How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Blog and Grow Your Income

Hi, I’m Antonio!

I’m a digital entrepreneur and affiliate marketer with an extensive expertise in SEO and social media ads for ecommerce businesses.

In this guide, I’m going to teach you how to create a successful affiliate marketing blog from scratch and how to make money from it.

This step-by-step guide for beginners includes everything you need to know to start a successful blog right now and grow to $5,000, $10,000, and even $20,000 per month.

If you are:

• Tired of your 9 to 5 and feeling stuck in your day job
• Unsure where to begin because you lack the necessary knowledge about affiliate marketing
• Confused by the abundance of contradictory information online about “how to start a bolg”
• Simply curious about what it takes to create a blog of your own

This guide is for you!

And that’s what this guide is all about: to give you the knowledge to achieve some success too.

I’m not promising overnight millions, but starting a blog represents a low-risk venture with potentially significant financial rewards, offering a fun and creative way to build passive income streams.

Here you will learn:

1. How to choose your niche
2. How to set up your blog
3. How to plan your keyword strategy
4. How to build your blog
5. How to monetize your blog

Ready? Let’s get to it.

Choose Your Blog Niche

First of all you need to pick a niche for your blog.

Your blog niche is simply the specific topic your site focuses on. It could be anything from photography to interior design, fashion, or even niche professions like gardeners or make-up artists.

Finding your niche is critical because it makes it easier to determine what to write about and build a content plan.

My niche for example is how to start with affiliate marketing.

I teach how to start an affiliate marketing business and how to make money with it.

My entire blog is around affiliate marketing.

The World Travel Guy is all about solo travelling on a budget.

Hope Taylor started as a photographer at 16 and then grew a massive blog where she also coaches others how to grow their business.

Now that you have a good grasp of what a niche is you need to understand two main things:

1. Why a niche is so important
2. Why you need to find a sub-niche for your blog

Why Your Blog Needs a Niche

Search engines like Google prioritize websites with a clearly defined focus, as this helps their algorithms better understand and properly rank your content.

This approach also makes sense from a credibility point of view. True expertise typically comes through specialization; unlikely to be an expert in a dozen different fields.

As people specialize, your blog should too!

While you have complete creative control over your blog, its success ultimately depends on the value you can provide to your readers.

Today, blogging is driven by Google’s rules, and to succeed, you need to play by its rules.

Start With a Sub-Niche

Many aspiring bloggers say: “I want to start a cooking blog” or “I want to write about workout”.

That’s a great start, but definitely too broad.

Attempting to compete in broad niches like cooking or fitness means going up against established websites with enormous budgets. Outranking them in search results? Nearly impossible. Outspending them on ads? Not happening.

The smarter approach is to narrow your focus first. Find a smaller, more focused segment within your niche to establish yourself—then gradually expand as your site gains authority.

This focused strategy allows you to rank faster with less effort. Once you’ve built credibility with Google, you’ll find it considerably easier to begin ranking for more competitive topics.

Search engines evaluate numerous SEO factors including:

• Your site’s age
• Overall domain authority
• Topical authority
• Content volume
• Backlink profile

As a new website, you’ll lack ALL of these critical factors—certainly not nearly enough to compete with established sites in your chosen field.

By targeting a specialized sub-niche, you dramatically improve your ranking potential. You’ll need significantly fewer resources to rank for specific terms like “tips for cooking steak in oven” compared to broadly competitive keywords like “cooking tips“.

The encouraging aspect is the momentum you’ll build once you begin ranking. Your initial successes create a positive feedback loop: higher rankings lead to increased trust from Google, more backlinks from other websites, and growing visitor numbers.

This accumulated authority then helps you rank for increasingly competitive topics, and will ultimately define the success of your affiliate marketing blog.

Makes sense?

Let’s make a quick recap.

When launching your first blog, identify a sub-niche within a niche.

Beginning with a narrow focus accelerates your ranking potential and helps build authority with search engines. After gaining initial traction, you can strategically expand into related areas.

