How to setup an affiliate marketing website to earn $20,000/month
Out of the multiple ways to monetize your website, affiliate marketing gives maximum returns with little investment. The reason why affiliate websites pay more than basic blogs which monetise through ads is simple. While a click can earn you $0.01 – $2, an affiliate sale can get you $5 – $200 as a commission.
To earn a decent amount of income with CPC ads, you need a lot of traffic. On the other hand, earning a good income through affiliate marketing websites is possible, even if the traffic is not that high. This case study will help you get an idea of how to setup an affiliate marketing website.
Recommended reading: 10 Affiliate programs for bloggers and influencers
Building an affiliate site is easy, but it requires consistent efforts to turn it into a successful affiliate website. There are some successful niche websites on the internet which earn $ 5000 – $ 25000 per month from affiliate sales.
You need to build your website around products which convert and have high sales as well as commissions. Therefore, building an affiliate site from scratch also requires some research before starting the website.
There are several other factors involved in making your affiliate website a success. We will discuss these factors through this case study of an amazing affiliate website started by Adam which earns more than $20,000 per month through affiliate sales.
How to setup an affiliate marketing website – Adam’s journey:
The initial journey of Adam into the world of online earning was not that easy. He worked on many websites but all the websites failed miserably.
Instead of getting demoralised, Adam learned from his mistakes in each of these websites and then started thisiswhyimbroke.com in 2011. Adam used to follow many affiliate websites and found many of these websites were not user-friendly. He wanted to give a better experience to the users with his product selection and website design.
Adam wanted to start a business which required very little investment and overhead costs. He also wanted to be his own boss which we all dream of. So, he started something of his own on the internet using the little resources that he had.
What is this affiliate marketing website about?
Thisiswhyimbroke.com is a website featuring unique, interesting and quirky products listed on marketplaces like Amazon, Ebay and other retailers, which are hard to find anywhere else. The website is designed in a way, that the reader is hooked to the website and spends a lot of time browsing the unique products. He started this website as a hobby, but slowly upscaled it to a big venture with 6 employees.
Hosting
Adam purchased the domain and hosting for the website and did not invest anything else in the website initially.
The initial phase
Adam had the basic knowledge of how affiliate sites work before he started this website. He was using and observing these websites for a decade. Therefore, he could later devote all his time and energy into developing an affiliate website of his own. He had many ideas he wanted to implement and could only do that by starting something of his own. He used to work for 60 hours a week initially to grow the website before he switched to a 9-5 routine.
Adam avoided any unnecessary expenditure on the websites which were not necessary till the time they became a necessity. This kept the investment in the website to the minimum and they turned profitable quickly.
Progressing towards the next phase
He slowly started hiring more people to handle different areas of the website as it grew bigger. Once the website was designed and was slowly attracting readers, they invested in Reddit and Stumpleupon paid ads for more visibility.
From a small affiliate website to a big affiliate business earning more than $20,000 a month:
There are a few secret strategies shared by Adam which separate his website from an average affiliate website. You can also start a successful affiliate website using these simple, yet effective strategies.
1. A unique name for the website with a cool concept
Not all affiliate sites become successful for a reason and that reason is that they market themselves as a plain money-earning businesses. Another reason is that all affiliate websites tend to sell the same products over and over again.
Adam broke this monotony by choosing a cool name for his website which naturally attracts visitors. He also focussed on products which were quirky and unique and had the potential to engage the readers. This natural interest made the website go viral very quickly and increased sales significantly.
2. Great website design with limited plugins and easy user-interface
This strategy made Adam’s website look and feel different from other websites. Instead of making a regular post by post affiliate website with links at the bottom, he shared enticing pictures of the products on the homepage itself with infinite scroll. This helped in making the readers get to the product immediately without having to read lengthy posts about the product.
The website does not have any articles at all. However, it has short and attractive product descriptions beneath each picture, which serve as information for the readers. He categorized the website into 4-5 broad categories. Then, he linked the categories to the top menu for simplifying the site navigation. Adam limited the use of plugins and created a minimal backend to support the website.
3. Kept initial investments to a minimum
The most common mistakes that new websites commit is that they spend large chunks of their money on unnecessary expenses like building an extravagant office space or hiring more people than necessary for the job.
