You may have heard of affiliate marketing and possibly even adopted a few of its tactics. You see, affiliate marketing is all about generating revenue without having to directly sell a product; instead, you recommend or suggest a product and when somebody purchases something through your ad, you get a cut of the profit.

So what is stopping you from following suit and just incorporating affiliate marketing into your digital marketing strategy?

Although the world of digital marketing is ever-changing, there are a few basic fundamentals that will never go out of fashion. One of these is SEO, for Search Engine Optimization. Without getting too technical (and this article isn’t meant to be an SEO guide), when people perform a search using a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yandex, your website will appear in the results because you meet certain criteria set by the search engine.

If somebody lands on your website and performs a search while you’re logged into Google, your website will show up as an option in the search results. For best results, you should optimize your site for all search engines.

The Next Step

Now that you have an idea of what an SEO-friendly website looks like, you can begin to build one. Remember that to succeed as an online marketer, you will need a website and you will need to drive traffic to it. Fortunately, we have you covered on that front. We have designed a free website tool that will create a fully-optimized, SEO-friendly website in no time at all. We call it Optimizer and it’s what we use to power our own websites.

So, let’s get started. First, you will need to pick a name for your new site. We recommend using the business name that you will use for your products or services. Once you have picked a name for your site, it is time to move on to the next step.

Step two involves selecting a domain for your site. A domain is a word or phrase that acts as a shortcut to a website. For example, if you wanted to create a website to sell skincare products, you would search for “skincare products” to find relevant websites. If you picked the right domain (in this case, skincareproducts.com), when somebody clicks on the link they will be taken to your website since you have an optimized and SEO-friendly site.

Building a Small Business Website

To create a small business website, all you will need is a place to store content and a domain name. You don’t need a whole lot of pages. The more content you put on your site, the more opportunities you have to rank high on the search engine results pages.

To get started, simply visit [https://www.wix.com/](https://www.wix.com/) or [https://www.google.com/domains/](https://www.google.com/domains/) and pick a domain with your business name. Then, click on the Get Started button to continue to their free website builder. From there, you can click on the plus sign to start building your site.

If you’re not familiar with WordPress, this is the platform we use to build all the websites here at GrowBig. We highly recommend it. Not only does it make building websites easy, but it also provides you with powerful tools to grow your business online.

Once you have your WordPress platform, it’s time to import your domain. To do this, click on the Import button at the top right of your WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the Choose File option and navigate to your website’s.zip file. Ensure that you have the right URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and that the file is located on your server.

Now that you have your WordPress platform and domain set up, it’s time to begin adding content. From our experience, adding content to a site actually boosts its SEO (Search Engine Optimization). When you create content for your site (e.g., how-to guides, case studies, etc.), you are automatically creating more opportunities for the site to show up in the search results.

To add content to your site, you can either use the WordPress dashboard or you can go through a third-party tool like Hootsuite or Buffer. Let’s say you used Hootsuite to curate and schedule content for your site. You can either go through the Curator tool to add a new piece of content or you can choose from a list of topics to write about. After you pick a topic, you can begin writing your content and schedule it to go live at a certain date and time.

Making Money With a Digital Marketing Business

So you want to start an online marketing business? Awesome! Below, we will discuss the various ways you can make money with a digital marketing business – whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or established business looking for new streams of revenue.

Sale Of Merchandise

Back to the original question – how does affiliate marketing make money for an online retailer? Let’s say you’re an online clothing store and you decide to partner with an affiliate marketing company. Whenever someone clicks on a product link you’ve shared on social media or a website, they will be taken to a retailer’s website where they can make a purchase. You get a commission when somebody buys a product that you’ve promoted on your blog or social media channels.

This is one of the more traditional affiliate marketing models and if you’ve been doing affiliate marketing, this is probably the type of revenue you’re looking for. The key to this type of partnership is making sure that the products you promote are relevant to your audience. You can also choose to promote relevant products that are not necessarily affiliated with a brand. For example, maybe you’ve written an article about how to plan a luxurious vacation with your friends and family. Now, you can partner with a travel agency and earn a commission when somebody clicks on a product link (e.g., a travel guide) while on their holiday planning journey.

Become A Product Seller

If you’re looking to make big money online, you might want to consider exploring the product selling route. Simply put, when somebody wants to buy a product but doesn’t want to be bombarded with ads, they will come to your site. You then sell the product and earn a commission.

Let’s say you’re selling hair accessories and you’ve created a blog post about the best hair accessories for black women. You then decide to partner with a product manufacturer who agrees to pay you a commission when somebody buys a product that you’ve promoted on your blog.

This is one of the more modern ways to make money online and if you’re looking for an easy way to make cash, you might want to consider exploring this path.

Monetizing A Mobile App

If you’re looking to make money fast, you can either choose to sell affiliate products or you can create a mobile app and sell it to mobile app stores. For the sake of this example, we’ll use Amazon as a market place and the Google Play Store.

Simply launch the Amazon App Store or Google Play Store on your phone and search for your desired product. On the next screen, you will see all the apps that are available for purchase. If you want to create a mobile app, you can either search for apps already available on the store or you can click on the Get Started button to get access to a large number of templates.

Once you have your Amazon or Google Play Store account, it’s time to add apps you’ve developed. For best results, it is important to make your app user-friendly and easy to navigate. When people install your app and use it, they will experience excellent user-friendliness. In addition, you want to make sure that your app is secure since people will be providing sensitive information (e.g., credit card details) while using it. You can do this by using a secure connection (https) whenever possible. When someone visits your Amazon or Google Play Store listing, they will see a little padlock icon in the browser’s address bar. This indicates a secure connection and that your app has not been hacked.

Creating And Promoting Virtual Goods

If you’re looking for a way to make quick and easy money, you can explore the virtual goods route. Simply put, if somebody wants to purchase an item but doesn’t want to leave the comfort of their homes, they will buy a virtual good that they can download directly to their device. For example, let’s say you’re a designer who creates clothing items for women. You can partner with a manufacturer who creates printed T-shirts with your logo on them. When somebody purchases one of these shirts, they will get a free download of your clothing item.