Now that you understand the importance of finding a specialized niche, let’s explore how to identify the perfect one for your specific skills and expertise.

How to Find Your Affiliate Marketing Blog’s Niche

Selecting a niche is the most crucial decision when starting a successful blog – it’s absolutely essential to your success.

Choose incorrectly, and your blog will likely fail. If the niche has too much competition for rankings or lacks monetization opportunities, even your best efforts won’t lead to success.

One technique that totally changed the game for me was the “intersection method.”

My blog — filoaffiliate.com — is a good example.

Instead of just picking “How to make money online”, I got specific. “How to start a profitable affiliate marketing business” is my focus niche.

Your sweet spot should be at the intersection of the following 4 things:

1. What you’re good at: Your skills and expertise.
2. What you’re passionate about: your unique experiences and passions.
3. Market profitability: Is there a market? Can you make money?
4. What you can leverage: What do you have that you can leverage to build your affiliate marketing blog? A network of people? Connections with brands?

All this can be summarize with one short sentence:

Build your blog around YOU.

So don’t think too much and base your blog on yourself.

And choose a personal brand domain based on your name. Why?

Because:

• Your name provides maximum flexibility. As your interests evolve over time, a name-based domain allows you to pivot your content strategy without starting over.
• It’s highly scalable and sustainable long-term.
• No content creation goes to waste – you’re the only niche you won’t quit.
• People buy from individuals they trust. While niche sites are declining in effectiveness, personal brands continue to thrive.

This is why domains like YourName.com or variations like FiloAffiliate.com are the best choices. Don’t worry about difficult spellings or lengthy names – most visitors will discover you through Google rather than direct typing.

Remember, using your name doesn’t mean your face must appear throughout your blog. It simply gives you the freedom to adapt while preserving the value of all your work.

Don’t think too much about your domain, just secure one based on your own name.

So when you’re ready to begin, register your domain name through Bluehost, currently offering special pricing at just $1.99/month.

Why Bluehost?

• They are one of the cheapest options out there.
• Integrated with WordPress and super easy to set up.
• 24/7 Chat Support.
• 30-day money-back guarantee.

This is how you get started with it.

1. Click any link on this page to take advantage of the discounted price, and then click on ‘Get Started Now’.

2. Choose the Basic Plan

3. Next, enter your domain name and choose the domain extensions you prefer (.com best recommended). Keep ‘Add Domain Privacy + Protection’ checked. You also have the option to choose your domain name later in case you are still not sure about it.

4. After you have chosen your domain name, you will be redirected to the cart. Notice that with my link you will save $128.10 and check our for just $35.76.

5. Add all your contact information.

6. Then scroll down and enter your payment info.

7. Once your payment is completed, click on ‘Create Account’.

8. Choose a name for your website and add a tagline. It doesn’t really matter what you put as tagline, you can always change it later. But make sure you choose the blog option; not the online store

9. And finally, you go to Manage Site, Log in to WordPress and you’re in!

And that’s it! Now you have set up your own blog.

Once again, make sure you sign up for the $1.99/month special offer!

Plan Your Keyword Strategy

Let me be brutally honest – keyword strategy used to sound like complete mumbo jumbo to me.

When I first started blogging, I thought throwing a bunch of random words into my content would magically make Google love me. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work that way. At all.

The game changer was understanding that keyword strategy isn’t just about stuffing random words into your content.

Instead, the main goal here is to find keywords to rank your blog and build topical authority.

But what is topical authority exactly? We’ll get back to this in a moment.

First, let me explain how Google ranks your articles.

Not too long ago, finding the right keywords was crucial to rank on Google. You needed to build your keyword strategy to find the right search terms that would have allowed you to outrank your competition in the first page results.

As things evolve, Google has also recently changed the way blogs and websites are ranked.

How? It’s all about content.

Google wants to know what exactly is the field of your blog. The more content you have in that specific area, the more authority you have in that area, the more you rank in the future.

And this is how you build topical authority.

Now this is very important to understand why you need to focus on a sub-niche that is not too broad.

