You can spend a career honing and perfecting your website with an html editor such as Microsoft's Expression Web or Dreamweaver. However, because time is money, the affiliate marketer needs to spend time promoting, not developing. The solution to this may be a good content management system. Three very good and free products to consider are Worpress, Joomla, and Drupal.
Wordpress - For Blogs or Content Wordpress can be used for content, e-commerce, or as a blog which is its primary focus. Many available add-ons make it a versatile tool for the affiliate marketer. If you are on a tight budget, you can host it free at wordpress.
com but you will not be able to use many of the additional features available on a self-hosted site. Wordpress can to compared to Blogger, Google's free blog, but Wordpress is much more powerful and flexible. Many affiliate marketers will want to use Wordpress in addition to the other content mangement systems. For example, you can use Joomla for you main site and add Wordpress as a complimentary blogsite.
More content means more traffic! Joomla Has it All Joomla with its myriad of modules, plug-ins, and components has all the bells and whistles available that any affiliate marketer needs. So many that it can be overwhelming! However, it is relatively easy to use although there is a learning curve. Fortunately, because there are so many users of Joomla, you can usually quickly find solutions to any problems you may have in forums. There are two versions currently available and both are robust and complete management systems.
Either version will likely exceed you needs, which is good thing. You don't need to worry about outgrowing your software. You can design you own templates for Joomla but you need more time and training than most affiliate marketers have available.
It is probably best to find a suitable ready made template, many are free, and modify it as you go. You will likely need to learn some html and how css works in order to made your site look and work the way you want. But there is still a great time savings over starting from scratch. With the popularity and wide use of Joomla, you will have no problem finding support and answer to most of any problems you may encounter.
I highly recommend Joomla for content management. Drupal--Another Useful Solution Drupal seems to be used primarily for community websites designed so that the members can add their own content and perspectives. Drupal is, in my opinion easier to learn than Joomla, but not as easy as Wordpress. Drupal can easily be adapted to a blog or content site and also has many add-on modules available to expand its basic capabilities. Drupal comes with a selection of themes or you easily create your own. Most themes have a central content column and left and/or right sidebar columns.
Drupal will remain free but you can expect to see more non-free additions in the future. You Web Host Matters Joomla and Drupal both use MySQL and PHP so make sure you select a web host that has these available. Also, if you select a hosting company that uses cpanel with fantastico, you can easily install Worpress, Drupal or Joomla. Some hosting company allow you to put unlimited websites in one account. That means you have many websites in one hosting account without any additional hosting fee.
Most affiliate marketers will find they will need many sites to promote enough products to be successful. Using a free content management system and a versatile hosting company can start the affiliate marketer on the way to making his or her online fortune!!.
Visit this site for more information on Affiliate Marketing Ideas or Choosing a Web Host.
