As an affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases made on NicheU.com. If you make a purchase through links from this website, we may get a small share of the sale from Amazon and other affiliate programs.
Are you looking for a simple platform to run your business? WordPress is the answer. It is packed with features that will help you grow your affiliate marketing business, and there is a huge community of users who are always happy to help out.
Plus, it is simple to use and is perfect for beginners making it a truly easy way for you to get started with running your business.
So let’s take a dive into WordPress and what makes it so helpful to affiliate marketers so you can start off on the right foot.
Seven Core Parts of a WordPress Site
If you chose to read this you more than likely have little knowledge of WordPress as these are very common parts within it you will be using.
WordPress is a content management system (CMS). That is, it is a system used to manage your website’s content. This is different from a traditional website in that all of your content is stored in a database.
When someone visits your WordPress site, they are viewing the most recent version of your content that has been pulled from the database and displayed on the page.
There are seven core parts of a WordPress site:
Pages
Pages are used for more static content that isn’t time-sensitive. This is where you would put your About, Contact, and Privacy Policy pages. The focus is on providing content that is not going to change often, if at all.
These pages are typically under-utilized on WordPress sites but are crucial for affiliate marketing success as they provide the foundations for a professional-looking website.
Posts
Posts are time-sensitive content that is displayed in chronological order on your blog page. You can think of them as articles or entries in a journal where each is numbered in order.
Posts are typically used for news, stories, or anything else that you want to share with your readers that is timely.
As an affiliate marketer, you will be using posts to share your content with the world. This is where you will write product reviews, share blog posts, and do anything else you want people to experience.
Categories
Categories are used to group similar posts together. For example, if you have a blog about dogs, you might have categories for breeds, obedience training, and so on.
This is helpful for both you and your readers as it organizes your content and makes it easy to find what they are looking for.
Tags
Tags are similar to categories but are more specific. They are used to describe the individual aspects of a post and align content with similar specifics across categories.
For example, if you have a blog post about training your dog to sit, you might use tags for the commands “sit,” “stay,” and “come.”
This is helpful for both you and your readers as it allows you to get granular with your content and makes it easy to find related posts.
Media
Media is where all the images you upload are stored for use on your website from blog posts and featured images to product images within each post.
As an affiliate marketer, you will be using images to help illustrate your content and make it more engaging. This is especially important if you are reviewing products as people like to see what they are getting before they click through to buy.
Comments
Comments are what you see at the bottom of a post where people can leave their thoughts and feedback. Comments are a great way to engage with your readers and build a community around your site.
As an affiliate marketer, you will want to moderate your comments so that only relevant and positive comments are displayed on your site. This is important as you want to give people the best impression of you and your brand.
Permalinks
This is what is used to create the web URL and can include things from the date of publishing to categories and tags.
As an affiliate marketer, you will want to use permalinks that include your keywords so that people can easily find your content when they are searching online. This is especially important if you are ranking in search engines for specific keywords.
My preferred setup for permalinks will just include the post name and skip having all this additional information in the URL.
Themes
Your website appearance is driven by WordPress using themes, themes define things like your website layout, color scheme, and font.
As an affiliate marketer, you will want to choose a theme that is clean and professional-looking as this will help you to be taken seriously by your readers and the companies you are working with.
There are thousands of themes available for WordPress so finding one that is perfect for you may take some time and experimentation.
Plugins
Plugins are pieces of software that extend the functionality of WordPress. There are plugins for everything from social media sharing to security.
As an affiliate marketer, you will want to install plugins that will help you with things like SEO, product reviews, and social media sharing.
These are just some of the basics of WordPress. As you can see, it is a powerful platform that is perfect for running your affiliate marketing business. So what are you waiting for? Get started today!
Four Key Reasons Why Affiliate Marketers Choose to Use WordPress
There are many reasons to choose WordPress as your platform but the four below are keys to why affiliate marketers in particular find it so advantageous.
Massive Support Online
There is a vast array of resources built to help you with your WordPress issues and build. Not only is the online support community large, but it is also incredibly helpful and friendly.
This is important as you will likely have questions as you grow your WordPress site and affiliate marketing business. Knowing that there is a supportive community to help you when you need it is invaluable.
Near Infinite Customizability
As the system is built using themes and plugins you are able to find or have something built that can perform anything you need within the system.
This is great for affiliate marketers as you can find or have built, a wide range of tools to automate various aspects of your business from email capture forms to product review systems.
Most things will already exist within the WordPress ecosystem meaning you do not have to start from scratch unless you choose to.
Easy to Outsource Development
Since there is a large array of support documentation and skilled programmers there is nothing that can’t be done, when it comes to developing for WordPress.
Even if you are not a programmer yourself it is relatively easy to find someone who can help you with coding issues or building custom functionality into your site as you grow. This is important as it allows you to focus on running your business rather than having to learn code yourself.
