How to Start a Blog for Affiliate Marketing? Step-by-Step Guide to Create a Blog

Introduction

In this era of digitalization, there are a number of methods that can allow individuals to generate revenue online. One such method is to create blogging platforms.

Individuals can create blogs for various reasons. You may start a blog to share your information on a particular topic with the audience.

Or, you may even create a blog to practice your passion or hobbies. However, one of the most important reasons for creating a blog is to monetize it.

The best way to earn money from your blogs is to create an affiliate blogging platform. An affiliate marketing blog is quite easy to start.

This article will tell you in detail how to start your affiliate marketing blog. However, before that, you should know that you need a small investment to purchase the website hosting and domain name for your affiliate blog.

Apart from the investment in monetary terms, the individuals also require an investment worth their efforts and time. This is because starting a blog and earning income from it is a long term process.

You cannot just expect to monetize your blog after creating it. Moreover, in the affiliate blogs, you will require certain strategies that can help you to convince the people.

In your affiliate blogs, you generally need to share information about particular affiliate products or services with people.

This information should be shared in a way that induces people to purchase a particular product or service for their requirements.

When people purchase a product or service with the help of your affiliate link, you can earn a commission. Hence, the main purpose of an affiliate blog is to help the bloggers to earn commissions through successful referrals.

Using this guide, you can learn the major steps that can help you create your affiliate blog. However, ultimately, it depends on your performance if you can achieve success in this industry.

The best thing is that you do not require any computer coding or programming skills to set up your affiliate marketing blog.

But before moving on to the various steps that will help you start affiliate marketing, let us know the main purpose of creating an affiliate marketing blog.

Why should you Start Affiliate Marketing Blog?

Generally, blogs have various purposes to fulfil. An article or blog can help users share information with their target audience, update old content, or even create a relationship with their audience.

However, the major purpose of starting an affiliate blog is monetization. As we all know, in an affiliate blog, you tend to promote the products or services of particular brands and companies.

Each successful purchase will help you earn commissions. It is for this reason that people start an affiliate blog to make money.

But it is important to choose the right affiliate marketing programs in your niche to determine your revenue from your affiliate blogs. If you do not choose a profitable niche, then you will likely suffer and earn lower incomes.

On the other hand, with the help of the right affiliate marketing network and the right niche, you can generate a constant source of passive income from your affiliate blogs.

So let us see the various steps that will help you create your affiliate marketing blog.

Step by Step Guide on How to Start a Blog for Affiliate Marketing

1. Choose a Niche

Before you start blogging, you need to make plans for them. The planning process starts with identifying a niche on which you can focus. Choosing a niche is very important. This is because bloggers cannot just randomly create articles on any topic they want. 

They need to choose a specific niche for their blogs. Unless and until you have a niche, you cannot define your target audience.

Finding your target audience will help you research their tastes and preferences. Bloggers should always align their content with the requirements of their target audience.

However, before choosing the niche of your affiliate marketing blog, you should know one thing. The blogger should determine whether they will create content on a subject they like.

Are they going to get their content written by a content writer? In the former case, you should always choose a topic that you like. This means you should create blogs according to your passions and hobbies.

On the other hand, if you are getting the help of a content writer, then you can choose a profitable niche.

Let us know what a profitable niche is. To know the profitability of a particular topic, you need to assess its demand-supply level. When you analyze the demand-supply level of a topic, there can be different situations.

In the first case, the demand may be greater than the supply. This means people want to read the blogs in that particular niche. However, due to low supply, they are not getting these blogs.

You can match up the supply with the demand by creating your affiliate blogs on this topic and attracting an audience towards them.

On the other hand, in the second case, the demand may be less than the supply. This means there are a whole lot of affiliate blogs on a particular topic on the web.

However, the readers do not want to read them due to low demand. Such a topic or niche is not profitable at all.

Let us understand the process of choosing a particular niche with the help of an example. So we assume that you want to create your affiliate blogs on the topic which you like.

Suppose you are passionate about cars. In this way, you can choose the broad category of your affiliate articles as cars. However, this is a diverse topic. It has several subtopics.

It is always important to choose a specific niche rather than a broad one. This is because the more specific your niche is, the easier it will be to define your target audience.

This will help you create your content according to the requirements of a specific group of people instead of a wider group.

While you are choosing a micro-niche, you should make sure that you do not restrict the scope of growth of your blogs. This is because if you choose a very specific niche, then you will have no room to expand your blogs and experiment with them later.

In the category of cars, you can choose a specific category, like classic cars. The classic cars category can include blogs about different types of cars, like the classic Ford Mustangs.

