There are many different types of publisher you can be as an affiliate. For some publisher types you don’t need to know any coding. Examples would be a YouTuber, Twitch streamer, or newsletter writer. But for others, such as owning websites, it can be beneficial to have basic HTML and CSS knowledge.
The more skills you have the more it can help you bring your ideas to life. And the more you can bring your ideas to life, the more chance you have of success!
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Website builders reduce the need for coding skills
With the proliferation of website builders, you don’t need any coding skills whatsoever to create a professional-looking website or blog.
However, with absolutely zero knowledge you may still come across frustrating situations. Whether that be to do with getting the most out of WordPress plugins or simple tasks such as placing affiliate links correctly to avoid a Google penalty. Sometimes you may need to place coding on your website to help with functions like tracking.
Nevertheless, website builders can take you a long way.
You’re on Affpinions now, it may look like a fairly standard WordPress website. But underneath the skin are custom plugins, a custom theme, custom post types, custom fields, and many changes to the functions.php file. Certainly not something a beginner would have a chance of doing. But the Affpinions brand is significantly better than it would have been without the heavy customization. All coding has been done in-house.
Being able to combine software such as WordPress and coding language can lead to the quality of your business creations being significantly higher and more complex.
Chat-GPT can help you code
AI is now very a powerful assistant for coding. Especially for beginners and casual coders. Not only can it write you pieces of code but you can also ask it to explain to you how the coding works.
It may seem daunting at first, but as get used to AI tools such as Chat-GPT, you’ll see how powerful they can be!
Hire skilled programmers from freelancer platforms for coding work
There’s a solution if you don’t want to learn to code early in your online affiliate business journey but do have technical tasks that need doing. Hire a programmer. Freelance platforms are where you can hire them from. Websites to try for finding high-quality programmers;
To have the most stress-free experience try and use experienced programmers who have lots of positive feedback. All the platforms listed above have lots of active programmers for hire. This will allow you to quickly get the coding tasks you want to be done, but without having to learn yourself. If you want a custom web design there are also lots of designers on the freelance platforms.
Getting a custom-made web design can allow you to stand out from the crowd. These days lots of websites have very similar designs. Standing out from the crowd can be one way to increase your chances of success, especially in fun niches such as kid’s toys, pets, or fancy dress costumes. If you’ve never hired a freelance web designer before and need help here’s an excellent video by SEM Academy.
Using freelance programmers will increase your outgoings in the short term. But if it’s a business and will make you more profitable in the long-term then it could be a shrewd investment.
Learn coding and get started for free
If you do wish to learn to code then that’s great! Not only will you learn a new skill that may directly help your affiliate marketing business but it can also help you really challenge yourself and get your creative juices flowing.
It’s smart to start with free courses just in case you really struggle with them in your first days of learning. There are lots of YouTube coding tutorials that you can watch. The downside to using YouTube is it can get a bit messy as you switch between different videos from different channels.
A more efficient way to learn programming can be using dedicated online courses. Here are some free educational resources for learning to code:
Don’t worry about whether to learn PHP or Python or another language. Just join one or more of the sites and give them a blast and see what happens. Remember to have fun! It’s well worth just signing up and giving them a try. They’re free so the most you have to lose is a few hours one evening!
And if you do start to love it then you can work out a learning roadmap for yourself. That’ll be the time to decide the exact languages you want to learn and the timeframes for progressing your knowledge. The best coding languages to be a successful affiliate will depend on what types of website or software you wish to develop. The most common language to learn is Javascript (source).
Your biggest skill will always be high-quality content creation
In affiliate marketing, the most important skill will always be creating quality content. It’s being able to create popular content that allows you to use affiliate links. So if you haven’t yet mastered content creation then you may want to prioritize that first. Just by becoming a highly skilled content creator, you can be a success.
And then you may wish to take the next step to learn basic coding and see if it can help you reach further for the moon! Or perhaps you’ll make so much profit you just don’t care 🙂
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