I find that some money can be made from this. It depends on how well you design your website and how well you encourage your visitors to click on the banners. Your website has to be carefully designed and the wordings selected to induce people to go to the merchant you represent. Some merchants pay 5%, some 10%, and some more. By carefully choosing the merchant to match the contents of your website you will get more click-throughs. More click-throughs means more sales. It’s a numbers game.
If you don’t already have a website to promote your business, a blog is a good first step in that direction. It provides a way for people to find you online without your spending a lot of money or time working with a Web designer or learning web design software. In fact, some people use a blog as their one and only Web presence.
Next I went into affiliate marketing. The concept is simple. My website serves as a storefront for other merchant’s advertising banners. When people who are attracted by the merchant’s banners, click on them, they got transported to the merchant’s website. If the visitor buys anything, a percentage of the purchase price will be paid to me.
As you are designing the web page in question, and creating the navigation functions, you will want to test each link thoroughly, making sure they work on each and every page. If you have any broken links, customers will lose faith in your product, and rather easily. If you are ready to build a website, then now would be a great time to start searching for the appropriate software, and of course, start making plans.
Although the search engines spot similarity between sites, you are able to make your site unique with small design tweaks, color changes and graphics.
What’s really needed is some kind of tool that you can use that can take care of the design and artwork while allowing you flexibility as well. There are many sites that offer canned templates but have you seen them? They are not very good and if you use them, you run the risk of looking like everyone else that has chosen to use them. And many of those are not exactly free either. The ones that they typically offer for free are the worst looking ones. So you end up paying anyway.
Be aware though: Only you know why you are writing your site. If it is because you have information that you wish to share or a product you wish to sell, then keep that focus in mind. My reasons — to share what I am learning, to learn more about my own personal finances, to be accountable to someone for maintaining my new system of personal finance — have led me to reject joining certain offered programs. I will not disparage programs, but, I was given an opportunity to try a “training program” for 14 days. The free materials were very good and readable, but once i got closer to having to sign up, the posts started looking very much like a sales pitch for a “pyramid” scheme.
A level of perfection should always be the goal for any web designer. It is true that there is no perfect website, though if you have this mindset, you will be constantly trying to improve what you have created, and it will always be better than it was before. It doesn’t matter which kind of site you plan to build, as a good attitude will get you far!