However, the blogger should not be very specific on this subtopic. This means you should not choose a topic like the 1969 Ford Mustang. In this situation, you will not have content to write a blog about in the future.

The bloggers will also not be able to expand the growth of their content. So there are different niches that the bloggers can choose for their affiliate blogs. Let us have a look at them.

i) Travelling

If you like to travel to different places all over the globe and share your traveling experience with the audience, then you can start an affiliate blog in a travel blog category.

In this blog, the bloggers can promote several traveling goods and equipment. These products may include travel bags, travel cameras, travel clothes, travel packages, adventurous equipment, etc.

Besides the products, the users may also promote their services related to traveling with their audience. These services can include those related to hotels, travel insurance, tour guides, traveling activities, and so on.

There are different affiliate marketing programs related to traveling. Let us have a look at them.

• Booking.com

Booking.com is a travel affiliate program that relates to different hotels. This platform provides some of the best hotel bookings and offers to users. You can suggest the platform to the travel enthusiasts and suggest different hotels.

For this, the users need to sign up on the platform. After signing up, you can search for the different hotels to promote on your platform using the search option.

Thus, the bloggers may choose a product according to the niche or content of their travel blogs. The rate of commission on this platform is 25% of the earnings. This rate further increases if you help provide more customers.

• Viator

This platform Viator suggests different destination tours and activities to the users. So you may recommend the different destination tours and activities to your audience in your travel-related blogs.

Once the audience makes any successful purchases with the help of your affiliate link, you may earn commission. The rate of commission for this program is 8%. It also has a cookie life of 30 days.

ii) Photography

If you have an interest in photography along with the required skills that can help you click pictures, then you can choose photography as your niche for an affiliate blog.

You can make money by using your skills and knowledge in the field to promote a product or service related to it. The blogger may promote different products related to photography according to the content of the blog, like cameras, lenses, editing software, etc.

Some of the affiliate programs related to photography that you may want to consider for your affiliate blogs are as follows:

• Lenscaption

As the name suggests, Lenscaption is a company that deals in decorative lenses. When you create an affiliate blog related to photography, you can promote this brand.

The audience that likes to purchase decorative lenses can use the platform. Once the audience makes a successful purchase, you can earn commission. The rate of commission is 20%. The cookie life of this software is 90 days.

• Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is photography software that belongs to Adobe Systems. The photographers can use different applications and services of their software, like graphic design, web development, photography, video editing, etc.

When the audience makes any successful purchase with the help of your affiliate link, you will earn commission. The commission rate is 85% of the first month for the monthly subscriptions.

The bloggers can also receive a commission 8.33% for the first year in the case of yearly subscriptions that are paid through a one time payment. The cookie life of Adobe Creative Cloud is 30 days.

iii) Music

As a music lover, you can share your information on different songs and music events with your affiliate music blog. The bloggers can also promote different products and services related to the music industry and make commissions.

Some programs that relate to the music industry are as follows:

• Apple iTunes

Apple iTunes is an online store that has a number of songs, audio books, movies, albums, etc. The platform is quite popular all over the world and hence has a high conversion rate.

The affiliate program of Apple’s iTunes requires seven days to approve the membership of the affiliates. Once your membership is approved, you can earn commissions through successful referrals.

The commission rate on this platform is 7% per sale. On the other hand, the cookie life is 24 hours.

• Music Business Institute

As the name suggests, the Music Business Institute is the platform that helps individuals enter the music industry. The platform helps these users understand the music industry and provides them with different opportunities within it.

Once you recommend the platform to your visitors, you can earn commissions through successful purchases. The rate of commission for this platform is 50%. The cookie period of the Music Business Institute is 45 days.

iv) Sports

People who have an interest in sports can create their affiliate blogs in this sports niche. With the help of this blog, you can share your viewpoints and opinions about different sports products and games.

This will help you build a relationship with the audience and earn income at the same time. Different sports affiliate programs which you may use for your affiliate blog are as follows.

• Fanatics

Fanatics is one of the largest online retailers that deals in sports goods all over the globe. Since the brand is quite famous, it is very difficult to get approved for its affiliate program.

The company is very selective when choosing its affiliates. But when you get approved, you can get access to more than 50,000 professional sports products to promote.

When you promote the product, you can earn commissions with successful purchases. The rate of commission for the program is 10%. The cookie duration of the Fanatics affiliate program is seven days.

• Online Sports

As the name suggests, this brand has been dealing in different online sports products since 1995. Due to its huge experience in the industry, it is one of the oldest brands that deals in selling sports-related products.

You can join the affiliate program of online sports and promote more than 150,000 sports-related products on the platform.

