As an affiliate marketer you can send traffic directly to the sales page of your merchant. This is a quick and easy approach with hardly any control though whatsoever, but easy on the newbie, because you don't need a website!
If you want control and if you also want to build a list of subscribers, you do need a website, and there is no way around this.
For starters an easy way would be to build your own blog. If you choose blogspot, all you need is a Google account and you ready to go. These blogs don't need external hosting and the editing process is made very easy with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor.
There are lots of different layouts available to suit your taste and the niche you are operating in. I do recommend you don't spend endless hours on the visual appearance of your blog, though. The main purpose of you blog will be to offer valuable content, keyword rich articles and blog posts. Search engines love fresh content and will rate you higher after some time. The articles or posts, rather, will sort of "presell" you readers and give you something like an expert status in the given field.
If your content stands up to the challenge, that is!
In your posts you will insert text links containing your affiliate ID and banners pointing to either your own landing page or to the sales page of your merchant.
Something quite similar is to be found at Squidoo.com. Easy to set up websites with no hosting and FTP uploading necessary.
As you grow more confident, you can look at websites or blogs which offer more freedom in the setup and editing. Today WordPress or WP would be your first choice. The Pros are significant: It's very easy to add content on a daily basis, which the Search Engines love.
Sure you can ad content to a static website, too, but it takes knowledge on FTP and server side file management and at least some basic HTML, while with WP you just add a new post from your hard drive and you are done with it. Well, almost, but we'll get into the details later.
Anyway, with WP there are thousands of beautiful themes (designs) available for free and the installation is done with a click of your mouse.
Again: Almost! As a general warning let me say that whenever I read something like: Done with a click of your mouse!, I know that most of the times this simply isn't true.
If you are new to all of this I highly recommend you choose a rather simple theme and concentrate on adding relevant and unique content on a daily basis and don't waste hours to find an even fancier design.
People won't buy anything or sign up to your Opt In box just because they are flattered by the chic theme you choose. Content matters and you got to bear in mind that this is what you want your readers to see and read and appreciate! Remember: Content is King!
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