This is a common question for many beginner affiliates. I think every affiliate marketer should have a website for affiliate marketing purposes. The better question to ask is, what type of website to have?
For example, you can either have a niche website that promotes affiliate products or a sales funnel (which is a multi-step website.) Those are the two most common types of websites for affiliate marketing.
Hey there! I’m Eartha, the author of this website and a digital marketer. I’ve created both types of websites to promote affiliate products. I started as an affiliate marketer by creating a niche blog.
Later I moved on to create sales funnels which are smaller websites that have a specific purpose. I utilize both a blog and a sales funnel to generate leads and sales.
Read below to discover how I combine a blog with a sales funnel to help automate my online business.
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How to Do Affiliate Marketing with a Website
As mentioned above, there are two popular types of websites to create for making money with affiliate marketing. These include a niche blog or a sales funnel.
Niche blogs are great if you want to promote one or more affiliate products. A sales funnel works well for promoting one affiliate product. However, you can recommend multiple products on the backend with your email list.
How a Niche Blog Works
I build my affiliate marketing website using WordPress. Another term for this is a niche blog. There are three main things you’ll need to create a niche blog:
- A domain name
- Web hosting
- WordPress
Almost all web hosting companies will have WordPress ready to install and connect with your domain. Some web hosting companies will set it up for you or they will offer one-click installations.
A niche blog will require you to create content in the form of articles (blog posts.) Learning some basic SEO (search engine optimization) can help your articles to rank higher in the search results.
How to Choose a Niche
Choosing a niche will depend upon how you want to make money with your niche blog. Is your goal to make money with display ads? If so, then you’ll want to choose a niche that gets a lot of searches but has little competition.
If you want to promote one product or multiple products, then choose a niche that is related to the product you’re promoting.
I like choosing a good affiliate offer first and then building a niche blog that is dedicated to recommending the affiliate product.
How a Sales Funnel Works
A sales funnel is different from a niche blog in that you do not have to write any articles for it. A basic sales funnel is made up of two web pages.
The first page is called the squeeze page or opt-in page. It is on this page that you collect a visitor’s contact details such as a first name and email address.
One of the ways to increase the number of people who submit their information is by offering some type of incentive, otherwise known as a lead magnet.
A lead magnet can be helpful content in the form of a free ebook (PDF file), an audio file, or a video.
As visitors subscribe, they are added to your email list where you can continue communicating sending both helpful emails and marketing emails.
Do You Need Sales Funnel Software?
If you are not tech-savvy, the answer is yes. You will need some type of sales funnel software to get your website up and to make your life easier.
Popular sales funnel software includes:
- Clickfunnels
- Kartra
- Systeme.io
- Leadpages
- GetResponse
- ConvertKit
GetResponse and ConvertKit are email marketing software but also offer landing pages as a feature. I’ve used Clickfunnels, Kartra, and Systeme.io.
Clickfunnels is by far the most popular. It is easy to use and they have great templates. I can say the same for Kartra. Kartra is user-friendly and they have professional-looking templates.
Kartra is priced slightly less than Clickfunnels. Systeme.io is the most affordable but isn’t as user-friendly as the others. However, once you learn how to navigate Systeme.io, it’s solid. I also like the templates they offer.
Focus On One Affiliate Product
Sales funnels are excellent if you are focusing on promoting one product. If I want to promote multiple products, I create a sales funnel for each. However, I rarely promote more than one product at a time.
The job of a sales funnel is to do the selling and converting for you. Some of your visitors who subscribe through your funnel will buy immediately. A bulk of your visitors will not.
That is why your email list is so important. Everyone who goes through your funnel will be added to your email list. From there, you can continue reaching out to your subscribers.
As long as your subscribers don’t unsubscribe, you can email them anytime you want using your email marketing software.
Not Using a Website for Affiliate Marketing
There are ways to promote affiliate products without a website. You can place affiliate links in your social media profiles or if you use YouTube, in the video descriptions.
The problem is that when people click your affiliate links (whether they buy or not), you’ve then lost the potential of marketing to them again.
You’re not able to send them to a website where they can subscribe to your email list. It’s a lot of wasted marketing effort when you don’t build a list.
Wrapping Up
I hope this post has provided some clarity on whether or not you need a website for affiliate marketing.
Choosing to go without is leaving a lot of money on the table. You’re not able to build an email list which is the heart of almost every online business.
If you want to learn how to grow your affiliate income, check out my Millionaire Challenge System review.