Don’t be intimidated with the idea of building a professional looking website.  You should seriously consider doing at least a mini-site.  A mini-site is a website that has just a few pages with some well placed ads  and filled with keyword related content.   The site should have usefull and content that is closely related to the domain name itself.  get your hosting account set-up through one of the many hosting services.  I use godaddy.com and have one of my hosting accounts set up using their wordpress hosting service to facilitate doing wordpress based website.

You should already be familar with Wordpress, and if you think you aren’t familiar with wordpress little do you know that you’ve come across many websites using wordpress. This site is a good example of what a wordpress site looks like.  Not happy with what I found through searching through the templates available at wordpress’s themes page, I finally found what I was looking for at dailyblogtips.com.  I joined the mailing list and got their wordpress themes package for free.  You get about 12 great themes for joining and they are perfect for mini-site development if you plan on incorporating affiliate ads into your wordpress site.  You also get some great plug-ins along with the download.  Plug-ins are “features” you can add to your site to give that extra cache that really takes it to that next level.

This site is using Studiopress  Red which has some integrated spaces for adding your ads directly into the page marked “adsense_sidebar160.php.”  Log into your wp-admin page to access the settings pages.    Get your code from your affiliate program, making sure it’s 160×600 pixels, and copy and paste it into the space provided.  Nothing could be easier.

Adding other ads

You can also add a few other ads into your sidebar such as the 125×125 buttons I’ve added here on the side.   From your wp-admin page, go to the “Appearance” option on the left, click on editor and find your sidebar.php file.  Once in, look at the information that is there and look for what you see on the sidebar from the website and look for the php code that relates to that information.  For example, on the side of the webpage you’ll find a heading of “Archives” and in the code you see the following that relates to it:

<li>
<h2>Archives</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives(’type=monthly’); ?>
</ul>
</li>

The heading is the <h2>Archives</h2> part and you can create a new heading by doing the following, just be sure to place this after where you want it located:

<li>
<h2>New Heading Goes Here</h2>
</li>

Find where you want the new ad button to go, after what heading, and paste your ad code in this location.  Refresh your website page to confirm it’s been posted in the correct location.

Changing Image Files on Your Site

I’ve customized this site a bit by adding a few of my own image files.  For example, the small “dp” up above in the welcome area on top on the right was originally another image.  The original image was welcome.gif.  To change this, I uploaded the new image file that I wanted to the wp-content/themes/studiopressred/images/  folder and found where the welcome.gif is referenced in the php file using the editor option again and changed welcome.gif to myfilename.gif to get it to appear there.  You can also do this with any other images that appear on the site, including the images used in the background.  Just find out what that file name is, find where it’s referenced in the corresponding php file, upload it your images folder, and change the reference to the new file name.

Get Some Site Related Content That Updates Automatically

Find a site that offers linked news that is updated automatically.  This gives your site some usefull information for the reader.  For example, Domaining.com offers a domain news html code that they update daily with the daily news.  Just copy their code, find a place where it’ll fit on your site, and paste it in that location.  Update the changes, and refresh your site page to see if you did it correctly.

Create a Mini-Site that Looks More like a Store Than a Blog

You can also create a site that looks more like a store than just a blog.  Sign up to become either a Ebay affiliate or an Amazon Affiliate and display their items for auction/sale on your site with site related items.  You can do this by purchasing a ebay/amazon plugin for wordpress.  The one I’m looking at is phpbay.   They offer both versions, Ebay and Amazon and both function as a plug in that you install into your wordpress site.  Once installed, you can customize it to display site related items that’ll make your site look like you’ve got site related items to sell.

So, seriously consider building a mini-site.  All the tools are out there to build a professional looking website and most of them are free.