The commission rate of the affiliate program of Online Sports is 10% for each sale. Moreover, the cookie period is 60 days.

v) Poetry

If you have great literary knowledge, you may choose poetry as the main topic and category of your affiliate blogs. The poetry blogs will help you share information about different poems and poets.

With the help of these blogs, the bloggers can promote several platforms and tools related to poetry and writing. Let us have a look at the different poetry-related affiliate programs.

• Grammarly

Grammarly is one of the best and most famous writing and editing software programs. This platform helps people edit their content for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, the structure of the sentence, and the percentage of active and passive voice sentences.

With the help of Grammarly, the users can also know the readability scores of their content and improve it. With so many features, you may promote the different plans of Grammarly.

Grammarly has three plans, namely the free plan, the premium plan, and the business plan.

• Write

Write is a text editor and word processor. The software helps different poets and writers create their content without any grammatical errors. You can suggest a platform to your target audience that relates to writers and poets.

They can use this software to maintain a backup and the security of their data. Once the audience makes a successful purchase with the help of your affiliate link, you can earn commission.

The rate of commission starts at 20% and can be as high as 35%. Also, the cookie life of the affiliate program on this platform is 30 days.

vi) Beauty 

Another famous niche to create your blogs around is beauty. Beauty blogs can help you share your knowledge about the different beauty-related products and services.

These products relate to the category of makeup and fashion, like skincare, hair care, nail care, etc. So you may promote different products like foundation, eyeshadow palettes, concealers, lipsticks, and so on.

The different affiliate programs related to the niches of beauty and fashion are as follows.

• Mac

Mac is one of the best and most popular brands in the beauty industry. This cosmetic brand has an affiliate program for bloggers.

You can promote the products of this brand to earn great commissions due to its high conversion rate. The brand also provides discounts, coupons, and free shipping to its users.

• Sephora

Sephora is an online beauty platform that deals in more than 300 brands of beauty products. Besides selling the products, the platform also provides an affiliate program for bloggers.

Under this affiliate program, the individuals can promote more than 13,000 high-quality products.

vii) Tech

If you are interested in programming or coding, you could make the tech industry the niche of your affiliate blog. In this niche, you can explain technology to beginners and even suggest certain related products.

• Affluent

Affluent is an affiliate marketing network that relates to the software and tech industries. It has a number of advanced tools that can help users keep their affiliate data in one place.

This will help you organize the different affiliate programs related to the tech industry. The dashboard can also help the users know the amount of commission that they generate for successful referrals.

Besides this, platform also has an easy-to-navigate interface. To get access to the different affiliate programs from this affiliate network, you need to sign up.

After signing up, you can promote different products or services related to your audience. If any successful purchase is made, then the affiliates can earn income. This income is in the form of commissions.

The affiliates may even make a commission of 100% of their first month’s income. Another type of commission is a two-tier commission. The rate of commission is 20% for each sale.

• ShareASale

The ShareASale network helps provide the commissions to the affiliates. You will receive your commission on the 22nd of each month. The minimum limit to receive your commission is $50.

Affiliates receive their commission via direct deposit or check. Moreover, the cookie life of this platform is 180 days. After you have chosen your niche, you can move on to the next step. The next step is to select the domain name.

2. Domain Name

A domain name is the website address or the URL of your blog. It helps people all over the blogosphere find your blog online.

Hence, the domain name provides the first impression to your viewers about your content. It is for this reason that you should be very careful in choosing the domain name of your blog.

Changing the domain name later is a difficult process. It involves transferring your old domain name website to the new domain name site.

So the different steps that you can pursue to create a compelling and intriguing domain name are as follows.

i) ‘.com’ Domain

First of all, the blogger needs to choose the extension of his or her domain name. There are different extensions available like .org, .net, .world, .blog, etc.

However, the most widely used domain extension is .com. It is due to this reason that, generally, the audience may assume the extension of your domain name as .com.

So, the bloggers should prefer to use the .com domain extension. If you choose any other extension, then your audience may even land on some other site.

ii) Short and Unique

A domain name should always be short and unique. Such a domain name is easy to remember. The ideal length of a domain name is 3 to 4 words.

If you increase the length of the domain name, then the audience may not search for it.

Let us understand this with an example.

Suppose the niche of your affiliate blog is photography. In this niche, you choose the domain name of your blog website as ‘EfaaffiliatePhotographyBlogger.com.’

But this name is quite long, and the audience may forget it. Instead, you can choose a short domain name as ‘PhotographyAffiliate.com’. 

iii) Be Creative

It is very important to choose a compelling and creative domain name. If you choose an ordinary and common domain name, the readers will forget it instantly.

