Starting An Affiliate Marketing Blog
If you are interested in making money from home, affiliate marketing from a blog can be a great choice. As long as you are willing to put forth the time and effort, successful affiliate marketing doesn't require any special skills or training. Here the basic steps involved in planning creating an affiliate marketing blog.
First, you have to select a topic for your blog. There are affiliate marketing products matching up to almost every imaginable topic, so don't feel you have to limit your blog to a topic that "everyone knows" to be lucrative. Instead, pick something you're passionate about, and you'll be better able to stick with it. You will also have better luck if you pick a small niche topic: don't start a website about cooking, start a website about heritage Russian recipes. Try doing a search for related terms, and you'll quickly see how much easier it is to rank in a search engine for a niche topic.
Once you've picked a topic, it's time to plan, plan, plan. This means step away from the computer and find a pen and paper. Remember those? Planning your site away from the computer will help you to generate your own set of creative ideas, instead of searching out article topics that already exist on other websites. Write down your main site topic, then list out all the potentially related affiliate products you can think of. For example, if you're creating a Dr. Seuss children's book fan site, you could include obvious companies such as Amazon.com and Toys R Us on your list, but don't forget about things like Book-A-Month clubs, children's magazines, and Seuss apparel. You should also create a list of potential article ideas related to your site topic. Try to be as creative and wide-reaching as possible with your article topics. By the time you finish, you should have close to 100 ideas for articles to write and products to promote.
Now it's time to put your planning into practice: building a blog. In order to do this, you will need to invest at least a little bit of money on a domain name and hosting. Most free blog sites heavily restrict the amount and kinds of advertising you can put into your blog, so it is better to simply avoid them altogether. Pick a domain name that is as similar as possible to your topic, as this does matter. You should also start writing as many of your articles as possible. A blog generally only has a few featured articles at a time, but the more articles you have written, the easier it will be to ensure that you update your blog regularly. Use blog management tools to schedule the posting of these articles as far out into the future as possible. The SEO and link-building strategies necessary to draw a large audience to your blog are beyond the scope of this article, but one key point to remember is that you can't just "set and forget" your blog. Respond to comments, write articles as requested by your readers, and tweak future content appropriately.
Once you build this blog and have a reasonable following, it is time to start monetizing. This means that instead of writing exclusively content-based articles, you should start mixing in affiliate product recommendations. Don't throw up a couple of banners for an affiliate and call it done. Include recommendations for products within your most popular articles, or write articles that are simply about the products you're trying to sell. As long as you keep your mindset focused on providing good content and resources to your readers, the occasional product review shouldn't drive anyone away.
The basic steps above will help you in starting your affiliate marketing blog. There is much more to the world of website design, marketing, and blog monetization, of course, but this guide is a good place to start. Good luck!
