Getting Started With An Online Business

Here’s a little transparency, my website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click and make a purchase,I may receive a small commission. Don’t worry, there’s no extra cost to you. It’s a simple way you can support my mission to bring you quality content. 

By Jena: Your Helping-Hand Affiliate 🤝 

How do I start an online business in affiliate marketing? That’s the question so many ponder..

If you’re anything like me, maybe you would also like to work from home, with your own business online. As for me, I want to stay home with my two fur babies, (since my actual child is an adult now)! I don’t want an alarm clock waking me up every morning. I’m NOT a morning person at all! I don’t want to go out in rush hour traffic every day. When I arrive at the office, I don’t want to be there helping someone else grow their business! I want grow my OWN BUSINESS working my own hours and be my own boss.

How about you? Does this sound like a dream? It doesn’t have to be! You CAN start an online business iin marketing. If you would like to make this a reality for yourself, keep reading!

WHAT is Affiliate Marketing? It’s promoting products or services for a company, in exchange for a commission on each sale, through affiliate links.

Basically, you find a company within your niche (what you’re promoting) that has an affiliate program and sign up with them. When a customer clicks on your affiliate link that you have established with the company, and a sale is generated from it, the company will give you a commission.

HOW does the Process of Affiliate Marketing Work?

• A customer looks up something on a search engine, like Google. They may type in something like, “How do I start and online affiliate marketing business?” Google provides results. In those results, there are going to be Websites ranked. Depending on where your website is ranked, is where it will appear in the search engines.
• Get your website seen in Google (through SEO, search engine optimization).
• Add affiliate links on your site to the program or product you’re promoting.
• The customer buys as a result of clicking the affiliate link.
• You get a commission. The affiliate program you are promoting will determine the commission and how you are paid.

WHY should you start your online business in affiliate marketing?

There is SO MUCH OPPORTUNITY in affiliate marketing right now! In 2023, the global affiliate marketing industry experienced significant growth, with revenues reaching approximately $14.3 billion. Yes, that’s BILLION with a B! It is estimated that in 2024, that figure should reach $15.7 billion! The affiliate marketing industry has a market value of over $27.8 BILLION!

Affiliate marketing is a lucrative field. Some participants have reported annual affiliate incomes exceeding $150,000. In the United States, 16% of online orders are generated through affiliate marketing. There is great income potential here! You do have to put the time and effort into it though. There are approximately over 107,000 companies worldwide operating within the affiliate networks industry. As of January 2024, there were approximately 5.47 billion people who use the internet daily worldwide. There is significant opportunity here to reach people and make money in the affiliate marketing industry!

Starting an online business can be an overwhelming process if you’re trying to figure it out on your own. So many people want to have an online business, but they think it’s too difficult to do, so they never even look into it. They basically have given up before ever even trying! I was one of those people too once. I have learned though, when you have the right tools, education and mentorship, you can definitely build yourself an online business. I found those building structures in the platform of Wealthy Affiliate.

I could never have started an online business on my own. I NEEDED help! HaHA! Wealthy Affiliate has taken me by the hand and helped me get an online business going. So, how did they help me?

It’s really just 4 basic steps that I’ll share with you.

STEP 1: Choosing a Niche

This is what’s going to set your Online Business Direction

What is a niche? A niche is a product or service that you want to promote.

When you are choosing your niche, here are some things to consider:

• What are you are interested in?
• What are you passionate about?
• What do you like to do for fun?
• What are your hobbies?
• What do you like creating?

You want to choose something that sparks your interest. If you choose something that you’re passionate about, that will reflect in the content on your website and to your target audience. You want your audience to relate to you. If they do, you will have them coming back resulting in engagement on your website. Besides, if your passionate about your niche, your business won’t even feel like work! It will be something you’ll want to do, and you’ll be excited about waking up to “work” every day!

STEP 2: Building Your Business Website

Constructing a Digital Foundation

Your website is the foundation of your business. Upon starting with Wealthy Affiliate, you are given your own website. With the assistance of their AI (artificial intelligence) platform, you create your niche and brand (website name) in just a matter of minutes of getting started! You now have a live website JUST LIKE THAT! How exciting!

You are going to need a .com domain in order for your website to go live and to start building it out. Typically, you want the .com domain to match your brand name. Wealthy Affiliate will show you how to look for available domains in their training, and when you sign up for their Premium Program, you will get a free domain included which is a $16 value.

Now that you have your website, you want to start building it out. The one thing you want to keep in mind as you build and design it, is your visitors/potential customers. Ask yourself, is my website easy to use and navigate around? Is my content credible, helpful and engaging? If you don’t have these things, you may possibly lose potential customers. You want to attract engaging customers who will keep coming back that will lead to sales. You want the whole experience of visiting your website to be a pleasant one. CUSTOMERS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PART, right? Without them, there’s no business!

