Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
Most of you reading this website are people who have recently started an affiliate website, or are considering starting one. This article is for you, and I’m going to give you one of the most important pieces of advice I can:
Invest Financially In Your Website.
I’ve been running this website for over a decade, and over the years I’ve helped over a thousand people personally in starting up new websites. I’ve seen some people who succeed beyond their wildest dreams. Others who have been able to turn it into a full time job. Some who are able to use it as part time income and funnel it away towards a vacation, or for the weekend drinking sessions.
And then I’ve seen failures.
Many, many failures.
I’m not calling those people failures. Far from it. So many people I know and have helped put the work in initially. They work their butts off to launch their first website and put in the effort.
However what I see often is a real lack of commitment. Their new website, which they worked hard on, isn’t an overnight success. Even if there is positive growth in regard to traffic and rankings etc, there is a distinct lack of commitment from them. I watch their work ethic wane month to month, and after just a few months their website is just sitting there never getting updated anymore.
There’s no magic formula to this. Some websites just don’t take off. Some people just don’t have it in them either. However one constant I have noticed over the years is this:
People who invest time but not money are more destined to fail.
You CAN become a success at affiliate marketing without investing a dime. I’ve written about that before. However I find the people that don’t invest that money just don’t work hard enough. It’s like they have no problem spending 300 hours working on a website as they don’t value their own time, yet they won’t fork over $12 for a domain name.
The commitment level of people who invest money, even if it’s just a hundred dollars, is always much more than the people who invest their time. It’s so silly but most people just don’t value their time at all. I’ll see people who have spent 200 hours launching their website completely drop it after a month or two. While there are others who have spent about $50 and are still working hard a year on with no income, due to that small investment.
It’s just the way people are. It’s a mentality thing. Back in the day I learned that – people value objects more than money. I would run poker freerolls for the same people at the same poker room and the amount of people who would enter a freeroll to win a PS4 (valued at $350) was double or even triple the amount of people that would enter a freeroll to win $500.
So one of the best pieces of advice I can give to you is to invest some money in a website. It doesn’t have to be a lot. However even if you are broke, try and muster up some funds to do this as it will seriously help your commitment level. Investing $100 compared to doing it yourself can be the difference between you being a success and a failure.
It’s a mentality thing and you will just treat it that much more seriously if there is some sort of financial investment in it.
Let’s look at a few ways you can invest in a new website financially without breaking the bank:
Buy A Domain Name, Get Some Hosting
Don’t go with one of those free websites by Wix or WordPress where it is a subdomain. Domains are cheap these days. Buy one. Take a minute and search any phrase you can think of and see what Wix or WordPress domains pop up in the search results. Not too many (if any).
Web hosting is a tricky one. Avoid Godaddy at all costs of course. In the past I’ve used Liquid Web but currently have my dedicated servers at Known Host. Either way these companies offer shared web hosting for usually $10 a month. If you get good traffic you’ll no doubt have to upgrade but it’s still an investment and a monthly commitment which is nice as it’s a monthly reminder on your credit card statement about your website.
It also stops you from just abandoning a website. You can’t just let the website sit there and ignore it. You need to actually take the time to cancel the hosting and make that decision, and that’s the type of thing that can spur you on and keep you motivated.
Buy a Logo
I shake my head when I see people who make their own logos when they have no real artistic talent. Or they’ve used one of a million logo generators online. A logo can be a nice and cheap investment. It sucks for them but a lot of great graphic designers do work for a pittance. You can get an awesome looking logo that will immediately spruce up your website for $20-$50. Hell on lots of places online you can submit your details and get multiple people doing logos for you.
Buy A WordPress Theme:
Chances are you’re going to be using WordPress. It’s an excellent CMS with no serious competition – especially when it comes to community creations.
Sure you can cheap out here easy enough with the basic WordPress theme, or by using one of the free ones – but there are so many excellent themes out there that can give you a professional looking website right off the bat. Or one that handles responsiveness, speed etc in ways that others just plain don’t.
In regards to themes that appeal visually and have an absolute boatload of features, I always recommend ThemeForest. They are always my go-to site when I have a theme in my head. I used to get my themes custom designed however in terms of features, support, updates etc I find myself going to ThemeForest more and more. Actually I just used a theme there last month when helping a friend launch Best Books.
If you’re looking for a more lightweight theme, then GeneratePress is one I have heard a lot of good things about. I’ve never personally used it however it’s something I’ve heard enough of a buzz about that I am going to give it a try I think. I hear the lite version is useless but the premium version is only $49 which is a nice little investment.
Subscribe to an SEO Tool:
There’s a lot of SEO Tools out there you can use for your research. Ahrefs. Moz. SEM Rush. And plenty more.
If you’re running a website, then you really should be using at lease one of these tools. You’ll get a positive ROI from them – trust me on that.
However they can be a bit pricey. For the lite plan Ahrefs is $99 a month. Moz standard is $99 a month. SEMRush is $99 a month. Seems to be the standard pricepoint.
So that can be a bit tricky and it’s a lot to ask from you to invest in that amount. Personally I wouldn’t when just starting out. Instead most of them offer trials – some cost a few bucks and some are free. Ahrefs gives you 7 days for $7 for example. Then go to town on it. Use it as much as you can. Use it to help your website and as a learning experience. Understand the benefits from it for the future.
It’s also something where you won’t even realize a lot of the benefits until you are a few months into your website. However then you can go back and subscribe to it for just one month and use it like crazy again.
It’s always a great idea to help you understand other websites, be it competitors or just leaders in their field. I’ll run analysis on websites such as The Pogg for example – not because I am looking to compete with them; but I always see them ranking in search engines for a wide variety of keywords, and want to get more of an idea of what they are doing.
Hire Someone to Write Content:
There are plenty of people looking to write content out there. Hire someone to write on a topic that you want.
Not only is this a cheap way to invest money into your site, but it frees up some of your own time and also introduces you to outsourcing.
It doesn’t need to be a regular job but it’s a great way to get some financial investment on the site, and it will help you with your mentality for outsourcing down the road.
There are plenty of options to get content out there and I also find that it can help you in regards to getting someone elses perspective. Not only do I ask people to write content for me but I ask them if they have any suggestions.
One writer for example suggested I could link to podcasts within bios of people which I thought was a neat idea and something I hadn’t considered for that aspect of the site.
Get a Logo Animation Video:
One thing you should probably do for your website is create YouTube videos targeting your primary and secondary keywords. Not only is it a natural backlink to your website but YouTube is obviously extremely popular and ranks well. I’ll create a lot of videos for competitive keywords in the SERPS that aren’t on Youtube, and see some traffic come in.
A site like Fiverr can even be great for that. Fiverr is all about upselling you these days however you can still invest like $7-$10 and get a solid logo animation for the beginning of your videos.
Hell just Browse Fiverr:
Not only is there a lot of things you can purchase for Fiverr with minimal investment however you can also get ideas from Fiverr for features for your website or brand that you never even considered.
There are so many things you can purchase there for relatively cheap to help you with that investment mindset. Get someone to promote your website on their podcast. Get someone to review your website or write a press release for you. Get someone to do some data analysis for you etc. You’ll be surprised at the ideas that will pop out to you just browsing Fiverr.
Summary:
These are just a few ideas for how to invest money into your website. I can’t emphasize enough just how important that financial investment is on a website, even if it’s minimal.
Most websites will take six months just to start seeing regular traffic and any sort of potential income.
That financial investment will help you stick around to see that happen.
This article was written on December 20, 2019 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
