Step 7. Building your Site

Why do I insist you build a website? 

You could start with a YouTube or twitch.tv channel, but now you are relying on a third party that may impose rules about your content and shut you down at any time. You always want to have the option of hosting your own video content and a place to send your Video channel subscriber to that is yours.

Can’t I just start with Pay Per Click and drive traffic to the offer page?
I don’t believe in what I like to call “pass through marketing”. This is where you just send the customer straight to the retailer and get a commission with no hope of ever getting that customer again. 

Another thing to keep in mind is most merchants do not allow direct linking in paid search. This means you may not use their URL in your paid ads. Instead you would direct traffic to a landing page on your site with links to the merchant you want to promote. Repeatedly testing offers this way can get very expensive and you will not have anything to show for it except an empty bank account. It is also very intensive and not for the faint of heart.

Having your own Web site will give you a piece of internet real estate that you can constantly improve on and consistently make money from loyal visitors or subscribers to your email opt in list.

A word about free platforms to host your content- Nothing is ever free. That hosting resource is paid for in some way and usually, it is your content that gets monetized with ads the “free” hosting platform stuffs into your content or next to it. You will have absolutely no control over the ads and won’t earn a dime from. Plus you know all that fine print in the user agreement, yeah you agreed to this and your site/content may disappear without any warning.  So please just do not do this. 

Author: Ginette

Search & Affiliate Marketing Strategist since 1993