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How to Make an Affiliate Website That’ll Bring in Six Figures

Affiliate marketing websites are one of the hottest sources of passive side income around.

Of course, you also know how to make an affiliate website.

It’s no small task, but it’s easier than many people make it out to be.

Are you ready to get started on a new journey to financial independence? If so, read on and we’ll dive right in and show you a blueprint for making an affiliate website that shines.

Decide on a Niche and a Business Model

There are a ton of different ways to produce an affiliate marketing website that can lead you to a high income.

The first step is picking a niche.

Many people pick a niche that resonates with them. Some handy with DIY might go for tools, a fitness fanatic may review diets and exercise programs.

Those are admirable, but the real start is in the art of keyword research and finding a microniche. You can expand later, but targeting a low competition sector of a high volume niche can bring things to fruition.

Once you have the niche down, you’ll want to look into the business model you’ll be using.

For programs, e-books, and informational products you may be better off partnering with a big affiliate network, but those who are reviewing hard physical products will often find themselves partnering with a retail network.

Both are completely viable ways to do things, and you can even mix them when you get farther down the line. The important thing is to find something and stick with it early in the lifespan of the website.

Content, Content, Content

Content often gets overlooked by affiliates.

That’s not to say they don’t have content, many of them have tons of content. The problem is that it’s horrible and it doesn’t inspire the user to purchase from the recommended products.

Bad content comes in a few forms. The big ones: stock advertising copy from CPA affiliate networks and using ESL writers with no expertise on the subject to create a site that is full of badly worded reviews.

Neither of these are appealing or effective.

Instead, you need to create a well-balanced blend of information, reviews, and soft advertising copy to help you sell the products that you’re getting paid to promote.

For instance, when you got to an affiliate website like Surf’n’Buy, you’re not just greeted with an endless wall of reviews. Instead, there are a ton of informational articles along with them.

Hire a good writer, or write great content yourself, and your conversion rate will go up.

Semantic search on Google means that many old keyword practices are dead, but it hasn’t quite caught up with some of the marketing agencies out there. As long as the keyword means the same thing, your on-page SEO will be fine.

A good content writer is worth their weight in gold and affiliate marketing websites aren’t free: don’t be afraid to spend a bit more money than you were expecting on an actual expert… or at least someone who sounds like one.

The end result will deliver.

You should also make sure that you have enough internal links to keep a person clicking through your page. This not only helps to increase the chances of a sale, dwell time is actually an SEO metric which will help your page’s rank on Google.

Off-Page SEO

There are a lot of ways to get off-page SEO going, but the most valuable for a beginner is beginning to build backlinks.

There are a few ways to take care of your off-page, but white-hat methods are usually the way to go. That means forming organic backlinks to excellent content and additions like infographics, as well as relatively neutral outreach in the form of guest posts on other web pages.

There are endless ways to build backlinks out there so pick a strategy and persevere.

Grey Hat SEO

Some people insist on doing things the fast way.

If that’s the case, then we recommend not buying links and instead producing a private blog network to promote your site. You can create free pages with WordPress, Blogspot, and more and then begin to interlink them.

Each should have at least 5 pieces of content and it shouldn’t look unnatural or spun. If you have a bad writer somewhere in stock who works cheap this is often what you should have them working on rather than your money site.

Just be aware that this kind of trickery is technically against the rules and you can drop ranks overnight if you’re not careful.

Hit Social Media

Social media can be important to an affiliate website. It’s also overlooked by many of the people running them.

When you’re creating your accounts on social media make sure to create a persona and engage with your customers. What the persona will look like depends on the niche and your own personality but as long as you’re actively talking to customers instead of being rude or using a copy-paste template you’ll be fine.

Paid advertisements can also do well, but make sure that they’re to value content instead of money content.

Social media’s purpose for an affiliate website is simple: it increases the consumer’s trust.

More trust, higher conversion rate, it’s that simple.

How to Make an Affiliate Website? Just Start

If you’re still wondering how to make an affiliate website… well, you need to brush up on the basics. The above is the foolproof guideline that countless websites have used over the years to become big earners for those who own them.

It’s not as complicated as many people make it out to be. The element which is lacking in most people isn’t knowledge: it’s persistence.

Why not get started today and get on your way to the kind of side income you’ve always dreamed of?

