How To Start A Simple Affiliate Business
Step By Step Guide To Starting Your First Affiliate Marketing Website In An Afternoon.
Remember: affiliate marketing is a business and as with any business there are risks and rewards, setting up a website is not a guarantee that you will earn, you will need to get traffic and place your offers and even then you may get no results. But I think if you follow this guide and stick to it… you can see some light at the end of the tunnel. I have been doing this for over 20 years so you should not expect to get the same results as me. Some of the links in this guide are affiliate links and I will be compensated when you order from them… that’s how we afford to give away all this cool stuff 😊
To Watch The Video This Training Was Based On Click Here
So many people who try to start an affiliate business seem to be over complicating everything and make it more difficult than it needs to be.
We are going to eliminate the clutter, dispel the myths and point you in the right direction so you can start making money with your affiliate business.
We’ll talk about how it works and provide you with an example along the way. So, let’s get to it.
If you have not yet setup your first affiliate site, I have instructions for you at GoHubSite.com
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This training is being done with the assumption that you have already visited GoHubSite.com and started your first hub site. The reason you need to do this is so the site you are setting up and the steps that I am showing you are identical to what I am showing you.
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The instructions are very easy, it will literally take just a couple minutes, I walk you through getting a domain name, setting up hosting and installing WordPress on your new domain. The cost will be about $70-$90 for the entire year if you follow the instructions.…
Tip: The hosting fee of $70-$90 per year will allow you to run as many affiliate sites on your account as you want. All you have to do is buy domain names. ==> GoHubSite.com.
Affiliate Website / Blog Step One
I. Find a Direct Target Market
To start, you will need access to a keyword tool for some simple keyword research.
We use a tool called Ahrefs. You can sign up for a free 7 day trial so you can follow along with this training.
There are other less expensive options like Spyfu and Ubersuggest and some free services like Google Keyword Planner (this has to be associated with a Gmail account). All will give you a good basis for keyword selection.
Our affiliate site example will be based on a product called Kartra.
After you have logged into Ahrefs, search the word Kartra.
A list of keywords associated with Kartra will be displayed. Your list may look different then mine, but that’s ok.
When looking at the list of keywords, you will notice a KD in the first column to the right of the list of keywords.
KD stands for KEYWORD DIFFICULTY.
The higher the number the more difficult the keyword is to rank in the top 10 results of the search engines.
When you go through the list of keywords you want to make sure the difficulty is low when it comes to free, organic traffic.
Paid traffic difficulty is completely different as we would be looking at the Cost Per Click.
As an example, in the graphic below we searched pillow reviews. Some of the keywords are non competitive for free, organic search and we can see the Cost Per Click associated with them.
We want to be concerned with this Cost Per Click number only if you are going after paid traffic.
PRO Tip: Let your market determine what form of traffic you go after. If there is a lot of low competition, organic searches then that is the way to go. Low Cost Per Click with high volume searches, then that would determine your traffic source as pay per click.
For instance, if you search for the word “Refinance” we see it is a very competitive, organic term and the Cost Per Click is extremely high.
Understanding how to use a keyword tool will give you insight into different ways you can reach your market.
If someone tells you what the best traffic method is without looking at your market, then run, run as fast as you can in the other direction. We have to understand the market before deciding on a traffic method.
The same holds true with affiliate products. Asking what the best product is to promote is counter-intuitive, you have to start with a niche and a market.
Once you understand your niche market and do the keyword research and focus on what it is you really want to do then you can look for a product to promote.
This training is focusing on Kartra and we will show you how to get affiliate links from Kartra. Any affiliate product or program will provide you with affiliate links. The process we will show you will essentially be the same for your affiliate product.
Your affiliate link is the link you will send your visitors to thru banner ads, links in your content and other methods… this is the link that tracks your click so you get paid when the action happens.
Once you figure out your market, understand that it is solid and you can get traffic that is not that competitive or difficult to do then we can choose our traffic method.
II. Choosing a Traffic Method
At a glance, when looking at Kartra in our keyword tool, the KD numbers are green. This indicates low organic competition. Because of this we would focus on going after free, organic traffic.
We COULD take a serious look at paid traffic if the Cost Per Click is within a profitable range.
If you are hesitant to use paid traffic, then just stick with the free traffic. It will just take a little bit longer and require more work, like writing articles and blog posts.
It can be done.
With more competitive niches we can strip out the more competitive words and focus on those that give us a better opportunity to be profitable.
The value of your niche is going to be determined by your Market, Traffic Method and Offers.
If you get those three things right…..YOU WIN!
That is why our High Ticket Niche product is so popular, because we do those things for you.
III. Get a Domain and Build a Website
The next thing we will do is purchase a domain. We like to use NameCheap. But you can purchase your domain where ever you like.