What Are Some Essential Elements of a Website?

Now that you have you have chosen your niche and brand for your website, it’s time to start building it out. So, what are some key elements you need on your website?

About Me Page

This is where you are going to tell your customers a little about yourself, the purpose of your site and how you want to help them. Also, put a photo of yourself, or one of you and your family. You want them to see there’s a real person behind your site. It helps the customers get to know you a little and it establishes a sense of connection to you. Here’s my “About Me Page” About Jena

Privacy Policy

This is a standard page that is legally required on all websites. It outlines, if and how, you collect, use, share, or sell your visitor’s information. You can see my “Privacy Policy” here: Privacy Policy

Affiliate Diclosure Page 

Anyone that monetizes their audience through affiliate links, must provide an affiliate disclosure statement. This is a legal requirement by the Federal Trade Commission, (FTC). Clear disclosures allows users to make informed decisions when they understand the financial relationship between your site and the products or services you recommend. This allows users to decide how much weight to give your endorsement when they are aware of potential incentives that may influence your recommendations or endorsements. See my “Affiliate Diclosure” here: https://cozyzonesolutions.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=106&action=edit

Logo

This is a visual representation of your brand. It helps identify your company. It’s essential for recognition, identity and differentiation from other businesses. Design, colors, lettering, background, and shape of your logo are some elements to help your target audience remember YOUR brand online. 

This is the logo of the company that I personally work with and recommend. Here’s their link to check them out. https://www.wealthyaffiliate.com?a_aid=f3f45629

You’ll find MY personal logo at the top. 

Content

(This section is going to be a little longer with some extras added, before you get to the next component of Navigation, because this is the MOST IMPORTANT section of your website).  Please look around my website here at Cozy Zone Solutions and read the content that’s available here. I hope you will find it helpful and feel free to ask any questions you may have.  

This is going to be THE HEART of your website. The content on your website can be written blogs, videos, links, pictures, and etc. It is important to have valuable, high-quality content on your website for two main reasons:

Gain customers (visitors to your website) to keep them coming back, potentially leading to future revenue, and SEO (search engine optimization).

You want your content to be of value to your visitors. If you provide your visitors with valuable content, you will build trust and credibility with your visitors. You want to establish a connection with them. Keep your visitors engaged by providing something of value and interest to them, and they will keep coming back. Eventually this may lead to your visitors taking action that will generate sales for you.

SEO or (Search Engine Optimization) is increasing your online visibility through search engines.

Basically, it’s how search engines rank your content. Have your ever searched on Google for instance, and what you have searched for, have pages and pages of information on that subject? How many times have you gone to page 10, 20 or even higher? Probably not often. Most people only look on the first few pages. This is what SEO is all about. You want your content to be on the first page if possible, so visitors will see it. Through SEO, your website will attract potential quality and quantity of website traffic.

At Wealthy Affiliate (WA), they have the platform to help you get an edge over the competition in getting ranked in the search engines. They have already done the research for you! WA provides key words to use for your content that SEO recognizes.

Key Words are crucial for search engine optimization (SEO). Key words are words and phrases that define what your content is about. It is what searchers enter into search engines to discover content. Key words help search engines understand the content of a web page. WA provides all the research and content tools that you’ll need for building out your website.

For more on SEO, see my article:

What Is The Importance Of Seo In Affiliate Marketing

Navigation

Navigation is elements like menus, search bars, link text, and buttons that help visitors explore and browse around your website.

When you are building out the navigation on your website, you want to ensure that your visitors find what they need quickly and easily enhancing their overall experience and satisfaction. If your navigation is not user friendly, then your visitors may leave. They are not going to spend the time to figure it out. They will go somewhere else.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is going to show your visitors that their opinions are valued which will enhance customer loyalty. For you, it will give you valuable insights as to what is working well or what you may need to improve upon. Also, your visitors may give you some ideas on what they would like to see on your site, or not see. If you can give your visitors what they want, which can be more or less of something, you will have them coming back to your site. It’s all about your customers, so feedback can be crucial. At the bottom of this post, there’s a place you can share your feedback with me. Please feel free to comment or ask any questions you may have! 😊 

Contact Us

This is a way for your visitors and potential customers to get in touch with your business. You can provide an email address here, and it’s a good way to build your email list, which is going to be important to your business. It’s important because it’s going to allow you to target precisely your subscribers with relevant content. Email brings business opportunities with every subscriber, from first time visitors to long standing customers. Each person on your email list is a doorway to new opportunities. Here’s my contact information: mailto:Jena@cozyzonesolutions.com

STEP 3: Building Content to Bring in Traffic

Utilizing AI

When you’re building out your content, it’s best to build it out in categories sequentially. You want to have relevance between your pages so they can be interlinked. This is best for search engine optimization, and also it helps your visitors navigate easier on your site.

