Over the coming weeks, I’m going to provide a step by step guide for launching a fairly simple affiliate site from start to finish. We’ll cover brainstorming ideas, keyword research, picking a domain, monetization methods, hosting, Wordpress as a CMS, Wordpress plugins, on-site SEO, and promotion. Let’s get started…

The first step for developing any website is picking a topic or theme. Building a site about something you enjoy isn’t absolutely necessary, but it will go a long way towards helping you stay motivated throughout construction and promotion. For my example site, I’m starting with the broad topic of football. Personally, I can’t wait for football season to start back up.. I promise, it has nothing to do with the beating I’m taking in the office fantasy baseball league. However, we have one small problem, “football” is way too broad of a topic – so we’ll need to get more specific.

There are a lot of ways we can go at this point. We could cover any of the following:

• The history of football


• Rules of the game


• NFL teams/players


• College teams/players


• NFL draft


• History of the Super Bowl (Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, etc)


• Greatest moments in pro/college football

etc, etc, etc

Essentially, anything related to football can be turned into a website. However, which topic is going to most easily lend itself to a monetization plan? With our football example, online ticket sales and memorabilia are where the money is flowing. (By memorabilia I’m referring to everything from shirts, hoodies, jerseys, hats, blankets, collectibles, etc) Since this is meant to be an introduction series, we’re going to chose a fairly specific topic: Philadelphia Eagles Jerseys.

So, before we launch into keyword research and buying a domain, let’s make sure we have an idea of how we’ll actually make money from our jerseys site. For a site like this, we can use any or all of the following…

• NFLShop.com’s affiliate program (CJ)


• Dick’s Sporting Goods affiliate program (CJ)


• Champs Sports affiliate program (CJ)


• eBay affiliate program (Internal)

If we want to branch out a bit more…

• Adsense


• Lids.com affiliate program (CJ)


• GrillsDirect.com and iGourmet.com affiliate programs (perfect for tailgating or game parties) (PJN)

If you’re up for it, any online sportsbook with an affiliate program would work. You’ll have an audience that likes the Eagles enough to search for a jersey to buy, so they may very well be interested in betting on some games. The payouts for gambling sites are also pretty impressive, BetUS.com pays out 50% of all revenue earned from the people you refer. A few die hard Eagles fans betting during the playoffs is sadly a very good way to make money.

Overall, I’d say 9 separate options means it’s a pretty safe bet that we won’t be short on ways to monetize our traffic. So, we officially have our topic – the next installment will cover keyword research, purchasing a domain name, and getting our hosting in order.

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The bald author of this post is Ian Howells, Director of Search-Engine Optimization for Pepperjam.  Ian has been with Pepperjam for 1 1/2 years and most recently assisted Pepperjam’s CEO Kris Jones in writing “Search-Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint to Effective Internet Marketing.” Aside from Search-Engine Optimization, Ian has been involved in internet marketing since 2002.

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