On the other hand, if your domain name is catchy and creative, they will remember it in the long run. Different methods can help you choose a creative domain name. 

First of all, the bloggers may use the alliteration effect to choose the domain name of their affiliate blogs. Under the alliteration effect, the words in your domain name all begin with the same letter or sound.

This helps to make your blog name memorable and creative.

Let us say, the niche of your affiliate blog is beauty and fashion. Under this niche, the domain name, using the alliteration effect, can be ‘Fashion Fanatics.’

Another way to be creative is by choosing synonyms for regular words. This means you can replace the basic words with catchy words that are easy to remember.

For this, you can make a list of the synonyms of the words to be used in your domain name. Accordingly, you can complete your domain name using additional words like ‘the, event, world, place,’ etc.

iv) Wider Scope

It is always essential to represent the content in the domain name. This is because once the viewers read your domain name, they should be able to understand the content inside it.

However, it is essential that the bloggers not choose their domain name based on a particular topic. In such a case, you will not be able to expand the content of your domain name in the future.

Let us say you have an online store and you decide to deal in kids products. Due to this reason, you may choose the domain name of your e-commerce website as kidsproducts.com.

However, this domain name has a narrow scope. You will not be able to deal with the products of teenagers or adults in the future if you choose this domain.

v) No Hyphens or Double Letters

If your domain name has hyphens or double letters, it might be hard to remember.Such characters are also likely to confuse your audience, and they may commit typos. So while searching for your page, they will land on your competitors’ websites or an error page.

vi) Keywords

The blogger should make sure to use keywords related to their niche in the domain name. The keywords will help to improve the positions of their blogs on the Google search engine result pages due to search engine optimization.

Another benefit of using keywords is that they help give your audience an idea of the content of your blogs.

So these are some of the methods and tips that can help you create your domain name. However, there can be situations when you choose a domain name that has already been taken up by someone else for sale.

In such a case, you may be tempted to purchase their domain name at a higher price. But the blogger should avoid paying higher prices for the domain name.

Instead, they can invest this amount in creating high-quality content. Later on, the income that they receive from these blogs can help them choose the domain name of their choice.

Besides choosing a domain name by yourself, you may automate this process. This can happen if you do not get a creative domain name. To automate the process of choosing your domain names, you can use several tools and applications.

Some of these applications include instant domain search, Name Mesh, Lean Domain Search, etc. On these tools, you can search for some memorable domain names using keywords.

But many times the people get too stuck on this process and are never able to move forward. So it is always advisable to be quick when choosing the domain name.

Some of the domain names that you can choose in different niches are as follows.

• My portrait world- Photography
• The beauty Palace- Makeup and beauty
• The tech crunch- Tech
• The Golden glowy girl- Makeup.

After choosing the domain name of your affiliate blog, you can move on to the next step. The next step is to choose a web hosting service for your affiliate blog website.

3. Web Hosting Service

After choosing the domain name of your affiliate blog website, you need to choose its web hosting service. This will allow you to store the documents and data of your website online.

It is with the help of a web hosting service that people from all over the globe can get access to the content of your blog website online.

Hence, a web hosting service can help provide online space for your website. So choosing a web hosting service is an important step in the process of creating an affiliate blog.

If you choose a good web host, then your website will receive high engagement. On the other hand, wrong choices in web hosting services can lead to different problems like slow speed of your website, security problems, blog crashing, etc.

You should make sure to check various factors of a web host before choosing it. These factors include the performance of the web host, the offers provided by it, and most importantly, its price.

A website is said to have good performance if it loads within three to four seconds and has a minimum uptime of 99.94%.

Secondly, it should provide you with different offers like excellent customer support, a money back guarantee, etc.

Different web hosting services that you can use for your affiliate blog are as follows:

i) Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the best web hosting services that is officially recommended by WordPress. The performance of the service is verified by the fact that it has an easy-to-use interface and an uptime of 99.9%.

The platform also provides excellent customer support and a 30-day money-back guarantee to its users. If you want to subscribe to this web hosting service, then you need to pay $2.75 for a single month.

ii) WP Engine

WP Engine is another good web hosting service. It has more than 500,000 customers in about 120 countries.This platform provides great speed to the websites due to the use of a content delivery network.

The platform also provides security to the data of its users through the facilities of daily backups and SSL certificates.

iii) Hostinger

Hostinger is another web hosting platform that provides a plethora of features to users. First of all, the platform provides high speed to the websites due to its cache manager.

Secondly, it has an uptime of 99.99% along with excellent customer service. The fast speed of the website is due to the usage of the content delivery network. You can get access to this platform by subscribing to its different plans.

