Start Affiliate Marketing With a Website On Bluehost

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If you’ve been thinking about trying affiliate marketing to see how you go, then start affiliate marketing with a website on Bluehost.

The Bluehost web hosting platform is really beginner friendly, has one click WordPress installation, a free domain name with every new hosting package, and some of the cheapest hosting for websites that there is.

In this post we’ll be covering some of the basics of affiliate marketing, how it works, and then get into the simple, step-by-step process of creating a Bluehost account and getting your very first website up and running within minutes.

 

What Is Affiliate Marketing and How Does It Work?

Start Affiliate Marketing With a Website On BluehostOne of the really awesome things about affiliate marketing is it’s a very simple idea. It’s not like eCommerce where you have to stock products, sell them and ship them out.

Really what you are as an affiliate is an online sales rep. You, the affiliate, represent the companies and products you’re interested in and promote them to others via a website, social media and so on.

If someone clicks through on your unique affiliate link and makes a purchase, the company who owns the product takes care of everything and simply pays you a generous commission for your efforts.

You can be an affiliate for any product in any niche, so long as that product has an affiliate program you can sign up with.

I could go into me detail here, but that’s pretty much what an affiliate marketer is and does.

As a quick example, I might be an Amazon affiliate and be part of their affiliate program – Amazon Associates. I promote sporting goods on my website and have affiliate links for certain sporting goods on Amazon.

I might write a product review about a baseball bat (or even several different bats), then link back to the sales page on Amazon with my affiliate link. Someone reads my post, clicks the link, buys a baseball bat from Amazon and Amazon gives me a cut.

It’s pretty much that simple in its processes. That’s why I love affiliate marketing so much. No stress, no buying and selling, no shipping products, just nice and basic.

 

How Affiliate Marketing Works

 

Affiliate Marketing Has Many Advantages

Affiliate marketing is far more than just being an affiliate. It can be a lifestyle as well if it becomes your main income generator.

Of course, you can just do it part-time as a side hustle for extra cash, but when it’s your fulltime gig, that’s when the magic really happens.

One of the greatest advantages is this can be done from home, whether it’s on the side as or as a fulltime thing. You can also work on your very simple online business at any time of the day or night. It doesn’t matter.

Now don’t let the word “business” scare you off. Being an affiliate is not like some full on business, but it is your very own gig, and when you build an affiliate website, you are creating a business asset that you own and can later sell if you like.

Because all you need is a laptop and an internet connection, as an affiliate who makes their living online, you can truly live the laptop lifestyle; where you can work from anywhere in the world that has internet and travel wherever you desire.

Even in your local area you don’t have to work from home. You could go to a cafe or the park. Anywhere really. You are the boss. You’re in charge. You do what you want.

If you no longer need to work a job, there’s no more waking up to an alarm, or tedious commute into work and then home again. Hell, you don’t even have to get dressed for work. You can wear anything you want when you’re at home.

It’s all about lifestyle freedom.

Let’s just quickly make a list of some of the benefits to being an affiliate online:

  • Online Home Based Business OpportunityBe your own boss and make your own rules
  • Spend more time with family and friends
  • Live the true laptop lifestyle if you want
  • Earn both residual and passive income
  • Enjoy the freedom of having both time AND money at the same time
  • Make money while you’re sleeping
  • Travel whenever you like and make money along the way
  • Work from home, the park, the beach, anywhere
  • Affiliate marketing accesses a global market that never sleeps
  • Create multiple sources of income for more security
  • And many more…

This is just a snap shot of just some of the advantages.

Most of this list is based on if you were doing affiliate marketing as your fulltime money earner, but there are definitely benefits part-time as well.

I’m going to take some time to expand on a select few of these advantages in the following sections of this post.

 

Making Money While Sleeping Is Not a Myth

The reason I make a point of saying it’s not a myth is because some people believe that making money while you’re asleep is a myth, a fantasy. They’ve never experienced it so they can’t get their head around the concept.

Millions of people all around the world make money while they’re sleeping in one form or another. Even things like bank interest or a return on investment could be considered making money while you’re sleeping.

