I’ve been fiddling around with Wordpress for quite some time now. I’ve had a few months to really have a good play around with it. Having recently completed a truly impressive Google compliant Adwords landing page with a Wordpress blog skin, I think it’s time to provide a one-stop guide to getting up off your affiliate bums and launching yourself into the world of Wordpress!!
The beauty of Wordpress is that its totally free, comes with a great and easy to use content management system, and has plugins that can do just about anything you can think of at the touch of a button.
Well, that’s easy for you to say Kirsts but it’s all been sounding complicated to me, so where the buggery do we start?
Well, let’s try the beginning shall we chaps? First off… you will need….
A Proper Domain
No fiddling around with Wordpress hosted efforts. Lets invest a tiny bit of time and money in buying a proper domain. A .co.uk costs about a fiver. When you are looking for a domain registrar make sure that they allow you to change name servers without any hassles. Personally speaking, I’ve always used Fasthosts for my domain registration but I’m not linking to them here because sometimes they are the most frustrating shower of arses to deal with (that’ll teach ‘em!).
A Web Host That Provides SQL Databases
Kinda got a bit technical all of a sudden? Now don’t you panic boys and girls, it’s nice and easy to set up a SQL database with a host and once you’ve pressed a few buttons within your hosting control panel, Wordpress does the rest.
Unclear? Don’t worry. There are incredibly Detailed Instructions On How To Install Wordpress Here. The chaps behind this platform really have worked very hard to make it as simple as possible.
OK, so you’ve got your site all ready to go. What now?
A Decent Looking Wordpress Theme Design
It’s really amazing just how many really cool free Wordpress Themes there are knocking about at the moment. You can create a really, really professional looking site without having to have a shred of design ability.
You can search through loads of free themes at themes.wordpress.net/, however James Little kindly uploaded a really neat Wordpress Pack to his blog a while back which included loads of great themes and some essential plugins. A great time saver.
If you’ve something particular in mind it’s really easy to search for great free themes in Google. Just search for “wordpress theme + site type” I’ve found some total crackers recently by searching on terms such as: -
Wordpress Beauty Theme
Wordpress Magazine Theme (these are great for creating sites with static home pages and a magazine or news site feel.)
Wordpress Fashion Theme
I just love the way you can change the look of your whole Wordpress site just by logging into the admin section and selecting another site from your “Presentation” menu.
OK, so you’ve got your site looking smashing, what next?
Right. First off, you’ll be needing a few of the plugins that make Wordpress sites a lot more effective in search engine terms. Chris Frost wrote a really interesting post about this on his blog a few days ago, so you don’t just have to take my word for it!
In no particular order, here are a few of the plugins I make use of regularly: -
Akismet - Helps keep those nasty, nasty comment spammers away.
SEO Title Tag - Lets you define the title content for every blog post and category. Hugely powerful as good titles make a huge difference to your SEO efforts.
Comment Relish -For adding feed subscription buttons to your blog.
Google Sitemaps - Adds a Google compliant sitemap of your blog.
Related Posts - Lists a a few related posts.
Some Good Posts About Wordpress Plugins
Christ Frost came up trumps again with his Blogging Necessities list. Some great plugins here.
Also, I found this one at The Blog Joint.
Finally…. Some Content!
Cover your topic thoroughly. Write a couple of posts each day on individual products or niche… it doesn’t have to be much, just a couple of hundred words or so.
I recently started this blog: - Natural Beauty Tips. It very quickly started getting traffic from long tail search terms. I still have a lot to do on this one, but it should give you a bit of an idea.
Also, Rob at Monetise This recently posted about a merchant he liked and gave an example of a Personalised Gifts Site he’s created using a Wordpress theme. As you’ll see, Rob has been able to create a nice Xmas feel using a suitably festive blog skin which he’ll be able to change at the touch of a button once Santa has returned to Lapland.
Finally Finally….
What more can I say? Give Wordpress a go. It’s a delightfully easy way to create affiliate content. I absolutely love it!!
November 28th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Wordpress 101 - Step-by-Step Affiliate Site…
Kirsty writes one of my favorite UK blogs.
She just posted an EXCELLENT tutorial.
Wordpress 101 - All You Need For An Affiliate Site
“I……
November 29th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Hi Kirsty - thanks for the link
You’re right about the joy of being able to quickly switch themes. I’m actually looking forward to Christmas being over just so I can enjoy switching to a Valentines type theme and have what looks like a brand new site in a click!
BTW, for the absolute beginner who finds setting wordpress up in any way daunting, it’s worth picking a webhost with CPanel and Fantastico installed, which I believe gives you One-Click setup of Wordpress (and other apps).
November 29th, 2007 at 2:53 am
This is perfect, been looking for a nice easy clear way to find some Wordpress resources and you’ve linked a bunch!
Would be awesome if someone wrote an in-depth guide to setting up an affiliating Wordpress site, just gotta piece the right resources together.
You should consider adding Chris Pearon’s site to the list, it’s a great resource for Wordpress, and here it is http://www.pearsonified.com
November 29th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I personally would never use Fasthosts again. They once shut my website down on a Friday afternoon and said I should speak to their spam team for a resolution. Their spam team didn’t have any phones, so I had to email them and they had a 48 hour response time.
