How To Start Affiliate Marketing | Building A Profitable Content Site

If you're feeling overwhelmed and just want to take action building a profitable niche website, this guide is for you.

Below I'll walk you through a super-simple site set up if you want to create a money-generating niche site- no hidden costs.

My sites bring in over $65,000 a month:

Now that you know I'm real, on to the guide...

The strategy I chose to make money online is producing long form, product-focused content that ranks in search engines and monetizing it with affiliate links and display ads. 

10,000 Easy To Rank Money Keywords

If you want my 10,000 strong list of low-competition product niches, enter your email and click the 'send it' button below. It's an ultra-useful resource that powerfully combines with my content site walk-through below.

Monetizing These Niches

To monetize these niches, the most popular affiliate program is probably Amazon Associates, but I also use Wayfair, Walmart, Jet and some other lesser-known affiliate programs. 

This is the basic recipe for SEO affiliate success:

Long-form Content + Affiliate Links and/or Display Ads = Organic Search Traffic = Passive Recurring Commissions.

Essentially, long-form content ensures that you thoroughly cover a particular topic- this helps it rank in Google.

As well, longer content naturally incorporates greater amounts of different keywords. A study conducted by serpIQ demonstrates that higher ranking content is longer content: 

Use the navigation below to jump to a relevant section- or just keep on reading to get into my niche marketing starter guide.

Let's use the tennis niche as an example to see how you can leverage lengthy content to passively market a niche site with organic traffic.

If you're in the tennis niche, and you want to write an authoritative article on "tennis elbow", a 1,500+ word article has a greater chance incorporating the following different keywords and themes than a 500 word article: 

By publishing long-form content, you naturally incorporate a variety of important and relevant 'tennis elbow' themes.

Google loves seeing this- and they will reward you with laser-targeted organic traffic that is likely to convert on your offer, whether that's a display ad or an affiliate offer.

In this case, imagine linking to a tennis elbow remedy on Amazon like this tennis elbow sleeve: 

It can be as simple as that. If you focus on producing high-quality, value-packed, informational posts that solve searchers problems, you can create a 'passive income' business. 

The biggest mistake I see novice site builders make is that they publish weak content. If you trust me on this and execute on creating at least above-average, longform content you will be miles ahead of most SEO-focused affiliate/display ad marketers.

Now, it will take some work. But your effort will not go unrewarded- it is your competitive advantage over lazy Internet Marketers.

Below, I'm going to layout a basic formula for choosing a niche (with an option for those who just can't pick one) and a beginner's content strategy to get your affiliate site up and running with quality content that converts. 

1. Choosing A Niche

This is a huge stumbling block for a lot of people. I've personally agonized over niche selection- it's not fun feeling stuck. And there are a ton of resources online that endlessly explore it- perhaps you reached this page Googling for a solution.

*Make sure you download my list of 10,000 product niches- it's great for brainstorming low-competition niches!

A good example of this is The Wire Cutter and Sweet Home, its sister site, both of which were purchased by the New York Times.  

The first strategy...

A. Go Specific

It can be agonizing scrutinizing niches, trying to figure out if they're worthwhile. Below I've assembled a list of strategies to use to pick a niche.

Keep in mind that in order to make money in a niche, there HAS to be products you can promote.

If you absolutely can't commit to a niche, I have a solution for you.

It goes against the grain of what I generally recommend site owners do, but it is the primary way that I'm currently making money online.

What is this solution?

Create a general product review site.

This means that you'll build a site like TheWireCutter.

All you'll do is publish review content, focusing on any and every product you can find, or settling into a broad category niche like Health products or Industrial products, for example.

Below is a screenshot of all Amazon product categories. You can also check out this page here. 

Simply select one of Amazon's categories and write affiliate content like "The 10 Best Kitchen Mixers" if you're in the Home niche. Or "The 5 Best Rollators" if you're in the Medical niche.

You get the idea. Every post is for a separate product type- top 10 lists, top 5 lists, etc.

Monetizing Right Away With A General Review Site?

When I started my own niche site, I monetized right away (i.e. inserted affiliate links).

I didn't notice any ill effects from having done that- but then again, I can't really test for that at this point. 

If you choose a general sub niche like "Health" or "Technology", instead of a general site that reviews both of those categories and more, you might want to publish some informational content first before going inserting affiliate links.

A pure, general review site- you can't really do much informational content. You might as well just try monetizing right off the bat. 

2. Create A WordPress Site

Now that you have a niche selected, you'll need a domain name and a hosting service. Be sure to read my domain buying guide to avoid selecting a domain you regret. 

I'll keep this super-simple because there are a ton of resources online for how to do this. Basically, you'll need to buy a domain name (I use GoDaddy for this) and then choose a hosting plan. I'd recommend using SiteGround and going with a shared hosting plan to start.  

Once you have your domain name and hosting purchased, you can contact SiteGround support for help configuring everything- tell them that you just bought a domain from Godaddy and that you want to install WordPress.org for your site. 