It really refers to passive income, but when we’re talking about affiliate marketing, it also means that while you’re asleep, someone somewhere in the world is awake and may make a purchase through one of your affiliate links.

You wake up in the morning, check your affiliate accounts and find you’ve made a sale.

While you’ve been sleeping!

It happens to me all the time with affiliate marketing. I also publish eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle platform, so I also make some money from book sales while I’ve been asleep too.

There are truly so many ways you can make money at any time of the day or night, and it’s especially true of affiliate marketing.

 

Multiple Sources of Passive Income

Lifestyle Freedom is Time and MoneyI tend to group residual income in with passive income as residual income is somewhat passive as well.

It’s both earning residual and passive income streams that leads to financial and lifestyle freedom.

It basically means that you don’t have to actually work for every single dollar you make.

When you work a regular job you are trading your time for money. You might get paid $20 an hour and work 40 hours a week for a total of $800. If you only work 30 hours one week (depending on your pay structure and employment deal), you’ll only get paid $600.

You’re trading time for money in the above example. If you don’t work you don’t get paid. It’s that simple.

With affiliate marketing it’s entirely different. There are no limits on what you can earn because you’re not trading time for dollars.

You could write a piece of content today that keeps bringing in sales and commissions for you for the next 10 years.

Let’s talk about my eBook scenario for a second. I still make sales today on eBooks I wrote and published on Kindle way back in 2010.

Now that’s genuine passive and residual income, and it works much the same way with affiliate marketing.

Residual income usually refers to a recurring income stream, such as interest, or membership fees. That sort of thing, but it’s still passive income.

Pretty much all of your affiliate income is passive in a way, because you’re not trading time for money.

That’s not to say you don’t have to put in any time and effort, because you do. It’s just that work you do today can keep on making your money time and time again.

 

How Much Money Can You Make With Affiliate Marketing?

There’s no simple answer to that question. It depends on so many things and there are so many variables.

Like I mentioned before, there are no limitations on what you could potentially earn with this. That’s the first thing that needs to be noted.

Some affiliate marketers have become millionaires. And I’m talking profit, not just turnover. One example is Pat Flynn with his Smart Passive Income site. Another is Neil Patel. There are loads of others as well.

I’m not in that league. One day I might get there. But you know what? It doesn’t matter even if I never get rich from this, because affiliate marketing has given me so much lifestyle freedom, and to me that’s more priceless than monetary or material wealth.

Sure, I’d love to get filthy rich from this, but if it never happens, I’m still happy anyway. I make money and I live an awesome lifestyle because of the freedoms this gig gives me.

That’s the most important thing. To me, anyway.

 

Be Patient and Persevere

One piece of very important advice though when it comes to making money with affiliate marketing.

Stick with it.

No matter what your financial goals might be – part-time income, fulltime gig, or even chasing the big bucks – it takes time before you start to see things happen.

For a while it’ll feel like you’re working for free. But this is the setup stage. Money doesn’t come in right away with this. I mean it can, but not usually.

You need to give it a few months before you can expect to see some dollars, but I guarantee you, if you put the effort in and stick with it, within a year your whole life could look entirely different. And in a good way.

Being an affiliate marketer is one of the best lifestyles you could ever have the pleasure of experiencing.

Trust the process and give it time. It’s worth it.

 

START A SIMPLE AFFILIATE WEBSITE WITH WORDPRESS AND BLUEHOST

 

If you really want to give affiliate marketing a try without going through affiliate training or spending much money, then getting started with a blog on the Bluehost web hosting platform is the perfect choice.

I said at the start of this post that Bluehost is one of the best – and cheapest – hosting platforms out there.

They also love WordPress and WordPress loves them, rating Bluehost their #1 choice for hosting WordPress websites for the last 10 years in a row.

The other really cool thing about Bluehost, on top of their awesomely cheap prices and very reliable hosting, is they have an extremely quick and easy one click install for WordPress. This means you get your website up and ready to fill with content in no time flat.

