Start affiliate marketing free with a WordPress blog.

Hi all, I want to help people to start affiliate marketing for as little cost as possible, as long as you have a phone or computer, internet connection and email address you can start fairly easily with a WordPress.com blog.

The free option for WordPress.com creates a website with a web address similar to YOURSITE.wordpress.com – Only go down this route if you want to spend absolutely nothing or are learning before setting up on your own domain.

I’d suggest getting a domain name and your own server option (tutorials also on here how to buy a domain name and how to setup WordPress on Kualo server) as seller websites and affiliate platforms take you more seriously if you have your own domain. You can choose to buy a domain through WordPress.com (see step 8) however this tutorial is about setting up the free option only.

How to setup a free WordPress.com blog with screenshots:

Step 1: head to WordPress.com or – Open in new tab option: https://wordpress.com/ click the “Get Started” link in the top right.

Step 2: Enter email address. Choose a username, this can be changed later and is not the name of the blog you are creating and a password. Make sure you save these somewhere safe.

Step 3: You should get a confirmation a email pretty quickly, mine was within seconds, click the Click here to Confirm Now button.

Step 4: After confirming your email address you will be sent to a page similar to this screenshot below. On the top right head to the button that says Write.

Step 5: As you won’t currently have any websites yet you need to start one, hit the Create Site button to get started.

Step 6: Choosing which type of website you want. I’m writing this in 2020 and this part’s new to me… I’ll try doing the Blog and Business options as Photography and see what I get. All that the Blog and Business options seems to do is change the template of the WordPress blog.

Update: after going through the process of setting up on WordPress.com, I personally think for a affiliate marketing website the Blog option is best, especially if you are starting in affiliate marketing.

Screenshot 1 is choosing Blog and Photography.

Screenshot 2 is choosing Business and Photography.

For this install I have continued with the business option. See the update above, I should have gone for Blog.

Step 7: Click the Continue button and you should get a page that says Tell us your business’s name. Insert a name that you want to use, I normally keep it to about 3 words but have gone for Starting in Ethical Affiliate Marketing as you can see in the screenshot below. Once you’ve chosen your name click the Continue button.

Step 8: I am only showing in this tutorial how to setup the free option of a WordPress.com hosted website which for this example is going to be ethiaffiliate.wordpress.com look for the word Free below the domain registration options and select that one. Look for the highlighted option in screenshot example 2:

Step 9: Choose the plan for you, obviously this tutorial is about free options so the choice is simple, look for the: Not sure yet? Start with a free site.

Step 10: this should take you to a page that says Hooray! Your site will be ready shortly. You then get redirected to the control panel shown below.

Step 11: Head up to the top right where it says Write the WordPress page will then take you through a few tutorials on how the newest version of WordPress works. After that’s done you can start posting, screenshot of the first post, when you’ve finished go up to the top right and hit publish.

Step 12: For people to see the site you need to hit Launch site, before you hit the button for launch site you can test your site as much as you want. Only you can see the site and everyone else sees a page that says Something new is coming. Log in here.

Step 13: When you do decide to launch the website WordPress.com will try again get you to buy a domain and server package if you definitely want to keep it as cheap as possible head to the bottom option: This is your current free site address. Skip Purchase.

Step 14: more WordPress.com up selling, just choose the Not sure yet? Continue with your free site to continue for free. The one I setup is now live at https://ethiaffiliate.wordpress.com/ – thinking I should have gone for the blog option rather than business.

Step 15: once you have Launched your website you will be able to edit the theme which controls the look, write posts and add pictures through your admin page which will have an address similar to: https://ethiaffiliate.wordpress.com/wp-admin/ and will look like the screenshot below.