In the world of affiliate marketing, there are many ways to drive traffic to the affiliate offers, but sometimes that proves to be a huge challenge, especially when dealing with CPA offers. CPA offers traffic that needs to be one that trusts you enough to take an action through your recommendation. That only comes with a well-built website that includes all the information potential buyers will need and convinces them that they actually need to make a purchase.
The process to build that website is straightforward but it has a few tricks to it. We have gathered a full guide in this article that goes through the entire process of building a niche website all the way to making money out of CPA offers.
How it Works
Before we get into the technical stuff, let’s brush up on our knowledge of what CPA offers are and how we can make money through having a website. CPA or cost-per-action offers pay you for every action taken on the target website, be it a purchase, a sign up leading to a deposit, or something else. You will only get paid for it when a user enters the target website and makes a purchase using your affiliate link.
Even though this might seem easy, you can’t make a living out of it if you don’t do it the correct way. The right way is to build a website, or better yet, a blog, where you post content about a certain niche or a certain subject. In-between the content, you provide recommendations for those affiliate services and place the link to those affiliate offers. If users find your content interesting or useful, they might end up clicking on the link and actually completing a purchase. That’s the goal that you are aiming for.
But how do we find those users? The users will have to find your website through a search engine, and that is what makes the whole effort worthwhile. You can pay for any advertising platform you want, but nothing will be as free and as effective as organic traffic. You will need to provide such content on your website that grabs the attention of both the search engines and the audience. But in the long run, your blog is only going to become a passive source of income, thanks to the trust you will have maintained if you follow all the steps mentioned here.
Now, not every content and every niche or offer will become successful in this method. Some offers pay less, some audiences buy more. There are always tricks to it. So let’s start with the first one. What is a good CPA niche to create a website for?
Select a Niche
Everything begins with selecting a niche you can work with or have some passion for. Mostly, we are talking about making money here, so you can consider some of these most profitable affiliate niches that are suitable for CPA offers:
- Dating
- Traveling
- Home Decoration
- Finance
- Health and Beauty
- Food and Nutrients
- Gaming and Gambling
Whichever of these niches that you choose, you have to stick to it and the website you are going to build should only include content about that specific niche. If you are unsure how to get ideas for the content, don’t be hasty. We will discuss that in the next sections.
Choosing a CPA Offer
When it comes to choosing a CPA offer, you will have to consider many things, such as the payment, the conditions, and everything else. But that is out of the topic of this article. You can always check out this full guide on CPA networks and which one you can choose. When you are done choosing a CPA offer in your selected niche, you are ready to move on to the next step.
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Keyword Research
This is one of the most important parts of the whole process. In order to make sure the content you are posting is the content that ‘users want’, not the content that ‘you want’ them to read, you need to do some keyword research. This is the process of checking out the related keywords to your niche and analyzing which one will perform better. Take a look at this example. Let’s say you want to write about coffee. You can search different keywords and combinations to find the ones that have the best criteria. By criteria, we mean several things.
- Keyword Difficulty: The keyword difficulty shouldn’t be high, meaning it shouldn’t be very hard to get to the top 10 results on Google.
- Search intent: Usually, users on the web have several intents from their search. It could either be that they want to gain some information (informative), or they want to get to know a service or brand (commercial), or they just want to surf around (navigational), or they are looking to buy something (transactional). The last category is the one you are looking for, however, commercial ones can also be good.
- Search volume: The search volume for the keyword should be high. So, it shouldn’t be a keyword that not many people are searching for.
You might wonder how you can gain such information. There are fortunately some websites made for this purpose, such as SEMrush or Google Keyword Planner. However, for the Google Keyword planner you need to have an ad campaign first, and SEMrush isn’t free to use forever.
Let’s say we will use SEMrush, since it’s more comprehensive.
Take a look at the chart below.
In this chart, you can see the search volume, the search intent, the trends, the Keyword difficulty (KD) and some other information. There are only a couple of good keywords found in this chart for the target keyword that we searched, which was “automatic coffee machines.” This means that people are likely to search for automatic coffee machines if they want to buy them. You can even see some examples, including the Jura D6 Automatic Coffee Machine and the Smeg Automatic Coffee Machine.
This is a good start, and you can keep searching and searching until you find a list of the good keywords you want to focus on in this blog. Some patterns for keywords you can start thinking about include the keyword + a quality of the keyword or something related to it. An example would be: Running Shoes for Women, Hiking Shoes for Men, and so on.
Once you are done with the keyword research, and have a list of the general and primary keywords you want your blog to rank on Google for, you can move on to the next step, which is creating the website itself.
