How to Create an Affiliate Website in 2023 (The Beginners Guide)

If you want to learn how to create an affiliate website…

This post has you covered.

Because today, I’m going to show you exactly how to create your own affiliate site fast!

Furthermore:

You’ll also learn simple ways to promote affiliate products on your site.

Let’s begin…

How To Create An Affiliate Website

Thanks to technology, it’s actually really easy to create your own website.

In fact:

It’s so easy, you don’t need any “tech skills.”

To create an affiliate site, there’s only 3x steps involved:

• Get a domain name & setup web hosting
• Install a website builder
• Customize your affiliate website

Let’s go over each of these steps in more detail…

Step 1: Get A Domain Name & Setup Web Hosting

What is a domain name, and what is web hosting?

A “domain name” is the address of your website.

For example:

My domain name is: www.AffiliateHelpCenter.com and Google’s domain name is www.Google.com

Pro Tip: Your domain name can be anything you want. However, you may find names you come up with are taken by someone else. If that’s the case, you can use hyphens in the name to create variations i.e Affiliate-Help-Center.com

And “web hosting” is a service that makes your domain name accessible on the internet.

You can get web hosting and a domain name through BlueHost.

This is the company I use personally, as do most people for their affiliate sites.

To get started with your site, head over to BlueHost and click the Host Your Site button:

Select a web hosting plan:

It’s up to you which plan you choose, but personally, I’d recommend the Choice Plus plan. (Either plan will work fine though.)

Because this comes with “domain privacy,” which protects your personal information from being published anywhere online.

Just click the blue Select button on your choice of plan:

Choose your free domain name:

If you haven’t come up with a domain name yet, that’s ok.

You can skip this step, and set up your domain at a later time:

Create a BlueHost account:

Simply fill in the “account information” section such as your name, and address etc.

Be sure to use a valid email address, because information about your account will be sent to that address.

Or if it’s easier, you can sign up via Google:

Confirm your package information:

BlueHost doesn’t have a monthly payment option.

Instead, they only offer you to pay 12, 24, or 36 months up front.

By doing so, it saves you money, but it’s a great deal either way:

Choosing package extras:

I’d recommend unchecking them all, except for the Single Domain SSL option.

An SSL will make your site secure and show a padlock next to your domain name in your address bar.

If you don’t have one, people who visit your site will see your site is not secure, which isn’t good:

Enter in your payment information:

Now, enter your billing information to purchase your web hosting package.

Be sure to check the box to confirm you agree to BlueHost’s terms, then click the green Submit button:

Order confirmation:

After you’ve purchased your hosting plan, BlueHost will confirm your order, and send you an email confirmation.

The next step is to create a password for your BlueHost account by clicking the green Create Your Password button

Log into your BlueHost account:

Here you’ll be able to log into your BlueHost account, by clicking the blue Log In button:

Step 2: Install A Website Builder

After you log into your BlueHost account, BlueHost will ask if you want “WordPress” installed.

You’ll say yes.

WordPress is what you’ll use to customize your site, and create/edit content.

Pro Tip: WordPress is a “Content Management System” that’s free to use. It powers most of the blogs and affiliate sites you see today. It’s powerful, easy to use, and the perfect choice for ANY affiliate site.

To begin installing WordPress, pick a “theme” for your website:

A theme is the “styling” of your website.

You can change themes anytime after WordPress has been installed.

When you’ve chosen a theme, click the blue Start Building button:

This will install WordPress.

When the installation is complete, you’ll get confirmation of the install.

Click the Login To WordPress tab:

This will take you to the WordPress dashboard, where you’ll go “behind the scenes” of your affiliate website:

You’ll see a Welcome To WordPress message, along with steps to getting the basics set up.

I’d recommend you go through these steps:

You can safely click the blue I Don’t Need Help tab if you’d like to do that later.

Step 3: Customize Your Affiliate Website

By default, when you preview your website, it’s going to look something like this:

One of the first things you’ll want to do is, delete the default blog post that’s there for all new WordPress websites.

And you’ll also want to delete the “meta widget:”

To delete the default blog post, go to Posts => All Posts:

This will show you all blog posts that have been created for your website, including the default WordPress post.

To remove this post, hover over the post and click the Trash tab:

Next, you’ll want to delete the default meta widget.

For this, go to Appearance => Widgets:

You’ll then see the meta widget, and have the option to delete it:

Depending on your theme, you may also have other widgets active by default.

