How to Create a Blog for Affiliate Marketing

You don’t need to be well-versed in web development, blogging, and affiliate marketing to create a blog for affiliate marketing. 

All you need is this simple yet comprehensive guide with actionable steps.

Why consider starting an affiliate marketing blog? Because the majority of businesses start turning a profit only after three years of hard work. That’s if they are lucky. Otherwise, they could fall into 35.9% of the businesses that fail.

However, in affiliate marketing, you can start earning today and continue earning for an extended period. Sounds great? Let’s get to it.

What Is Affiliate Marketing 

Affiliate marketing is simply a type of  marketing in which you market or promote other people’s products or services and earn commissions for successful sales.

That definition might confuse you and trigger the question, “If this is what affiliate marketers do, what sets them apart from advertising professionals?”

Affiliate marketers are different from advertising professionals in these ways:

1. How They Are Paid 

Affiliate marketers are paid a commission for every successful sale. Advertisers are paid for every advertisement, whether a successful sale is made or not.

2. How They Work

Affiliate marketers promote others’ businesses using unique affiliate links. On the other hand, advertising professionals might work for the business owner or as part of an advertising agency.

Pro Tip: There are different forms of affiliate marketing. The one we talk about in this article is the type that involves promoting people’s products and services on your blog.

In that form of affiliate marketing, you write blog posts about tutorials, reviews, and guides on a topic in your niche. In your posts, you’ll include affiliate links so users get directed to the best products and services related to that topic. 

How Much Do Affiliate Blogs Make

The amount of money you can make as an affiliate blogger depends on several factors such as:

• Your chosen niche
• The amount of traffic your blog gets
• Commission rates

Nevertheless, as of 2024, majority of affiliate marketers can earn up to $80,000 yearly. 

How to Create a Blog for Affiliate Marketing (5 Steps)

Let’s get to business: the five steps to create a blog for affiliate marketing.

Step 1: Find a Profitable Niche

This is an essential step. You can’t create a successful blog, whether for affiliate marketing or not, without determining the blog’s niche in the first place.

A niche is a particular topic in an industry. You create almost all your blog content around that topic.

Are all niches equal? Niches are different. That’s why choosing a profitable niche for your affiliate marketing blog is crucial.

Here are some tips to do that:

1. Consider How Competitive the Niche Is 

Start your affiliate marketing journey in low-competitive niches or even subniches. Why? Because they’re beginner-friendly.

2. Choose a Niche You’re Passionate About

Passion is the powerful thing that will keep you on track. When you’re passionate about something, you’ll never think of giving it up. You’ll always work hard to counteract challenges and obstacles.

3. Choose a Niche You’re Well-Versed in

Suppose I am to start an affiliate marketing blog, I’ll choose one of these three niches:

• Blogging
• SEO
• Content Writing

Why? Because I’ve been in the blogging industry for more than three years. So that will make my research way faster.

Step 2: Know Your Target Audience 

Suppose you’re to convince some people to buy a product because you believe it’s the best type; how do you do that if you don’t know the kind of people and their tastes? That’s the same thing that happens when you start an affiliate marketing blog without knowing your target audience.

How do you know your target audience before creating the blog?

• Target a specific location or two.
• Choose an audience of a particular profession.
• Know through which channels your audience will get to your blog — like search engines or social media.

Step 3: Create a Professional Blog

First, is a blog good for affiliate marketing? Yes, it’s one of the best affiliate marketing channels because it allows more transparency. Moreover, promoting products and services on a blog is much easier as all you’ll have to do is insert your affiliate links.

You buy a domain, pay for a hosting company, set up your blogging platform, and, poof, you have a blog. Or do you?

There are about 600 million blogs on the Internet. How do you make yours stand out? By creating it differently and professionally.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Buy a Meaningful Domain Name

Your domain name is the principal part of all your posts and pages’ URLs. For example, our domain name is web1expert dot com (web1expert.com/blog).

Always choose a meaningful domain name broadly related to your chosen niche. Why “broadly related”? Because you absolutely don’t name your site’s domain “Ahrefs is the best SEO tool dot com” (ahrefsisthebestbloggingtool.com) when your niche is “blogging tools.” Do you? That’s unprofessional.

