Make an Affiliate Marketing Website with WordPress & Thrive 2021

Do you want to create your own affiliate marketing website?

Today, I want to show you everything you need to know from start to finish if you want to become a full-time affiliate marketer with your own website, making money passively. But before we do that, I want to tell you a real-life story about a WP Eagle viewer.

Carl’s Success Story

His name is Carl Broadbent, and back in 2017, he used one of my tutorials to create an affiliate marketing website. And it was at that point that his life changed forever. Carl had a really good job at the supermarket, but he knew that something needed to change. He felt like his life wasn't quite going in the direction that he wanted it to. The first site that Carl created wasn't his best site. He's honest about that. But it got him going down a different road.

And let me cut this long story short, here's what Carl is doing now:

he earns around $7,000 a month from his projects online
he recently sold one of his affiliate marketing websites for approximately $26,000
he now documents and talks about his journey and shares his ideas on his YouTube channel

And that all started from my tutorial, just like this one. If you're looking to change your life like Carl, then this might be the tutorial that does it. I suggest you watch right to the end of this tutorial and apply everything you learn – then some amazing things might start to happen.

It is quite a long guide, and you might want to bookmark this post for later. You won't be able to go through it in one sitting. You might want to do one thing at a time and come back later after a break. We are going to use WordPress and Thrive.

All I have to say is good luck and let's start!

Before we Start Creating Affiliate Marketing Website

You need to know that those websites can generate a pretty substantial income, and they do work if you put in lots of work and you know what you are doing.

Sites that I put all my knowledge in are:

These sites are relatively new, but they are generating pretty good traffic and earning commissions like planned.

So, I'm here to share with you all my knowledge, tell you what do's and don'ts are and show you step-by-step how to do things properly when it comes to creating affiliate sites.

What is affiliate marketing?

As an affiliate, you are there to help people make a purchase. There are people out there on the internet and searching for information to help them. They are looking to buy something, or they have a problem to fix, and we are there as affiliates to help them. We are here to provide information so that they're able to make a purchase.

Let me give you a real-world example of this. I'm going to use the site that I mentioned earlier, bestroofbox.com. There are people out there in America that have a Subaru Outback car. It's a very popular car. And they run out of space. The trunk is full, and they need some more room. They head over to Google, and they type in “roof box for Subaru Outback”. Or “what's the best roof box for a Subaru Outback?”

And when they do that in Google, my site appears. And my article appears. Then they click through, and they can very clearly see which roof boxes are the best for the Subaru Outback. They then click through to Amazon using one of my special tracking links. And if they make the purchase, I earn a commission.

And the great thing about Amazon is, I earn a commission on everything they buy. If they add the roof box along with a large TV, hiking boots, jacket, and maybe a fishing hat, I'll get commission on all of that. That's all there is to it. We're just there to help people buy by providing some good information through our websites' content.

You might be thinking, how do I come up with an idea for a site? What niche should I go in? Well, I've got a full video on exactly how to choose a niche as well. You might also be thinking, how on earth can I come up with content, ideas? How can I write content? How can I get content created? I've got you covered. I've got a video on that here.

Pro tip: Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Many gurus and people on the internet that often have courses to sell might imply that it's something that works quite quickly. And that you can start making money online overnight. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that. Affiliate marketing is a long-term project (12-24 months). And you're going to put in the effort and do a lot of work now, and then you're going to get paid in the future. That's how things are working.

What to expect from the affiliate marketing business

It's different from working a job where you do a day's work and then get paid at the end of the day or week. With affiliate marketing, you're going to put a lot of work in now, and then you're going to get paid in the future over and over again. It's a bit like being a farmer. You must put the work in in the spring and the summer, and then by the fall, that's when you get paid.

I'm not quite sure when farmers do their harvest, but it works like that. What I'm saying is, you have to plant the seeds now. You have to tend the seeds and water them now. You have got to look after your plants, and they will grow. And you put the work in, and they will grow big, strong and healthy, and then you will get paid handsomely in the future.

You have to approach affiliate marketing as a long-term project. And you need to keep in mind that there is going to be some work involved. You have to create the site, which I'm going to help you with right now. And then also you need to create some content. The good thing is that once you've created a site and you know what you're doing, you will be able to outsource a lot of it.

