Affiliate Bootcamp - Getting Your Business Rolling

byPaulREvans57

1.4K followers

Updated 5 years ago

I have just completed part 1 of the Affiliate Bootcamp. Finally, I feel I'm getting somewhere, now that I've built my affiliate Wordpress site, and my writing is improving. I used the free twenty-seventeen theme, which will do until the money starts rolling in and I can afford to start paying for services and themes.

Getting started

This is the hardest part, though Kyle makes this easy. In this lesson, Kyle explains where he will be leading you.

Of course, before you get started you will have to sign-up for a free account and a sub-domain on the SiteRubix.com domain. That's real easy to do. If you are reading this and you don't have an account, then you will be invited to join today.

Now that you have an account, Kyle will walk you through the benefits (earning potential) of being an affiliate for Wealthy Affiliate.

Choosing Your Direction

The next lesson - , Kyle explains a key incredient for becoming a successful affiliate, and that is, understanding who your target audience is going to be. For me, I chose the baby boomer generation. This is something close to my heart. There are millions of people either retired or just coming up to retirement who have insufficient pension arrangements. I'm looking at affiliate marketing, and specifically, Wealthy Affiliate as my "Exit Strategy!"

Now that you have decided on your target audience and how you are going to get their, you can now move on to the next lesson.

Building Your Website

Hooray! Now we get on to some practical stuff. Let's build a website!

First we are instructed to click on the Site Builder link as followers:

On the next window, choose the "free domain" button, decide on a name for your niche and enter in the "Choose a domain name for your website", and give your website a title. Once you have done this you have to decide on a theme for your website. There are thousands to choose from. At this point just scroll through them and pick one you like. You can always change your theme later. Once all these steps have been completed click on the big green button "Click Here to Build This Site!" I've chosen the Hiero theme.

Then if by magic, the robots behind the scenes will build your site for you.

Don't worry about changing your admin password if you don't want to. Most people, myself included, login to the admin portal of my website via the Wealthy Affiliate Site Manager, in the same way as you accessed the Site Builder. If you click on your Website URL, there for all the world to see is your new website, in the above example: affiliateboss.siterubix.com.

That wraps up this lesson.

A Quick Look Around & Activate Your Plugins

The next lesson is all about getting started with the aministration of your website. You'll learn how to navigate around the various features. You'll be shown how to delete the default pages and posts, and an introduction to the Wordpress plugins and themes.

There is no need to rush this stage and you can go back and repeat any lesson. You can delete your SiteRubix sub-domain, and start all over again. Once you are feeling comfortable with Wordpress you can then move on.

Kyle goes over the initial Wordpress plugins, and how to activate them. There are thousands of plugins, some good and some not so good. Some only work with certain themes. To start with there are only two to be concerned with.

Getting Your Website Ready for SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), this is the one everyone is talking about. In Kyle's own words "SEO is not rocket science". Kyle explains this subject in very easy terms and it is very simple. The main points to remember are:

1. Initial Website SEO Set-Up
2. Keyword Selection
3. Content Length
4. Content Structure
5. Engagement
6. Social Elements
7. Time (Authority)

That's all there is to it. You will be told repeatedly, content is king! If you can write good content, and it is not difficult. With planning, this is far easier than you may think. I will write another blog on my thoughts on content writing and how I tackle an article, of any length. Planning removes the fear!

Content Framework

Now that you have initialised your website for SEO it's time to get into the content. For this Wealthy Affiliate again, makes this easy for you.

Click on the Site Content from the left-hand Websites menu.

Once you have clicked on Site Content, you will be taken to the Site Content dashboard.

This is a blogger's dream. I use it all the time now. It has all the writer's tools, all in one place. It has the usual spelling and grammar checker, as one would expect. Some of the other features are; the ability to post directly to your website, duplicate content checker, SEO analysis checks, and content structure analysis.

Here Kyle kicks the content off nice and easy with walking you through your first two pages; the About Me page and the Privacy Policy. There's a recent addition for affiliates, and that is the Affiliate Disclosure. And yes, there are templates all ready and waiting for you!

Now that you have written your first content, Kyle steps you through creating the Menus to link to your new pages.

Understanding Keyword Research

The art of finding keywords that people are using to find answers to their questions is demonstrated. It is important to remember that as affiliates, that our content has to deliver what our target audience is searching for. If the search engine detect that your content dosn't deliver real value for those keywords, then the search engines will not rank you. As ranking high is the key to us, as affiliates, to earning money, then it makes sense to do the best we can of writing meaningful content.

Wealthy Affiliate has one of the best tools around for keyword research, and that is Jaaxy! It is a staple tool that we as members of WA use extensively.

Not all of these features are available for the free membership, as you would expect. But on going 'Premium' all these doors are opened. You do get a basic keyword search in Jaaxy.

The three key take-aways here are that your keyword must have some traffic, it must have a low Quoted Search Result (QSR), and the keyword must make sense.

Creating Awesome Reviews

Kyle wraps up this phase with helping you write your first affiliate review. As this is the Bootcamp your review will be on Wealthy Affiliate.

This lesson, Kyle talks of the CIAO Principles of good content writing; Captivating, it has to be interesting, othwerwise your audience will leave and you Bounce Rate will be high. Search Engines don't like this.

The next principle is that your content should be Informative. This goes without saying really, otherwise, what's the point?

If we are being informative then we also have to be Accurate. If you are not sure then find out, don't just bluff your way through. Do proper reasearch if you don't already know your subject.

The final principle, had me questioning this, as it is, be Opinionated, ouch! I thought about this some more. It is right. If you can force yourself to have a strong opinion then you will open yourself up to engagement, people will react to you more. they will agree with you or, more likely, dissagree with you. A point to bear in mind, search engines, again like posts that engage with their audience. It shows that that article has a strong connection with that keyword. Your ranking will strengthen.

There you have it. A very strong introduction in phase one "Getting Your Business Rolling".