You are a website owner that wants to take advantage of the numerous online affiliate opportunities.You have chosen your niche and purchased a domain name.You have installed WordPress and picked up a theme that suits your needs and style.But before publishing fresh content in order to target online traffic you have to setup a basic framework that will help you get your website organized and prepared for the engines and the visitors.

In that Article I Will Be Discussing On How To Start An Affiliate Website , Setting Up The Initial Plugins And About The Primary Content

When I first setup this website with the SiteRubix builder inside the Wealthy Affiliate University and chose the “Theme” I had the option to activate the first plugins that were pre-installed.The plugins are very useful in a website operation as they can extend your website capabilities and functions.There are thousands of Free plugins that you can use in WordPress websites but today we will be discussing about the initial ones , the necessary.

Initial Plugins For WordPress

All – In – One SEO 

This is the most important plugin of all.What it does is to prepare your website for the search engines.With that plugin the robots will crawl your site easily and will pick up all the necessary tags in order to understand your content and to give you rankings for the SERPs.I have already analysed the whole process for that plugin and I refer you to my article here.

There are a lot of marketers that use another popular plugin , called Yoast.I have never tested it so I can’t tell the difference between those two.I never had any problem with the All – In – One SEO that is created by Michael Tolbert (wordpress.org link page) and the search engines rank my content normally.The only thing that I would suggest is that you install an SEO plugin for your website , you don’t want to build the SEO parameters on your own.Besides that plugin will save you a lot of valuable time.

Exclude Pages From Navigation 

This plugin was already installed in the SiteRubix panel , all I had to do is to activate it.The main feature of this plugin that was created by Simon Wheatley (wordpress.org link page) is the option to exclude some pages of the navigation menu , the one that is visible to your visitors.By default all pages are included in the menu but you can uncheck the box to exclude any pages you want.

Now although that this plugin is not updated for the last 2 years still it is working fine for my website.Additionally I have checked the latest comments inside the WordPress.org forum and it seems that everybody is using the plugin with no problems , at least for the moment.If anything goes wrong with this plugin I will immediately update that post with fresh information and by providing a corresponding alternative solution.

SI – Captcha Anti-Spam

This particular plugin is the starting point of your spam protection.The creator is called Mike Challis and you can follow the (wordpress.org link page) here.Remember the last time you tried to leave a comment or to fill a form in a website and they asked you to enter some letters or numbers in a small box?

…I bet you all have experienced this process.That is what plugins like the SI – Captcha Anti-Spam do.It is a line of defense against spam robots that crawl the web and try to sneak into websites with no “good intentions”.Although this plugin alone is not enough for the spam protection it is essential to get you started.

At a later post I will be presenting you another plugin , called Akismet , which provides an additional layer of spam protection and controls the comments that you will be receiving.

Additional Plugins

Furthermore I use a few more plugins for my website operation.But these plugins are exceeding the content and the purpose of this post.

Primary Content For Your New Affiliate Website

“About” Page

We have setup the initial plugins for our new affiliate website and now it is the time to create the very basic content PAGES (NOT Posts).The most important pages of all is the “About This Site” page.A lot of marketers name this page “About” or “About Me” or “About John” or in my case I name this page “WMS” coming from the “Web Market Support” – first letters of every word.

In that page which is a page that your visitors will land many times and is one of the most visited pages in any website , you want to clarify things for your audience,It would be nice to present the purpose of your website , what you will be discussing in the future , what your visitors should expect from you and I think it is mandatory to give a brief background of yourself.

Talk about your experiences , your accomplishments , your plans , your dreams and you can moreover add some personal tone to your writing by letting people know who you are , what your hobbies and interests are , but in that part you have to keep it short.

Visitors are looking for that information and your domain name and the tagline is not enough to guide them in a proper way.Every serious entrepreneur and website owner Include that details in their homepage menu.

Don’t forget to invite people at the end of the page to participate with their comments.Even for your “About” page this is very important and you want to keep that in mind with every blog post or page you create in the future.Engagement with the readers is the top priority of every affiliate marketer.

