Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn money online. You simply talk about products and services you love and make money when people buy them. In this guide on how to create a free landing page for affiliate marketing, we’ll show you how you can get started with this money-making endeavor without spending a dollar.
We’ll share 🚀 seven key steps for creating your first affiliate marketing landing page:
- Write convincing copy
- Acquire high-quality graphics
- Collect social proof
- Choose a host for your page
- Install your landing page design tools
- Create a landing page template
- Design your landing page
But first, let’s talk about what a free landing page for affiliate marketing is.
What is an affiliate marketing landing page?
To understand affiliate marketing landing pages, you need to understand the core components: affiliate marketing and landing pages.
Affiliate marketing, as already mentioned, is the process of using special tracking links to recommend products and services you love. The links are connected to your affiliate partner account for specific companies, and when someone uses those links to buy things, you get a small percentage of the income made from the sale. The most popular affiliate marketing program is Amazon Associates, but many popular brands in all kinds of industries have their own affiliate marketing programs.
A landing page is a specialized page where all of the content is chosen to support one goal, typically selling a specific product or service. Landing pages are typically hosted on business websites, but you can also create a landing page that exists on its own, without any other connected web pages.
Therefore, affiliate marketing landing pages are landing pages where the sole purpose is to direct people to click on affiliate marketing links. This can be a great way to get started in affiliate marketing without having to build an entire website.
How to create a free affiliate marketing landing page in 7 steps
Now, let’s talk about how to create a free landing page for affiliate marketing! For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume that you already know what you want to sell on this page. If you don’t, you can look at our list of the best WordPress affiliate programs for ideas.
1. Write convincing copy ✍️
Copy is persuasive writing typically intended to convince people to purchase a product or service.
There are several strategies you can use to write successful copy:
- Draw them in with an exciting headline. Your headline should use emotional words and be specific about the benefits people can get from the products/services you’re recommending.
- Tell a story. Share how you’ve benefitted from the products/services you’re recommending to demonstrate how they can help your website visitors.
- Craft compelling Calls To Action (CTA). The call to action is the text used to encourage people to complete an action. For example, on a product page, the CTA might be “Buy Now.” CTAs should use specific action words to make sure people know exactly what you want them to do. You can also use the CTAs to reinforce the benefits of the products/services you’re selling. Either way, you’ll want to create multiple CTAs for placement throughout your landing page.
In affiliate marketing you also typically want to use a conversational tone and infuse your writing with your personality by choosing words you would actually use in real life. People are more likely to take your recommendation seriously if they feel like they can relate to your life experiences and personality.
2. Acquire high-quality graphics 📷
Your landing page needs to be visually appealing to draw people in. This means using high-resolution graphics and photos to display the products/services you’re trying to sell.
The good news is that you can often use promotional images directly from the website of the company you’re selling for. Some companies even offer visual assets such as logos in varying sizes and color schemes specifically for use by affiliates.
However, there are benefits to making your own graphics:
- Taking high-quality photos of yourself using the products/services can give your page a more personal feel
- When you design your own graphics, you control the color scheme and can easily make sure they match the aesthetic you want for your page as a whole
And you don’t necessarily need to spend any money to make these graphics happen. You can find many resources on how to take product photos with your smartphone and how to make your own graphics with a tool like Canva.
3. Collect social proof 📱
Social proof is the phenomenon where people make decisions based on what they see other people doing. In marketing, you create social proof by sharing reviews, testimonials, and images/videos of people actively using the products/services you’re selling.
On your free landing page for affiliate marketing, your own story with the products/services you’re selling is the first form of social proof. If your story is particularly emotional, this may well be enough social proof for many visitors.
You can also collect social proof from other people who have used these products/services. This is easy if you’ve already recommended them to people in your social circles: simply reach out to the people who have tried it and ask if they’re willing to share their experiences. You can then collect these testimonials in a folder to be added to your landing page during the design process.
💡 Pro tip: Social proof works best with visuals. Ask for headshots or other photos to go with text testimonials and encourage people to record video testimonials if they feel comfortable.
4. Choose a host for your page 💻️
With your materials ready to go, it’s almost time to start building your landing page. But there’s one more thing to figure out before we can start on how to create a free landing page for affiliate marketing: where you’ll host the page.
There are numerous specialized tools for building landing pages that offer free trials, but these tools are often quite expensive when the trial ends. For example, Instapage costs a full $199 per month.
