We’re coming into a generation where more and more people are working towards creating streams of regular and consistent passive income. That’s always been the most ideal career trajectory, and it’s getting more popular now.
With it comes the enabling capability of technology and the Internet, so today we have affiliate websites. Comparing it to other means of earning passive income like real estate, affiliate websites are significantly more doable for almost anyone who’s willing to do some initial work.
In this post, we’ll tackle creating affiliate websites on WordPress. It can be intimidating, but WordPress absolutely makes everything possible.
What are Affiliate Websites and How Do They Work?
Affiliate websites are a new means for any person to earn passive income. Much like blogs, online magazines, and other online media websites, affiliate websites contain information about a specific niche with the ultimate purpose of driving their visitors to a specific linked product and getting commission when those visitors purchase that product.
When several people end up buying a product from the website’s link, the amount of the commission compound and can earn a lot of money. To better understand how affiliate websites work, we have to really dig deep into what affiliate marketing is.
Affiliate Marketing
There are two major ways to make money through your website. One is to place ads and charge companies for giving them space and exposure to your website audience. The other is to create your own product and sell that.
Many websites have seen success from either one of the two, but affiliate marketing marries the best aspects. Affiliate marketing is the process of advertising a product that’s not your own in your website by way of affiliate links, and earning from the commission you get when a user buys that product from the link you had.
The catch with this is it doesn’t take as much work as creating a new product, and the customer doesn’t have to pay extra for your commission. The price stays the same for them, while the original seller pays you the agreed percentage. You simply need to incorporate affiliate links to your website and you can start earning.
Types of Affiliate Websites
There are different types of affiliate websites that you can start. Deciding which to start will affect what kind of content that you will create. These are the most common 3 types of affiliate websites and the type of content that you need to flesh out for each:
Daily Deals
Daily deals affiliate websites are an information resource for the latest promos, coupons, sales and discounts from a plethora of online stores. It’s hard to resist a sale so it makes for the best “product” to promote.
You already know that there will be a market of people constantly looking for deals that will save them money. While they do, you also earn at the same time.
These are the kinds of content that you can create for this type of affiliate website:
- Sale roundups
- Trend predictions
- List of coupons for big sales of the year
Price Comparison
Price comparisons are another big subject in affiliate websites. When you want to buy something high value, what you usually do is scour the stores for what the average price is. Price comparison websites allow people to do that without going into physical stores. Everything is online.
These are the kinds of content that you can create for this type of affiliate website:
- User guides
- Statistics or data with product information
- Price alerts
Product Reviews
People nowadays sometimes trust strangers on the Internet more than marketers and salespeople in stores. They see more value in opinions and insights from actual people’s experience than praises and promotions by someone who needs to sell their product.
That’s why product reviews are a big business out of every other type of affiliate website. You can elaborate with the content here so much without being too pushy for people to buy from the
These are the kinds of content that you can create for this type of affiliate website:
- Customer reviews
- Best-of articles
- Product vs. Product
Pros and Cons of Affiliate Websites on WordPress
We already know that affiliate websites are quite beneficial if only for some passive income. It’s what young people do nowadays on the side to earn a little more.
In this section, I’ll list down the advantages and disadvantages of both creating affiliate websites and the overall experience using WordPress.
Pros
On WordPress:
Cons
On WordPress:
6 Steps to Create an Affiliate Website on WordPress
Creating a website in itself is not an easy feat. I don’t want you to think that since I only put 6 steps to creating an affiliate website here, it’s much easier and faster. Affiliate websites still take work, mostly on the aspect of content creation.
These steps are condensed, but nonetheless, each of them encompass a wider scope of work that needs to be done. If you must know the basics and the most essential parts of creating your affiliate website, start with these:
Decide on a niche product or subject
Having a niche will predetermine everything that a visitor should find in your website, and subsequently the content that you’ll be creating. It should be broad enough that you can create topics and article headlines related to it, but still specific enough that your visitors would know exactly what they’d come to your website for.