If you use Amazon, you don't need to worry about:

customers
stock or inventory
shipping

Now I get all of my content written by writers. I just give them a brief, and they create the content for me. I get the content added to my sites by my editor. So, I'm hands-off. Once you get to a point where you've got some income coming in, and you know what you're doing, you will be able to scale this up and outsource many tasks.

I absolutely love affiliate marketing. And I always choose it over things like dropshipping and e-commerce, which are other ways of making money online. And the reason why I love affiliate marketing is that you don't have to worry about customer service because you're just referring people to companies like Amazon. And I will say there are many affiliate programs out there and not just Amazon, although Amazon is a great place to start.

Affiliate marketing monetisation

With affiliate marketing, you're just doing the marketing part of a business. You don't have to worry about all the other stuff. And that's why I love it because I like to have plenty of time. I like to spend time with my family. And once you start bringing in customers and stock (like dropshipping), that will eat away your time.

That is why affiliate marketing is always my number one choice when it comes to making money online. You can monetise your sites in other ways. For example, on bestroofbox.com, the main source of income is from Amazon and is from affiliate marketing. But have some ads on there too. And they generate a reasonable income too. You can diversify, and you can have multiple income streams all off one website.

If you're ready to start that side hustle, start making some money online, and become an affiliate marketer, we should get started right now.

What we will cover in this tutorial?

Let me just explain exactly what we're going to cover in this tutorial.

We're going to cover:

How to get a domain name and your hosting (USE CODE WPEAGLE75): Hosting is how you set up a website on the internet. You need to go with a hosting company, and they get you up and running and look after your website. And I'm also going to give you some tips and ideas on choosing a domain name.
How to create a website: We will use WordPress and a fantastic drag and drop builder, which is called Thrive. It's my new favourite WordPress theme and plug-in. It allows you to create some fantastic-looking sites and it has awesome templates, and it's really easy to use.
How to add content to the site and make it look amazing: We're going to use tables, images and buttons. It will look stunning.
How to create a responsive website: I'm going to show you how to make sure the site looks beautiful on tablets and mobile devices.
Talk about legal stuff: I will cover some of the legal pages. Show you how to get a fantastic privacy policy, terms and conditions and set up a cookie policy.
How to submit the site to Google: I will show you how to submit the site to Google and do some basic SEO because we're going to generate most of our traffic from Google. I'm going to show you how to set up Google Analytics. This is a great way to track all the visitors to your site. You can see where they're coming from, how long they spend on the site, and how many of them there are coming. And allow you to make some insightful decisions about the way that you manage your website.
How to make a fast website: I'm going to show you how to make your website run fast. It's essential that your site loads quickly. You don't want people coming through to your site and then waiting for pages to load. And from a Google and an SEO point of view, and in terms of getting ranked on the search engines, speed is quite important

That's the bulk of it. There are loads of other things within the tutorial. I will show you how to create a logo for your site using a fantastic free graphics package, Canva. Also, you'll learn how to create lovely featured images for your blog posts so they stand out. I'm going to cover everything from start to finish when it comes to creating affiliate marketing websites.

Getting a domain name and hosting

The first thing we're going to do is get a domain name and get our hosting set up. And you will need a little bit of money to get these things. Hosting and domain names are not free. And if they are free, they're probably not very good and should be avoided. Like all good businesses, you do need to invest a little bit to get it started. But I've managed to secure a fantastic offer with one of my favourite hosting companies, HostArmada. (USE CODE WPEAGLE75)

You need to budget around $5 a month or so for your hosting and your domain name. And that should be enough to get you started. Obviously, when you start getting more traffic, you need a high-speed, super performance site because you've got so much traffic, then you might want to upgrade. But to start with, $5 a month should be about right.

A domain name is what people type into their web browser to access your website. The most common one is .com, but you can get lots of other extensions now like .net, .org. There is quite a few to choose from. Your hosting is basically where you hire a server from a hosting company, and they make sure that your website's online and that people can access it. You're going to need both of these things to get your website up and running.

The hosting company that I'm going to recommend to you is HostArmada. They did well in a recent test that I did where I tried out a few different hosting companies. I checked out their speed and their support. And HostArmada did well. If you haven't got a domain name, you can get one for free right with HostArmada. If you have got a domain name, that's fine as well. We can use that, and I'll show you how to set that up.