They'll walk you through configuring everything so that you have WordPress installed as your Content Management System for your domain. 

The video below provides a detailed walkthrough of how to install and use WordPress to create a website.  

3. Write 10 Informational Articles

As I mentioned above, informational content answers 'how, what, why' user questions, while affiliate content is usually product reviews.  

Continuing with the tennis niche idea, check out this LongTailPro keyword research below. Regarding informational content, I see some interesting angles you can take leveraging these keyword searches.

Perhaps an article that covers the 10 best places to get tennis live scores, a post that explores the way the top 20 tennis pros hold their rackets, the 20 coolest tennis courts in the world, the 20 best tennis coaches in the United States, how to play beach tennis, etc.   

You should write these articles yourself- especially if you're new to niche marketing. Eventually you can look to outsource, but it's invaluable to learn to get your hands dirty at the start. 

Organize Your Content With A Mind Map

Use a freemium tool like MindMeister to organize your content. If you're a novice, you might be inclined to skip over this section- but it's really crucial.

By using a mind map, you can sketch out your site structure and organize your content strategy. It's also a great niche validation strategy- before you dive into a niche, try outlining all of the different topics.

You'll begin to immerse yourself in the niche and gain perspective on the content you'll need to become an authority on. Perhaps you decide to ditch the niche, go broader, or go smaller.

Whatever you decide, by taking an hour to strategically analyze the different topics and subtopics of your niche you'll have a clearer understanding of the undertaking. You'll know what type of content you'll need to publish and even get some bearing on the team of writers you'll target recruiting.

Mind-Mapping The Tennis Niche

As you can see, I broke the Tennis niche down into a bunch of different topics and sub topics. You don't even need to do any advanced keyword research. I just browsed different tennis websites to see how they organized their content. 

For example, using ESPN.com, I found that they broke Tennis down like this: 

They have content buckets for Scores, Schedule, Rankings, Players, Tournaments and Tickets. Since they're more of a news site and don't do affiliate content, I Googled "tennis equipment" and found Tennis-Warehouse.com.

Their sidebar has an extensive breakdown of different equipment categories:

I can't stress how important it is to consciously organize your site's content. Besides the user-experience, niche validation and content creation benefits, it'll also prevent burn-out. If you're in a broad niche like this it can feel overwhelming to cover such a massive scope.

It could be that you focus on just two topics to start. Say you really want to dive into Tennis History on the Informational side of things and Equipment on the Affiliate side of things. This helps to organize your content production and gives your site a stronger focus, raising its topic relevancy in the eyes of the search engines. 

And then, once you've published 10 or 20 articles on Tennis History, you can strategically add another Topic to your site- perhaps profiling Tennis Coaches. 

Mind maps are your friend- so create a free account and go to town! Take it from me, you can spare yourself an immense amount of aggravation if you take the time to do a mind map before you get into a niche.

You'll decrease your risk of failure and increase chances of success by strategically envisioning your niche market. 

4. Join the Amazon Associates program

You'll want to apply to the Amazon Associates program once you have a website and some content published. It's safer to apply for acceptance once you have a legitimate-looking presence online.

In my experience, and from what I've read, it's pretty easy to get into the affiliate program. 

Amazon has also made it simple to create affiliate links. The video below walks you through how to use the Amazon Site Stripe. It enables you to visit Amazon product pages, once you're logged into your Amazon Associates account, and click to create text and image affiliate links.  

Don't Get Banned

One important note- you'll want to remain in compliance with the Amazon Associates program. Read this post from Authority Hacker- they outline how to ensure you don't get banned.

Some common infractions include publishing Amazon customer ratings, prices, or images from their site. These Amazon product characteristics are all subject to change.

So if you are telling your readers that something costs $19.99 on Monday, but Amazon changes it to $15.99 on Friday, you are misrepresenting the price. The Site Stripe feature does let you pull in Amazon pricing information- so if you want to publish real-time pricing, it is possible. 

Other Affiliate Programs

Depending on the niche you choose, or if you have decided to go general, you can investigate other affiliate programs. I recently began profiling affiliate networks- you can check out my affiliate program profiles. 

Join some of the affiliate networks below and search within them to discover relevant products (digital and physical) for your niche:

• Rakuten Affiliate Network (my review)
• ShareASale (my review)
• CJ Affiliate by Conversant 
• ClickBank 
• eBay Partner Network

5. Write 10 'Affiliate' Articles

Now for the fun part. Again, this will depend on the niche you select, but sticking with the tennis niche, it's pretty simple. Check out my Amazon keyword research tutorial to go more in depth. 

I used ScientificSeller, input the keyword "tennis", and found a bunch of tennis-related products:

The second advantage is that by listing out 5, 10, or even 15 options, it ensures you can get a pretty large word count.

Say you have 200 word blurbs for each product, a 500 word introduction, and a 1,000 word piece of supplementary content, that's 2,000 words if you choose to curate 5 products.