As an example, we want to do pillow reviews as our niche. Simply do a search for pillow-related domains like pillowdudes.com and see if it is available. If not keep trying. Finding a .com is best. A .net will work fine also.
It makes more sense to have a closely related domain name to the niche and product you are promoting.
Getting back to our Kartra example.
I found kartraprofits.com to use for my Kartra review website.
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When going for certain traffic using a business or product name in the domain name, you want to make sure the trademark is not an issue.
If You Are Not Sure… Get A Generic Domain Like The Pillow One
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Next load your new domain on to your BlueHost account that you set up at the beginning of this training at GoHubSite.com.
Very, Very, Very Simple!
To load your new domain… click domains and choose add on domain… as long as the nameservers of the domain are set to ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com you are good to go… click save and your new domain will be pointed at your bluehost and ready for wordpress.
You can install wordpress just like you did on the hub site you set up in the beginning of this training.
Log In To Your New WordPress Account
Once you log into your new WordPress account you will come to your dashboard.
First thing we want to do is make your site live.
At the top of the dashboard you will see a line that reads: Your site is currently displaying a coming soon page……click here.
Clicking on the CLICK HERE link will take you from your hosting account dashboard that looks like this……
…to this. The home page of your new website…..congratulations!
Getting Your Site Ready For Prime Time
Now we take, what is an ugly site with no design and make it ready for prime time.
Step 1. Along the left menu in the black, click on SETTINGS > GENERAL
We want to make sure that we have our keyword in the SITE TITLE and a secondary keyword in the TAGLINE.
You will want to go to your keyword tool.
Again, I use Ahrefs which is a paid tool. You can your whatever tool you want such as Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest, which are free, to do this.
We are picking our keyword KARTRA REVIEW for our SITE TITLE
For our TAGLINE I will choose a combination of keywords from our list to broaden the search KARTRA PRICING PACKAGES & PLANS. You will have to discern what is the best site title and tagline for your site.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the SAVE CHANGES button.
Step 2. Go back to the black menu on the left and click on READING
From there we will move your cursor up to A STATIC PAGE.
Click on that to highlight it.
Directly below click on HOMEPAGE-SELECT.
A drop down will appear with SAMPLE PAGE.
Choose sample page. We will be modifying this page.
Click the SAVE CHANGES button.
If we had developed other pages a list of those pages would appear. Then you could decide which page you wanted for your homepage.
This is similar to what your page should look like……your SITE TITLE, TAGLINE and SAMPLE PAGE.
Step 3: We want to set how out domain name looks in the browser by using the PERMALINKS menu.
Navigate back to the black menu bar on the left and click PERMALINKS under the SETTINGS. You will want to click on the POST NAME. This will give your post name in the browser your keyword.
Example: http://kartrareviews.com/sample-post
As opposed to http://kartrareviews.com/?123
Click SAVE CHANGES button.
Creating a Custom Theme
The next step is to create a custom theme.
I am providing you with my Custom Simple Mobile Theme.
You can download it here. DOWNLOAD the file to your DESKTOP. All themes and files come as ZIP files. They have to be ZIP files in order for you to use them.
From this point on we are working in a Windows environment.
Step 1: Extract File
Right click on the ZIP file and EXTRACT ALL.
STEP 2: Rename File
A window will pop up with a URL thread. After the last slash give the file a name you like.
Theme Customization
The Simple Mobile theme is designed to look good on mobile. More and more people are searching for things on their phone, so websites need to be designed with mobile in mind.
Edit Logo Files
Open IMAGES FILE
The files we are going to work with are MY LOGO, MY LOGO – LARGE and PAGE
Right click on the MY LOGO image and open in your favorite image editor. I use SnagIt. Some people like to use Photoshop. You get to decide.
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The logo area is predefined. Do not change the size.
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Now you can develop a logo that works with your niche and product.
Find a piece of clip art. Since I am using Kartra as my product I went to ClipArt.com found a shopping cart that I liked, took a screen shot of added to the logo template I opened from the ZIP file.
Then add your domain name.
You can design this however you want.
Once you have the logo how you like it you will want to do a SAVE AS and save it right over the top of the original logo file.
After you Click on the SAVE AS, find the original logo file, click on that. A box will pop up asking if you want to replace the file. Click YES.
Repeat the process with MY LOGO LARGE.
When you return to the logo file you should now see the new images in the images file
Edit page image
Repeat the same process with the page image – this should be a larger image unless you want it to repeat… choose an image above 1920X1080
Go back to ClipArt.com or other suitable image website (be careful of copyrights) and pick a suitable background image. Rinse and repeat the logo replacement process.
Resave all files back into a ZIP File
Go back to your open ZIP file and do a CONTROL A to select all the files.