Choice Of High-Performance Hosting
As WordPress is open-source it is able to be installed anywhere. This gives you a lot of choices when it comes to finding hosting that is right for your business.
You can choose from a wide variety of shared, VPS, and Dedicated hosting options that are all available at different price points.
This is great as it means you can start small and then upgrade your hosting as your traffic and business grows.
So there you have it, four key reasons why affiliate marketers choose to use WordPress as their platform of choice. If you are looking to start an affiliate marketing business then WordPress is a great option for you.
Get started today and see how quickly you can grow your business!
High-Performance Hosting Options
There are really two options for most new affiliate marketers, shared hosting and a managed WordPress host.
I recommend starting with a shared host like SiteGround or Bluehost, then upgrading to a
Two options or most, Managed or shared
Managed Hosting
A managed WordPress host is a bit more expensive but they manage your site for you and keep it running fast. In addition, they tend to have and provide better support than a shared host.
BigScoots
BigScoots is one of the best-performing managed WordPress hosts. They are a bit more expensive but they offer great support and performance.
They also offer a free migration service to help you move your site to their servers.
Kinsta
A strong performer with good features and pricing. Kinsta is a great option for those looking for a managed WordPress host.
They offer free migrations and have a wide variety of plans to choose from.
Rocket.Net
A newer player to the field but with excellent speeds and features. Rocket.Net is a great option for those who want a managed WordPress host.
They offer free migrations and have some of the best customer support in the business.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is when you share a server with other sites, this is the most affordable option but can also be the slowest. Two of my favorites are Host Armada and Siteground as they are both solid performers with good initial discounts.
Host Armada
One of the most solid performance-based shared options available. Quality speed and amazing customer support allow this host to perform above average.
Siteground
A great shared hosting option with some of the best customer support in the business. They are also one of the few companies that do not oversell their servers.
High-Quality Affiliate Marketing Themes
There are loads of themes out there but for most affiliate blogs you want more simplistic and straightforward as they are going to find your content through the search engines and are interested in the information.
You need to avoid things like using comic sans and weird fonts but you don’t need to have the fanciest and most complicated website.
Your job is to provide information, not distract them with visuals hocus-pocus, you want them looking and reading content to convert them with affiliate links.
GeneratePress
One of the best options out there for free, with the addition of their Pro license you get a load of additional ability to customize. This theme was built with speed and full-on customization in mind.
Astra
A great middle-of-the-road theme that is lightweight and fast with a good selection of customization options. Astra has a long history so you know it isn’t going anywhere.
Popcorn
A very new theme aimed at new affiliate marketers with a super fast and efficient setup that can be done in less than 5-10 minutes. This allows you to get set up and focused on content creation quickly.
Carbonate
This theme is built on a Bootstrap 4 framework which makes it very lightweight and fast and unlike others in this list is built without a sidebar so the entire focus will be on the content.
This can help to convert visitors to email subscriptions, information products, and affiliate offers.
High-Quality Affiliate Marketing Plugins
Affiliate marketing requires putting the right product or service in front of the visitor at the right time, there are many plugins available for WordPress but they tend to follow two distinct paths, Amazon or multiple vendor support.
Amazon Affiliate Focused
These plugins focus on using the Amazon API to help you sell products from the highest converting store online at this time. Amazon is a huge player but also the commission has continued to decline year over year.
Amalinks Pro
This plugin is designed to help you increase conversions by adding products in the form of tables, product showcases, buttons, and links. This is a paid plugin only but it does provide support for Non-API use alongside API access.
AAWP
AAWP is an Amazon API-only plugin that allows you to create product links, tables, and various list and product boxes.
The only drawback is that it requires Amazon API access to be used which depends on you making the first three sales before you can even apply.
Any Affiliate Focused
These plugins are built to allow you to integrate links and content from all affiliate programs which makes them tremendously valuable if you are someone who uses multiple programs already or wants to avoid being locked into Amazon alone.
Lasso
This plugin is very powerful, with cool features like out-of-stock awareness and auto-linking of keywords, it is designed to help increase conversions and make the whole process easier.
Affiliate Booster
This is a plugin that comes with a lot of Gutenberg blocks to help you build affiliate websites, featuring things like call to action, pros and cons, and the things needed to make a high-quality appearance.
Affiliatable
This is a unique option as they work on WordPress and non-WordPress sites giving you more flexibility if your platform changes in the future.
Designed to help increase conversions by adding quality displays of products and providing multiple links to places where you can make a purchase.
Final Thoughts on Affiliate Marketing Using WordPress
As you have seen WordPress is perfect for most affiliate marketing strategies and provides a lot of features and flexibility not found elsewhere.
It is important to remember that the focus should be on the content, not the design, you want to provide value first and foremost if you want to build a successful business.
There are many great themes and plugins available to help you get started but don’t get bogged down in the details, just start creating and let the affiliate marketing come naturally.
The most important thing is to get started and WordPress is the perfect platform to do just that. Thanks for reading!