The entry-level plan at Hostinger costs $0.99 per month. On the other hand, the cost of the premium level plan is $2.59 per month.

Some other web hosting services that provide excellent performance to the websites are as follows.

• Siteground
• Dreamhost
• Hostgator
• Cloudways

After you have selected the appropriate hosting service, you can move on to the next step. The next step is to choose the look of your affiliate blog website.

4. Decide the Theme

A theme helps to govern the look of your website. When visitors visit your website for the first time, they can understand the content of your site through its theme.

It is for this reason that choosing the theme that has been created specifically for the affiliate blog website is important. Such a theme provides a professional look to your website.

The features of affiliate marketing in the theme help to highlight the different aspects of each item on your blog. Some of the useful features that the themes provide are star ratings, product comparisons, image galleries, etc.

Other important features that a theme should provide for your website include responsive designs, customization facilities, and premium plugins. Now let us have a look at different themes related to an affiliate blog website.

i) REHub

REHub is an affiliate marketing theme that has several product display features. Due to all such features, the theme helps the users provide several options, like comparisons, reviews, product showcasing, etc., on your WordPress website.

No matter if you are promoting affiliate products or selling them on your own, REHub is an ideal website for all of these purposes. This is because of the facilities of the two best eCommerce plugins that come along with this theme.

These plugins include easy digital downloads and WooCommerce. The bloggers may use any of these plugins and list their products that they are promoting as affiliates.

Not only this, but the layout affiliate theme is quite flexible and provides the users with many layouts. These formats include the magazine layout, the blog layout, and the online store format. The bloggers may choose any of the formats according to their requirements.

REHub also has other plugins that allow users to manage their affiliate links and create product comparison tables.

When you manage your affiliate links, you can easily track the conversions or the clicks of your links and change them accordingly from a single dashboard.

With so many features, REHub is an ideal theme for affiliates to make high affiliate commissions.

ii) Blabber

Blabber is a great affiliate marketing theme for online magazines or even blogs.The theme has a library that consists of more than 20 website demos. Due to so many demos, the theme is a multi-purpose affiliate marketing theme.

Some of these demos include travel websites, tech blogs, food blogs, gaming portals, etc. Hence, the website theme provides customizability and flexibility to the users in creating their affiliate blogs.

The demos of Blabber also have stylish home pages. These home pages will help you list your latest blog posts under different categories on them.

They also have spaces that allow the users to monetize their content by publishing advertisements or affiliate links. Blabber even provides several custom widgets to the users that even include affiliate links.

Besides this, you may even use the content to earn income from your website through e-commerce support. With so many features, you may use the demo version of the theme.

iii) Blurb

Blurb is an affiliate marketing theme that can help you promote products using its different features. These features include the price, comparison tables, product reviews, etc.

So you can use the theme for different purposes like review blogs, coupon websites, price comparisons, portals, and so on. The theme library has many templates that can help you share coupons and discount codes when you publish product reviews.

Blurb also allows users to increase their audience with the help of useful features like pop-up forms, content options, and opt-in forms. Whenever any visitor signs up for your newsletter, you can update him or her about your latest products or services.

One of the best features of Blurb that makes it different from the other themes is that it helps users sign up for your website.

After signing up, the users can share their affiliate links if they want to promote their products on your site with your audience. This gives the affiliates control over their website.

iv) Voice

Voice is a WordPress theme that comes with many layouts. But if you want to create your own affiliate website, then the full-width layout that has a cover image can be an ideal choice for you.

Besides the layouts, the theme also has a good choice of shortcodes. You can use these codes to place several elements in your content. These elements are the column layouts, tabs, buttons, progress bars, font icons, etc.

Not only this, but the theme also provides custom sidebar widgets and header configuration modes to the users. To aid the users in their affiliate marketing progress, the theme has the support of WooCommerce and bbPress.

This makes it easy to add your online store or promote the products by giving the users their descriptions. Due to all such features, Voice is an ideal theme you can use to modify your content with the help of affiliate links.

v) Typer

Typer can be a good option if you want to create your affiliate blog website. It helps the bloggers that have multi-authored content websites on this platform.

Each author can register on their own profile page. The theme also provides these authors’ bios and links to their social media handles.

Besides the profile page templates, Typer also has different home page layouts. You can choose these home page layouts for different types of articles or blogs.

The theme helps you include referral or affiliate links on your how-to guides, tutorials, or travel-focused website.

Thus, with Typer, the users can ensure that their content is easy to read as well as appealing to look at. This is with the help of the Elementor page builder or WordPress editor plugins.

