Becoming a wealthy affiliate is a challenging task but it is very possible. It requires that you take every major step along the way very serious and put a good chunk of your time into research.

You will have to research on topics like website building, domain name registration, finding a market niche, hosting a website, doing a keyword research, writing captivating content and monetizing your website.

Does all of this sound scary? Don’t worry, I felt this way at the beginning but see me now. I am actually teaching others how to do it. It is a steep learning curve but so are many other course you will take online.

In this post, I will try as much as possible to explain the topics listed above and where I fall short, I will refer you to the appropriate post to continue reading. This post will also explain the importance of joining the wealthy affiliate program.

The first step is to find a market niche.

Finding a market niche

In my opinion, the most important step towards becoming a wealthy affiliate is finding a market niche. You should put a lot of effort into this step of the process because a great niche will make your dream easier to attain.

So, what is a great market niche and how do you find it?

There are many lucrative markets you can choose from. It could be in the money making niche like mine here, it could be in the health area, it could be auto related and so on.

So say for example that you decide to go with health for example, you will need to start the process of narrowing down in order to find your niche. The health related market is huge.

Let’s say you had experience with autism in your past or are even experiencing it right now either directly or indirectly. You could choose to design your business around the topic of autism.

You could relate with many others out there and use your experience/expertise to help them find ways to live a fulfilling live. Many parents with autistic children go inline to find help.

Now that you have an idea on how to find a market niche (for more info on this topic, go to my post titled how to find a market niche), let’s go on to the next step; Registering your domain name.

Registering your domain name

Before you can become an active player online, you need to have a domain name. There are a few companies that have been approved to register domain names to businesses.

This aspect of a business is tightly regulated to make sure that no two people will have the same domain name (this could be very problematic).

So, what is a domain name you ask? A domain name is a name like abcxyx.com or uuuddd.org and so on. Domain names usually end with .org, .gov, .com, .edu, .net and so on.

When you get your domain name, it is great to get one that ends with the extensions above because they are more popular and are trusted by many.

In order to register a domain name, you go to a place like Godaddy or wealthy affiliate that are allowed to do so and search for availability.

Before you even start searching for availability, you need to have an idea of what you want the name to be. Then you can adjust the name as you search.

For example, if you are looking for something close to helpforautism.com, you could find that it is already taken. You will be given suggestions and from this list, you can choose which one you like next.

You can buy a domain name anywhere from $0 to as high as $20 or more. I do not know all the ins and outs of it but I know that the number of searches a particular domain could get a month will affect the price. Also, the extensions I listed above are more expensive than elusive ones like .pizza.

If you are interested in buying a domain name for free, go to wealthy affiliate and find out how. And while you are there, take advantage of their free starter membership to learn more about becoming a wealthy affiliate.

You can also read my post on how to build and maintain a website for more information on this topic.

Now that you have registered your domain, let’s go to the next step, build and host your website.

How to build and host my website

Nowadays, building a website from scratch is very easy. You don’t have to be a geek to do so. You just need to follow simple instructions. WordPress is a great word processing platform you can download.

Or you can just join a program that has it already downloaded and installed. WordPress is free so you do not have to pay to build your website. You however need to pay to get it hosted.

I know all this is a little confusing if you are a newbie but let me explain.

Building a website is one thing but for it to be visible online, it needs to be hosted. Hosting involves some kind of technical coding and stuff that I won’t go in to.

Many companies charge a monthly fee to host a website. But you can get your website build and hosted for free at wealthy affiliate too.

Once you have your website up and going, you need to personalize it.

Personalizing your website

This is where you chose and change themes till you find one that works for you. Some themes are free and others will cost you. Once you have found a theme, you need to design the widgets of your website.

You need to determine how you want your post and pages to be displayed, whether you want your side bar on the left or right. Upload your logo if you have one and name your site.

Usually, the name you give your site should be similar or the same as your domain name. Once you website is ready to go, you can start finding topics to write on by doing a keyword research.

