Gadooney.com

This one is just for the WordPress crowd, and takes all of two seconds to implement, but one thing to be aware of with WordPress is that a few of its out-of-the-box features need tweaking, if you’re using it for affiliate purposes (or if you’re simply looking to get as much search engine traffic as possible).

The most important one, which I’ve simply gotten into the habit of changing every single time I launch a new site using WordPress, is the permalinks setting. Permalinks are basically the permanent URLS for your pages that WordPress automatically generates, whenever you create a new post or page. The default setting for these look like this:

http://www.bluewidgets.com/?p=192

That works fine as a URL link, as far as functionality goes, but it doesn’t help us from a SEO perspective. If you can, you should always try to incorporate the keywords you’d like to rank well for in search results into the actual URL. If you’re writing good content and picking good titles, the easiest way to do that is to simply use the title of the content in your URL. So if I were writing a page about “Blue widgets”, and it was titled “Blue widgets”, I’d prefer that the URL for that page look something like this:

http://www.bluewidgets.com/bluewidgets

instead of

http://www.bluewidgets.com/?p=192

Happily, there’s an incredibly simply solution, if you’re using WordPress. Just login and click on “Options” in the dashboard. In the sub-tabs you’ll see tabs for “General”, “Writing”, “Discussion”, etc. Click on the “Permalinks” tab there.

Once you’re on the Permalink tabs, you’ll see some choices there, with radio buttons. “Default” should already be selected. Click on the option below it, which is “Date and name based”. Hit the “Update Permalink Structure” button in the bottom right and voila, you’re done. All of those links that were previously not helping you in the eyes of search engines (the http://www.bluewidgets.com/?p=192 ones) have magically been converted into links with your juicy titles incorporated into the URL (now looking like http://www.bluewidgets.com/bluewidgets).

There’s pretty much no reason to ever use the ugly default permalinks settings, so this is one of those things that I have trained myself to always change, right after getting WordPress set up on a new site.

Once you’ve registered a domain name and have a Web hosting package set up, the obvious question is, umm, what do you do now? Good question.

As I’ve mentioned before, I highly, highly recommend that you use WordPress when starting out. It’s free, simple to install, and provides you with a browser-based way of publishing content to your site. If your Web host provides WordPress installations for you, you may have it already loaded and ready to go. If not, the Wordpress site provides the free download and all sorts of installation instructions to get you up and running.
If you don’t use WordPress or some similar content management system, then you’ll be managing and uploading content to your site the old-fashioned way, creating HTML pages and then uploading them to your site via FTP. Like many old-fashioned ways of doing things, this works extremely well and there’s nothing at all wrong with managing your site this way. The reason I shy away from it is that it means you have to either have a good working knowledge of HTML or are willing to spend the time learning it (which is beyond the scope of what I’m going to cover here).

Many die-hard coders would claim that I’m doing you a disservice by pushing you towards WordPress and enabling you to avoid having to learn HTML. And they’re exactly right. In a perfect world where time is unlimited, we’d not only learn to code HTML by hand in Notepad but also know how to churn butter in case the local grocery store burned down. Unfortunately, in the real world, sometimes we have to cut corners. While it’s optimal to be a HTML guru, you can run a highly successful affiliate website these days with little to no HTML knowledge.

If you’re going for the quick and easy route I’m recommending, all you really need to manage your first website is WordPress and a FTP program to edit permissions on certain files in WordPress, as well as to possibly install WordPress itself to your server. I’m a big fan of FileZilla, which is a free open-source FTP application that is really easy to use. If you already have a FTP client installed, cool, use that one (they’re all pretty similar for what we need them to do), but if you don’t have one at all, I’d go with FileZilla.

And that’s really all you need to get up and running, as far as programs or applications on your end of things to manage your website.

Good question.

There are basically three major ways that affiliates monetize traffic on their sites. I’ll quickly cover them, then ramble on with a few caveats and disclaimers.

