How to Create an Affiliate Site in WordPress

So, you want to make an affiliate site in WordPress, right? Maybe you are confused about the process, or you couldn’t figure out how to get started with the site.

If you are in that situation, you have come to the right place. In today’s post, I am going to show you how to create an affiliate site in WordPress. By the time you finish reading this post, you will have a complete overview of the whole process.

Let’s begin with a short introduction to affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a beginner-friendly way to make money from your website. In this method, you promote some products, services to your audience. You will use a special link to direct the visitors to those products.

When someone makes a purchase from your link, you will get a commission. The amount depends on the affiliate program – some pay a percentage of the product price, while others offer a fixed amount per sale, etc.

Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, the next step is to understand the common types of affiliate sites.

What Types of Affiliate Websites Can You Make?

Here are the most common types of affiliate websites you can make right now –

1. Amazon Affiliate: This is the most common type of affiliate website these days. These sites pick a niche (like gardening, kitchen, outdoor, electronics, etc.), and publish in-depth reviews, top ten, comparison posts containing products from Amazon. When a customer goes to Amazon from their site and makes a purchase, they earn a percentage of the sales amount.
2. Daily Deals and Coupons: As the name suggests, these sites collect deals and coupons from various sources and display these on the website. The deals sites serve multiple purposes – they help the customers get their desired products or services at a discounted price, while the site owner receives a commission of the sale.
3. Price Comparison: Most of you are probably familiar with the price comparison sites already. These sites enable you to search for a product and get its price from various online shops. They help the customers to find out the best price for a product and receive a commission in exchange.
4. Review Sites: Review sites are the classic type of affiliate websites. In most cases, review sites sign up to various affiliate networks and promote the products or services from these networks. Review sites can be based on a single niche or multiple niches.

Getting Started with Your Affiliate Site

The first step to get started with your affiliate site is to decide what type of site you are going to create. Depending on your chosen type, you need to choose a suitable domain name. The name should be short, memorable, and brandable.

After choosing the domain name, your next task is to choose a hosting provider for the site. Since all of your website data and files will be saved on their servers, you should go for a reliable hosting provider with a solid reputation.

Once you have chosen the domain and hosting, you need to install WordPress on your hosting. Most hosting companies offer one-click WordPress installation, which makes it a simple task.

Choosing the Theme and Plugins

These days, there are specialized WordPress themes available for different types of affiliate sites. Make sure you are choosing a theme that is developed for your chosen type. These themes come with lots of ready-made designs and necessary features to help you get started.

You should also remember the general principles of choosing a WordPress theme. For instance, the theme should be developed by a reputed company, so that you can get the necessary support whenever necessary.

Other than these, your chosen theme should look great, be optimized for a great loading speed, compatible with all modern web browsers, and updated regularly.

You will find lots of high-quality premium themes at ThemeForest, MyThemeShop, Mojo Marketplace, Elegant Themes, and StudioPress.

All WordPress sites require some common plugins. Other than these, you need to use some specialized plugins for your affiliate site. Let’s take a quick look at these plugins –

• Easy Azon: This is a must-have plugin for Amazon Affiliate sites. It will localize the affiliate links, show a pop-up window for products, cloak links, and add the no follow attribute.
• WP Review: You need to publish lots of in-depth reviews on your affiliate site, and this plugin will help you display the reviews in different styles. It also works correctly with Google Rich Snippets.
• Thirsty Affiliates: This is an extremely helpful plugin to help you shorten or cloak the links, track link clicks, insert affiliate links to posts, pages, comments, and so on.
• Thrive Architect: This drag-and-drop page builder plugin enables you to create fully customized layouts for your affiliate content. There are lots of ready-made landing page templates and conversion elements to help you get started.
• Coupon Creator: If you are creating a coupon site, you will need this plugin. It allows you to create a new coupon or upload a coupon image with a recurring expiry date, shortcodes, and print view.
• TablePress: It doesn’t matter what type of affiliate site you are creating; you will find this table creator plugin very useful. It helps you to create and manage complex tables within a short period.

Growing Your Affiliate Site

Now that you know how to choose the best theme and which plugins you need, it is time to grow your affiliate site. And the best way to do that is to publish helpful content on a continuous basis. No other technique will work if your site doesn’t have unique, in-depth content that will be actually useful for the visitors.

While high-quality content should be your first priority, there are some other promotion techniques to grow your website. For instance, you should keep an active presence on all the major social media platforms. This will help you establish the brand and grow a follower base.

Another effective promotion technique is to build relationships with other bloggers and website owners. They can help you reach more people through their network. Other notable methods include guest posting, infographic outreach, paid ads, influencer marketing, etc.

Final Words

As I said earlier, affiliate marketing is a great way to get started with making money online. Now that you have read this step-by-step guide, you have a complete understanding of the whole process. However, if you are still confused about any of the step, let me know by leaving a comment below. I will try my best to clear your confusions.