Besides these things, you can also choose other affiliate marketing themes, like

• Zox News
• Zeen
• Neori
• Pixwell
• JNews
• CouponXL

There are two types of themes: premium (or paid) themes and free themes. However, the blogger should always prefer the premium themes over the free themes. This is because the premium themes have more advantages than the free themes.

Let us have a look at these advantages.

• First of all, the premium themes have full customization capabilities and cleaner code. The clean code helps to create a faster website.
• The premium themes provide responsive customer support to the users. This means if you have any queries related to any of the functionalities of the theme, you can connect with customer support.
• The premium themes have great online reviews and ratings. They also provide free updates for the users’ lifetimes.
• These themes are beautifully designed and have a number of great-looking templates.

The bloggers can also try out the Thrive Theme Builder. This builder is fully customizable, and you can adjust it according to the niche of your affiliate blog.

Once you have chosen the theme of your affiliate blog website, you can move on to the next step.

5. Create Essential Pages

After the bloggers are done with the technical aspects of their website, they need to fill it. Filling the website means creating all its essential and foundational pages. The foundational pages are very important.

They help the viewers learn about you and your website’s background. You can also make use of these essential pages to promote your affiliate blogs.

Let us have a look at the different foundational pages that are essential to create for an affiliate blog website.

i) About Page

As the name suggests, the about page helps the audience learn about your background. On the about page, you can answer certain questions like, “What is the niche of your affiliate blog?” “Which types of blogs do you promote on your affiliate blogs?”

All such answers will help the audience get an idea about your blogs. Hence, with the help of the about page, they can decide whether they want to become your audience or not. Let us say you create affiliate blogs in the niche of travel.

So on the about page, you can let your audience know about your travel niche. The bloggers only need to make sure that they let their personality shine through on the about page.

ii) Contact Page

When you create affiliate blogs, you tend to promote certain products and services. Your audience may want to connect with you to clear their queries or ask certain questions of you. But how can they connect with you?

The contact page will help them find your address and contact information. Information on this page can include the email address, Skype, social media handles, phone number, etc.

However, you should make sure that you review these channels regularly. This is because the audience will not like it if you do not reply to their queries on time.

One of the best features is the ability to place contact forms on your pages. This will help the audience to connect with you and ask questions of you.

iii) Privacy Policy Page

A privacy policy page is a legal page that tells the users how they can collect and use the information or content of your affiliate blog website. This helps safeguard your rights and prevent other users from violating them.

You can also create other legal pages like the terms and conditions page, the disclaimers page, etc.

You should also make a logo for your website along with any extra pages or foundational pages. The logo helps your audience identify your great content on different platforms.

Several tools can help you create logos. One such tool is the logo maker. The logo maker will allow you to create a logo according to the content of your website in high resolution.

After you have created your foundational pages and the logo, you can move on to the next steps. Now is the time to start writing blogs and promoting your products or services.

6. Content Marketing Strategy

You cannot start creating blogs without a plan. The blogger should have a content marketing strategy that can guide them in their process of blog creation.

These content marketing strategies help you rank your blogs and let the audience find them through them. The bloggers can follow the content marketing strategies and techniques to align their content according to the requirements of their audience.

Resources even show the importance of content marketing strategies. However, it is important to create a written content marketing strategy. A written content marketing strategy is always better than a verbal content marketing strategy.

But how can you create your content marketing strategy for affiliate blogs? Let us have a look at the different steps that can help bloggers create a content marketing strategy for their affiliate blogs.

i) Define your Objectives

Since you’re making affiliate blogs, your main goal will be to get the word out about the various products and services. By promoting these products and services, you will get a commission.

But this might be possible. only if you convince your audience about these products and services. Due to this, you should provide good reviews about the product or service.

Because of this, the main goal will be to get people to buy the products or services.For this, the bloggers should make sure to make the audience realize their needs for the particular product or service.

Once you know the main goal of monetization, you can move on to another step that will help you create your content marketing strategy.

ii) Define your Target Audience

As an affiliate blogger, you will create your blogs for the target audience. So you should understand your target audience. Understanding the target audience will help you learn about their needs and requirements.

Then you can promote the different products or services according to the needs and requirements of the target audience. If your audience needs certain products or services, they are likely to purchase them using your affiliate link.

So you can satisfy the desire of your audience by promoting the required products or services. But how can you search for your target audience?

First of all, the bloggers may look out for their target audience on a lot of different social media platforms. After you know your audience, you can comprehend their needs and requirements.

This is possible by knowing about the demographics, interests, and age of your target audience. With this information, you can align your content and promote the products accordingly.

