How to Set up a Niche Affiliate Blog

When it comes to working from home, blogging is more than likely a big part of your home business. If it isn’t it should be! Today, guest blogger Mary Lutz is going to tell you all about how to set up a niche affiliate blog.

You’ve probably heard of niche affiliate marketing or niche blogging or something along those lines. But, perhaps you don’t quite get what it is or how it can make you money. When I first started out working from home I didn’t quite get it either. But now that I’ve been around internet marketing for a few years, I’ve come to understand just what niche affiliate marketing is and how it works.

Wikipedia defines niche as:

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.

A niche affiliate blog, therefore, targets a specific market through content. The content contained in the blog usually contains keywords and key phrases that search engines will find and thus drive traffic to your blog.

Setting up a Niche Affiliate Blog

The first step to setting up a Niche Affiliate Blog is determining what your niche is going to be. It might be best for you to start off with one niche, one you know you can identify with and therefore it will be easy to come up with content on a regular basis.

So, sit down with some index cards and start writing out some things your passionate about. Sewing, scrapbooking, photography, knitting baby blankets, quilting, couponing, hiking or rock climbing are just a few things that pop into my head.

Write each idea on an index card and when you’ve run out of ideas, go back to each card and write sub topics (sub niches) on each one. For instance, under sewing you might put “the lost art of hand-made clothes” or “how to make dolls by hand”. The idea is to narrow down the niche to a very specified topic. The more narrow the niche, the better chance your blog has of being found by the search engines.

Domain Name

Then of course comes the right domain name. Let’s stick with “How to make dolls by Hand” as our niche. You need a domain name that will appear in the list of websites when someone searches for information having to do with your niche. A couple ideas might be dollsbyhand.com or handmadedolls.com.

I haven’t researched these domain names to see if they’re available or not, and that is something you will also need to do. If you have a hosting account with Mom Webs or Reliable Webs, you can freely search domain names. The idea is to have a domain name that contains specific words your potential customers will search for.

After you’ve bought a domain name, then you will need to have your blog installed. I recommend using WordPress because it has all the functionality and style you want and need. Setting up a niche affiliate blog on your own domain can be done through wordpress.org, and requires just a little bit of skill and knowledge.

Affiliate Programs

You will also need to search out good affiliate programs because this is how your blog is going to make money. As an affiliate, you will be placing other businesses ads and links on your site targeted to your niche market. Using our handmade dolls example, you might search for companies that sell the specific products you would need in order to make dolls, such as thread, material, stuffing, Styrofoam balls, buttons, yarn, special needles, etc.

Or you may find affiliate programs for stores that sell all of these materials as well. There are hundreds of affiliate marketing programs and you may find it useful to sign up for several. I recommend Clickbank.com, commissionjunction.com, and LinkShare.com. There are many, many others, but these are good to get started with.

In my next post, I’m going to talk to you more about affiliate programs and how to find good ones, as well as how to use Google Ads. I’m also going to talk to you about content for your niche as well as article marketing and social networking. So be sure your subscribed to the RSS feed so you don’t miss out on any of this information.

Mary Lutz is the owner of Full Blog Support. She can help you get started with your niche affiliate blog from installation and customization to providing high quality content on a regular basis targeted to your specific niche.