Adam focussed only on the website and its basic requirements initially and worked from his home office. It is only after the website became popular and started earning money that he hired two people. With more earnings came more employees. They eventually shifted to a basic office and warehouse after they started selling their own line of products.
4. Intelligent product placement and social sharing buttons
Adam used an intelligent product placement technique to make the users get shocked and browse the website for a longer period of time. One example was using a picture of a teddy bear next to a chainsaw to bring a shock factor to the product placement.
He changes the placement every few days to generate curiosity and to keep the site look fresh. He placed the social sharing buttons and the save button strategically for the readers to share the product easily on social platforms.
5. Using a converting CTA (Call-to-action) button
One thing that most people do not realise is that when it comes to affiliate websites, the Call-to-action button is one of the most powerful factors. It takes a lot of proper research and trial to find one. If your website is great, but your CTA button doesn’t look attractive to convert well, the website won’t be successful.
Another common mistake is using a “Buy Now” CTA button which makes the website come across as money-minded. The common perception of people is that they should not be forced or told to do something. Adam found a solution to this problem by simply adding a big and attractive “Check it out” button for his readers to decide for themselves.
This made his website look authentic and genuine, while earning commissions from any purchases made by readers who went from his site to the marketplace.
Not listing all the products as affiliate products
Another strategy unique to this website is that, it did not list all products with affiliate links and CTA buttons.
It featured some unique futuristic products, which no other company sells, and general products, which are interesting enough to match the website’s theme. This strategy made the users trust Adam for not only sharing links which make money for him, but also sharing other interesting finds from the internet just for everyone’s entertainment and creating value.
Adam typically adds around 3 new products on the website every day.
Used link exchange network for generating traffic and paid ads for visibility
Adam shared on Reddit, that one of the best converting traffic sources of his website is a small link exchange network called Knowd. It does not bring many users but those who come often buy products from the website.
Adam’s website did not have any articles or content apart from the pictures with their short descriptions. So, he did not rely on search engine traffic a lot. That is why they used paid Reddit and Stumpleupon ads which made them go viral very quickly.
Major traffic source:
Adam uses the power of social media sharing to get a decent number of users to his website. His content is so engaging, that the readers share the products on social media and the chain continues.
They invested a very little amount on Reddit and Stumbleupon ads. This helped them gain initial visibility across the web, as some users shared their ads on the first page of Reddit.
One of the goals of Adam is to rank the website on search engines as well.
The major traffic demographics for this website are college students, who frequent the website mostly to look for unique products.
Results:
The results of Adam’s strategies are amazing. The average traffic to this website is around 2.8 million visitors/month. The average income is $20,000/ month through affiliate commissions. About 66% of his total income comes from Amazon and the rest of it comes from other marketplaces like Ebay. He also earns a little from Google Adsense.
The social media profiles of the website are also quite popular because of social sharing by the users. The Facebook page of this website boasts around 300,000 followers and other social media profiles are also very famous.
The estimated worth of this website is more than 5 Million dollars currently.
Failures/lessons learnt:
There are some things that could make this website even more popular and could have enhanced the user experience. Some of the leanings from this website include:
1. Adam shared that his inexperience in running a huge website posed many issues. For example, he did not know that his small web server wouldn’t be able to handle huge amount of traffic. Due to this reason, his server gave out many times and the website was down temporarily, until he fixed the issue and moved to a dedicated server.
2. Many people tried to steal the website idea or tried to take the ownership by citing that their website was very similar to this website. Adam simply took down the photos which had issues.
3. One thing that could have enhanced the traffic and sales of the website was maintaining the blog regularly. While this website does have a blog, it is not updated regularly. If it had been updated regularly, it could have brought search engine traffic as well.
4. Email marketing is another untapped resource for this website which can lead to more conversions easily.
So these are some of the basic strategies which Adam used to take thisiswhyimbroke.com to new levels of success in the world of affiliate marketing. Affiliate websites are a great way to earn passive income and you can also create a great website with just a little investment to earn a great living.
Have you tried using affiliate marketing to monetize your blog? How was your experience?
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