Affiliate Marketing Tutorial - Step 5: How to Build an Affiliate Marketing Website that Sells

Your website is the hub of your affiliate marketing business.  Without it, you don’t have a business.  With your website being so important, it is essential that you take some time considering not only what it looks like and how visitors navigate it but what you call it.  You need a domain name. 

Before you can have a website, you have to have a website name, right?  Your website name is your domain name.  It looks like this internetbasedfamily.com or in the rock climbing example from earlier tutorials it might look like this:  rockclimbingwithkids.com or climbingaustralia.com. 

There are a few basic rules to follow when you choose your domain name: 

• Make the name short

• Make the name memorable

• Make the name easy to spell

• Make the name unique but not silly

• Make the name descriptive. 

Registering your domain name.  Once you have come up with a few potential domain names you will want to make sure that they are available.  Any domain name registration service will let you search availability for free.  If all of your potential names are available you may want to consider registering all of them, that way your competition won’t have access to them. 

Consider registering your domain name with your hosting service.  If you register with one company and then want to transfer the domain to a different hosting company you may have to pay extra fees.   

Now it’s time to design your website. 

There are a few important factors to keep in mind when designing your website:

• Your website must be appealing and easy to use. 

• Your website must be easy to navigate.  The three click rule says that all pages must be accessible by your visitor in no more than three clicks. 

• A website must be easy to read, which means no flashing graphics or pictured backgrounds.

• If you use banner advertisements, which you likely will because your affiliate programs provide them, try to keep them to a minimum.  Banner ads don’t generally sell as well as text links and they can give a visitor the wrong impression about your website. 

• Your website must provide your visitors with valuable information.

• Make it easy for people to read your website by using standard Ariel or Verdana font in black. 

• Place a form on your website to make it easy for customers to contact you.  Always reply in a prompt and friendly manner.

• Have a survey page where people can leave comments about your website.  

Next tutorial will look at the number one tool to make your affiliate business profitable.

Next in our tutorial: --> Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate Marketing Content