There has been a significant rise in affiliate marketing over the past decade.

However, not everyone possesses the same level of knowledge about making their place as an affiliate marketer resulting in an uneven playing field.

This article is aimed at providing you with all the necessary knowledge you need to start affiliate marketing and gradually become a pro at it.

What are the costs to start affiliate marketing?

The primary myth to break here is that if you want to just become an affiliate marketer to enjoy social popularity, you might not need to invest money or purchase a domain to kick start your own website.

However, if you are looking to become an authentic platform from which you also earn money, you should be prepared to incur some costs along the way.

When you earn money through affiliate marketing you basically earn passive income via a commission-based model for increasing the sales of someone else’s products. It can also be called a form of revenue sharing.

Visiting facts, breaking myths, and discussing the costs to start affiliate marketing is all this article is about. Continue reading to know more!

Purchasing a domain

As an affiliate marketer you have two main ways of working with a particular brand for promoting its products or services:

1. You can write a beneficial and appreciative blog post about the brand’s products or service on their platform only
2. You can have your own website that allows you to talk about different brands with for whom you are working as an affiliate marketer

The first option will limit your growth as an affiliate marketer since it won’t be your own platform on which you can post different types of content.

However, even in the second option, you cannot just post about products or services that are not at all connected, they have to follow some sort of theme. For example, it can be about fashion, or skincare, or make-up.

Since it's more viable in the long run for you to have your own domain, you should think of a domain name that is relevant to the theme of the products or services for which you will be doing affiliate marketing.

You should be prepared to tweak the domain name a little since it requires a lot of luck to find the first domain name searched to be available.

There are two main platforms that are well known for searching and purchasing available domain names; Namecheap and BlueHost.

BlueHost is the bigger and more well known among these two domain registration platforms.

It has better security for your registered domain and a bigger team that can provide support when you need help.

BlueHost also caters to the provision of SSL certificates as well as email or domain auctions. However, this platform will not provide free registration to a new affiliate marketer like yourself.

Namecheap is similar to BlueHost in the features it provides but it is a relatively smaller platform.

The one thing that makes Namecheap more favorable is the free provision of the ‘whoisguard’ which means that your personal information is protected without any charges on this platform.

On average it will cost you $10 to register your domain on either Namecheap or BlueHost (the second being slightly cheaper). If you want the best domain name for your blog then you must try the Namecheap beast mode since it has raving reviews as an excellent tool to search for the best domains.

I have also written a detailed article on how to start a successful blog that you may want to check out.

Taking your platform live

Purchasing a domain name of your liking is just the first step in affiliate marketing. You have to decide what type of content will you be posting on this platform and who will host your website (also termed as taking it live).

This brings us to another cost associated with affiliate marketing.

Similar to the availability of multiple options for searching for an available domain name there are also multiple platforms that host a particular website.

These hosting companies tend to back up the necessary data from your website and provide assistance in case there are any technical glitches.

It is always better to do your due diligence prior to choosing the company that will host your website.

If you choose a new company or one that does not have a very good reputation to save costs you might regret it down the road when you lose customer engagement due to a dysfunctional website or lose data due to the shut down of the hosting company.

One of the most well-known website hosting companies is Bluehost who charges $3.95/month for hosting your website. This amounts to a total of $35.4 for a year of getting your website hosted by this company.

Bluehost has earned a reputation in assisting newbies in setting up their website and offering immense support to each of the websites it hosts.

Bluehost is one of the website hosting companies that has a 24/7 helpline available for its customers and even provides SEO based analytics to improve the performance of your website.

It is always better for you to keep your domain registering service provider separate from the website hosting service provider.

Even though Namecheap and BlueHost have hosting capabilities it is better to stick to Bluehost for these services.

This will eliminate the risk of you losing your domain name due to a glitch with the hosting service provider.

The website theme

As an affiliate marketer, this is one of the most important decisions you will make for your platform.

You should ensure that the theme you pick is friendly to the eyes (not too stark), is compatible across multiple devices, and is user friendly in terms of maneuvering across the website.

The best platform for choosing a theme for your website is WordPress.

They have a massive collection of both paid and free themes that you can choose from for your platform.

Even though the free themes tend to work pretty well but they do have limitations in terms of how well they load on different devices and how much customization they offer.

Paid themes will definitely perform better and have many more options than a free theme.

If you’re looking to purchase a theme you should browse through the options on Mythemeshop and choose one as per your needs.

One of the best options (in terms of website speed) available on this platform is the Schema from Mythemeshop and is what I use for this website. This option retails at $35 for the theme.

There are also other cheaper options present that you can pick from as per your suitability. If you purchase a theme from this platform and need to customize it you can log a ticket on their website and you will receive a prompt response.