Such as archives, categories, or recent comments:

It’s your choice whether you want these to appear on your website.

If you don’t, these can be removed from the widgets area in WordPress.

Next, you’ll want to change your “permalinks.”

By default, the URLs of the pages or posts you create will look like this: https://yourwebsite.com/2019/04/21/dog-training/

It will show the date within the URL, which you don’t want as it doesn’t look very professional.

Instead:

You want your URLs to look clean, without showing the date.

Like this: https://yourwebsite.com/dog-training/

To change the appearance of your URLs, go to Settings => Permalinks:

Choose the Post Name setting, then click the blue Save Changes button:

If you’d like to change your theme, you can do this anytime by going to Appearance => Themes:

Click the Add New Theme tab to browse thousands of different themes:

If you’d like to change (or edit) the title and tag line of your website, you can do this by going to Settings => General:

You’ll have the option to make changes to your websites name (title) and tagline:

If you want to create a blog post, go to Posts => Add New:

This will open the post editor.

Give your post a title and type in your content:

If you want to change your fonts, colors, or lay out of your website, go to Appearance => Customize:

This will display your websites main customization options/settings:

You’ll have different options, depending on your website’s theme.

You will have to familiarise yourself with WordPress, so you can customize your website to your liking.

It’s easy to use, and just so awesome for an affiliate website(s).

The more you play around in WordPress, the more comfortable you’ll become with WordPress.

How To Promote Affiliate Products On Your Website

There are many different ways you can promote affiliate products on your website.

Here are 4 ways that work really well:

Promotion Method #1: Product Reviews

This is one of the most popular ways to promote affiliate products, because it’s just so easy.

All you’re doing is reviewing different products,

You can do a review of just 1x product.

Or you can do product comparisons, and review multiple products side by side.

Either way works well.

A great example of this type of affiliate promotion can be seen at BestReviews:

They review all kinds of products.

From pool cleaners, tents, shoes, instruments, and more.

What they do is, they review similar products from different companies against each other.

And the products they review are all affiliate products from Amazon:

One of the main reasons BestReviews does so well, is because their reviews are so in-depth.

For example:

They add things such as FAQ’s into their reviews:

And even tips and tricks:

If doing product reviews is the route for you, you don’t have to do everything BestReviews is doing.

They’re simply a great example of how you could go about doing your own reviews.

Just note, the more in-depth your review is, the more chances you have of making sales.

Promotion Method #2: How To Posts

Personally, this is one of my favorite ways to promote products.

These are posts where you teach people “how to do” or “achieve” something.

For example:

I have this post that teaches people how to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest:

The post lists different strategies people can use to promote their affiliate products on Pinterest.

And at the same time, I’m promoting TailWind, an affiliate product:

With these types of posts, what makes them really “pop” is being as detailed as possible within the post.

And, to ensure the product being promoted is relevant to the content.

Promotion Method #3: List Posts

Lists posts are powerful, and also really easy to create.

It’s simply a post where you feature a numbered list of “something.”

For example:

In this post, I list the 5 Best Affiliate Programs for Beginners:

Within the post, some of the affiliate programs being recommended are affiliate links.

I don’t list just the affiliate programs though.

I also mention pro’s and con’s to each affiliate program:

This gives the post “more meat,” and more info to the reader, so they get as much info as possible about each affiliate program.

You can create list posts for virtually anything.

They’re powerful, yet really simple to create.

Promotion Method #4: Resources/Tools Page

Many website owners do this, because it’s easy, and it works.

It’s simply a page (or a post) where you list out different resources/tools you think your audience will benefit from.

And of course, some of the resources you list should be for affiliate products.

You’ll normally see these types of pages in the header or footer of a website.

For example:

I have this tools post, which lists some of the best tools/resources for affiliate marketing:

I use this post as a “stand alone” post (like a stand alone resources page) where I’ve added a link to that post in the menu of my blog.

As shown here:

By showing it in the menu, it gives visitors the option to view the different tools when they’re browsing my blog.

You can also do this for your own niche and affiliate products.

It works great, and can be set up in no time at all.

Conclusion

Creating an affiliate website is quick, easy, and fun.

Everything you need to get up and running can be done with BlueHost.

Even more:

There are simple tools you can use to CRUSH it with your affiliate website.

Now over to you…

Are you ready to create an affiliate site of your own?

How will you promote affiliate products?

Let me know in the comments below…