After you understand your target audience, you can create your blog and move on to the next step of creating your content marketing strategy.

iii) Create a Contact Calendar

 A content calendar will help you publish your articles in an organized way. It will also help you know the right time to post your affiliate blogs to attract the largest audience.

There are several applications and software that can allow bloggers to create their content calendar. You can use Trello or Google Calendar to create your tasks.

iv) Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, can help you get your blogs ranked on search engine result pages. Once your blogs rank on these pages, the audience will learn about them more quickly.

This will help you attract a larger audience and generate more leads. So you should know the various search engine optimization tips and techniques to integrate into your affiliate blogs.

First of all, there are two types of SEO: on-page search engine optimization and off-page search engine optimization

On-page search engine optimization helps attract traffic to your website through directly related features. These features include the content marketing strategy, the choice of topic, and the keywords of your content.

On the other hand, off-page search engine optimization includes features that are performed outside the website. It is a passive process that helps attract traffic to your content. The different features of off-page search engine optimization include links, sharing, etc.

You can perform off-page search engine optimization through various techniques like lead generation forms, forum posting, blog commenting, etc.

Now let us have a look at the different strategies related to choosing the right keywords for your affiliate blog.

What are Keywords?

When the audience searches for your topic on the Internet, they type a certain phrase or sentence on the search bar. This phrase or sentence includes the keywords related to your topic.

Hence, the keywords include all the phrases that the audience searches for while looking for your content. But different keywords have a different level of importance and provide information on the topic.

Once you know the keywords that you should include in your affiliate blogs, you can answer several questions related to them. It also helps you to know the kind of content you should create for your target audience.

This increases the organic traffic visiting your website and, hence, improves the rank of your blog on the search engines.

But how can you look out for the right keywords for your affiliate content?

Choosing the Right Keywords

There are several keywords on a particular topic. However, you cannot just include all the keywords in your content. This will result in bad on-page search engine optimization.

So the bloggers need to know the specific keywords that they should include in their content.

To know the right keywords, you need to know about the following factors.

• Target audience

The bloggers should know their target audience and their interests and preferences. Once they know the target audience, they can also identify the phrases and sentences that they will search for on the internet.

Let us understand this with an example. We assume that you create your affiliate blog in the niche of travel. The subcategory of your blog includes all the beautiful places to travel to in Austin.

Here, your target audience includes all the travel enthusiasts who want to visit Austin or have already been there. So they are likely to search for phrases like:

• Best places in Austin
• Best places under a budget in Austin
• Activities to do while visiting  Austin
• Hotels in Austin
• Best restaurant in Austin

So these are the keywords that you should know and include in your content. Besides knowing the target audience, some other factors that you should know about your keywords are explained below.

• Keyword Difficulty Score

All the keywords have different difficulty scores. The difficulty score of a keyword helps determine its competitive nature of it. You should always prefer to choose a keyword that has less competition.

Several tools help the users know the keyword difficulty scores. One such tool is the keyword explorer. Generally, the keyword difficulty score at the beginning may range from 20 to 30.

• Search Volume

Search volume refers to the number of times a keyword is searched on the internet. Due to this, it is always recommended to choose a keyword that has a greater search volume.

So when choosing a keyword, you should look out for both the search volume and its keyword difficulty score.

It is generally recommended to choose a keyword that has a high search volume and is low competitive nature. This is because such a keyword will help you rank your blog.

But practically, finding these types of keywords is difficult. The reason behind this is simply that if a keyword has a higher search volume, then more people will use it, and hence, its competitive nature will increase.

But what are the purposes of the keywords in the content?

The algorithms of Google identify keywords and help to rank the blog through keyword ranking. These keywords also provide the most important information to the audience.

After making sure to integrate the different keywords into your content, you can move on to the next step. The next step is to promote your affiliate blog.

7. Promotion Process

Bloggers should do more than just use good content marketing and search engine optimization to promote their blogs. Promoting their affiliate blogs will help them let their audience know about them.

Different methods can help you promote your affiliate blogs. Let us know about them.

i) Social Media

As we all know, in this era of digitalization, each individual has a profile on social media. You can reap the benefit of this opportunity and attract your audience to your blog through social media. The bloggers may promote their blog posts on social media with the help of links.

Different social media platforms include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. You can place the link to your recent affiliate blog on your Instagram profile or bio of Instagram.

On this application, the bloggers can also post regular stories and update their audience about their affiliate content. This will help the audience to purchase the products promoted by you as soon as you release your blogs.

Besides Instagram, you can also promote your affiliate blog on Facebook. On Facebook, bloggers can join several communities and forums. These communities and groups consist of likewise people.