This means that the best option for hosting your landing page is often to buy a website hosting package and build your website using WordPress. You can get very affordable pricing on your first year of hosting from a company like Bluehost, install WordPress for free, and install free themes and plugins to help you create a landing page. The hosting price does typically increase upon renewal, but it still doesn’t end up anywhere close to $199 per month.
5. Install your landing page design tools 🖱️
Once you’ve purchased web hosting and installed WordPress, you’re ready to start the design process!
First, you’ll want to pick a flexible, lightweight theme that uses responsive design to look good on all devices. We recommend the Neve Full Site Editor (FSE) theme.
This theme isn’t in the official WordPress directory yet, so to get started you’ll need to head to the Neve FSE page (using the link above) and click Download.
Next, head to your WordPress dashboard and choose Appearance > Themes from the sidebar menu, then click the Add New button on the Themes page.
On the next page, click Upload Theme and then drag-and-drop the ZIP file you just downloaded into the Choose File area. You can also click Choose File and upload the ZIP directly from the folder it was downloaded to. Then, click Install Now and give WordPress a few seconds to unpack your new theme.
Next, you’ll want to install Otter Blocks. This plugin gives you access to specialized blocks for things like reviews and testimonials, which can help you build a more attractive landing page. To install it, head to Plugins > Add New and search for Otter, then click Install Now followed by Activate.
6. Create a landing page template 👨💻
The next step in how to create a free landing page for affiliate marketing is to create a template for it by going to Appearance > Editor and choosing Templates.
Next, click the (+) button and select Custom Template, then add a name like Landing Page and click Create.
This will open a template that you can easily edit by clicking on any element:
From here, you have two options:
- Disable the header entirely by clicking on the header, then selecting the three dots from the customization menu and clicking Remove Header.
- Disable the navigation menu by clicking on one of the menu options, click it again to get the customization menu, then select the compass, followed by the three dots, and finally, the Remove Navigation option.
You can also remove individual menu items one-by-one. Once you’ve edited or removed the navigation menu to your liking, click Save.
7. Design your landing page 🎨
The next step in creating a free landing page for affiliate marketing is to design the page itself. Head to Pages → Add New to open the WordPress block editor. The Settings menu at the right of the page should be open by default, but in case it’s not, click on the folder looking icon (next to the Publish button). It should open to Page by default, but in case it’s on Block, click on Page. Then click on the Template option in the Summary area.
This will reveal a list of your templates. Select Landing Page from the dropdown menu and click Save in the top right corner. This will apply the header-free template to the page you’re using.
With your header-free template in place, you can now start working on your page by typing a title into the box at the top, then click on the empty space below your title to start adding text. If you want to add images or other non-text elements, click the (+) button beside the editor to reveal the block menu:
When you add a block, you can click on it to see editing options. Some will appear above the block itself, while others will show up in the sidebar:
You can add as many blocks as you want and use drag-and-drop function (the icon is six dots in two columns of three) to move them around the page as needed.
How to add affiliate links to your content
You can add a link to almost any block within WordPress. To connect your images to affiliate links, simply click on the image you want, choose the link icon from the bar that appears above it, and copy + paste your affiliate link into the text box that appears.
Adding affiliate links to text blocks is similarly easy. Simply highlight the text you want to add the link to, and click the link icon in the formatting bar that appears above the text.
Copy + paste your affiliate link into the text box that appears, and voilà, you’ve added your affiliate links!
How to add social proof
The next step in how to create a free landing page for affiliate marketing is to add your social proof. To do this, open the block menu and search for Testimonial. You’ll see a few different options, including single-testimonial options and multiple-testimonial options with a columned layout. Choose one of these and add it to your page.
Once you’ve added a testimonial block to your page, you can click on any element to edit it. For example, you can click on one of the images to replace it with a photo of someone you’ve gotten a testimonial from:
Note that multiple-column layouts are best for one to two sentence testimonials, whereas longer testimonials should go into single-column blocks.
Final thoughts on how to create a free landing page for affiliate marketing 🏁
A landing page can be an incredible tool for affiliate marketing and you can create an effective one without spending much money by using WordPress and the Neve FSE Theme. Just remember to follow the steps outlined in this article:
- Write convincing copy ✍️
- Acquire high-quality images 📷
- Collect social proof 📱
- Choose a host for your page 💻️
- Install your landing page design tools 🖱️
- Create a landing page template 👨💻
- Design your landing page 🎨
Need more help understanding how to create a free landing page for affiliate marketing? Check out our complete landing page checklist!
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