Create an Affiliate Website and Secure an Additional Income Each Month

Are you bloggers and looking for ways to monetize your website traffic? Or does your entrepreneurial spirit simply lead you to build a nice side income? Surely you have already come across the term affiliate website.

Maybe you have already read up on the topic and now want to find out how and with which tools and software you can create an affiliate website. We share our expertise with you.

What is an affiliate website?

First of all, you should know what affiliate websites are used for. It's about marketing: Affiliate marketing is an American term that can be translated in German with partner program. So it's an internet-based commission system. The more visitors are led to the partner, the higher the earnings.

Anyone can build an affiliate website and the best part is that the investment for it is limited and the risk is minimal. Affiliate websites can be homepages that are created solely for the purpose of generating their own commissions with partner programs or simply have strong traffic.

Who are the actors of affiliate marketing?

The operators of affiliate homepages are called publishers. On the other side of the partner program are the companies that operate online shops and/or market products and services on the internet. They are called advertisers. They can use affiliate networks or use a local affiliate software. The big ones, like Amazon, of course have their own software and all-around packages for affiliate partners. The small ones need the support of the networks. Networks are operated by companies that offer solutions, tools and meeting places for both, advertisers and publishers.

The application here is simple and you will be guided through the whole process.

Form of Affiliate Partnership

There are three possible forms:

• Access to the partner program of large companies.
• Use of affiliate network including the purchase of all-round package of software, tools, assistance etc. offered by a network operator.
• Direct contact to the small advertiser.

The first two are most commonly chosen.

Prefer affiliate network or affiliate software?

You can decide for a giant of e-commerce or rather search for the suitable affiliate partner in the networks. Here comes the question again, whether your capacities are enough to manage everything on your own and whether you have the necessary technical solutions. Both offer affiliate plans that save you time and effort. Of course against compensation, but which reduces your profit.

The direct relationship with a smaller partner saves you costs. You can find a tailored partner program over impact.com. Compared to affiliate networks, Impact.com offers a SaaS platform that connects advertisers directly with their partners. This allows you to determine your own affiliate business plan. But consider whether you have sufficient knowledge and capacities for this type of partnership.

How does affiliate marketing work exactly?

Affiliate marketing is all about quantity. Affiliate marketing has revolutionized our world. The simple interactions of traditional advertising without direct conversion have no value in affiliate marketing. It is important that users, in the end, buy products from the partner.

With one (or more) affiliate website(s) you can earn really well. The principle is simple. You place banners, text or image links on your website that lead to your affiliate partner. When your visitors, who have followed the link, buy something, you get up to 20% of the amount paid. So you will not earn money because you have a banner ad on your homepage, but because you have directed visitors to the online shop of a partner and they have bought something there.

Imagine you are working with the Amazon Partner Program. Max M. comes across your affiliate website by chance and he finds the information there exciting. In the best case scenario, this happens:

Amazon Affiliate – the classic if you are looking for partner programs

The Amazon Affiliate websites were among the first to contribute to a wide spread of affiliate marketing in Germany. They offer millions of products and plenty of partner programs. You can find something suitable for your affiliate marketing project there. In addition, Amazon Affiliate supports publishers, bloggers and influencers with tailored link tools to create their Amazon Affiliate website easier and faster. Although the percentages are not always high, they also offer temporary promo actions from Amazon PartnerNet, which offer good partner rates.

Important:

Certain categories are better remunerated. However, more expensive products bring in more money, as the commissions are calculated in percent. But don't be unsettled by higher percentages. If one of your niche ideas falls into the 0% category, take it off your list. Advertising for products without remuneration is simply pointless. Categories with commission rates of 2% or less are also unattractive. One would need a lot of traffic to achieve lucrative results.

This applies not only to Amazon, but to all partner programs.

What topic and products are best for your affiliate website?

Finding the right topic for your affiliate website is not an easy task. It should not be far from your own core business. You should research whether there is a suitable affiliate network or affiliate software. It is important to be well informed about as many current affiliate network programs as possible.

You could, of course, also approach the topic in reverse: get good information about affiliate marketing programs and then decide which one you enjoy most. We have prepared a list of affiliate network providers, software and tools for you:

ADCELL

Webgains

Awin

MyLead

impact.com

100partnerprogramme.de

financeAds

Belboon

CJ

Rakuten Affiliate Network

Before you make this decision, let's take a closer look at the necessary steps to build a good affiliate website.

How do you create an affiliate website?

It is best to answer the question by explaining the steps in order.

Step 1: Choosing the Topic

As already mentioned, the topic, or more precisely the affiliate network to which one binds oneself, is very important. An idea is already a good starting point. What also matters is having a lot of knowledge about the subject. If you are financial experts, for example, and can hardly wait to pass on your knowledge to others in a blog and earn money while doing so. Then you should find out more about financeAds where partner programs for financial products and services are offered.

But if you are enthusiastic about special topics, you should definitely check whether there are also partner programs for your favorite niche. It is important that there is a large search volume for this topic. The pros of partner programs know this best and usually don't bother with things that are not financially worthwhile.