Privacy Policy

Although there are numerous website owners that do not include a Privacy Policy page on their websites , I strongly recommend that you take some time to create that page before you publish anything else.Google and the search engines are looking for that page and having it will add to the authority and status of your website.It means you are serious , that you are a perfectionist and that you are clear to the public.

The structure of a Privacy Policy page is following some standard patterns.The content of this page is depending on your niche and the purpose of your website.E-Commerce sites have more complicated policy pages than affiliate websites.In general with sites where you can buy products or services or deal with any other kind of financial activities the policy pages differ.

But when you are an affiliate and you are about to promote products and services of other companies that do not belong to you then this policy page does not have to be so complex

That pages give information about the cookies that are used in a website , what information is being collected form your visitors and other legal details.In the Wealthy Affiliate University we were been given a policy page template which we could copy and use it right away.And this is how I created my policy page.

On the web there are endless resources with templates of privacy policy documents.Some of them are free , some can only be purchased.What you can do if you don’t want to get involved in that process is to visit a website similar to yours , an affiliate website in our case , and get information of its policy page.You can let the policy page open and use it as a guideline to build yours.

Now because all these pages are very similar we don’t want to have that page ranked.We can easily turn off that option through the All – In – One SEO plugin that we talked earlier on this post.When the search engines crawl our website they will come across that page as well but as we have setup the SEO plugin the right way we are announcing to the engines that we don’t want that content indexed.This way you avoid having “duplicate content” as this page’s content is almost exactly the same with thousands of other websites.

At the bottom of every page or post you create there is the All-In-One SEO plugin configuration panel.You have to check all the Robots Meta Boxes (4) to exclude that page or post from indexing.

Be sure to include your email address within the privacy policy page or link to your contact page (we will get to that later)

Affiliate Disclaimer – Disclosure

As an affiliate and promoter you will be receiving commissions from companies and networks that you co-operate with when online visitors that landed on your website followed your affiliate links to these companies and proceeded with a purchase or other action.Just because of that you have to let the people know that you may get a commission when they follow your recommendations.It is a legal document page that you don’t want to overlook and avoid building it.

Its structure is very simple and you can write about it yourself.You can always refer to similar websites as with the privacy policy page.Don’t get involved with online resources and templates as in most cases these are paid options.For example in my Disclaimer page I clarify the above process for my visitors

…I present the affiliate nature of this website and I discuss about my preferences on online marketing products and I strongly advise my visitors to proceed with a purchase or actions whenever they feel ready and only in cases that they can afford it easily.

In the end I refer them to my contact page for any questions that they might have.

Don’t forget to apply the same method as with the privacy policy page.We don’t want this page indexed as well.

“Contact” Page

Another very important page as people are always looking for this.I remember whenever I had questions with a new website I was always looking for their contact page.It adds credibility and authority and as a serious entrepreneur you want to include this information.You can simply add your personal details and if you want you can add a physical address as well , although that is not obligatory.The only place that you must include a physical address is in your emails but I have included my address as well in the contact page.

I am preparing a post about Contact Pages where I am gathering some beautiful examples of “Unique” contact pages that I found on the web along with some other “Design” details that can add to the authority and the credibility of your website..

Important Notice

These plugins and pages are enough to get you started in this online journey.When you prepare these pages you can publish them and get ready to build fresh content.Now please have in mind that before promoting affiliate products you need to create some useful content for your visitors first.You don’t want to post only about promotional offers.If every page or post you create has an affiliate link inside do not expect good rankings.

You are not the only person in the world that wants to make money online.Everybody can promote anything.What will get you to the top is your unique and valuable content.Content that can help your visitors find important information , to solve their problems and to avoid pitfalls.Do not overuse affiliate links.Keep that in mind as it is the most crucial factor of all.

I hope you enjoyed another article in Web Market Support.Of course I am waiting for your comments , thoughts and insights.If you need any help to complete these steps I will be more than happy to help you out.

Till my next post , your online partner.