When you promote your affiliate blogs on such groups, there is a greater possibility that people may purchase your products or services.

ii) Near and Dear Ones

As soon as you post your affiliate blog, you can let your friends and relatives know about it. Not only this, but the bloggers should also ask their friends and relatives to promote their blogs and share them with other people.

iii) Guest Posting

Guest posting is the process where you create blogs for the websites of other bloggers to attract traffic to your blog. You can do this by interlinking. Interlinking is when you link your affiliate blog with the blog of another blogger.

iv) Email Marketing

Another method to promote your affiliate blog is through email marketing. Under this method, bloggers can share the links to their affiliate blogs with their email list subscribers.

However, the blogger should know the click-through rate of email. According to different research, the click-through rate of an email is 25%. This means there are high chances that your email list subscriber may ignore or delete your email in the first instance.

Due to this reason, the blogger should make sure to resend the emails to these subscribers. But how can you know the people who have not read your email or put it in the spam folder?

For this, the bloggers need to take the help of different email marketing software. An email marketing software can help you know the readers who read your email and the people who did not read it.

Once you know the people who have not read your email, you can resend it to them. As soon as the subscribers receive your emails, they can check out different products or services on your affiliate blog.

So these are some of the ways in which you may promote your blog. After promoting it, the bloggers need to assess the success of their affiliate blogs. For this, you can assess the traffic visiting your website.

8. Assessing the Success

After publishing and promoting your blogs, you cannot sit peacefully. The blogger should always assess the performance of their affiliate blogs. There are two methods through which you can assess the success of your affiliate blogs.

First of all, the blogger should examine the commission earned by him or her through the affiliate links. This commission includes the revenue earned by the affiliates on successful affiliate sales. The commission is usually a certain percentage of the product or service sold.

Besides knowing your commission, you can also know the traffic visiting your website. If a good number of visitors visit your website, then you are writing blogs with the right method. However, if fewer visitors visit your website, then you need to change your content marketing strategy.

So the bloggers need to assess the type of traffic that visits their blog. Different types of traffic include organic traffic, direct traffic, referral traffic, social media traffic, etc.

Several tools can help you in this process. Some famous tools include Google Analytics, Open Web Analytics, and the Google Search Console.

Now you may proceed to the next step. The next step includes improving your blog if you do not have success with it.

Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Affiliate Blog

If you do not earn a high commission with the help of your affiliate links or do not attract more traffic to your affiliate blog, then you can follow certain tips and tricks.

First of all, you should know who is creating your content. If you have hired the services of a content writer, then you should change your writer.

But if you create content on your own, then you should always make sure to change your style of writing. As we all know, the main purpose of creating affiliate blogs is to earn commissions. This means you should create compelling and intriguing reviews of products or services.

Such reviews should let people realize their needs and requirements and generate a desire in them to purchase the particular product or service. You should clearly emphasize the advantages of the product or service.

Secondly, the bloggers should make sure to be consistent in posting their affiliate blogs. If you post inconsistently, then the audience may lose interest and not want to connect with you.

At the same time, consistency also means updating your old blogs.

Say, for example, that a particular product has a modified version. So you can update this in your previous affiliate blog to let the audience know about the new or revamped version of the old product.

The blogger should also make sure to place a call to action in their blogs. This will help them convert the leads into regular customers. In the end, it is very important to avoid any grammatical mistakes or plagiarism in your content.

Grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, plagiarism, and other such features show the bad on-site search engine optimization of your content.

They are also likely to affect the readability score, which may affect the position of your blog on the search engine result pages negatively.

To avoid grammatical errors, the bloggers may use different grammar editing software. Some of these tools include:

• White smoke
• Grammarly
• Pro writing aid
• Hemingway Editor
• Ginger software
• After the deadline
• Language Tool

Besides taking care of the grammar of your affiliate content, you should take care of the website’s loading time. The website loading time also determines the number of visitors that are attracted to your website.

Make sure that your blog loads within three to four seconds. This is the ideal time during which visitors may visit your blog. In the end, the blogger should engage with their audience through the comments section.

Start an Affiliate Blog!

So this detailed guide can help you create your affiliate blog. By creating such a blog, you may promote the products or services of different brands and companies.

This allows the bloggers to share their experience of using different products and earn income from this experience or review at the same time.

You should also make sure to take care of the technical aspects of creating an affiliate blog. These factors include the loading speed of your website, the domain name, and the hosting service.

All these factors determine the traffic attracted to your affiliate blog. If more traffic is attracted to your affiliate blog, there will be greater chances for you to make commission.

In the end, it is all the quality of your content that can attract the audience towards the products or services. If you can’t write reviews for the products that are interesting, the bloggers will just ignore them.