They have three different levels:

Start Dock
Web Warp and
Speed Reaper

I think the Web Warp is probably the best value for money. You get unlimited websites, loads of storage, a faster server, but it's really up to you. If money is tight, then maybe the Start Dock might be the best one for you.

But you can only have one website on that. It depends on your ambitions and how many websites you're thinking of creating. You can change your plan later if you need to go up or down. All of the plans include that free domain name.

Installing Thrive Themes

The next step is to instal the fantastic Thrive Themes. The reason why I use Thrive Themes is that it's wonderful. And it's my new favourite theme, plug-in and website builder. I used to use Elementor a lot. I still love Elementor but Thrive Themes is just perfect for an affiliate marketing website. You get the drag and drop functionality, and it's easy to use and very intuitive. It has loads of built-in blocks and templates, and widgets. That means you can get a website up and running pretty quickly.

What makes this stand out from some of the others is that it has some very specific elements that you can add to your content. These elements work well in terms of affiliate marketing. It has a pros and cons widget, which is useful when you're doing a product review or a product comparison. And it has a whole load of content-based elements. Thrive Themes makes your content stand out from everyone else's because people tend to add text and a few images to their content. And that's it. But with Thrive, you can add loads of other things that make your content rich and attractive. That's why I love Thrive.

In terms of purchasing Thrive, you have two options: – You can become a Thrive Themes member. I highly recommend you to become Thrive Themes member because you get access to all of their plug-ins. And you can install them on up to 25 different websites. You get the Thrive Architect and the Theme Builder. You also get all these other bells and whistles that you can use in the future. If you want Thrive Leads, it can help you collect email addresses when you want to build up your email list. There is a quiz builder if you're going to add a quiz.

There is an Ultimatum plug-in as a countdown. All of that and more for only $19 a month. You get access to the Thrive theme-builder, and you get to instal it on up to 25 websites. Once you have this website set up and running and making money and start to think about other websites, you won't need to pay anything. You'll be ready to go. Once you get Thrive Themes, we can instal them both onto our hosting and our WordPress. After you install all of your WordPress, you're ready to start creating a website.

Creating a logo

For those who don't have a logo, you can design a simple one using simple online software Canva. Canva is free, and you can do it a lot with the free version. They do have a pro version that gives you access to stock images and stock icons and a whole load of other stuff that you might find useful. But honestly, it does a lot the free version. So, you may not need to upgrade to pro. I'm using Canva to do my logo. But I'm also using it to design featured images for content and maybe for some Pinterest pins.

It's a handy tool to have in your toolbox. And since I've started using Canva, I don't have any need for Photoshop. And I do use Photoshop, but generally, I can do everything I need to do with Canva. It has a whole load of different templates for all sorts of different things. The size of my logo is 500x250px. I want a nice little pressure washer icon. And then, I will add the words bestpressurewasher next to it. You can choose what you want, and it will depend on your niche. That's going to determine obviously which icons and things you need. We've designed our logo. We've got two versions, a high-resolution one and a normal one.

Header, Footer & Homepage

From Thrive Themes, you get loads of different headers, footers and homepages you can choose from. Here's what I've chosen. You can always change your mind, so don't worry too much at this point.

Joining Amazon affiliate

You need to sign up as an Amazon affiliate. That's because you're going to need access to your affiliate links. Go to amazon.com and become an affiliate. This is where you sign up. Go through and fill out a form. It's pretty simple. You just need to add your name and address. You need to list off your URLs. I think they will ask you a couple of questions about how you're going to promote the site. Well, you're going to promote it with content and SEO. And then you're done. And then, you'll be given access to the affiliate tools straight away that will generate affiliate links and Plug-in for Amazon Affiliates AAWP.

Important note: You will generate commission only when you start sending traffic over to Amazon and generating some sales. It's at that point that Amazon will come and take a look at your site, and then you'll be officially approved, or you'll be rejected. Hopefully, if you've followed my guide and followed this tutorial, you'll be fine.

Amazon is a great place to start if you're new. But if you have another company in mind, that's fine. The process is going to be pretty much the same. It's just about inserting affiliate links. Most companies do offer an affiliate program. Something like rei.com. They also have an affiliate program. However, if you are new, I'd recommend Amazon. Amazon is great because you get a high conversion rate.

