Internet marketers are banking lot of money using affiliate marketing strategies. There are several ways to make money using affiliate marketing approach. Also there are several ways to build affiliate websites. Building a super affiliate website which attracts more visitors hence customers, is a crucial part of this make money strategy.
In this tutorial, you will learn “How to Build an Amazon Affiliate Store Using WordPress Yourself”. I will let you go step-by-step with the process until you produce a really high quality website. I will also discuss “adding amazon product in a post”, “how to insert amazon affiliate link into WordPress” and some practical tips on building your WordPress blog an amazon affiliate selling machine.
I personally answer questions in the comments section. So never hesitate to ask, if you have any question in mind.
Step-1: Register a Domain Name
Domain registration is a critical part of the website setup. This is the same thing which you normally use to browse your website. So domain name (YourWebsiteName.com) should be selected properly before you design your website. When choosing and registering your domain name, consider the following things.
- Self explanatory
- Brand-able
- As much short as possible
- Attractive
There are several registrars who sell domain names for very cheap rates like $10 to $35 per annum. My favorite registrar is Godaddy, therefore you can surely choose your favorite one. Some registrars even offer a free value added service called Whois Privacy. So it all depends on your needs and budget.
Step-2: Setting up Web Hosting
A web hosting is normally a disk space on a remote computer called web server. These servers and their networks are built in a way to remain online. This makes sure that users can access them via their browsers any time during 24 hours a day. Here are some features, which should be available in a good web host.
- Modern servers with good hardware resources like RAMs, Hard Drives and CPU speed.
- Good and redundant infrastructure built for seamless experience.
- Backup power solution which may include Power Generators, UPSs and Solar Power Solutions.
- Building security.
- Protection from weather.
- Speedy internet connections with multiple lines.
- Data backup system to backup data in case of crashes.
- Flexible payment plans.
There are 100s of web hosts available in the world, but few of them match your requirement. For you convenience, I have listed few of most redundant and flexible web hosts on the earth. I personally like HostGator but you can surely use any of the available web hosts in the list.
Step-3: Installing WordPress on Your Server
WordPress is a free and open source software available in the market. This makes live much easier, when you want to start your own website. People who like to do things themselves, love WordPress. I personally fall in love with WordPress around 10 years back and the love is going stronger and stronger every day. Here are the few things, which make WordPress different from other open source software in the market.
- Very much user friendly.
- Built using PHP (a programming language, known by most programmers in the world).
- Huge developer community available in the world to support you where you stuck.
- Lot of info available online to let you get help.
- Quick start.
- Secure more than exaggeration.
- Thousands of Plugins and Themes available in the market.
Installing WordPress
WordPress is really easy to install on your server. Whether you are a newbie or a seasonal developer, it let’s you get started really quickly. I have already written article on “How to install WordPress on your server“. So you can refer to the tutorial and complete STEP 3.
Step-4: Signing up for Amazon Associates
Amazon associates is an affiliate program created by well known online store amazon.com. This program let’s you make money while referring customers to your amazon, using your special affiliate link. Amazon associates program is free to join for people living on the globe.
How Amazon Associates Work
Amazon associates program let’s you join their program and login to your dashboard to see reports and create your affiliate products to products or categories available on the store. Once you promote your affiliate link to blogs or other places on the internet, people referred from your affiliate links can buy from amazon.com. Once the complete their purchase, you get commission from total sales up to 4% of total purchase amount. So let’s get started and join Amazon Associates Program. This program will guide you with the process itself.
Step-5: Installing WordPress Template
WordPress templates are great way to skin your WordPress website. It not only makes the look and feel different yet it also makes new functionality available which extents original WordPress features. For amazon affiliate store, I would like to recommend you to buy some premium WordPress theme. This theme/template can extend the functionality of WordPress and include ecommerce feature as well. I have published a complete tutorial on “How to Install WordPress Template Step-by-Step“. So you can take benefit of that tutorial and install your WordPress theme.
Choosing a WordPress Template for Amazon Affiliate Store
There are lot of WordPress templates available in the market, which let’s you make your affiliate store linked to Amazon.com. I would like to suggest you few WordPress templates which are best to use with amazon affiliate store. These themes will let you do the following tasks accomplished.
- Convert WordPress blogging software to a fully equipped ecommerce store.
- WooCommerce integration allows you to build all ecommerce features. and these themes are compatible with wooCommerce plugin for WordPress.
- Link products in your store to amazon associates program.
- Beautify your amazon affiliate store.
You will need few plugins to install on your WordPress website to extend its core functionality. I have written a brief guide to install WordPress plugins on your server.
Step-6: Installing and Setting up Necessary WordPress Plugins.
There are some WordPress plugins available in the market, which should be preferred to use on every WordPress website. Fortunately, these plugins fulfill general requirements of a website. Here are some plugins and their uses. You may choose for your amazon.com affiliate store website.
- WooCommerce is an ecommerce store plugin for WordPress. It transforms a conventional WordPress CMS/blog website to a fully equipped ecommerce store.
- Yoast SEO Allows you to optimize your website for better search engine rankings. This plugin allows you to configure several options to let your website suck more traffic from search engines.
- Sassy Social Share It allows you to embed several social icons to let users of your website to share your articles/pages/products on their social networks. This plugin is helpful to make your website more popular, hence a good traffic is acquired. You can see this plugin is work on wpbloghelp.com as well. on top of this blog post and on bottom of the page, there are several social icons available to let you share this article to your social network.
Step-7: Configuring WordPress for Amazon Associates
Setting up WordPress theme is normally an easy task. Most of the WordPress themes in the market, which allow amazon products, do have a setting page. This type of page let you configure your amazon affiliate ID once. This affiliate ID will allow the WordPress theme to automatically create your affiliate links when you will add a product.
Why to Use Amazon Affiliate ID in a Product Post?
The answer is simple, these amazon affiliate product IDs help amazon track the account, who helped them get things sold. This ID is included in the affiliate product URL. Once the user clicks on this URL, it carries forward the affiliate ID to the amazon affiliate store website. This way, they are able to track the affiliate sales and credit affiliate commissions to appropriate affiliate marketer.
Step-8: Adding Your First Amazon Affiliate Product
Adding affiliate products to your website are super easy. It normally uses the same method which is used while adding the products to your WooCommerce store. The appropriate Amazon affiliate theme will automatically change “Add to Cart” button to “Buy at Amazon” or something like that.
Conclusion
WordPress is great way to design beautiful and fully functional websites. It let’s you create different type of websites as per your needs. WordPress themes and plugins allow you to extend its core functionality and enable new functions in your WordPress website.
Creating amazon affiliate website using WordPress is lot easier than other open-source frameworks in the market. If you could choose an appropriate web template for your WP installation, it can support WooCommerce shopping cart and amazon affiliate products as well.