Here are some of the best niches as of recently—ones that already have a market, are searched for constantly, and that can earn you a decent amount:
- Health and fitness
- Expensive hobbies and interests (bikes, luxury jewelry and watches, gaming, outdoor activity gear, sports, travel)
- Pets
- Beauty
Pick your affiliate programs
Affiliate programs are the main driver of affiliate websites. Without these programs, the owners of the website can’t earn commission from buyer’s purchases. You have to pick one that suits your preferences well. It needs to carry products related to your niche, so you can feature as much as you want.
Amazon Affiliate program
One such affiliate program that’s very popular right now is the Amazon affiliate program. To be honest, I’m quite surprised this is still booming these days. I thought it would be a fleeting trend, but I guess the Amazon affiliate program won’t be unavailable anytime soon.
Amazon Affiliate program is very popular and probably one of the reasons why affiliate websites haven’t died down by now.
Build your site
Building your website on WordPress alone can be quite confusing. As I said in one of the disadvantages of WordPress, you can’t fully experience the customization features of WordPress without a skilled web designer.
Thrive Architect
This is where Thrive Architect comes in. Thrive Architect is a website builder that offers the most ease and convenience I’ve experienced. It’s built specifically for building conversion-focused websites. You don’t have to code much because almost everything is pretty visual.
Set up affiliate links
Affiliate links are what drives in income for your website, so it’s probably the most important feature you can’t miss. Setting up affiliate links are quite tricky because you don’t want them to be just text. That would be pretty bland and it’s not exactly enticing to click through. There are some plugins that allow easy linking with visually creative buttons and product previews directly from the original seller’s site.
Amazon EasyAzon plugin for WordPress
If you’re a partner at the Amazon affiliate program, EasyAzon is one of the easiest plugins to use. It showcases products with the features, name, and real-time price in Amazon’s yellow and orange box background. This should be more attractive to readers who are looking for specific products.
Create plenty of relevant content
When I say relevant content, that means everything from informational articles (purely for capturing an audience that’s not yet willing to buy) to product features with affiliate links. The bulk of the work falls on this step because you never really know what will make people tick, so you have to be consistently fleshing out valuable content regardless of the response or the lack thereof.
Establish your authority on the subject
This goes along with the last one. Continuously publishing new content makes your archive rich and look full of resources people can refer to for any topic related to your niche. When people can go from one article to another and find valuable content on each one, they would immediately assign you as someone knowledgeable enough about the topic. Eventually they’ll also take your recommendations for products.
Additional Tips for Making Content on Affiliate Websites
Creating an affiliate website comes with its own set of difficulties. Here are some additional tips that could help you when deciding what to post on your website.
Take as much effort into informational articles as you would with posts with affiliate links.
With affiliate websites, it might be tempting to put out post after post just promoting products and directing people to affiliate links. If you do that too often, it might seem not genuine because you’re merely using people to earn more money.
The best way to make sure you’re still offering value is to make an effort into informational articles that aren’t intended to sell. If you can spread out posts with and without affiliate links, that would be better.
Ultimately what I’m saying is, give your readers free content that will establish your image as an authority figure or a legitimate reference for your niche.
Make your reviews personal, detailed, and specific.
This one is specifically for types of affiliate websites that focus on price comparisons or product reviews. A common mistake that some affiliate website owners do is put the same features and details about a product as found on the original seller’s website.
Generic information like that will likely drive people away. They’re probably looking for reviews to get personal insights, others’ firsthand experiences, opinions and whatnot. It helps to ask yourself, what value am I adding to this product review that is not already found in other websites?
Conclusion
To conclude, I first want to say my two cents on affiliate websites. I don’t think they’re very feasible as a long-term plan. Like social media websites, the future of affiliate websites rely too co-dependently on affiliate programs to be able to resolve issues on your own when those programs shut down.
However, they’d been having a moment since the early 2010’s and I must admit, even I’m falling into it a bit at the moment. I would also reiterate that affiliate websites are not a one-time, big-time kind of work. You need to constantly improve it, work on it, and put out relevant content for it to bear profitable results.
If you’re interested in creating an affiliate website and having it as a means for your passive income, refer to this post to be reminded of the best and not-so-best things about it before committing head-on.