The commission rates aren't great, but generally, people do buy from Amazon. They've got an account, and it's straightforward for them to buy. You earn commission on everything, not just a product you promote. I think Amazon's a great place to start.

Creating and Planning content

It's a good thing to plan your content quite early on when you're developing your sites. Hopefully, you have some ideas for content. Head over to Google, and you may need to use a VPN. If you are in the UK and want to look at Google.com, a VPN is the best way to do that. You just want to start typing stuff that's connected to your niche. And then scroll down and look for ideas.

The section you're looking for:

people also ask (at the top of Google)
searches related to (bottom of Google)
alphabet method
keywords everywhere (keyword tool google chrome extension)

And what we're going to try is to answer these questions concisely and helpfully. An affiliate marketing website is just there to help people make a purchase.

This is what I found:

What is the best pressure washer for home use?
Is it okay to wash your car with a pressure washer?
Is it worth getting a pressure washer?
Is pressure washing bad for concrete?

And you'll notice that a lot of these articles don't answer the question that well. But we might do better if we write an article that's specifically around these topics. Another place you can get some ideas is down the bottom of Google. There you can find the searches related to your keyword. I like to do the alphabet method where you type in some words related to your niche, and then you start putting in letters and see what comes up.

This is what came up for me:

pressure washer accessories
pressure washer attachments
pressure washer attachment for the hose
pressure washer adjustable pressure
pressure washer cheap
pressure washer

There are some ideas you can pick. Put them in your spreadsheet. In a short time, you are going to have a ton of ideas for creating new content. Here you can check out my spreadsheet.

Adding content to the website

When it comes to creating content, I'm paying writers to do the work. That's because I'm not a great writer and the entire process makes it easier and faster.

You can find writers:

That way you're going to save a lot of time. You can create a brief and research or hire a writer to do the entire process. Test things out and see what works the best for you. Before we add the article, I need a featured image which is the big image that goes at the top of the content. I always create one using Canva. Another stock photo service I recommend, iStock photos. Adobe Stock is also good. You can find a ton of unique images for your affiliate site. Now you can add content, pros and cons sections, headings, top tips sections, tables, bullet points and all the things you need for your content.

By the way, this table here has been put together with the plug-in AAWP, which a premium plug-in that you can install in. It allows you to create tables using Amazon products. You still have to populate a lot of the data yourself. It can pull down the image, pricing, a couple of other things using the Amazon API to get access to the Amazon API. To gain access to the API, you need to have made three qualifying sales through Amazon for your affiliate account.

If you're just starting, don't worry about it. If you've already got some sales and you don't have API, you might want to go check it out. The tables do look good. But we can make good looking tables with Thrive anyway. To put images in, I'm going to use the Amazon site Stripe. You can add links and pictures using Amazon Site Stripe.

You can check out here all my work on this post:

Adding About page, Contact page, Terms of Conditions & Privacy policy

In this part, we need to add a few more pages. These are pages that you must have. It's not particularly exciting or interesting. But things like the About Us, then Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and a Cookie pop-up policy you must have on your site.

To add a new page, just come up to new and then go to the page. Let's start with the About Us page. Now switch to Thrive and choose what you have in filter blocks. They're all perfect. I added the one from the TEAM section. It is pretty nice and simple. Then obviously, you need to fill it all out with information.

Now, if you don't have a team, don't worry. Just add your writer or editor or your friend. Then you write a bit of yourself, and you might need to point out that you're into writing or research about the niche you are into. Here's how my About page and Contact page looks like. I believe you like it and you can use some ideas.

When you are creating your privacy policy, make sure that you cover all the legal stuff. You have to make sure that your site is legit. Google likes it when you have a proper privacy policy with a cookie policy and terms of conditions. I'm using a service that works excellent when it comes to legal stuff. It makes things easier.

I'm pretty sure it covers you for legal stuff. The service that I'm using for this is Iubenda. For this, you need cash, so you can wait until you get some money coming in. And then go for it. It's good to have this from the beginning, but if you are short with cash, do it later. Just don't forget this legal stuff.

You could find a generic privacy policy out there on the web and just copy and paste that in. But that's a risky move you don't want to do. Not that I've ever heard anyone getting in trouble for not having a privacy policy or having an incorrect privacy policy, but you never know. I'm using this and worry-free across my sites.