Step 2: Which software and tools are needed to build an affiliate website?

To apply for a partner program, you already need to have a website that serves as an “application portfolio”. So something that you can show to the affiliate partner program providers and that convinces. If you have been present on the internet as a blogger or influencer for a while, we can skip the ABC of general website building. Instead, let's concentrate on the special features that should be considered when creating an affiliate website.

Step 3: Now we come to the choice of hosting and the website builder

Here the general rule applies: observe cost-efficiency balance and do not compromise on the quality of hosting. Even if you start with modest means at the beginning. Better to start with a starter package at WordPress or Strato or All-Inkl.com and then move to a higher tariff. They also offer the possibility to install several affiliate websites with a MySQL database package, for example, and thus save costs. Take the time to learn and gain experience. Some specialized companies, like Webgains, even have their own academy where they offer seminars and training for beginners and advanced students about successful affiliate marketing.

Step 4: Content Management System (CMS)

Before we deal with the content, let's clarify what a Content Management System (CMS) is. Content is the English word for content. A CMS is the basis for creating an affiliate website. CMS is a web software with which you can manage the content of a website directly in the browser. Manual programming of websites is thus made superfluous. You can install this software on any domain, log in, optimally set up the software for the planned project, and finally start filling the affiliate website with content. WordPress is very suitable for this, as it is very flexible and can grow with each new project.

Step 5: Now we come to the question: What content do you need?

The content is important to generate traffic. In order to earn money with an affiliate website, a lot of traffic is required.

Without visitor traffic, no one will click on the affiliate links, which means that no commissions will be paid. There are many ways to increase traffic. You could generate most of your traffic through SEO.

Step 6: SEO optimization is key here

Your SEO optimization should serve to get your content at the top of Google rankings. For this you need many, but above all new and original texts, which were not created on your affiliate homepage by “copy-and-paste”. Writing neatly, informatively and a lot about specific topics is not everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes there just isn't the time for it. Here a “purchase” of content could come into consideration. The investment is worth it if the content achieves the two main goals of affiliate marketing: generating traffic on the website and getting visitors to click on affiliate links or banners.

Many network operators, like MyLead, help you with useful information and tips around SEO optimization.

The keywords in the articles of an affiliate website should be exactly those that your target group is looking for. You should also be able to integrate the affiliate links or banners in the text.

SEO optimization without strategy and observation of the customer journey makes no sense. You should know and control the users. There are various software solutions that allow such monitoring. One of them is the Multi-Touch Attribution of Belboon. With attribution models, you can evaluate the individual touch points of the customer journey. You have an overview of the individual contact points and can thus optimize your strategy in the long term. This tool is available as a plug-in for all Belboon customers.

Step 7: Speaking of control: affiliate links play a central role here

After being activated for the appropriate partner program, it's time to insert the affiliate links, affiliate banners and advertising materials. Depending on the partner program, different means are made available to you. Ideally, there is a deep link generator with which you can insert direct links to individual products. There are performance marketing providers like CJ, who specifically support you with such services as Ad & Content Monetization.

A plus is also the receipt of statistics. Here, CJ has the On-Demand Insights & Analysis software solution (reports for the analysis of the traffic over a certain period).

By the way, you can read here how to create the links in the first place

All network operators offer tools and plug-ins for creating affiliate links. Such links are always structured something like this:

Make sure that your tool is easy to use. Affiliate link tools should also be suitable for your business and allow linking through your work channels. If you are a blogger and mainly reach your followers via YouTube or TikTok, the tool should be suitable for this digital environment. The innovative network provider Rakuten Affiliate Network has developed this idea further and introduced the tool Linkless Code Tracking. This software solution expands your possibilities for affiliate marketing websites beyond traditional channels. This way, users can be reached where they spend a lot of time, namely on social networks, Connected TV, print media, podcasts etc.

Finally, we would like to give you some information about the usual conditions in affiliate partner programs.

What conditions can you expect with an affiliate partnership?

Partner programs offer numerous condition models. These three are most widely used:

• Pay-per-Click
• Pay-per-Lead
• Pay-per-Sale

With Pay-per-Click the commission is calculated per successful click on the affiliate link. A multiple click is calculated as a single one. Here, the quality of the forwarded visitor streams is hard to estimate. This option is normally only available for short-term advertising campaigns to increase the reach of the partner page.

Some affiliate programs offer the Pay-per-Lead option. The commission depends on the contact made through the affiliate website. This is the usual condition model for online distribution of advice-intensive goods such as complex software solutions. If, for example, a company is looking for a good enterprise resource planning system a purchase without a thorough analysis of the possibilities is excluded.

That's why the third condition plan – Pay-per-Sale – is most common. Here you receive a commission if your visitors buy a product or service. Often the entire generated turnover is remunerated. That means, your commission is calculated on all purchased products and not only on the single one that has led visitors to the partner page with your affiliate link.

Conclusion: Creating an affiliate website to earn an additional income can pay off

User experiences can be very useful in your choice of affiliate marketing program. The OMR community can help you adapt your search to your own needs and find the right affiliate network thanks to real user ratings.