Choosing a Content Management System
James Youngblood
Creating a basic website is relatively easy however, if you want yours to stand out from the crowd, you may find yourself spending hours, days, months, even years tweaking and fine tuning your html code. For an affiliate marketer for whom time is money, time spent on website development means lost revenue which may ultimately lead to failure. What to do? Find and use a good content management system! There are many content management systems available, but three of the best are Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal. One outstanding feature of these solutions is the cost-they are all free!
Wordpress
WordPress is used primarily for blog-type websites although with the many plug-ins and add-on modules available it can easily be adapted for affiliate marketing and even an e-commerce site. Blogger (google's blog service) is generally considered easier to set up and use for new bloggers, however for serious affiliate marketers, Wordpress is the preferred choice. Wordpress is frequently upgraded and because of its popularity, support is readily available. If you don't need have a web host, you may consider getting a free blog on WordPress.com but most affiliates will want to host your blog on their own domain and will then have access a significant range of plug-ins and tools that are not available on their free service or at Blogger.
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 customize the look of your site with the many free templates available for Joomla. However, you probably will need to modify any template for you own use--logos and slogans for example. So, you will need to understand at least some html and css in order to use it. You could design your own template with the available tutorial, but that would probably take a lot of time away from promotion which is key to an affiliate marketer's success. So unless you plan on developing templates to sell, which many do, you are probably well advised to find a ready made one that you can modify to your personal taste.
Drupal
Drupal is also a free content management system that can be used as a blog, e-commerce, or content site. The learning curve is not so steep so you can get you site operational in a hurry. There are many free and paid additions that make Drupal a full-featured solution to website development and maintenance. I consider Drupal to be a viable option for use by affiliate marketers.
Web Host Considerations
Choose a web host that supports MySQL and PHP. These are necessary for many content management system including those discussed in this article. Also be sure to find one that has cpanel with fantastico. You can painlessly install Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal with fantastico. Many web hosts will let you have many domains and sub-domains without any additional fees. Get one of those! You will probably need several sites to be a successful affiliate marketer. Versatile hosting and free content management software is, in my opinion, the way to go!
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