Right click on the files and SEND TO COMPRESSED ZIPPED FOLDER
Finally, rename the new ZIP file to your product name like KARTRA 1. Adding the 1 allows for easy recall to revisions you may make to the file. If you do edit you would resave with a
2, 3, 4…..
Adding your Simple Mobile Theme
Our next step is to add the Simple Mobile theme we just edited to your WordPress installation. It is very easy.
Go back to your WordPress dashboard and click on the APPEARANCE>THEMES link in the black menu bar.
In the next window click on UPLOAD at the top.
In the next window click on UPLOAD THEME.
Below, in the same window, an UPLOAD BOX will appear. Click the BROWSE button.
After you click the Browse link, your computer file page will pop up. Navigate to DESKTOP > YOUR SIMPLE MOBILE FILE > and the locate the ZIP file we just saved and click on that.
In the next window click ACTIVATE
Now you will see we have gone from the original WordPress theme we started with to our new Simple Mobile theme that is ready for mobile.
Modifying your Simple Mobile Theme
The first thing we want to do is to get rid of all the information on the right side of the theme…Recent Posts and everything below that.
These are managed by WIDGETS in the WordPress dashboard. Navigate back to the
black menu and Click
Ion WIDGETS.
We are going to focus on the PRIMARY WIDGET AREA.
Notice how these match the titles on the right side in our theme.
Start by clicking and dragging each bar out of the PRIMARY WIDGET area. When you are done, refresh your theme and you will see that the right side titles have disappeared.
Next, open each of the other widget areas to be sure there are no other widgets within them.
Adding Plugins
Next we are going to install the CLICK VOODO PLUGIN. You can download the ZIP file here.
This is the same process we went through when we add a new theme.
Navigate to the dashboard menu bar. Click on PLUGINS > ADD NEW > UPLOAD PLUGIN.
Browse for the CLICK VOODO PLUGIN that you should have downloaded to your desktop. Click on that. Then click on INSTALL NOW.
new window will open up where you click ACTIVATE. After activation it will show up on the black menu bar.
Next, because the new WordPress editor sucks, we want to add a new login called CLASSIC EDITOR.
Click Add Plugin… Classic Editor Should Be One Of The Choices On The Main Plugin Page.
You may have to do a search.
When you are done you should be able to click on the PLUGIN link and see a list of all your installed plugins.
************************************IMPORTANT*******************************
The hardest part of marketing is finding your niche, business and product. The tech stuff I am showing you is easy. Don’t get caught up in this. Just continue to follow along.
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Building an Email List Form
As “they” say, the money is in the list. Let’s get started.
Step 1: We are going to edit our SAMPLE PAGE.
But before we go too far we have to go back to the keywords. In this example we are using KARTRA PRICING and KARTRA REVIEW. We want to add these to the title of our page and click UPDATE. This will be the new headline on your page.
TIP: Open up a second browser tab. It makes it easier to keep track of your changes. As you make changes on the back end, you can refresh the second page on the front end.
Modifying Page Content
To get started, we want to add an email capture form.
Navigate back to the Simple Mobile file on your desktop. Like for a file title AWEBER.
Open the file in NOTEPAD, Copy the code…don’t be overwhelmed. Just make sure you copy all of it.
Go back to your WordPress page and on the right side of the text box where there is currently copy, click on the TEXT tab. Highlight all the text and delete.
Then paste all the AWEBER code in the text box. Anytime we use code you must use the TEXT tab not the VISUAL tab.
Your new page should look like this.
Next we want to edit this to relate to our product. Change the headline to talk about something related to your product and offer enticing the views to keep reading.
Next we want to edit the GIVEAWAY image to relate to the our “email bribe” that we will give away when someone enters their email.
Follow the instructions that we went through to revise the logo above..
Use your creativity. The affiliate company usually has some graphics that you can use for purposes like this.
Save it back to the same folder.
Super easy!
We now want to add this image to our page.
Open another browser window, locate your image in the SIMPLE MOBILE folder and just drag it over the page we are modifying.
It will show up in the Media File, CLICK FULL SIZE and insert. We can change size
later
Next edit the copy in the TITLE area and BULLETS below the graphic adding value propositions and benefits.
Connecting Aweber to our Form
First, if you do not have an Aweber account, you will need to set one up here. Get Your Aweber Account
They have great tutorials that will help you get your account set up and your first list started.
We are proceeding with the understanding that you have set up your Aweber account have have your first list set up
Navigate to your new page and click on the TEXT tab. This will open back up to the code side of your page where you will see all that nasty code I gave you.
Next, locate the line of code that reads, AWEBER LIST NAME about 5-6 lines down.
Replace the AWEBER LIST NAME with your new list name you just set up in Aweber.
Be sure to UPDATE your page.
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Make sure you highlight and paste your code between the
QUOTE MARKS.
