What software do I need to build an affiliate site?

I took a call the other day from someone who knew what they wanted to do (i.e. get started in affiliate marketing) but wasn't sure about where to begin. So here's a primer article to start off with and kick the blog into action.

Firstly you have to know what you want to build and why you want to do it.

"Giving up the dayjob" is a good reason but it's not good enough. You need to define your purpose much more narrowly.

The networks like affiliatewindow are full of merchants looking for affiliates but starting here is a mistake. The offers here are generally lowball and come with ridiculous cookie conditions that mean you won't get credited for sales made out of the 30 day period or worse - any repeat sales.

If you look at the more independent networks that specialise in helping affiliates like Moreniche you'll find much better offers for you to promote but maybe these products don't sit well with you ethically? Weight loss and health related products have some of the highest commission payouts in the business but they are not to everyones taste that's for sure.

So deciding what it is you want to work with is your first step. I'm a keen poker player so poker is a no brainer for me, you have to decide what sit's comfortably on your shoulders.

Trying to promote products like TV's and and other gadgets is fraught with the limitations of working within the confines of the merchants program and a lot of your effort will go to waste so I highly recommend you think about promoting something that is going to give you a high ROI for your time.

So once you've decided what you want to promote - how do you go about building your first site?

In my opinion the affiliates choice is Joomla. This is the most flexible and customisable CMS. If you combine joomla with rockettheme you will get off to a very quick start and have a quick foundation from which to work.

But what if you have limited HTML skills, have no knowledge of PHP/Mysql and are technically challenged?

Well this is the rub isn't it.

A good affiliate is technically proficient. It's what separates the men from the boys. Being good at affiliating means that you will have good HTML and PHP skills. If you don't have this then you will have to start a bit lower down the ladder.

When people with no skills talk about how easy it is to make money as an affiliate they don't understand that there is a myriad of skills involved to do it successfully. Not only do you need web savvy skills to build good looking sites, but you also need creative writing ability and self discipline - these are essential traits for the successful affiliate. If you can't get out of bed in the morning and discipline yourself to work properly - and that doesn't mean browsing the day away on your favourite forums then you'll never make it as an affiliate anyway.

If you have limited TECH skills then your next best choice is wordpress. Wordpress is as simple to set up as it get's and there are many customisable themes. You'll need to learn how CSS works to be able to customise it and make it your own but many nice sites are made out of wordpress and with a little effort you should have something nice with a few weeks work.

If you don't know anything at all then get yourself a copy of Sitesell this will let you get a website up and running in no time at all whilst you learn the ropes and figure out what you should be doing as an affiliate - which essentially is marketing. If you spend all of your time making sites and none doing the traffic building bit then you are going to fail anyway.

So there you have it. Coders should use Joomla, beginners prepared to learn and intermediates should use wordpress and novices should start with sitesell

What are you waiting for? Go build it!

Storebuilder Blog - Site Building