Jul 17, 2009 - Development    12 Comments

Create An Affiliate Website In 15 Minutes

So you want to quickly knock up an affiliate website? Here’s how I managed to create one within 15 minutes… that’s less time than it took to write this post!

1. BUY A DOMAIN
You could spend hours searching for a generic domain that’s either free or due to expire in the next few days like Cufflink.org.uk by using the facility over at Caught.co.uk. Alternatively you could settle for a domain name that describes what you plan to offer such as Quirky-Gifts.co.uk.

2. INSTALL AFFILISTORE
I first mentioned Affilistore back in 2007 when I wrote a piece on making use of old domain names. Affilistore is a very simple tool that will create a website based on a merchants datafeed and it’s completely free of charge if you agree to leave the footer links in place. Affilistore also has a great (if somewhat small) set of forums, that means obtaining help is a breeze.

3. ADD A DATAFEED
OK STOP RIGHT THERE!
As we all know, merchants datafeeds differ greatly in size and quality and this is the main thing you need to consider when choosing a merchant to work with. For Quirky Gifts I chose Totally Funky on Affiliate Window has they had one of the cleanest datafeeds I think I’ve ever seen. This meant integration was as simple as can be, something Totally Funky should be proud of!

4. GRAB A LOGO
Either knock one up yourself quickly, create a Web2.0 logo online, or pop along to Logo Instant and tweek one of their free logo’s along and grab one of their free ones.

5. TWEAK
Once everything is in place, over the next few weeks you will need to tweak Affilistore, changing settings here and there, seeing what works and what doesn’t. Their forums are a great starting point!

WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS PARTICULAR NICHE AND MERCHANT?
After the A4U Awards in London, Jane and myself shot across to Paris for a wee break and whilst there visited a quirky store called Pylones. On our return, I saw Totally Funky had joined Affiliate Window and after browsing their website, noticed they stocked a lot of similar products.

I found their site enjoyable to browse due to it’s clean, uncluttered, crisp feel and easy navigation system – and also fell in love with (almost) everything they had especially the Crayon mugs!

After having a look at their datafeed I found it to be like their website – clean and uncluttered – meaning integration would be a doddle. I know Totally Funky have a sister site (Strawberry Fool) which I would expect to have a datafeed of the same quality and are due to introduce a third site dedicated to VeeDub followers :) On top of this, with Existem-AM managing the affiliate programme, any requests you may have for specific graphics, content, links etc is you can be sure Mark and others will help you out quickly.

Remember… when starting off in affiliate marketing it’s often best to focus on an area you have particular interest in, something you enjoy, or an area you have partiuclar skills in. It just makes creating an affiliate site that little bit more enjoyable and less of a chore!

  • http://howIgotRich.net/ Joe

    Good post. I’ve got at least one dormant domain name I will try this out on. Not used data feeds before either so will give me a chance to get familiar with them.

    Cheers!

  • http://snood.org.uk Perp

    nice inspiring post, I’ve dabbled with affilistore which is great, how much tweaking did it take for quirky gifts? Presumably a little longer then 15 mins?

  • NigelB

    Hi Chris,

    Really interesting post and a nice clean looking site.

    How do you find Google treats your Affilistore site, it looks like you are using the free version….or not?

    Is it converting well for you?

  • http://www.webaffiliate.co.uk Chris Frost

    Joe
    Definately worth giving it a go, especially if you have a spare domain doing nothing. Affilistore really makes using (good quality) datafeeds very easy to use. Be very careful who you select to promote as it’s very dependant on the quality of the feed unless you plan to hack away at it yourself.

    Hi Perp
    The site’s not yet finished. In total I’ve spent no more than 1 hour on it and that includes some little tweaks here and there such as changing the caching, re-jigging keywords and descriptions, creating a logo and adding 4 additional categories. I expect to spend about another 2 hours maximum in the coming weeks.

    Nigel
    As Quirky Gifts has only been up for 4 days, I can’t comment on conversions. I have used Affilistore before, and with some tweaking, it’s possible like any other site, to target some good keywords and attract visitors. I’m using both the free version and a paid version but there is no difference other than the removal of the footer.

  • Paul

    So how would you go about promoting this? Surely all you’ve got at the moment is a site full of duplicate content from the feed.

    I don’t mean to sound negative. You could churn sites like this out all day but how good would they be for attracting visitors?

  • http://www.webaffiliate.co.uk Chris Frost

    Paul

    You’re correct in thinking if you did the basics and no more, then eventually you’d probably have issues with duplicate content. However the information within the feed, titles, keywords can be easily manipulated to a small extent.

    I’m not implying you should think “Do this and the money will role in”, I was pointing out how someone can quickly and very easily, get a site up and running using feeds from merchants. Datafeeds to some people are the dark mysterious unknown. People often think they’re only used by the technically competent when in reality, using them with Affilistore means there’s nothing technical involved at all. Even I can use them!

    The site I created 2 years ago relies on a feed for one single merchant. There’s no jiggery-pokery what so ever, yet I still manage to make a few quid here and there. The emphasis of this and my previous post, is on using domains that you’ve lying dormant which guarantees £0.00 and £6.88 renewal fee’s every 2 years… as you WILL get round to it this year ;)

    The alternative is to spend 15 minutes and you could have something in place that stands more chance of earning a few £’s when compared to an “Address Not Found” message. Give it a go and see what you make of it.

  • http://www.blogercise.com BLOGERCISE

    Some handy links there, thanks. I use a single WordPress install that picks up a different set of db tables depending on the domain/subdomain in use. This is all controlled in a custom wordpress config file. So setting up a site becomes as simple as going to the domain, clicking through the WP install and the site is up with all the plugins, themes etc of my standard install. Write up 10 articles or so and you have a site that will bumble along making a few pounds a day. If the site seems to be doing well then I’ll invest more time in it.

    Quick micro sites can build up quickly. Having one or two is never that impressive as sometimes a few days will go by with no income. But when you get 10 up and then 100 you’ll find a nice steady income :)

  • http://www.fordy.biz Fordy

    You could try some of the tools at http://www.domainnamesoup.com to find good available domain names

  • JohnC

    Hi,
    As this is kind of an experiment I would be interested to hear from you whether/when you had some sales on the site, some statistics about visits. How the site is doing on its own, in general…
    Thanks.

  • http://www.leofogarty.com Leo Fogarty

    Hi Chris.

    Great post! I’m playing around with Affilistore myself at the moment and totally agree with how easy it makes it to setup the datafeeds. I’m using Paid On Results for the feeds and it couldnt be simpler. One of the reasons I wanted to try Affilistore was when I analysed some of the demo sites using Keywordspy, I think only the Football Kits one had good rankings. The other thing was the volume of links but low PR. It kind of made me a bit scepticle about using it but as its cheap to remove the footer link I was kind of intrested to see if it was worth the go. I’ll let you know how I get on.

  • Julie Gibbins

    very good post about niche implementation of Affilistore – this works for better SEO results. Also, Take a look at http://www.simplytoday.com/categoryblog/affilistore-the-best-free-website-comparison-scripts.html

  • Julie Gibbins

    Update from earlier comment:
    We now rely on AffiliStore as a sub directory installation for selling affiliate products on our niche websites and it works extremly well.
    We have updated our information page to include our latest fitness equipment Affilistote niche template as well, plesae take a look – http://www.simplytoday.com/categoryblog/affilistore-the-best-free-website-comparison-scripts.html