As a beginner, the wider you go with your niche, the more topical authority you need, because you would have to go against big websites that already have hundreds and hundreds of articles.

So you need to build deep topical authority in areas that these big sites would never write about, because it financially doesn’t make sense for them to.

Now that you understand what topical authority is, let’s see how to plan your keyword strategy.

Keyword Research and Content Planning

First things first, you need to find low-competition keywords that it’s easier to rank for.

The main idea here is to find as many easy wins as possible.

Start with long tail keywords that have a low difficulty score and a good search volume. This will make it easier for your articles to rank among the first search results.

And trust me, once you start seeing some of YOUR articles from YOUR OWN blog ranking on Page 1, you will feel galvanized.

Now this doesn’t mean that you should not write some posts with keywords that are hard to rank on Google. Because these posts are probably those that will bring you more money.

So how do you rank for these if you can’t outrank the competition?

There’s a catch to it.

The strategy here is to get as much traffic as possible from all the articles that will easily rank because of the low competition, and then direct your audience to the articles that are hard to rank.

So it’s important to include in these articles internal links to your other blog posts.

All clear?

Now let’s see how to rank on Google and bring traffic to your website.

How to Do Keyword Research the Right Way

Before we jump into this, you need to understand that you are going to write two different types of posts for your blog.

Each of them serves a different purpose.

1. Informational posts: They are meant to educate, inform, or entertain the reader without a direct sales pitch. Think about “10 Best Practices for SEO in 2024” or “How to Kickstart Your Digital Nomad Career” for example. These posts are very useful to build trust and authority by providing value and will help you rank better on Google.
2. Transactional posts: These aim to convert readers into customers or leads. They are the money posts, useful to drive conversions, whether it’s a purchase, sign-up, or other business-related actions. They are usually product reviews like “Best Laptops for Video Editing” or “Top 5 Email Marketing Platforms for Beginners”.

Try to have a good mix of both types of content, but prioritize more informational articles over transactional, as Google prefers sites that inform readers rather than those that sell too much.

How to Find Keywords for Your Blog

As mentioned earlier, your main goal here is to find low competition keywords that other websites haven’t bothered with or haven’t optimized properly.

These are the so called longtail keywords: longer and more specific search terms such as “best gardening tips for indoor plant lovers”, instead of just “gardening tips”.

Once again, you want to find keywords that have a low difficulty score (20-25 max) and some search volume. This can vary but I’d say to have at least between 200 and 300 searches per month.

Here’s how you do it.

How to Use Ahrefs for Keyword Research

This tool is much simpler to use than you might think.

It all starts with you choosing a keyword to enter into Ahrefs keyword explorer tool and you’ll get plenty of information that will be useful to decide what content to write.

For our goal, we would need to look at 4 main metrics. Although the first two are the most important ones to consider:

• Keyword Difficulty: How hard it is to rank for this keyword.
• Volume: How many people are searching for this keyword.
• Traffic Potential: A rough estimation of how much traffic the #1 page receives for this key term (and all other key terms it ranks for).
• Global Volume: An international breakdown of traffic by country.

Let’s take women’s workout niche as an example.

As you can imagine, writing something strictly focused on this keyword would be like shooting yourself in the foot. We need to find something easier and more specific to rank for.

All we need to do is enter this general keyword into Ahrefs and then click on “matching terms” in the top left corner and… BOOM!

Now you have lots of interesting blog post ideas.

Like I mentioned above, you want to have a look at KD or Keyword Difficulty and Search Volume.

These two metrics will give us the top indicators on what to write for our next blog posts. And as you will see, it’s a lot simpler than you think!

First of all, you want to take only those keywords that have a low KD. I would generally stay below a score of 15-20.

At the same time, you want to make sure that these keywords have enough search volume so it’s worth focusing on them for your blog posts.

Let’s have a look at the keywords from the example above:

From this list we already have 7 blog article ideas to write about. We could also count the two keywords with a KD of 22 so that’s actually 9 ideas in the blink of an eye.