1) Pay-per-click: You’re likely familiar with the Google text ads that you see on sites everywhere. What you may not realize is that the owner of the site that displays them gets paid a certain amount each time those ads are clicked. That’s all it takes to get paid, just a simple click. It doesn’t matter whether or not the surfer who clicked the ad goes on to buy something or not, doesn’t matter how long they stay on the site that is linked to the ad, all that matters is if the link is clicked. This is called a pay-per-click (PPC) model, and while programs other than Google Adsense offer it, the vast majority of affiliates who want to use this type of program use Google Adsense.

2) Traditional affiliate programs: These are programs that pay affiliates either a flat fee or a percentage of the total amount purchased when a surfer clicks through a link to their affiliate program and then buys something. In this model, the surfer must whip out their credit card and buy something. If you get 162,182,192 clicks but no one buys anything, you make absolutely nothing.

3) Leads and quotes: These programs are common in the car buying and online colleges arena, where you typically are paid a flat fee for everyone you refer who fills out a Web survey page to get a car quote, a catalog of college classes, etc. While you don’t get paid for each click, surfers also don’t have to physically buy anything for you to make money.

(You might be wondering why I’m not mentioning the old-fashioned method of selling advertising space on your blog, either through direct contact with potential advertisers or through a program like Text Link Ads. Yes, indeed, that’s another viable way that people make money from websites, but it’s a different beast from affiliate marketing in many ways. it’s also a case of getting the cart before the horse, as you need to build traffic first before you can make any real money using those methods.)So that’s the nuts-and-bolts details, as far as the major ways to make money as an affiliate. The real question, then, is which one is right for you?

Stay tuned for an in-depth look at each of the options above, as far as the thought process you should run through when deciding what type of affiliate model you’d like to target on your site.

One of the common myths that still abounds is that setting up your own Web hosting is difficult, expensive, and requires a ginormous amount of technical know-how. The reality is that getting your own Web host is simple, cheap, and requires only the technical know-how of clicking a mouse.

Technically speaking, you can actually make money via affiliate marketing with just a free Blogger account, so you don’t even have to pony up cash for a hosting package. I highly recommend that you don’t go the free route, though, as hosting is dirt cheap and it’ll open up many nice options for you that you won’t have with a free service like Blogger.

I recommend keeping it simple when you get a hosting package, and to not get bogged down in details. Hosting is becoming more and more commoditized as time goes by, and these days there’s very little difference in most packages, and they’re generally in the same ballpark price range. Don’t worry about how many gigs of traffic you get and how many users that is and how much storage you have, etc. Pretty much any entry-level package you get will be just fine your needs when starting out and you can always upgrade your package later if you need to.

Here are a few things to look for when selecting a Web host:1) Unlimited domains: Most hosts offer you the ability to put an unlimited number of domains on your hosting account at no extra charge. This is a good thing, as you’ll be creating a number of sites over time and you want to have room to add them to your hosting package at no extra cost. It’s fine if they’re just name-based domains and not unlimited domains with a unique IP address.

2) Support for WordPress and mySQL: I’ll touch on this more later, but the best way to get started with affiliate marketing is to use the WordPress blogging software as a content management system (CMS). When I say “support for WordPress” I basically mean that it’s a nice bonus if you can find a host like HostGator that offers an add-on package that makes implementing WordPress very simple. You can install WordPress on just about any hosting package that offers you mySQL databases, but some hosts make it very easy to install.As far as mySQL databases, look for a host that provides you with unlimited ones, and preferably one that allows you to create the databases yourself. This is pretty common and isn’t hard to find. If they insist on creating the databases on their end, that’s cool and not a deal-breaker, it just adds an element of complexity as far as contacting customer support and waiting for them to create the database. Wordpress requires a mySQL database to work, so that’s why it’s listed here as something to look for.

3) Good customer service: Pretty self-explanatory, but you don’t want to be waiting for days to get a domain added to your hosting account.

4) Shared hosting is fine. When you have an empire of affiliate sites and ten billion unique users each day, then yeah, you need to go the dedicated server route. But for most of us normal affiliates, shared hosting is perfectly fine.