Within Wealthy Affiliate, you are given all the tools you need to build your content. The platforms are AI integrated and will streamline a lot of the content for you, doing most of the heavy lifting.

Within the platform that Wealthy Affiliate provides, you have a business hub, which is the platform for building your business. In your business hub, your website structure and organization are built out for you.

Also, in your business hub, you have AMAZING tools to help with efficiency in your content creation. The tools are time savers! What use to take hours, can now be done in minutes! The research has already been done for you! This will help you get started ranking in search engines.

Within your hubs you’ll find low competition, high intent ideas to drive high quality traffic to your site. Traffic to your site is what you’re aiming for with your content. Traffic provides opportunity for revenue! That’s what we all want! Some of the tools provided within Wealthy Affiliate to accomplish this are, writing tasks, writing tools, and an article designer!

STEP 4: Monetizing Your Digital Space

From Clicks to Cash

Now that you have got traffic to your site, you want to provide access to the company that you are promoting products or services for. A way to do this is through affiliate links. Affiliate links are a way for an affiliate to earn passive income by recommending products or services that are relevant to your niche and audience. For more on affiliate links, check out my post: Beginner’s Guide To Affiliate Links 

When you sign up to a company’s affiliate program, you will be provided a special web link that contains an ID (affiliate link) that is unique to the affiliate who is promoting a product or service. (That way the company knows exactly who referred their customer). They are redirected to the seller’s website, where a cookie is stored on their bowser. The cookie tracks the user’s behavior and records  if they make a purchase or sign up for something. If they do, the affiliate earns a commission for the sale or lead! To learn more about signing up with an affiliate program marketplace, see my post: How To Find The Best Affiliate Programs In Your Niche

Most cookies do have an expiration date though, so you would want to check that when you sign up for an affiliate program. The affiliate will only get credit if the user completes an action within a certain period of time. Cookie expirations vary from company to company.

Get Started

There are so many products and services to promote through affiliate marketing, I can’t even begin to tell you. The industry is so much more established now than it ever was too. It’s only going to get bigger and better with time, which is already growing at a rapid rate. I have seen that personally just in the time that I’ve been in this business. It’s a great time to get into this industry for sure. 

People in my WA Community that has been doing this for a little while tell me that building out your business, website and content use to take so much longer before AI was a thing. Now with AI tools, that Wealthy Affiliate has integrated into their platform, it’s a much easier and faster process. WA is always updating their platform to keep up with today’s changing times, standards and trends. 

Wealthy Affiliate (WA) helped me get my business started, and I would not recommend or partner with them if they were not up to par. They’ve been in business since 2005, and are not some fly-by-night company. If you would like to know more about WA, please see my article called, “Wealthy Affiliate Reviewed“ and it goes in a lot more detail. But always, do the research and check out any company you partner with for yourself, whether it be Wealthy Affiliate, or another company. 

If you would like to get started working from home, WA alllows you to go into their platform, look around and test it out for free, to see if it’s something that interests you. There’s nothing to lose by checking it out, especially if you’re someone who would welcome the opportunity to work from home, or would like a side income in addition to your current job. You can click here to get started and see if it’s something that interests you.  

If you have any questions, just ask! 

You will never know if you automatically dismiss opportunities. 

Oh look, Prowler can by for a visit! 

Hi, I’m Prowler! Just in case you haven’t met me officially yet, I’m just the MOST AMAZING SPIDER YOU’LL EVER MEET! My job is to spider-crawl search engines throughout the web looking for quality content worthy to be indexed and ranked. You can learn more about how I work in Jena’s post on SEO. I provided the link earlier in this post. Just scroll up a little. Hey, I didn’t want to be repetitious, you know! (It’s just under the Cartoon about Keywords). Anyway, you’ll find me crawling all about Jena’s website making sure she provides you with quality content, and of course to harass her, which is always fun to me! 🤪 So be watching for me! 

Check out my

***FUN FACEBOOK PAGE!!!***

You’ll find funny memes, jokes and inspiration! 

Click this link to take you there! 

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557740904317&mibextid=ZbWKwL

Tell me what you think about this post, Getting Started With An Online Business, and leave a comment below! Let me know any thoughts, suggestions, ideas or questions you may have! I would love to hear them! Or contact me at:

mailto:Jena@cozyzonesolutions.com

Peace be with you, and remember:

GOD LOVES YOU! ❤️❤️❤️

Jena 🌻🪻🌸