I always like to throw in 'supplementary content' at the end. An example of this might be, if we are doing a "tennis ball hopper" review post, 'How Do Tennis Ball Hoppers Work', or 'How To Use A Tennis Ball Hopper'. 

Emulate Successful Review Formats

For product review inspiration, check out some of the leading product review sites like TheWireCutter or OutdoorGearLab.

While OutdoorGearLab has a lot of fancy formatting going on, if you just focus on emulating their quality standards and on-page organization, you're off to an amazing start.  

In terms of organizing your content within WordPress- use a WordPress Category to mark your affiliate reviews as "Reviews".

That's one way of organizing your content. Or if you want to organize it by type of product- say you are doing individual reviews of tennis rackets, you could have a Category for "Tennis Rackets", "Tennis Balls" and "Tennis Shoes". 

The video below shows you how to use WordPress categories. Structuring your site in an easy-to-understand way helps users navigate it and helps Google crawl and discover your content.

5a. 10 Twitter Comments A Day

I'm tacking this one on because I think it's an awesome strategy for both new and seasoned site owners. 

The idea is to make 10 authentic, non-promotional comments a day on Twitter targeting people interested in your niche. 

I wrote a full post documenting my 10 comment strategy here.

If you're building a new site, this is especially rewarding. You can get traffic day one of your site launch. If you're depending on Google, it can take months before you even sniff an organic visitor.

If you already have a site, this could be a solid traffic and link acquisition strategy. There are infinite opportunities available for motivated marketers who are willing to invest in selfless interactions.  

Check out this comment I made below- it was liked by none other than Gary Vaynerchuk on day 2 of my challenge. To call me a Gary Vaynerchuk 'homer' would be to undersell my fandom- so for me, this was super exciting. 

Twitter provides incredibly precise targeting capabilities- your audience is there. Search them out with keyword searches and hashtags.

Connect them with your content by engaging with them.

I'm not talking about spamming them with your link- engage with them. Check out their content and say something reflective that demonstrates you've actually consumed and appreciated it. 

Believe me, this sort of engagement cuts through the noise- you'll be surprised the sort of early traction your site can achieve with some social media elbow grease.

Next Steps

If you've followed the guide up to this point, you should have at minimum 20 posts that are at least 1,500 words each. It should have taken you 2-3 months to get all of this done. 

I would conservatively expect that you begin making affiliate commissions at least a month after your first piece of affiliate content is produced.

This gives it enough time, especially if you're a brand new site, to have been discovered and properly ranked by Google for various keyword terms. 

What should you do next?

There's a million directions to go. 

Produce More Content

This goes without saying. During the course of your research and writing you've probably seen a number of interesting avenues you can go. Perhaps you write a mega-post on the 20 different tennis grip types and the tennis stars that use them.

Maybe you do more affiliate reviews, writing content that focuses on brand terms- like the 20 best Wilson tennis rackets.

There's likely a lot more content you can create and now that you've gotten a feel for doing it, you're likely eager to get started. 

Outsource Writing & Formatting

Writing and formatting can be tedious chores. One way to scale your site more quickly is to outsource tasks to inexpensive freelancers.

You can read my guide on how I hire writers from UpWork to get a sense of how I do it. Or how I use iWriter and HireWriters for cheap content:

Yet, because it was competing in a very low competition niche and it had a decent word count, it had great rankings, but was under-optimized. 

So I went back into all of my old content and fixed ugly formatting, spammy sales language, inserted informative videos, and boosted calls-to-action.

Anything and everything to improve user experience while simultaneously enhancing its conversion and revenue potential.  

Different Content For Different Channels

One epiphany I had came after reading Jon Dykstra's post on creating content for different traffic channels. 

For example, a 5,000 word review post on the best Wilson tennis rackets is really optimized for search engine traffic. People on social media generally aren't clicking to read affiliate content- with rare exceptions. But for SEO- a 5,000 word review post is awesome.

On the other hand, if you have some social media traction, a photo-gallery of the top 20 tennis meltdowns of all time might not get any search engine traffic, but could be an amazing draw for people on Twitter and Facebook. 

So when you are sketching out your content calendar- one consideration is the type of traffic your content is targeting. You might draw people into your site's ecosystem with the tennis star meltdown post, but convert them to sales on the tennis racket affiliate post. 

Email Lists

You should begin capturing emails as soon as your site launches- unless you're in the general niche. If you're a 'generalist' like I am, it's really difficult to capture emails because your site has no true focus. 

You can market to them- send them links to your content or even affiliate offers (every so often). This direct access overrides your dependence on traffic acquisition platforms like Google Search or social media. 

Conclusion

If you use my guide to start a site, let me know by emailing me at ryan@nichefacts.com.

Keep in mind that this guide isn't comprehensive. It's meant to provide a solid foundation for creating a profitable niche site if you're new to internet marketing. 

Especially if you're skeptical that you can make money online.