When you’re getting started as an affiliate marketer, you need to think about what kind of site will play to your strengths. If you’re a good writer then you should use that by creating articles or blog posts that your audience will enjoy reading; that’s where your site’s value will lie. If words aren't really your thing, you can use your skills as a designer or simply work hard to find useful data from around the web and present it in a user-friendly format.
Today, we’re going to look at 5 types of affiliate marketing website so you can get a better picture of what your options are.
Blog Site
The simplest format is a blog. You can fill it with any kind of content you like; articles, reviews, opinion pieces, guest posts or whatever else you come up with.
A great example of this is:
You understand in an instant what the site is all about and you’re also not overwhelmed with options. Some blogs put way too much content and navigation can almost feel like an IQ test. But with Baby Gear Labs, you have reviews, how-to’s and some basic essentials. This means they cover all kinds of audience; whether it’s people who really want to dig deep into their choices, or those who just want a simple solution.
Baby Gear really go that extra mile by actually buying every product that they review. Now, obviously this is a lot of work and cost but the payoff is extreme credibility and great content. This just isn’t possible for a lot of blogs, either because of the cost, or the time involved or simply the niche they are in. However, the thing to take away from this is that customers value credibility.
If you want to learn more, here’s a detailed video on how to set up an affiliate blog site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4esAzpTjhQ&t=25s
E-commerce site
The selling point with an e-commerce site is typically a nice clean design. You’ll need to have some content, of course, just like on a blog site, but you will heavily feature products on the page.
The logic behind this is that you can be found in long tail searches. For a lot of SEO, you are benefitting from certain general keywords. But long tail searches are when people are looking for a very specific product, where they’ll probably type the brand and the item and maybe even a code. Since far less sites will contain these specific words, if you feature that product, you’re very likely to come up as a result.
It’s a bit like betting on a long shot; there’s less chance people will make that search but if they do, you’re likely to make a sale from it.
Here we have:
http://www.hipsterbeardclub.com/
There’s good, simple design and the products are broken up into logical categories. You can see there’s a small blog section, with just a handful of posts. This is probably all they need to get in enough keywords and bring traffic. They require a plugin, to let you pull in all of the various featured products, but this is fairly simple to set up, even for those of us without hipster beards.
Here’s one of my videos on how to set one up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZgjyMqi8R8
Review site
You’ll have noticed by now that these first three are really just variations on a theme. They all have some blog elements to them but it’s just a matter of where you want to focus. Review is great because it is one of the most common words people will type when looking to chose a product.
You give your audience plenty of options so they can pick for themselves, looking at the criteria that suit them, whether that’s price, quality, functionality or anything else.
Some sites are very niche but you don’t need to be.
The site https://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/ has a great, broad theme which allows them to get a wide range of traffic. Their reviews are only a few sentences but the value is mostly in having everything all in one place. They have collected all the products and simply let the customer choose.
Or you can go the other direction and be very specific. Here’s a site I set up called http://bestwpthemes.info/ that reviews the various WordPress themes out there.
If a review site sounds like you’re thing, here’s a video on how to set one up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgFBLGkD2cE&feature=youtu.be
Voucher Code sites
This is a very competitive niche because it’s purpose is very, very focussed on offering deals. There’s no real value other than that, like you get from the content on a blog or review site.
Here you can see one of the big players in the UK:
https://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/
They have some deals of the day and the rest is really just a case of putting the vouchers into useful categories. To get regular visitors, you need to make sure that the codes are up to date and still working.
The sale is tracked either by a typical affiliate link on your site, or by tracking the unique code that you offer. The codes themselves can either be agreed directly with the merchants or you can source the existing ones from around the web.
So, if you want to get ranked, there’s no point competing with the big, generic ones like above, you’re much better off setting up something that caters to a niche.
Comparison site
Comparison sites walk the line between reviews and vouchers. You’ll get some traffic who are looking for ideas about what to buy, and you’ll also get those who know what they want and are simply hunting for the best deal.
You’ll need a plugin to run them, one like this
This will let you pull in the data from around the web and show useful extras like availability, rather than just price alone.
A big one in the UK is:
http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/
You can fill up a basket with your regular shopping, and then see which of the major supermarkets offers it at the best price. Then you make an order to have it delivered.
Once again, finding a niche will be the key to success here as there are a lot of established players. And you’ll still need some blog content, partly for the SEO but also to add some value and to help push sales.