Doing a keyword research

Keyword research is super important for your business, especially if you plan on depending on search engines for traffic to your website. The more traffic you get to your website, the better your chances of driving your message to many people.

Keyword research is the practice where you use professional tools to figure out which keywords rank high on the search engines, how many clicks those words get in a month and what your probability for ranking high for that keyword is.

Many keywords with very high click rates have very high competition and you will be least likely to rank high for them. It is tempting to go for these shiny keywords but don’t.

Go for the “low hanging fruit”, keywords with low competition and you have a better chance of ranking high for. If you can pick many of these kinds of keywords, the combine effect will be big.

For example, instead of going for the keyword “how to make money online”, with a ton of clicks per month and outrageous competition, go for the keyword “how to make money online with Pinterest” (less competition but better chance of ranking).

For a detailed explanation of keyword research, read my post about keyword research. Now you have your keywords sorted out. Next you need to write your content.

Write captivating contents

The saying goes, “content is king”. Do well to remember this saying every time you write a post for your site.

You can do all the above perfectly but if your content is not captivating, you will have done it all for nothing. You want people to find what they are looking for when they come to your site.

So, if your tittle says how to make money online, your content better be talking about how to make money online or people will bounce off. Nothing hurts a site more than a high bounce rate.

If your content is captivating, people will spend more time reading it and they will search other pages on your website too. They will also tell their friends and family about your website and your following will grow.

Read more about the dos and don’ts of content writing from my post on content writing. And also read my post on how to rank high on google to get ideas for your business.

Hooray! you have written your content. What then? You publish it of course! and share it on social media.

Publish and share your content

After you have written your content and made sure it is captivating and addresses the topic, you need to publish it. Before you click on that publish button, you need to give it a featured image.

This is the image people will see when they first come to your site to read your post. It is also the image they will see on social media if you share your post.
Your featured image should be unique and captivating.

A unique image will stand out and likely draw more attention. This is especially true for post shared on Pinterest.

Choose a few social media to share you content to in order for it to reach more people. You do not want to completely depend on search engines for your traffic. You also do not want to go coo coo craze with social media. Make yourself an expert on one or two of them.

You should also submit your post to the top search engines after you publish them.

Oops I skipped a step, or maybe not. You need to monetize your site by adding affiliate links to your content. You can choose to do this before publishing and sharing or after you start getting considerable traffic to that post.

Monetize your website

Our topic is aimed at making you a wealthy affiliate. To be wealthy, you need to make money with your website. As soon as you have enough content on your website, you can begin to monetize it.

There are several ways of doing this but I am going to focus on affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is the type of marketing where you write reviews about products and services and get paid a commission when visitors to your site buy those products or seek the services.

Let’s say for example that your website is centered around best hotels in the Middle East. You write reviews, giving advice to people looking to visit The Middle East. Then some of these people take your advice and stay in one of these hotels. You then get paid a fraction of the cost of staying in that hotel as commission.

In order to link this purchase back to you, you add unique links to your website. You get these links from the hotels you review. It is like some sort of contract between you and these hotels.

When people click on your link and make a purchase, it signals to the hotel management that the referral was made by you.

So, you monetize you site by add these links to your reviews.

You can read more about affiliate marketing from my post titled, what is affiliate marketing and how does it work?. 

Build your email list

It is important to collect user data and build your email list. Email marketing is a great way to hold on to people who visit your website. There are many WordPress plugins that will help you collect this data in the form of a welcome mat or pop up.

This pop up invite visitors to submit their emails so you can keep them updated. As you gather this information, you can then on a regular basis, sent updates to these people and keep them coming back to your blog.

If you keep writing interesting content, your list will keep growing and so will your income.

In conclusion

This is a rundown of the steps you can take to become a wealthy affiliate. I know wealth is a relative term. For me, it is being able to work for myself and provide all my family’s needs and a lot of their wants.

I have pointed you to other post that will give you details on some of these topics. In the near future, I will write a detail post on the other topics like monetizing you website and building your email list.

I hope this post was helpful and you come back for more.

Cheers Denise.