If you’d like some more great content, check out our website to see what else we have to offer!

7 Blog Design Tips That’ll Make Your Site Look Professional

The number of websites online is quickly approaching 2 billion. Yes, I said billion, with a B! Wow!

How do you possibly compete with those billion other people that want your customer’s attention? It seems impossible, right?

Well, I have good news for you. Many of those websites are not good at all. Their blog design is – let’s say, not so great?

If you want to get the respect and attention you deserve online, you need to have a professional blog. You need to make sure your brand is on point and representing you in a way that is going to get the right kind of attention. The good kind that is.

To learn more about how to make your blog look professional, continue reading this article.

Boost Your Blog Design to the Next Level

As you’re looking over the latest web design trends, it is easy to get distracted. You aren’t sure what you need to do first. Maybe you start one thing and then another and another.

Before long, you’re left with a bunch of half-finished projects, and your website is looking a little neglected. Knowing how important the design of your blog is, you’ve come here. And you’ve come to the right place.

1. Plan Out Your Design

If you throw your design together on a whim, everyone is about to tell. Instead of piecing your design together element by element, make a plan before you even get started.

As with your content marketing strategy, you need to have a strategy when you want your blog to look professional and well organized.

2. Watch Your Grammar

The fastest way to negate from a beautifully designed site is to riddle it with terrifying grammar mistakes. You don’t want to make your readers gasp and shake their head when reading through your information.

While grammar isn’t a design element, it will kill all of your chances of credibility, so we wanted to throw it in here for you.

3. Don’t Sacrifice Too Much for Conversions

We’ve all been to that website. You know the one. The one with three different pop-ups, a scroll over and an abandonment opt-in form. 

Sigh.

Frustrating, I know. You don’t want to be that guy or gal. When you’re going for conversions, make sure you keep the user experience in mind.

If you sacrifice the user experience to increase your opt-in rate too much, you may lose a high percentage of your visitors. And you’ll definitely upset more than a few.

When you have too many pop-ups, pop-overs, lightboxes and such, it doesn’t look professional. It looks cluttered and unattractive.

4. Thinking in Colors

When you’re building your brand, you need to create your brand color palette. Your business cards, website, and other marketing materials should all work with those same colors.

People associate you with colors, and it makes it easier for them to remember you. You want people to remember you and your brand so don’t forget your color scheme when you’re designing your blog.

A professionally put together color scheme compliments the other colors in the scheme and makes people enjoy browsing through your website more. Avoid flashy and clashing colors as they may hurt the eyes and be a turn-off.

5. Branding Your Graphics

Honestly, people are going to hi-jack your graphics. We know it, but if we’re prepared, we can get some exposure out of it, at least. Put your logo in your graphics so if someone takes them from your site, they will still know who made them.

Not only will branding your graphics help you keep your name in front of people looking at your content, but it will also make you look more professional. When you brand your graphics in a classy manner, it shows you know how to take care of business.

6. Bye Bye Clutter

Remember when I said early about all of the pop-ups, pop-unders and other opt-in forms? Well, those aren’t the only kinds of clutter that make a blog look unprofessional. 

Think about some blogs you’ve visited. Maybe you’ve seen a blog with a tag cloud with random phrases. If you click one of those phrases in the tag cloud it takes you to a blog post that is tagged with that keyword. 

People very rarely use tag clouds and it looks tacky. You can either get rid of the tag cloud or put another type of more useful navigation in its place.

7. Hello White Space

Whoa. You’ve got a lot of stuff going on there.

Just like you wouldn’t want your date to show up wearing a striped suit with a checkered necktie and bowling shoes, your website shouldn’t have too much going on either.

Leave plenty of white space, so people’s eyes get an opportunity to rest. When you leave white space on your blog, you allow users to focus on the most important part of your website. Use whitespace to direct attention instead of feeling like it is a waste of blog space.

Bonus Tip – Your Content Needs to Be Easy to Scan

When you write your blog posts, make sure to break your content into easy to scan pieces. If people don’t want to read a specific part, they should be able to skip to the next header to get into the next important part of the post.

When you structure your content this way, it is put together thoughtfully. Thoughtfully and well-structured content is valuable to your visitors and shows your level of professionalism.

