Introduction

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money on the Internet. In a nutshell, affiliate marketing involves referring people to purchase the products of other companies, and earning a commission in return for your referral - you are basically the middleman.

Many successful affiliates are able to quit their jobs and earn a living purely from the internet, by using their websites to promote the products of other companies and never having to deal with the hassle of actually having to deal with customer problems, delivery of products, etc.

In order to promote products successfully as an affiliate, you will need a website to operate as a platform on which to place the advertising material of companies who are going to pay you commissions to promote their products.

Starting a website is easier (and cheaper) than you may think. There are basically three components required: 

 

Step 1: GETTING A DOMAIN NAME

Your domain name is the name of the website that visitors will type in to get to your site, e.g. www.flightnetwork.co.za.

 you can check the availability of your chosen domain name by by entering .co.za as a web address in your browser, clicking on "Whois" on the left side of the screen, and typing your chosen domain name into the box that opens (type: YOURWEBSITESNAME.co.za).

Once you have confirmed the availability of your chosen domain name, you must get the domain name hosted with a website design company, after which you will be able to register the domain. Afrihost is an affordable and reliable local web hosting company - you can visit their site and sign up for a hosting plan by clicking HERE.

Once you have the site hosted on your hosting company's servers, ask your hosting company for the domain name servers of your domain (If you host with Afrihost, they will be dns1.afrihost.com and dns2.afrihost.com). Once you have obtained these from them, you are ready to register your domain and become the official owner of it.

Now, to register your domain, go back to the Domain Name Registrar by entering .co.za as a web address in your browser. Click on "Application form" on the left hand side of your screen, and copy and paste the form into the text of a blank e-mail. Insert all of your details onto the form, and where it asks you for your Primary and Secondary server FQDN, insert the domain name servers that you got from your hosting company.

Once the form is completed, e-mail the form to coza-admin@co.za.

 

Step 2: The Website Design

Many sites on the internet offer free website templates, which are basically blank websites which you can edit using a web page editing program. Most computers with Windows already have a basic, easy-to-use web page editor on then in the form of Microsoft Frontpage.

A good site for downloading free web templates is http://www.oswd.org/. They have a large selection of high-quality free templates to download.

Experiment with editing the templates and adding any content you wish to place on the site.

Alternatively, you can hire a web design company to design the website for you professionally. There are many web design companies around - try to pick one that is reputable and affordable: R400-R700 per page of your site is the ordinary going rate.

Once the site is ready with content having been placed on it, contact your website hosting company to inform them that your website is ready to be go live on the internet, and they will send you instructions on how to load your site or ask you to forward the site to them to upload.

 

Step 3: Become an Affiliate

Now, to make money from your site...

The best way to get advertising content for your site is by joining an affiliate network which provides you with a large selection of material which you can place on your site. The large affiliate networks will track the visitors from your site to see whether they purchase products that you advertise, bill the client for all referrals that you make, and pay you accordingly at the end of the month.

Offerforge is by far the largest and most reputable affiliate network in South Africa. You can access the sign-up form for their affiliate program by clicking HERE and completing your details.

Once you have signed up with Offerforge, you will have to wait a day or two for your account to be activated, after which you will be able to log into their website to get access to advertising material to place on your site, and track your commission earned.

 

Step 4: Promoting Your Site

Now that your site is live and your content and advertising material is on it, you need visitors to visit your site. The best kind of visitors are those who you don't have to pay for to visit your site - those referred to your site through search engine results and by other websites. Submit your website to Google, the world's largest search engine, by clicking HERE.

You should also contact other website owners and ask them to place a link to your site on theirs. Sometimes they will do this without requiring you to link back to them, but some website owners may require a link back. Only link back to them if they have a quality site which would be useful to your site's visitors.

You can also pay for visitors to visit your site by advertising it through the Google AdWords program. This involves you paying a certain amount to Google AdWords for each visitor that they refer to you. To sign up for Google AdWords, click HERE.

Happy Earning!!!