The result? My main site down all weekend just as a new product launched. Some seriously high commissions lost as a result of Fasthosts.
Needless to say I moved hosting company.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Yeah, they are a bit of a shower aren’t they? Unfortunately I’ve got over 100 domains with them and it’s just too big a task for me to bloody move them. I use some hosting with them, but increasingly I’m hosting all new sites with Clook. Nothing terribly important is on Fasthosts these days!!
November 29th, 2007 at 10:58 am
[...] this morning. He was concerned about his lack of web design skills. Given my recent post about how smashing Wordpress is for the non technical, I thought it was an appropriate “Ask [...]
November 29th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Hi Kirsty, great blog! Do you know whether there is a way for me to remove the bit under the title where it says who the post was created by and when? I want it to look like a proper website but it stil looks bloggish with that bit still there. Thanks
November 30th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Hi Kylah, Yes you can do this but you have to take it out of the hard coding within the wordpress theme you are using. It’ll be in the PHP file that controls the page content. I think its called “page” or “index”. I’m not at home right now so can’t nip into the FTP to check!
If you’re not confident, drop me a line via the contact form and I’ll help you out. It’s a two minute job.
December 7th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Does blogs like Rob’s make good landing pages at for PPC traffic or do they mainly convert from SE-traffic?
December 8th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I think Rob’s offering is probably better suited to SEO. It might work for MSN & Yahoo traffic, but it wouldn’t last the distance in Adwords because of the Google Adwords landing page restrictions. Kieron at http://www.here.org.uk wrote a great “How To Create Google Landing Pages That Won’t Get Slapped” guide a while back. If you applied those principles to a blog, you could use it for Adwords.
January 1st, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Hi new at this and 5stars is a big help they send people like me over to your site to learn the ins and outz of flogging with bloggings.
got to say you have a nice page and setup good information here.
thks
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
[...] Kirsty pens one of my favorite UK affiliate blogs. She wrote an EXCELLENT tutorial about how to build an affiliate site with WordPress. This is an entry I’ve been wanting to share for awhile. Wordpress 101 - All You Need For An Affiliate Site [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 3:22 am
I just started a wordpress blog, and haven’t done much with it yet, but now that I’ve read this, I’ll definitely be paying it more attention. I’ve been looking for a place where I can use my affiliate links that have nothing to do with my site.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:59 pm
do you have any wordpress tutorial ebook for sale?
January 30th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
[...] wrote my other guide -Wordpress 101 - All You Need For An Affiliate Site a while back, and a lot of people found it quite [...]
March 5th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Hi kirsty, whta I would like to know is, how can i use this for an existing site hosted on a microsoft server? I have seen some sites that use php pages displaying products from affilites, how do they do that?
March 17th, 2008 at 12:26 am
Which WordPress are you speaking about in this blog? WordPress.com or WordPress.org? I’ve been on WordPress and it is a bit confusing. This is all new territory for me. Although, I am learning. I’m not a programmer, yet. Albeit, I will be a “novice” programmer. Good thing I am able to teach myself.
March 25th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Rebecca, Wordpress.com is the hosted service, i.e. your blog is on their servers. If you want proper full control of your blog head to the download page on the .org site.
That said, as this is new territory you might want to play with setting up and posting to a blog on the .com site first and ease the learning curve a bit.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Does using wordpress really work for affiliate marketing? I have never tried it and just launched my affiliate mobile phone website, can someone give me some advice please?
April 12th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Yes, it absolutely does! Its absolutely fantastic, and there’s a plugin for just about everything you can imagine. It definately extends your ability to create nice sites.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
forgive me being stupid but can i hownload WP to my computer and design before installing on a server or do you do evcerything online when you make one of your pages like the beuty therapy one please?
April 17th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Hey Tony, you do need to design the site online… unless you have a php server on your computer system . It’s really easy though… don’t be put off!
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:17 am
[...] Know How To Set Up A Site? Don’t forget to read my Wordpress 101 Guide. It has everything you need to get your first site up there and [...]
May 30th, 2008 at 10:56 am
And another great post!
Thanks for this too!
June 1st, 2008 at 10:16 pm
This is an excellent and in depth article for someone starting out in creating websites. Awesome!
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I really like the way you write, Kirsty… you make all this dry stuff sound not too formidable, even almost fun! On top of which you’ve created a great one-stop resource for those wanting to build an affiliate website with WordPress.
July 19th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Hi Kirsty, great info here, thank you very much. I’m gathering it all up and attempting set up a Wordpress content management system to generate loads of affiliate revenue - Aye right!
Anyway, I was hoping you could help me with the dreaded Permalinks. First of all, can you explain the Permalink structure and how it relates to categories, post slugs and titles, etc, and secondly can you explain how best to set it up for a CMS with SEO in mind..?
Is it enough to choose ‘custom structure’ and enter /%postname%/ or should I include some category reference too? Sorry folks for the dull as dishwater post!