Suppose I choose aliyuusman dot xyz (aliyuusman.xyz) as my domain name. And someone chooses bestbloggingtools dot com (bestbloggingtools.com) as theirs. Which one will people trust more? The latter, for sure.

2. Choose a Reliable Hosting Company

There are many hosting companies. How do you tell a reliable one? Go for a widely used, transparent, and trustworthy hosting company.

To know if a company has those properties, ask yourself 

• How many people use it?
• Does this hosting company open up about its location?
• What are the genuine views of its users about its reliability?

Let’s address something: Do you think of creating a free blog? Don’t do that. 

Some platforms allow you to create a free blog without buying a domain name or hosting service. These free blogs lack some features, like

• Flexibility 
• Plugins — which are essential to every blog

Therefore, it’s better to buy a domain name and hosting service to start your affiliate marketing journey with a professional blog.

3. Choose a Blogging Platform

There are several blogging platforms to choose from. Some examples include:

• WordPress
• Wix
• Weebly

Which platform will I recommend? WordPress. 43.1% of websites are built on the platform. Why does almost everyone love using it? According to Forbes, WordPress is the best blogging platform in 2024 for those who want complete control over their sites.

4. Have a Well-Designed Blog

People judge a book by its cover. So, after buying your domain name and hosting service, it’s crucial to design the blog, hire someone to do it for you or install a premium theme if you use WordPress.

A professionally designed blog is mobile-friendly and has a good user interface.

Step 4: Find Affiliate Marketing Clients

Now that you’ve created the blog, what’s the next thing? Finding affiliate marketing clients.

There are many ways to find clients for your affiliate marketing blog. Let’s have a look at three of them:

• Join the Amazon Affiliate Program.
• Use social media to reach out to potential clients.
• Use advertisements on social platforms to attract clients.

Step 5: Craft Epic Affiliate Marketing Blog Posts

We’re at the significant step: creating affiliate marketing blog posts.

Remember, your blog posts are what your audience will read. So, no matter how professional your blog is, if the posts can’t provide value and solutions to readers, no one will read them.

How do you write epic affiliate marketing blog posts?

1. Write About Topics People Search for

You can use other channels like social media to get your audience to read your posts. But search engines constitute a free channel for beginners to get readers. So, use a keyword research tool to understand which topics are worth going after.

2. Know the Products or Services You’ll Promote

In blogging, we have a simple rule, “Write about what you know.” 

Know the products or services you’ll promote before writing anything about them. To do this, you can use any of these three methods:

• Buy different kinds of the products or services and test them to know which one is truly the best.
• Ask users how good it is compared to others.
• Conduct a thorough study to understand how it works, its advantages over other kinds, etc. 

3. Place the Affiliate Links Appropriately

Beginners make different mistakes in link insertion within their affiliate blog posts. They

• Insert links at the conclusion or places no one will notice
• Use an improper anchor text
• Insert links in a way that disrupts the content’s flow

Avoid using any of those poor link-insertion methods.

4. Always Write With Content Writing Best Practices in Mind

Whether you are a beginner in blog post writing or an expert, these tips will help you create epic affiliate marketing posts:

• Write error-free posts by reviewing and editing.
• Ensure the on-page SEO of the post is correct.
• Write as you speak — doing so humanizes the post and engages readers.
• Use headings and subheadings to segment the post.
• Provide in-depth and precise posts.

5. Can Affiliate Marketers Use AI Writing Tools

They can. But for research purposes only. I use AI to speed up my research but never to write blog posts.

As an affiliate marketer, write your posts yourself or hire content writers. Using AI to write affiliate posts is unprofessional. An AI writing tool

• Can’t resonate with readers as you do
• Doesn’t know how good a product or service is — it only knows what it’s been trained on
• Doesn’t exactly write in the same way humans do

Let’s Wrap up

You’ve created the blog and started affiliate marketing on it. Now, what’s next? Let’s check some affiliate marketing best practices:

• Don’t review products or services you don’t use or know (I repeat this).
• Always write to help readers, not just your pocket 😉.
• Be transparent and let your audience know about your affiliate links.
• Stay updated about affiliate marketing by continuously learning about trends and best practices.

Have a happy affiliate marketing journey!

Have you anything to ask me? 

About Me

Aliyu Usman is a web content writer with three years of experience. He writes about blogging, digital marketing, tech, and how-tos.

He’s the head of content at News Pulse. Follow him on Facebook.