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Setting Up Your Thank You Post
After your customer has submitted the form, you will want send them to a THANK YOU post. This lets them know that the form was submitted correctly, plus you can offer upsets if you wish.
Navigate to POSTS > ADD NEW. Right click and open it in a new tab.
Name your new post THANK YOU, the click PUBLISH.
Now, we want to replace some more code just like we did with your Aweber list name.
Locate the post URL just below the post title.
Right Click and copy the link.
Go back you your PAGE where you have the AWEBER code.
Find the line of code the reads THANK YOU POST. Highlight it between the quote marks and then past the URL you copied from your THANK YOU PAGE.
Aaaaaannnnnd…UPDATE
Oh, so simple
My code (http://kartraprofits.com/thank-you) runs on 2 lines. Again, be sure to place your code between the quote marks.
Let’s test out your new form.
Enter a random name and email and click the red ACCESS button. Your thank you page should look like this.
Connecting Your Affiliate Links
Navigate to the account where your affiliate product is. In our case we will be going to our Kartra Affiliate account.
Your account will look different. It may read Affiliate Links, Promotional Links…..
Copy your link for the promotion you want to advertise. It could be for a free trial, purchasing the actual product, or whatever your product affiliate is offering.
Paste that link into a new browser to look at the offer to make sure it is what you want to promote.
Navigate back to your WordPress dashboard menu and click on the CLICK VOODOO plug in then click on the SETTINGS link.
We want to establish a URL parser. This is an identifier for your campaign.
For this purpose we are using “GO” to keep it simple.
Click on the MANAGE link > ADD NEW.
- Give your new link a name associated with you affiliate promotion
- Paste your affiliate link.
- Add a short descriptor text.
This is your new affiliate link
Click SUBMIT.
This is the same process for any affiliate offer you want to promote.
TIP: Keep the end of the URL short and relevant to your offer for easy recall. You can even add a traffic source to it if you choose for better trackinghttp://kartraprofits.com/go/ktrialsaw (AW for AdWords)
With CLICK VOODO we can now track the clicks to that specific affiliate link.
Copy the link and paste in a new browser window and walk through the sign up process.
Go back to your WordPress dashboard and the Click Voodoo dashboard, refresh and you should see a number in the CLICKS column next to that affiliate link.
Edit Thank You Post
For a better user experience, it is best to have a thank you message on your thank you post.
Your message can be a simple as “Thank you for registering to receive the fee guide. Start your trial here”. Use my example as a guide.
Link your download or trial landing page to your message making sure you have it set to OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW.
You can add images if you like, but for this example we’ll use just text. Update.
TIP: add your actual email address that the email would be coming form and always test your links
THIS IS THE BASICS OF A MARKETING FUNNEL
REVIEW
Your new site will consist of PAGE and POSTS.
PAGES are best for Opt Ins, Sales and Landing pages. You may have 5 or six of these depending in what you are offering.
POSTS are best for Traffic Getting (SEO), Thank You ,and Follow up. You can have dozens of these.
For Example: after someone has completed your initial funnel sequence, you send a follow up email about another part of the service that they may want to take advantage of that was not part of the initial service or product purchase.
Your email would send them to a POST page that talks about the new product and has an AFFILIATE LINK directing them to that product to buy.
And the cycle repeats……
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ALWAYS! ALWAYS ! ALWAYS!
send your customer back to your website, never directly to the offer. You want to educate them first before giving them the offer to buy.
This is where your site has pages about the product, reviews of certain aspects, testimonials, etc. Build trust, get better conversions. **********************************************************************************
Which Program Is Right For You?
Simple Sites Big Profits ($297 One Time)
THIS IS WHERE YOU SHOULD START… this course has all you need to start making a living with affiliate marketing… it includes a custom training software that walks you thru everything step by step, tools that do the hard work for you. It also comes with personal support, niche market ideas, sample profit sites, and guaranteed acceptance to some of marcus favorite affiliate netowrks. Signup now and come say hi 🙂
High Ticket Niches ($1277 One Time)
This is where marcus (me) goes thru and hand selects a niche for you based on a non competitive keyword and some super profitable offers… we then get you a domain name geared towards the niche (these are super valuable) and set up the site with you… we hook you up with some plugins… tools, and even some content… and of course… we give you a copy of the simple sites 2017/2018 program so you can follow along and profit with your new niche. My Most Successful Students Choose The High Ticket Niches.
Marcus Mentor Me ($77 Per Month Cancel Anytime)
Marcus mentor me is a place where you can get updated access to all his custom wordpress plugins ($700 value) notes from his videos, tools, videos, and training on how to get started with affiliate marketing. every student of marcus’ who is serious about making this business work should be in the mentor class… its affordable and has the tools you need to make this work… this works great along side our other in depth training courses or even as a stand alone for those on a budget who want to get started