Creating a Website
To start creating a website you need two things:
- A domain address for the website (such as example.com)
- A service to host your website and your files
There are many options to choose from, but perhaps a simple one just for the sake of this tutorial would be WordPress. Of course, if you want, you can choose other hosts or domain providers. But since WordPress provides both together, you can simply subscribe to one of the packages. You can also start with a free website, but later on, just for the sake of having a better branding and memory in the audience’s mind, you want to get a domain.
When you are done with that, you can select a theme for your website, which is exactly the reason why making a website shouldn’t be intimidating for you. Almost all domain providers will give you a free library of amazing designs and themes you can choose for your website. So if you don’t see yourself designing or coding, no worries at all. The internet has got you covered in this case.
Afterwards, you will be redirected to your WordPress dashboard. Almost all domain and hosting service providers will give you this dashboard, so no worries.
If you are seeing the dashboard, congratulations, you have come almost 50% of the way. The rest of it, includes just customization of the website and adding content. For customization, you usually get a section on WordPress or other similar website that is dedicated to widgets. But if you want to keep it simple and focus on the content, let’s move on to the next section.
Content Creation
So you have some keywords and you want to write about them. The best way to begin is to know your competitors. Before you start writing, you need to set your expectations, so do a quick Google search for your chosen keyword to see how the top search results are doing.
Take the keyword we had before, “automatic coffee machines”, and let’s do a quick Google search.
We can already see a blog that is doing affiliate marketing on the same exact keyword. You can tell almost by the first glance. If it’s not a name you know, then it’s an affiliate website.
By clicking on the result, we can scroll down and see the links to the affiliate product, which is Amazon here.
By checking out the type of content that these competitor websites have, you can learn how to improve or even replicate but add your own spice to it. The point is to include more informative content than your competitors.
You will need to write at least 10 long-form articles for CPA offers in order to grab the attention of your audience. But don’t make the mistake that many beginners do. Many people think that the more content you write, the more popular you will get. But the truth is that quality wins quantity over. If you have 10 fully optimized articles, it’s definitely better than having 100 loosely written articles.
So, it’s important to plan and perfect your content. The next step in the perfection process is SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Search Engine Optimization
Your content doesn’t only need to be informative, include the affiliate link, and compete with others. You will also have to adhere to some standards for search engines to find you and rank you. That is called search engine optimization or SEO. This will help, not only humans but also bots, to understand your content better. Here are some of the most important rules in SEO that you should stick to, no matter what:
Write an Eye-Catching SEO Title
The SEO title, or the article title, should be anything between 40-50 characters and should include some power words or buzz words that trigger an interest in the user. It should also include your keyword. So if the keyword you are choosing is “Best automatic coffee machines with remote control”, then, the whole keyword phrase should be in the title of the article.
Take a look at the example coffee website we saw earlier. In the article, the keyword “Super Automatic Coffee Machines” is repeated both in title and the text.
This is a good example of showing Google or other search engines what exactly your blog post is about.
Meta Description
This is the second most important thing you need to optimize. Meta Description is a quick description about your article in about 150 words or less. This description usually is taken from the blog post text, unless you specify what exactly it should be. Mostly, it is beneficial for you to specify a meta description and let people know exactly what you want them to see from your blog on the results page.
In this example of the coffee machine, this is the meta description that this website has specified for this article.
This seems like something somebody wrote for the results page, right? But what about this one?
Does this one seem like a meta description that was written for users? Does it grab the attention of the reader better? Not really. That is exactly why you should be focusing on writing an eye-catching meta description.
Slug
Slug or post URL is the address that is visible on the browser address bar, or on the results page of Google. Anyhow, even though users might not have much of an interaction with it, the search engine crawlers will. This URL will help search engines understand that your keyword is repeated not only on the title and the meta description, but also in the URL. So the post must really be about the topic you are presenting.
In case you are not sure what exactly a slug is, this is how it looks like:
Content and Keywords
The main part of the article, which is the text, should be about 600-800 words. Keep in mind that nowadays, users are more likely to read content that is either shorter than 800 words or longer than 1 200 words. However, depending on the topic this may differ. In our case, and CPA offers, you want to establish trust and maintain the fact that you have all the information the user needs to know. So you need to write as much as possible about the information that the user needs. Try to keep it less than 5 000 words, because that long of an article is likely not read by many people.
About the number of keywords you need to be using throughout your text, you can measure it by percent. If the keyword density is about 1% to 3% of the text, you’re on the right track. That means that an 800-word article should have at least 8 instances of the keyword, and an article with 2 000 words in it should have the keyword repeated at least 15 times.
Keep in mind that you shouldn’t overdo the keyword usage, or it will have negative effects on your SEO and ranking.
Overall Content Layout for CPA Affiliate Marketing
When you are writing an article where you want to promote CPA offers, you need to consider a certain structure for the content.
