosting
  • Installing WordPress
  • Installing the theme and the page builder plugin

Let’s go through these steps one by one.

Step 1: Get Domain and Hosting

Before making your affiliate website, you need to get a domain name and a hosting plan. There is no shortage of hosting companies for WordPress but Siteground is my favorite. I tested Siteground as well as 15 other hosting companies and Siteground came out on top as the fastest host with the best uptime. Another benefit of using Siteground is that you can purchase a domain name at the same time as your hosting plan. 

Go over to Siteground’s website and you’ll see that they offer three different hosting plans. I recommend choosing the Grow Big plan as this one allows you to host an unlimited number of websites and offers more disk space and bandwidth than the cheaper plan. This is a great option as this will allow you to create other affiliate marketing websites in different niches in the future.

Once you’ve selected your plan, you need to come up with a domain name. This can be something related to the products you’ll be promoting or a more general domain name such as your own name. Once you have chosen a domain name, you’ll need to enter your payment information on the next page. 

After submitting the payment, Siteground will create your account and you’ll be taken to your customer area. 

Step 2: Install WordPress

Once you’re in the customer area, the next step is to install WordPress. Click on the orange button that says Start Your Website and then select Start New Website > WordPress

You’ll need to enter a desired username and a password that you’ll use to log in to your WordPress website. Be sure to write it down as you will need them later on. Click the Continue button and Siteground will then finish installing WordPress on your site. 

You’ll then see the option to manage your site so go ahead and click that button. The page that loads will show you all the WordPress installations you have in your Siteground account. Click the login icon next to the site name and you’ll be taken directly to your WordPress dashboard.

Now that you’re in your WordPress dashboard, there are a few things you need to do before installing the theme and the plugin. Start by disabling the plugin installed by Siteground as you don’t need it. You can find it by going to Plugins > Installed plugins. You want to deactivate and delete the WordPress Starter plugin.

Next, go to Settings > Permalinks and select the Post Name option. This particular permalink structure is more SEO-friendly as well as more user-friendly. Save your changes. 

With that out of the way, we can move on to the next step which is installing our theme, the page builder plugin and a few other helpful plugins for affiliate marketing websites.

Step 3: Installing The Theme And The Page Builder Plugin

To install a theme, go to Appearance > Themes. Search for Astra and then install and activate the theme. 

Next, we’re going to install some essential plugins for the site. Go to Plugins > Add New, search for Elementor and then install and activate the plugin. This is a page builder plugin that allows you to add various blocks and elements to your site without knowing any code. 

You’ll also need to install Essential Addons for Elementor plugin, install it and activate it. This plugin will add extra features to the Elementor page builder plugin such as countdown timers, buttons, pricing tables, and more. The plugin offers 39+ free addons for Elementors. You can also purchase the premium version that offers an additional 29 addons for Elementor.

Once those two plugins have been installed, go back to Plugins and install Envato Elements, Pretty Links, Yoast SEO and Really Simple SSL plugins.  Be sure to activate all those plugins after installing them by going to Plugins > Installed plugins

Envato Elements plugin is a free plugin that offers hundreds of premade page layouts for your website. You can find both free and premium page layouts and each of the layout packs comes with all the necessary pages for a complete website.

The Pretty Links plugin will make it easy to create affiliate links that are easy to remember and look better than the standard affiliate links. It’s a free plugin that you can download from the official repository. 

Yoast SEO plugin will help you optimize your posts and pages to rank better in search engines. It also makes it easy to verify your site with Google Search Console. The plugin is free. 

Finally, the Really Simple SSL plugin will fix the warning about your site being insecure that sometimes happens after installing an SSL certificate. Like the other plugins we installed, this one is free to download from the official repository.

Step 4: Creating Pages For Your Website

Now that everything is in place, it’s time to create the pages for your site. Go to Pages > Add new. Name the page Home and then publish it. 

Then, repeat the process to create your Blog and your Contact page. Once you’ve created the pages, go to Appearance > Menu. Create a menu and name it whatever you’d like. Then, drag all the pages you’ve just created to the new menu, assign this menu as the primary menu, and click Save changes.

Finally, go to Customize > Homepage settings, and select Static page. Then, assign your homepage as the homepage and assign your blog page as your posts page. Save your changes. 

Step 5: Customize Your Site

The last step is to customize your site. This is where the plugin we installed earlier, Envato Elements, comes in handy. It offers hundreds of premade free and premium layouts that you can use to quickly design and setup your site. 

To use it, all you have to do is go to the Envato Elements section in your WordPress dashboard and browse the layouts. Once you find a layout you like, click on it. You’ll be able to see all the pages that come with it and import them into your library by clicking the Import button. 

To apply a template to a particular page, hover over the page title and click on Edit with Elementor. Then, click the folder icon and navigate to Templates. You can then insert the imported template onto the page. 

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Video Tutorial: How To Create An Affiliate Marketing Website For Beginners

As promised, here’s a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to create an affiliate marketing website for beginners. It also includes instructions on signing up for an affiliate program, coming up with content ideas to promote the products, and creating and optimizing your blog posts. 

Final Thoughts

WordPress makes it easy to build an affiliate marketing website and in this tutorial, you’ve learned how to build your own affiliate marketing website with WordPress, Astra theme, and the Elementor page builder plugin. Now all that’s left to do is find some affiliate programs, join them, and start earning commissions. Happy marketing!

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About the author
DW Staff
DW Staff
DarrelWilson's team of content writers regularly helps write high quality content. Its a party over here.
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