• Best pre workout for women
• Workout sets for women
• Workout shorts women

All great ideas for your first blog posts. And with low KD and pretty good search volume!

Use this to make a list of the post you plan to write and their related keywords. This will also make it easier to keep track of the progress you are making and will set the basis to write more and more.

How to Build Your Blog

You have chosen your focus niche, developed your keyword and content plan, and set up your blog through Bluehost (again, use my link to get 85% discount).

Now it’s time to build your blog!

Choose Your Blog’s Theme

A WordPress theme is basically the design template for your WordPress website — it controls how your site looks and, to some extent, how it functions.

There’s countless themes you can choose between free, premium and custom made.

I personally recommend Kadence, because it’s lightweight, fast, and great for blogs. On top of it, you can use their AI feature (for free) to design your blog.

You just need to fill in few info about your blog like:

• Your industry
• A short description of your business
• Relevant keywords
• The tone you prefer for your site (Neutral, friendly, professional…)

You will be asked then to choose some stock images that are selected specifically for your site.

And that’s it!

In a matter of seconds, Kadence will generate several layouts based on the info you have provided. Here’s an example for a “Coffee Roaster” website:

You can customize them further by changing the color palette and the fonts.

Create Your Four Main Pages

The first step once you start creating your blog is to build this 4 core pages. This is the only thing you’re going to need at the start.

The main pages of your blog act like your site’s foundation — they give visitors direction, build trust, and make everything easier to navigate.

Here are the essential pages almost every blog should have:

Homepage

Your blog’s front door. Should include:

• A short intro about what your blog is about
• A nice picture of you
• Featured or latest posts
• A clear call to action, if applicable (e.g. “Start Reading,” “Join the Newsletter”)

About Page

Let readers know who you are and why your blog exists.

• Your story or mission
• What readers can expect from your content

Tell your story, display your achievements, and show accreditations. People like to learn from and connect with real people these days. Don’t hold back!

Blog (or Articles) Page

The core of your site — a listing of all your blog posts.

While you want to showcase some of this in your homepage, you should have a dedicated page for all of them.

Some bloggers actually set this as their homepage. But I wouldn’t recommend this. You want to introduce yourself and your blog to your audience before getting them into reading your posts.

Don’t forget to use categories or tags for easy browsing.

Contact Page

Let people reach out to you!

Use a simple form (Name, Email, Message)

Optional: social media links, business email, or FAQs

I would recommend to add a short list of what you can provide to your readers, in case you offer paid services.

For example, I offer SEO and Meta paid advertising consultation services, and I want people to know that in case they might be interested.

Privacy Policy & Terms

If you collect emails, use cookies, or plan to monetize — these are a must.

• Can use generators or plugins to create these
• Usually found in the footer

Start Writing Your Blog Posts

After you have set up your core pages, it’s time to start writing your first articles.

Start with the keywords you have gathered so far.

Remember earlier when we discussed finding your target keywords? This is the foundation for writing your posts.

Use those keywords to come up with a nice headline for your post.

Here’s a very important tip: you want to create a balanced mix of informational and transactional posts. You should not have all articles focused on selling something!

The important factor is that all your posts should be related to your focused niche.

It’s all about topical authority!

But no matter what you post, you want to write with the following standards:

• Short sentences
• Short paragraphs
• Low-reading level words
• Lots of white space
• Bulleted lists
• BOLD or italics for pattern interruption (occasionally)

They key when it comes to writing a blog is to create quality and compelling content. The more quality content you create, the more success you blog will have.

Most bloggers just don’t put the time and energy into writing great content.

Others get stuck with finding the time to posts articles constantly.

But blogging is also a volume game and you should write as much great content as you can!

I’m sure you are also wondering: how can I write 2-3 articles per week?

You have to find the right keywords, come up with a good title, write a first outline of your article, potentially search for quotes or stats to support your statements… the list goes on.

Especially if you are also working full time, this would seem like an impossible task.

So how can you make sure to keep a good pace to write your posts?

