Using WordPress For Affiliate Marketing & Local Business Websites

If you’re hosting company has CPanel, then you can install WordPress blogging software quickly and easily.

Here’s where most people stop reading.

They say to themselves “But I’m not a blogger, I just want a website first to sell affiliate products! (Or to have a website for a local business, etc.

Wordpress can work just as well for local businesses, affiliate websites, etc. where a blog is only a secondary consideration.

How?

1. Install Wordpress to your “root” directory (the one that comes up when people visit www.yourwebsite.com) This requires a slight change in the .htaccess file in that folder to include:

DirectoryIndex index.php

(Or else an .html page will be the assumed default page)

Hostgator’s tech support did this for me for free - they’re top notch.

2. Then log into Wordpress (not your file manager) at www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin

3. At the “Dashboard” that comes up, click “Options” along the horizontal navigation bar.

4. Then beneath the line where you clicked “Options” now click “Reading”

5. Then you will be asked your preference for “Front Page Displays”. If you do nothing, the first thing people will see is the latest blog posts. But when you click “static” page, the first page to load will be whatever you create. And, handily, the link is there to create that static page.

What this means is that you can use WordPress to create an affiliate marketing site, a local business or organizational site or whatever you need.

The static landing page can do whatever you want any regular page to do.

You’ll want to

1. Get a better WordPress template which will require uploading some files to your file manager PLEASE! There are some nice free ones available.
2.  Rearrange your sidebar to suit your website’s purpose. (This is under “Presentation” and “Widgets”!)

If your main purpose for the site isn’t to blog, at least use the blog to help make the search engines happy. The sidebar is where you can show your most recent posts.

Using WordPress this way saves you money on templates potentially (if you can find a free one you like), saves you from having to mess around with a lot of nitpicky html or php tweaking issues and makes creating a decent website fast and easy “on the cheap”.  A small business should be able to get all the webspace and technology they need from a firm like Hostgator for only $10 per month plus the domain name (@$10 per year).