Before we go on, did you know that around one third of all websites you see online are WordPress websites?

This site you’re looking at right now is a WordPress website.

Even most web design companies build client sites with WordPress. They just add a few modifications and some client-specific coding.

You don’t need to do that though. Just get yourself a cheap hosting account with Bluehost, install WordPress, choose a free theme you like, get a free domain name and off you go.

Let’s now run through the process of getting started with Bluehost. It’s really simple.

 

Bluehost Discount Price Web Hosting

 

Cheap Web Hosting

I won’t go right into this here, because you can read my official Bluehost review for more details on the hosting packages they have, how much they cost and what you get.

What I can tell you is that for every single new hosting package you sign up for, you get a free domain name thrown in.

A domain name is your slice of internet real estate. If you build an affiliate site and later decide you want to sell it for some bucks, it’s having your own domain name that shows you own the site.

If you get a subdomain, say through some sort of generic blogging platform, that company owns the domain. So therefore it’s important to have your very own domain name that you personally own.

That’s gold in this business.

Anyway, there are a whole host of options when you host your WordPress affiliate site on Bluehost, but all you really need to get started is their basic shared hosting, which is the cheapest.

You can always upgrade to a better hosting deal down the track, so that’s not a problem at all. Bluehost has got you covered no matter what you need or how big your online business, blog or affiliate marketing gig grows.

They even have specialised managed WordPress hosting if you decide you ever want or need to go in that direction.

Let’s just very quickly have a look at some of the benefits of hosting your affiliate site on Bluehost:

  • Rated by WordPress itself as the #1 hosting platform for WordPress sites
  • One of the cheapest web hosting companies online
  • Super reliable and state-of-the-art hosting services
  • 24/7 tech support
  • Money back guarantee
  • Get your site up and running with 1-on-1 training
  • Regular site backups
  • FREE domain with new hosting accounts
  • Get the latest cPanel for website stats
  • Highly secure website hosting
  • And stacks more…

You can get started and host your very first affiliate site for less than $3 a month (as at the time of this writing).

 

Let’s Set Up a Bluehost Account

When you arrive at the Bluehost homepage, all you have to do is click the green “Get Started Now” button. From there you’ll be redirected to a page that offers you all the hosting options for your new WordPress website on Bluehost.

 

Bluehost Get Started Now

 

After you select your preferred hosting plan, it’s time to decide on a domain name, see if it’s available and secure that domain name.

Remember, when you open a new hosting plan on Bluehost, you get your domain name free of charge for the first year.

Sometimes it’s not easy to get the domain name you want, but just make a list of domain name ideas and then see what’s available. Try and choose something relevant to what your website topic will be, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.

 

Bluehost Domain Name

 

After you have chosen an available domain name, it’s time to move on with finalising your new Bluehost account.

This involves completing your personal information and then making the purchase. Now all you have to do is select a password and your account with Bluehost is complete.

 

Installing WordPress

By now you have a domain name, a Bluehost account and have secured your chosen hosting package.

Now it’s time to install WordPress so you can get started on your very first affiliate marketing website.

This is really simple on the Bluehost platform.

After logging into your Bluehost account if you’re not already, all you have to do is navigate to cPanel and click the icon that says “Install WordPress”. You can find this under the “Website” tab.

 

Install WordPress On Bluehost

 

To install a working version of WordPress onto your Bluehost account, you’ll be using the “Mojo Marketplace Auto Installer”.

Now it’s time to select “Build Your Website” within the Bluehost Marketplace there. You’ll see a section to enter the domain name you just got. Don’t put the “www” at the start, just the actual domain name and its extension (.com etc.). Leave the subdomain section blank.

You’ll now be prompted to input just a few more details as follows:

  1. The name or title of your website
  2. Your Admin username
  3. Your Admin email address
  4. Create a password for accessing your WordPress site

 

WordPress Login Information

 

Check the box to accept the terms, then click on the “Install” button.

Once WordPress installation is complete, you can log into your brand new WordPress site hosted on Bluehost and get started becoming an affiliate marketer.

 

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