Appealing Content

The primary job of an affiliate marketer is to put up content that attracts users to their platform.

The harsh truth is that there will always be at least one more person posting content that is similar to that on your affiliate marketing website.

At times they may even be working for a competitive brand and try to lure customers towards a brand they are promoting.

There are two main ways that your content can appear to be more attractive to the users:

• The actual typed content
• Graphics and Imagery

The question you should always ask yourself before finalizing content for your platform is if it is good enough to convince a reader and choose the product or service you are referring to in your content.

It is always better to start with yourself and reflect upon the type of content that would appeal to you if you were browsing through a similar website.

Once you have laid out the rough draft of your written content you need to “optimize it”.

This means that you want your platform to appear amongst the top search results when any user types a keyword relevant to your product or service in the search engine.

You can begin this process by doing a keyword search yourself for the product or service you are promoting.

Once you have a list of top keywords based on their volume and ranking you should incorporate these in your content to optimize it.

You can use content optimizers like Surfer that will tell you exactly what words and the number of times they are to be included in your content. There are other optimizers available but this seems to be the most user friendly.

Once your content (word-based) is optimized you need to switch to the imagery and graphics.

Free source images and poor quality graphics will drop the score of your website among the search results and may even reduce its compatibility across multiple devices.

This is one aspect that is commonly ignored by many affiliate marketers but is highly important.

One source of high-quality paid images is Shutterstock that contains a wide variety of images for all types of content. You can create an account here and then download images throughout the year for your website.

Alternatively, you can use Pixabay or Pexels to find high-quality photos for free.

The Website Appearance

If you are at this step of your journey as an affiliate marketer you are almost close to going live with your platform.

Every website requires changes and updates from time to time. In order to be able to do so, a website owner needs an easy to use editor.

One of the best landing page builders for affiliate marketing is the Thrive Architect by Thrivethemes.

WordPress tends to have its limitations as a website editor and is also not seen as user friendly by some individuals.

This is where the Thrive Architect by Thrivethemes editor for your website will come in handy. The cost for one license of this program is $67 and it offers multiple benefits for this price.

It is highly user friendly, has multiple templates to choose from, and assistance in building a better email list for you.

This may not be necessary at the start of your journey as an affiliate marketer but it is an expense you must consider at a later stage.

Get that necessary knowledge!

You may have the best software and services for your website but if you enter the industry without the necessary skills and knowledge you will not be able to succeed.

There are many affiliate marketing programs out there that can provide you with the necessary information to be successful in this industry.

One of the top-rated affiliate marketing programs out there is a course created by John Crestani called the Super Affiliate System.

This is a training that has its focus on paid advertisements, sales pages, and customer conversion. This $997 (quite pricey) program spans over a period of 6 weeks and is aimed at helping you get immediate results for your website.

If you have sufficient room in your finances at an early stage and you want quick customer conversion to your website then this is the program for you.

However, there are cheaper alternatives available for those not willing to dish out this much money at the beginning of their journey as an affiliate marketer.

A second equally amazing alternative for an affiliate marketing program is the Authority Site System that has been developed by Authority Hackers Pro. This program is completely different from the previous one since its focus is improving organic search results by means of SEO.

As the name suggests they aim to help you make your website the authority on a particular subject matter like “fashion” or “skincare”.

Since this program focuses on actually improving the content on your website it takes more time than paid advertisements. there you will have to exercise a little more patience if you sign up for this program.

This program tends to cost around $600 and offers you a “money-back guarantee” in case you are not happy with the content covered over the course of the program.

It is up to you as an affiliate marketer to choose which program you enroll in, but ideally, you will want to undertake some training before you start your own platform.

Wrap Up!

Even though the above list of costs for starting affiliate marketing is not exhaustive it will give you an idea of the major outflows you should be expecting if you wish to enter this industry.

This will help you be more prepared once you are starting your own platform.

In addition to those costs discussed above, you may also incur small costs related to email marketing (estimated $15/month), a keyword search tool like ahrefs ($99/month), or Keysearch ($17/month), and other miscellaneous expenses.

Here is a sneak peek of my hrefs tool:

This business model is a fast-paced and lucrative industry but it requires some initial costs to be invested.

That is why I want to provide you with multiple alternatives.

Sum Up the Costs to Start Affiliate Marketing

To sum everything up, these are the costs you will need to invest in when you decide to start affiliate marketing.

Have in mind though, if you put in the time and effort required, this particular investment will return to your bank account.

It may take some time as with all great things, but at least you can make an impact on other people's lives, and make a side income along the way.

I hope this article on how much it costs to start affiliate marketing was helpful.

Please like and share if it provides you with beneficial knowledge and leave any queries you may have in the comments below. I will reply to them as soon as possible.