Previous articles in this series: Part 1: Create A Plan

Now that you have a plan for you authority affilaite site, you will begin laying the foundation so that you can build onto it as time goes on. This article is going to talk about getting the basic pieces in place so that it will be easy to continually add new phases.

Registering A Brandable Domain Name

The very first step (after planning of course) is to name your website. I’m not going to go into too much detail about this because I already wrote an article on choosing a great domain name, and all nine of its tips are directly applicable to this post (so make sure you read it). I will, however, stress the importance.

We are building a long-term, authority site, so you better make sure that your domain name is brandable. The search engine benefits of your domain name should be the furtherest thing from your mind. They simply don’t matter. We are much more concerned with becoming a respected authority, and the only way to do that is to have a respectable domain name.

Hiring Content Writers

Content takes time to produce, so you should be prepared to order it ahead of time. You will want to hire “full time” writers in the later stages of development, but for now, just get batched content. These initial batches of content do not need to be informational (unless you want to spend some extra money up front), but instead, should be sales content for your landing pages.

What I did for the website I am currently working on is hire a freelancer to write 75 in depth product reviews, each consisting of 1000-1200 words. As for the price, I received bids from $800-$2500, and chose one for $1200. I know that might seem like a lot of money to spend on content, but keep in mind that you must take risks to get rewards, that content is a good investment, and that you don’t necessarily need to start with such a large amount of it.

The reason we are only creating landing page content at this point is that our main goal is to generate a positive cash flow and then use those profits to fuel further development. The actual implementation of this content and the building of the landing pages will not be discussed until the next article. For now, there are other things that need to be done while you are waiting for the content to be delivered.

Getting A Design

The next piece of the puzzle is the website’s design. At this point, you only need to be concerned with conversions. If you want to save some money (the bills can add up quickly), just use a modified free template like the ones found at OSWD. There will always be time to hire a professional designer once profits are made.

What you need in a design is entirely dependent on your initial planning, but again, it should be optimized for conversions. This means not having useless page elements that distract the visitor and take them away from the desired outcome of clicking your affiliate links. Everything in your design should be geared towards coercing the reader to complete an action that helps you make more money.

Starting To Develop The Website

If you don’t know how to build database driven websites, this part could get difficult. There are alternatives for creating this type of site, but if you want it to be the best it can be, you are going to need a professional backend. The best alternative I can think of to programming the site from scratch (either by yourself, with a partner, or through outsourcing) is to learn ExpressionEngine. It is a very powerful framework used for creating completely custom content management systems, and will probably be easier to learn than database programming.

Note: Just like with the design, instead of developing the backend at this stage of development, you could simply create the pages by hand. The problem with this, however, is that it will greatly increase the amount of work that you have to do and will limit your available options.

For me, and those of you who have the resources to develop the programming, it is probably easier to just do it the old fashioned way. I played around with ExpressionEngine before, and while it did seem very cool and powerful, it didn’t make sense for me to learn a new, proprietary framework.

Anyways, what you need to accomplish at this point is the coding of your template along with a way to store your content, display your content, and track actions. I created a database for my reviews, broken up into sections (i.e. price, positives, negatives, summary, full review, etc), and loaded all of the reviews into that database. I then created a simple framework for pulling that data out of the database and a few scripts for tracking different actions (page views, clicks, and conversions).

Keeping SEO Principles In Mind

This step is optional, and probably unnecessary, if you are going with the “temporary” route (free design template and basic backend). If, however, you are actually developing what will become the full authority site, you should design and build it with SEO principles in mind. This includes (but is not limited to) avoiding duplicate content issues, using good internal linking strategies, and properly structuring your page content.

Because this is optional at this point, and because this post isn’t about SEO, I’m not going to go any deeper into the subject. If you want to learn the main principles of search engine optimization, I highly recommend you get yourself a copy of SEO Book by Aaron Wall.

Next Article

While this article discussed laying the basic groundwork for your authority affiliate site, the next article will talk specifically about building various types of landing pages. These landing pages will be used to take visitors from your PPC ad groups and convert them into leads.