When I suddenly found myself unemployed, at a time when the UK unemployment rate was the highest it’s been for over 15 years, I knew that it might take a while for me to secure my next job. With very little money, but an awful lot of time on my hands, I decided to create an affiliate website. I themed my website around money saving tips, thinking that I might learn some handy tips on how to spend less, as well as generating a small income from affiliate marketing.
It took me less than a week and cost less than £50 to get the website up and running and making its first few pence. Here’s how I did it, step by step:
Research a domain name.
Choosing a good domain name is the most important decision that you’ll ever make for your website, so it can be a bit scary that this is the also the first decision you have to make. And it’s irreversible, so choose wisely. I went with Doshtips.com because it’s short and snappy and lets people know what the website is about.
Buy the domain.
My domain cost £9.99 for a year. I also bought the .co.uk version as this was only £4.99. I redirected the .co.uk site to the .com site to catch those visitors that might type in the wrong one and also to prevent someone else buying it in the future.
Write some content.
The saying ‘content is king’ really is true. I try to make all of my content as useful as possible for the reader. Forget about what search engines might want and think about what people want to read.
Set up a Twitter account.
Twitter is great as it’s an instant way to attract visitors to your website. I installed a WordPress Plugin that publishes my tweets on my website. This means that the website has fresh content every few hours, which search engines love.
Set up affiliate links.
I made a list of all the links to other websites I had included in my posts then looked for their affiliate programmes using Google. After you apply it takes a few days to hear back, but if your content is good they usually say yes. Change your regular links for affiliate ones and you get paid for sending traffic.
Set up Webmaster Tools.
This is a good idea because it helps you get your website indexed by Google and also gives you useful information so you know if you have any technical issues that you need to look into.
Set up Google Analytics.
You’ll need this to know how many visitors you have, where they’re coming from and which pages they’re looking at. I also installed a free app on my iPhone called Fast Analytics which gives you summary data on your phone. It’s tempting to stay up until midnight to see how many visitors you’ve had the previous day, but I try to refrain because I know that’s very sad.
Done!
Now that your website is ready it’s tempting to sit back and go ‘ahhhhh’. But you must keep working on it, even if it’s only an hour a day. You need to be writing new articles, building links, tweeting and setting up new affiliate links daily to keep the traffic coming. If you don’t have the time, don’t abandon it. Consider paying someone else to maintain it for you. You’ll reap the rewards later.
