Starting My First Affiliate Site
I've had previous experience with developing websites, but never tried a living off of them. I have learned about the basic idea of affiliate marketing and online businesses while I was in college. But with the huge work load, I never got around to trying it out. Now that I have graduated, I have started my journey to make this my main income since I can't seem to get a job in programming. (Everyone wants experience but you can't get industry experience when no one will hire you).
Anywho, I have started my site on localhost which means I am developing it locally on my network; it is not published on the internet yet. Reason for this is so I can do different tests with WordPress. This way I can get an idea on how everything works (as I have never used WordPress before). In short, I just don't like doing major changes on live sites. And I also don't have to pay fees for hosting until I'm ready to publish. [I don't plan on using WealthyAffiliate to host my sites.]
I hope to keep a local copy of all my sites on my own computer. Backups are important and I want a copy of all my sites on my own computer. I personally don't trust hosting companies to keep reliable backups. This also means that I will be able to easily move hosting companies as needed.
The content creation is where I am struggling. So far I have a small "About Us" post and a product review post that shows ~15 products. There's a small description with a "pros & cons list" for each product. I just feel I’m not too great of a content writer. I've always developed websites, not blogs. But I feel this will come with time, it's mostly just not knowing what to write about. Like I just wrote this blog quite quickly cause I know what to talk about.
My next content will be the privacy policy. There is a template on Wealthy Affiliate and WordPress also has a template. But since I am terrified of getting caught in some legal non-sense, I want to make sure my privacy policy is accurate and covers the law stuff in my region. This is especially difficult since I'm using WordPress and plugins. If I were coding these sites myself, I would know exactly what is going on with the information, but coding sites just takes too long. WordPress is definitely the better option, just I gotta do some research on what all the features on my site uses. Any advice on this would be a big help.
My second struggle so far has been finding the motivation. I have always aware of the work that is put into creating websites, but I thought everything would be more exciting and fit together better. Then again, I also hate starting things, I much rather maintain. Once I get a site up and running, creating more content is easier to me then starting one. And this is my first affiliate site.
There also a small sense of doubt. Will this really work? Is my effort going to pay off? Can I actually live off of this? Logically, yes it should. I understand how this all works and how it's not a scam, but I'm just a natural skeptic.
But I will keep pushing forward with this.
Recent Comments
3
Welcome to WA. You definitely made the right choice. Everyone is very helpful. My advice is, follow the training step by step and you won't go wrong. Although you may be tech-savvy, following the training is vital to your success. I'm ignorant where technology is concerned but I'm getting along slowly but surely. For your site, you may want to download Grammarly. It's free and it corrects all the grammatical errors. Since you mentioned that you're not comfortable writing. Don't hesitate to ask any questions, you will always get an answer within minutes.
See more comments
Ditto finder's comment. Work through the training and do the tasks as you go. Before you know it, you will have a dozen posts rolling along. This training below is very advanced and I don't recommend that you complete it until you complete the online entrepreneur certification, but it will give you some ideas for organising yourself to make better use of your time, and help with some ideas for content creation. Month 2: Content Efficiency, Engagement, Design, and Intent Unfortunately we cannot stand over you and make you write, you must make time and set your goals according. But we can be here to help and guide you if you get swamped.