When you get inside and put info about your business, make sure to check these boxes:

Amazon affiliation
google-analytics
contact form (first name, last name, email)

After you go through the process, just copy the code for cookie policy, privacy policy and terms and conditions into your site using a custom HTML box. You will get instructions there. Save it, publish it, and you're ready to go.

The main reason for having these documents is that it makes your site look legit, both to visitors and Google. And that's obviously a good thing. Also, it's needed to have Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer in the footer, for example. And at the beginning of every post/page on your affiliate amazon website.

Final things to do on the affiliate marketing website

We've basically finished. The site is looking good, as you can see here. Hopefully, you have a site that you're pleased with, looking good and ready to launch. There are a couple of little things that you might want to do before you launch your affiliate website. The thing is people are going to visit your site from mobiles and tablets as well. And you need to make sure that it looks good on those just as good as it looks on the desktop.

The second thing we need to do is instaling an SEO plug-in and submit a site map to Google. This will help Google crawl the site and give us some information about how well we're doing on the search engines. Alongside that, we're going to instal Google Analytics. That will help you track all the visitors that come to your site and see how many people are you getting. And where they're coming from as well. And the final thing is we're going to check is how fast this site is loading.

Faster the site loads, the better. You'll do better on your search and your rankings if you've got a fast site. And also, just for visitor experience, it's better to have a fast site. We're going to speed up the site.

Make mobile responsive affiliate marketing website

You need to make sure how your website is looking good:

on a mobile phone
on an iPhone
on a tablet

Let's check what it looks like on a mobile. You can see it with Thrive. You can tweak it there and make sure that everything looks good. Just check everything looks good on a mobile, tablet and desktop.

Set Google analytics & other SEO Tasks

The next thing I'm going to do is set up Google Analytics and our SEO stuff. We'll do analytics first because it's a useful thing to do first because it enables you to authenticate your site a lot easier. You will need a Google account to access this. If you haven't got anything set up, you'll be prompted to start creating it. I'll show you what that looks like.

I'll create a new one right now:

create a property
give it a name – Bestpressurewasher.com
set time & currency
select industry
put your URL
copy global site tag
paste it in Thrive analytics & scripts section

And you're ready to go. You can test things out by visiting your site and checking on google analytics real-time overview.

Set Google Search Console – Rankmath SEO plugin

Go into the plug-ins section in WordPress. Then search for RankMath SEO, which is my favourite SEO plug-in. Type that into the keyword section and instal and activate it. We need to connect through to our RankMath account. If you don't have already one, you need to register. Put inside all the info about your business, and you're ready to connect to Google. Inside RankMath, you will set Sitemap as well. There we go. It's all set and done. That's RankMath SEO set up.

Improving Speed of your affiliate marketing website

The final thing is the speed of the site. There's a couple of tools that I use. There's a Google tool, which is called Google page speed. And here, you enter your URL. Then click analyse, and it goes away, giving you a score out of 100 for both the mobile and desktop versions. The closer to a 100 URL, the better. It is notoriously hard to get a good score on this tool. I got 43, and even though it's red, it is not too bad. I've seen a lot lower than that.

On desktop, we're up to 84, which is pretty good. And these things are green. It gives you some tips here in terms of how you can improve the speed. The other tool that I like to test sites on is GTMetrix. This gives you some different information on how long it takes your site to load and your site's performance.

The plug-in that I use to speed up my websites is WPRocket. I recommend this plug-in. I use it on pretty much all of my sites, and it will make a big difference to your site's performance. It's effortless to use. And it doesn't cost too much. After you download and activate it, you will notice significant improvement.

Here's what I got on Google page speed:

desktop (from 84 to 92)
mobile (from 43 to 55)

If I went through and optimise some images, I'd probably get the highest speed. I'm pretty sure the image that I uploaded to the homepage is bigger than it needs to be. But for now, I'm happy with that.

Final word

I hope you've been able to create a fantastic-looking affiliate marketing website. And hope you're now ready to continue working on it and continue adding content. Hopefully, within a few months, some of those affiliate commissions will start to come in.

Make an AFFILIATE MARKETING WEBSITE 2021 with WordPress & Thrive