Luckily in 2025 there many AI tools that can help you streamline this process.

The Role of AI in Blogging

AI can seriously streamline the entire blog-writing process, but it’s not the game-changer you might think.

If you want to rely on AI only you might want to consider this twice, as Google heavily penalizes these websites and doesn’t allow them to rank well.

AI often writes in a polished but generic way. If your blog’s appeal comes from your unique personality, opinions, or storytelling style, you might lose that authentic spark if you lean too hard on automation.

AI it’s great to assist you write content and speed up this process. But you will always need your human, personal touch, especially when you want to add expertise or opinions in your posts.

In short, using AI as a tool — not a total replacement — is the sweet spot. Think of it as your helpful assistant, not your ghostwriter.

You can use AI for your blog, but you need to know how.

I teach how you can outline your blog posts and generate content for them using AI. If you are interested in this or need help to setting up your blog, just reach out to me through my contact page and I’ll show you how it’s done.

How to Monetize Your Blog

Do you want to understand how a successful blog can earn $5,000, $10,000, or even $50,000 a month or more?

Monetizing a blog is all about turning your content, audience, and traffic into income. There’s no one-size-fits-all method, but here are the most common (and proven) ways people make money from blogging:

1. Affiliate Marketing

This is probably the most common way to earn money through your blog.

You promote products or services using special links, and earn a commission when someone buys through your link.

We are talking about transactional posts here. These are usually “best” posts that are used to review products and services.

You can adhere to a company’s affiliate program and start promoting them; or you can sign up with affiliate networks, where you can find multiple products to promote (check my article on the Top Affiliate Networks if you want to know more).

Bonus tip: you might want to look for small and medium companies that don’t have affiliate programs and offer them to have one with you. It could be a long shot, but if you succeed being the only one to promote them will give you a huge competitive advantage.

The downside is that you need to be credible. Which means you want to wait until you have enough traffic to your blog, so you can provide real benefits to the companies you want to partner with.

2. Display Ads

Once your blog has consistent traffic, you can make money just by placing ads on it.

Start with Google AdSense (easy for beginners). They’ll pay you based on how many views or clicks your blog post gets so it doesn’t really matter if one or more of your posts don’t sell anything.

Scale up with higher-paying networks like Mediavine or AdThrive.

3. Sponsored Posts

Brands pay you to write about their product or service. These can be reviews, tutorials, or just mentions — as long as it’s disclosed and fits your niche.

Pro tip: Having a media kit makes it easier to pitch to sponsors.

4. Digital Products

Many entrepreneurs create and sell their own stuff, from eBooks to online courses, to templates.

These are super scalable and will give you 100% of the profit.

5. Services

Finally, you can use your blog to promote services you offer. For example, I offer SEO consulting, Meta advertising services, and blogging coaching.

How to Start Your Blog: Recap

I know this is a very long post, and if you’ve come this far I’d like to express my gratitude!

I also hope you got a lot of value from it, and that it will help you start your own blog, achieve financial success and become your own boss working anywhere at any time you want.

Here’s a short summary to start your affiliate marketing blog today:

1. Set up your blog with Bluehost ($1.99/month)
2. Start thinking about your focus niche
3. Have a look at other blogs within your niche and start searching on Google for inspiration
4. Search for keyword ideas and start building your content plan based on these keywords. Use Ahrefs or SEMRush for this. Ahrefs has a free keyword generator tool to start giving you ideas. You can also use Google Trends to check the search volume of these keywords or just a basic Google search for more ideas.
5. Start building your blog by creating your 4 core pages (Homepage, About, Blog Archive, Contact Page)
6. Start making a first draft of your content plan using a spreadsheet. Include about 15-20 keywords and come up with some good titles for your posts

Once you have done all of this, you can start writing your first blog posts.

Good luck with your blogging journey!

If you wish to have a more in depth knowledge on how to start and monetize your blog, as well as some useful tips and tools to get everything up and running in a couple of days, get in touch with me through my contact page.

Antonio Filograsso