Creating a Content Marketing Strategy for the Win

Now that you’re a blog design ninja and you know how to give your users an amazing experience, it’s time to level up. Learning how to make your blog look amazing is great, but now you need eyeballs on the blog.

We’ve created amazing content for you so you can learn how to promote your blog and get more traffic. Read our content marketing strategy articles today and learn how to grow your traffic.

7 Web Design Tips That’ll Improve Your SEO Dramatically

It’s Saturday night and you’re going out with your friends. You get out your phone and pull up a ride share app to arrange your transportation.

As the page is loading, a note appears that your ride will be found within the next minute and a countdown starts on your screen. As you tap your foot, the first minute passes and the next thirty seconds seem to drag on for eternity.

After the time is up, the page continues to load. You’re now wondering if it’s going to find you a ride at all, so you open up the competitor’s app and give them a shot at securing your ride.

Even if this scenario doesn’t sound familiar to you, it’s a reality for many people. In this dog-eat-dog world, responsive web design tips are necessary for success. Read on to learn what you need to do.

1. Optimize Your Site for Multi-Device Usage

Responsive website design refers to the programming of a website so that it realigns text and images automatically when a device is reoriented.

If your website design doesn’t adapt based on the screen size and angle that your customers are using, then you are making life more difficult for them. Trying to read a full-scale webpage on the small screen of a cell phone can be frustrating. No one wants to have to scroll back and forth to read lines of text.

Make sure that you take the time to ensure your site is displaying properly on all devices. This makes it easy for Google to crawl your web pages and deliver the content searchers are looking for.

2. Boost Your Site’s Mobile Capabilities

Google’s algorithm has regarded mobile-friendly websites as superior for a few years now. This is because currently, the majority of Google’s searches are coming in from mobile devices such as smartphones.

It used to be that you had to wait until you get home to look something up, but now everyone has the ultimate encyclopedia in their pocket. Numbers of mobile users are only expected to grow in the coming years so adapt today and rise with the tide.

3. Achieve Lightning Fast Load Times

Internet users want websites to load instantaneously. If it takes more than a couple seconds for one of your website pages to load, then they will find another site to visit. With the responsive design we previously mentioned, your website users will have the experience they crave.

4. Keep Your Bounce Rate Low

Your bounce rate refers to how often someone comes to your website to land on a single web page for only a moment. This behavior signals to Google that the content they provided wasn’t what the reader was looking for.

To ensure your bounce rate is low and users are directed to your site, you need to make sure your menus are all easy to navigate and that you are providing opportunities for viewers to find more content on your site that they would be interested in.

5. Improve Your User’s Experience

Your website users should be able to navigate easily from one section of your website to another. That means making your menus robust. Try to create page titles that are highly accurate so that customers don’t have to dig for what they want.

Another good idea is to include a call to action at the end of any blog posts you write that sends your reader to a purchase point or another article. This will help to keep your bounce rate as low as possible. Learn more about web design that engages your customers here.

6. Avoid Duplicate Content

Before responsive website design was a thing, it used to be that companies would create multiple versions of their website – one meant to be viewed on a mobile device, and one meant for the desktop.

Often they would delineate between the two by putting “m.” at the start of their URL.

While this was the best strategy in the past, today having two websites is a major Google faux pa. Google crawls the web to see how often a piece of content has been published and if you maintain two websites then you are essentially copying yourself. That hurts the SEO of both your websites.

Instead of continuing to update and maintain two versions of your website, move to a responsive web design. You’ll save time and get a boost in your rankings.

7. Include Social Media Sharing Options

When people come to your website to read one of your blogs or purchase your product or service, they should be engaging with your content. That means that they are hooked in by your introductions, informed by your words, and directed by your call-to-action.

If readers are hooked, then they will want to share your content with their friends on social media. While copy-pasting the URL is one way to spread the content, adding mobile-friendly share buttons to your articles is a great way to help get the buzz out more easily.

Be sure that you include buttons to the social media sites that are most relevant for your business. For example, if you are a restaurant or bar, you will want to have share buttons for all the major social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, while ignoring more niche sharing sites like Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Wrapping Up Web Design Tips

Now that you’ve learned these helpful web design tips, you’re ready to draw in new customers.

For more helpful articles to boost your rankings, check out our blog today.