How to Start an Affiliate Business: First Steps

Do you want to know how can you build a successful online business? You only need two things: focus and perseverance. Focus, because staring anything new is overwhelming by itself. Soon you realize you need a content strategy, social media accounts, an email service, an SEO strategy and lots more. If you lose focus, you lose everything. Perseverance, because this will be a long, long journey. If quitting is an option, you probably shouldn’t start at all. If you’re ready to build something amazing and long-lasting, this guide will take you through the process of getting started step-by-step.

Before you start, every great tutorial should start with a list of what you need. The things we believe you need are:

• To-Do List: In the Information Age, distractions are not something we can completely avoid, but we can learn how to deal with them as they come. Next time you sit down to work, have a notebook for any ideas or thoughts. Mark them as they come and continue working on your business. I personally use Google Keep for its simplicity.
• Calendar: A calendar will help you stay on course. Whether you are scheduling your website content, or go through your distraction list, you should have a place where all your Must-dos are on a single page. Remember to leave some room to maneuver your tasks. You know, in case that little thing called Life changes your daily plans. Google Calendar is the best-known calendar.

1. Essential Components of Starting an Affiliate Marketing Business

There are many factors involved in learning how to build an online business. Here are some of the crucial ones:

• Choose a niche
• Build a website
• Create quality content
• Promote

It’s not bad advice. You’ve probably heard it before as many other beginner affiliates. But, alone, it doesn’t actually help you get started, does it? That’s why the rest of this guide will focus on affiliate business essentials: planning, building a website and writing content. Taking control of these will help you schedule the rest for later.

1a. Building Your Affiliate Business: Planning
As I said, essentials. Don’t stress over coming up with the next billion-dollar niche, don’t look at what everybody is doing, just answer me two questions:

• What do you want to create content about?
• What problem in that area can you solve? What do you want to create content about?

What’s the first thing that pops into your head? It can be anything. People online earn from showing exercise routines, explaining football tactics, fixing stuff, playing video games (new and old), talking about relationships, rare skin diseases and everything in between. I once stumbled across a YouTube channel with millions of views showing nothing but hours of burning fireplace videos. So, let your mind go wild.

Action Point:

• Set a timer on your phone for 5 minutes
• Brainstorm 3 topics you love
• Go to findaforum.net, or reddit.com, and find a like-minded community (if there’s an audience, there are buyers).

1b. What problem in that area can you solve?
Here’s one piece of advice that in the long-run will help your business grow the most: focus on solving problems, not selling products. Sales will come naturally. Focus on solving problems, not selling products. Sales will come naturally.

To find out what are the common problems in your niche, use a search engine. Enter site:, URL of the niche community and some relative keywords.

Action Point:

• Go to a forum keyword finder
• Add keywords or even simple verbs that are closely related to problem solving, like ‘fix’, ‘how to’, ‘problem’. In a couple of minutes you’ll start to see a pattern.
• As soon as you do, narrow the keywords a bit and write down 3 problems you can solve (or would like to solve).

2. Building Your Affiliate Business: Setting Up

Building your affiliate marketing business

We have talked about creating a website numerous times on Online Affiliate World. That’s why I won’t get into a lot of detail on it in this guide. But if you want to know more about creating a website, check out our Wix vs WordPress comparison.

It’s essential that you don’t get stuck on searching for a perfect brand name. There is no need to stress. Firstly, your content is much more important. And, even if you later come up with a better name, you can later rebrand. You may not know this, but OnlineAffiliateWorld was once PokerAffiliateWorld. Our rebrand the name helped us grow, and reposition ourselves within a changing affiliate marketplace.

Action Point:

• Visit GoDaddy.com or another domain provider like radicenter.ee, and try out a few domain names
• (Optional) Ask your friends and family to help you pick the best one
• Go to Wix.com and pick out a plan. You will have a website in minutes and be able to start working on your website content.

3. Building Your Affiliate Business: Content Creation

Affiliate marketing content creation

In this part, I will help you create some content to get your website ready to drive traffic to. You don’t need a year’s worth of content, just a few articles for someone to read and share.
If you don’t feel confident creating content, you can leave it to freelancers on Fiverr or Upwork. Still, brainstorming content ideas will help you figure out the direction in which you want your website to go.

Come back to the list of problems in your niche. Now, all you need is to come up with solutions. Here a few ideas:

• 9 Ways to [niche problem]
• Are you tired of [niche problem]? Here’s how you can fix it.
• Why [niche solution] will stop you [problem]
• In-depth guide to [problem] the right way.
• New research: [niche problem] solved!

Go back to your community forum. See whether these problems have been solved.

If they HAVE, mark the solutions. Are they helpful? Is there another way you can look at it? Research is really important. If all you do, is repeat what others have said, people won’t be thrilled to read your content.
If they HAVEN’T, you have found a gold mine. Help them and they will flock to your website, trust you, interact and share your content.

4. Maintaining Your Affiliate Business

Maintaining your affiliate business

Hey, great news! If you followed through, you have just launched your affiliate business. But there’s still a lot of to be done. I don’t want you to lose focus, so here’s a plan for the next few days to keep you on course.

Day 1 (Today)
If you can, try to find time to write at least 300 words on your first article. You launched your business, you’re excited. Use the momentum you have created to get more done.

Day 2
Plan your website. Write down 3 things about what you want it to grow into and plan the way to reach it. Perhaps you will need an ‘About Me’ page? Also, write 200 words of content.

Day 3
Go to your OnlineAffiliateWorld affiliate dashboard and pick a few programs you can promote. Get tracking URL’s and banner ads. Write 400 words of content.

Day 4
Find 3-4 websites that are in your niche. What do they talk about? What channels do they use to distribute content? Write 500 words of content.

Day 5
Create social profiles for your website. You can use the same that your competitors use. But not more than 3. Remember, you will need time to manage it. Write 500 words of content.

Day 6
If you already have some content to share, do it. Ask your friends to share it, too. Create a Google Analytics account.

From the moment you start sharing your content, make sure to regularly (at least once a week) produce great content. We haven’t talked here about keywords, paid ads, networking and similar stuff for a reason. Focus and perseverance. Remember?

If you want your website to grow, focus on content. That’s all. The time for other things will come. We hope this guide was helpful but if there is anything you want to ask, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Source  Saulius Griskenas