I created a new site yesterday, and I thought I would share my process with you as kind of a mini tutorial on how you can build a professional affiliate site for a merchant relatively quickly.

I decided that I wanted to build out a site to market Rosetta Stone's affiliate program. Rosetta Stone is the leading language learning software provider.

Step 1: Register a Domain
I went to the Rosetta Stone Website and noticed that their title tag on their home page is "Rosetta Stone: Language Learning Software". Since languagelearningsoftware.com was taken, I registered Language-Learning-Software.com. Quite honestly if you are going to be doing paid search, the dashes look good in your ads.

Step 2: Web Template
For this project, I wanted it to look professional, so I decided to grab a pre-made web-template. I used to have a paid account with DotComBuilder.com this site has a lot of quality templates. When I had an account for a month, it let me download 5 templates per day. They also have some interesting pre-canned affiliate sites. Anyway I went through my templates I had downloaded and selected their e-book template:

Step 3: Graphic Modifications
In order to work with professional templates you need some good graphic tools. I prefer the tools from web design tools from Macromedia. I use Fireworks for graphics and HomeSite for HTML, but have plans to move up to Dreamweaver. Using Fireworks, I made the updates I needed to the buttons and logo on the site. Then I used HomeSite to make HTML modifications and work in the new elements and design feels I wanted.

Step 4: Content and Links
I spent a lot of time on Rosetta Stone's site learning about how they market their product to determine what I thought the key selling points were. I honed in on their unique approach to language learning, the 29 languages they offer, and the online demo. Unfortunately the didn't have all the links I needed in their general listings, but I was able to create the links using the URL redirection codes they provide for specific product listings to figure out how to link to each language page and the online tutorial.

Step 5: Final Preparations & Launch
The final steps were to ad Adwords to the site for some additional monetization opportunities, setup the hosting account. (I use 1&1 Hosting because I can host up to 100 external domains under 1 account for just $9.99 per month, can't beat that!).

That's it, I am now prepared to do the hard work, promotion:

Take a look at the finished product: Rosetta Stone Language Learning Software