- Include a list of things you want to talk about in the article (i.e., table of contents). This table of contents could be a table of the products or services you are promoting or just the table of post contents.
- Include an introduction to the field. If it’s an article about coffee makers, write an introduction letting them know why they need a special coffee maker, and that they should continue reading. Try to include the keyword in the first paragraphs as well.
- Write up the content in lists. For example, if you are advertising for a health and beauty offer, you need to list up the different products or solutions and explain why each one is a solution to the user’s problem, or how each one will help the user.
- Wherever you are introducing a new solution, paste the link to the offer and let the users know they should click on it.
- Finally, end the article with a summary of all the notes and include your own suggested product or solution as well. This can be the most profitable one or the actual best one.
Images and Links
The last things you want to pay attention to are the images and the links. You need to include some images with alt descriptions that include the keyword. Links that redirect to other websites and your own website are also effective.
Make Use of Tools
Even though all of the knowledge about SEO is necessary, you will still need to use an SEO tool to make sure you are in the right direction. The best SEO tool, which is also a WordPress plugin that you can use for free, is Yoast SEO.
This tool has all of the SEO standards that you need to follow in one package and keeps reminding you of them throughout your blog post writing and editing. This tool will help you not only to write SEO-friendly content, but also readable content. As mentioned before, the most important part of a content on the web isn’t just the information or readability, but also the search engine bots that need to detect what your website is exactly about.
Setting Up Analytics
The next important thing after having your content ready is to have some way of analyzing the traffic and the overall interest of users in your content. One of the best ways to stay updated is Google Search Console. You can see your website’s daily performance, and if there is a problem, you can find the root and solve the issue.
Building Backlinks
The last step in this process is building backlinks. What are backlinks? Backlinks are links that redirect back to your website and affect your SEO and ranking in SERP more than you can imagine. You might be asking, how can I build links back to my website? That would require actual credibility, right? Fortunately, there are ways you can build this credibility yourself.
Social Media
First and foremost, consider creating social media accounts for your affiliate business and include the URL of your website on them. These social media can be anything: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, you name it.
Profile Creation
Just like social media, you can create profiles on platforms that allow for it. Then you can paste the link to your website on them. There are so many platforms that allow you to do this, including Linkedin, Blogger, Medium, Vimeo, IMDb, Quora, behance.com, and many more. Of course you already have profiles on the internet yourself, so finding some other websites for creating profiles shouldn’t be difficult.
You will need around 50 profiles with the link to your website on them, and that’s enough for a good impact on your overall SEO. Many people choose to use a service on Fiverr to get that done, so if you feel like you don’t have the time to do it yourself, you can give Fiverr a try.
Social Bookmarking
Another way of spreading the word and creating backlinks at the same time. There are websites on the internet that allow you to post something along with a link and have the internet save it for you. In that case, these posts will show up on a Google search results page. Some great examples of social bookmarking websites include Reddit and Tumblr. All you have to do is create a post and redirect users to your website, but not in an advertisement kind of way.
Posting Answers on Forums
The last great way to earn backlinks is through finding forums on the internet where people ask questions and others answer. These forums are amazing for you to spread the link of your website on. However, you will still need to adhere to their rules, so in order to work in the most efficient way, you need to write answers to people’s questions and then redirect them to your website for more information about a topic that you specifically wrote.
You might ask, how do I find a forum related to my niche? Easy. All you have to do is search your main keywords or topics plus the word “forum” on Google. Take a look at this example in the case of Coffee machines. We searched “coffee machine + forum” and the first result that we saw was a forum for coffee fans.
Using this simple method, you can find forums, look for questions you know the answer to, or questions that you answered on your blog, and write an answer on the forum with your website link.
You can already see some examples of forums where users post links to websites, whether their own or others’.
Especially on Quora, you can see many users who promote their own website through an answer that they give other users. If you can find balance between answering their questions and promoting your own affiliate website, you will get lots of attention and upvotes on social media, because for all that users are concerned with, they don’t know (don’t care) whether you are the owner of the website you’re introducing to them or not. They would just want to check it out if the rest of the things you say make sense.
What’s Next?
When you have all these tips followed, and you have at least 10 posts on your blog, you can start filling out some other sections. You might want to run ads or do other types of offers beside CPA. You can always try and create different sections for the website like reviews, top/best articles, e-shop, guides, ebooks, etc.
When you have a website like this, you will always have a source of income. All you have to do is keep updating the content with the latest updates, update your offers, choose better offers, and invest back into your affiliate business.
Conclusion
Now that you know how to create a website for affiliate marketing, you can explore other options. You might want to try writing content without the need to create a website, or you might want to try other types of content, such as audiovisual content and image content. Whichever path you choose, the basics are the same: choose the correct keywords, stay in a single niche, analyze your market and competitors, and update your content every once in a while.