And that’s pretty much it. For comparison sakes, my hosting package at the moment is for 25 gigs of data transfer, 100000 MB of storage, and unlimited domains and mySQL databases, for $12/month. Anything in that ballpark is more than enough to serve your needs.

Below are some hosts that offer good entry-level packages that I’ve used in the past and have had good experiences with, that offer all of the above goodies:

HostGator

AN Hosting

1&1

GoDaddy.com

HostRocket.Com

Here’s a dirty little secret. In this day and age, if you’re starting a website for affiliate purposes the domain name you pick is nearly meaningless. Yes, in some very rare cases you can do much research and unearth a peach of a domain name, but it’s almost always wasted time.

A “perfect” domain name would be one that has your key topic in it (or, in affiliate marketing parlance, your “targeted keyword”), as well as one that gets type-in traffic and is memorable. So let’s say you wanted to promote affiliate programs for cigars, and somehow, in a magical world, no one had registered cigar.com. That’s a perfect domain name for you, as it has your targeted keyword plus people simply type in “cigar.com” into a search engine if they’re looking for a cigar but have no idea who sells them online, just like horny monkeys type in “sex.com” for the same reason.

So that’s the theory of the perfect domain name. Now let’s bust it to pieces.

Search engines continue to move away from attaching any value to terms in your actual domain name (such as ranking you higher on search terms for “widgets” if your domain name is “justgreatwidgets.com”), because even a retarded chimp can game that system.

People like to pretend that understanding the inner workings of search engines are some secret, alchemical art, but in many cases it’s common sense. If you rank pages higher if they have the keyword in their domain and suddenly see an onslaught of domains and pages like “http://www.widgets-buy-online-great-super-widget.com/widgets.html”, well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that you should move the other direction, and stop rewarding spammy pages like that.

(Sure, argue with me all you want that Google still gives you a boost if your domain name has your targeted keyword in it, but I’ll bet you a box of doughnuts that over time that will steadily dwindle to nothing, if it isn’t already there.)

As far as great type-in domains and/or memorable ones, well, this one is obvious, as they’re pretty much all taken. The only ones not taken are too obscure to do you any good. Sure, midgetgoatsex.com is still available, but what in the world are you going to do with that? Umm, forget I asked.

People waste far too much time when getting started with affiliate sites searching for that perfect domain name. The reality, too, is that you’ll crank out mnay sites over your affiliate career, and it’s often better to launch new ones as stand-alone domains. If you’re about to start a new site and are struggling for a domain name, don’t sweat it. Just pick something. It matters very, very little.

Gadooney.com is a good example of the above. When faced with possibilities like “makemoneyfromaffiliatemarketing.com” or something equally silly, I couldn’t help but throw up in my mouth a little. So I picked a random nickname for a coworker that developed from Jebus only knows what dumb inside joke we were riffing on at the time. Within ten minutes from the decision to launch this site I had the domain registered, added to my hosting account, and was up and running.

Don’t get bogged down on choosing the “right” domain name. There is no “right” domain name. Grab something and get to work.

Unlike many endeavors, affiliate marketing often rewards those who simply leap in, especially when starting out. Yes, indeed, there are many, many things you don’t know. Tons of things. You’re a virtual babe in the affiliate marketing world, pink-skinned and ignorant.

But don’t let those facts reduce you to inaction. Don’t sit around and say “Yeah, I’d like to do that affiliate stuff but I need to do more research first, and I need to find the perfect market and domain name, and build a snazzy, well-designed website, and and and…”

Bullshit. Just dive in. Trust me on this one. It’ll make more sense when we’re farther down the road, but there are many reasons why it’s best to simply leap in at first, with the knowledge that you’ll be tweaking, optimizing, and adding content as time goes by.

Regardless of what affiliate market you end up targeting, your success is almost always going to hinge on getting “good” search engine traffic. The sooner you get content out there, the faster you see returns. That means you need to get started. Now. Today. Not next week when you have all of your ducks in a row. Now.