This is the article I wish I’d had when I started Best Digital Buyers three months ago. I’m Majdinel — IT manager by day, tech reviewer by side hustle — and I’ve spent the last 90 days building this site from a blank WordPress install into a 31-article affiliate site that’s making real Amazon commission revenue.
Below: every tool I’m running, every mistake I made, and what I’d do differently if I started today. No fluff, no hidden affiliate-only recommendations — what I actually use, and what I’d actually recommend to a friend.
The premise (why I started this in the first place)
I read 10–20 tech reviews a week anyway, comparing earbuds for my commute, monitors for my home office, USB-C hubs for the MacBook. I noticed two things: (1) most of the top-ranking review sites felt like they were written by AI with no actual hands-on testing, and (2) the ones that DID feel real (Rtings, The Wirecutter, Notebookcheck) had editorial structures I could mostly replicate solo with discipline.
I’d also been looking for a side project that wouldn’t require ongoing client work or evening calls. An affiliate content site checks both: write once, earn passively, control my own time. The income ceiling is uncapped if the content is good. The downside is it takes 6–12 months before you see meaningful revenue. I figured if I committed for a year I’d at least learn what I needed to know.
Three months in, the first Amazon sale arrived. $20.55 commission. Tiny, but it confirmed the model works. That’s what this article is really about — the cheapest, lowest-friction way to get to your own first sale.
The stack I’m running (under $50 to start)
Here’s the entire stack, in priority order. Total upfront cost: under $50. Total monthly cost: about $3.
1. Hosting: Hostinger (~$3/month)
I went with Hostinger’s shared hosting plan and would make the same choice again today. Three reasons:
Price. $2.99/month on a 24-month plan. Compare to SiteGround at $14.99/month after first-year promo, or Bluehost at $11.95/month. For a site that might earn $0 for 6 months, hosting cost matters.
Performance is fine for an affiliate site. Page load is consistently under 1.5 seconds on mobile after LiteSpeed Cache is configured. My Core Web Vitals are green on every article. If your site is going to do 500K monthly visits, you’ll outgrow shared hosting — but you’ll outgrow it AFTER you’re making enough money to upgrade.
WordPress is one-click installed. hPanel auto-creates the database, sets PHP 8.2, forces HTTPS, configures daily backups. I had a working WordPress install in 4 minutes from signing up.
Hostinger is the right answer for a brand-new affiliate site where every dollar matters. When you’re earning $300+/month and the site is bigger, switch to Cloudways or Kinsta. Until then, $3 hosting is plenty.
2. Theme: Blocksy (free)
After testing GeneratePress, Astra, Kadence and the default WordPress block themes, I landed on Blocksy. It’s free, the magazine layout is genuinely beautiful out of the box, and it works perfectly with the block editor (Gutenberg) — no learning a new theme builder.
Custom CSS via the Customizer overrides Blocksy’s CSS variables to apply my brand colors. About 30 lines of CSS total. The theme handles the rest.
Why not Kadence or GeneratePress? Both are excellent — but Kadence Pro is $59/yr and GeneratePress Premium is $59/yr. For a brand-new site with $0 in revenue, free wins.
3. SEO: Rank Math (free)
Rank Math handles SEO meta, sitemap generation, schema markup (Article, Product, Review), Search Console integration, and breadcrumbs. It’s free and has fewer arbitrary limits than Yoast Free. Schema is non-negotiable for affiliate sites — Google rich results (the star ratings you see in search results) come from schema markup. Without it, your single-product reviews look like plain text in search; with it, they show as 4.5★ ratings with price. Click-through rate doubles.
4. Caching: LiteSpeed Cache (free)
Hostinger uses LiteSpeed servers, so the LiteSpeed Cache plugin is the perfect fit. It does page caching, image lazy-loading, JS/CSS minification, and converts JPEGs to WebP on the fly. With it enabled, mobile LCP drops to under 1.5s on all my pages.
I tried WP Rocket ($59/yr) on a test site and saw maybe 10% better PageSpeed scores. Not worth $59 when LiteSpeed gets you 90% of the way for free.
5. Multilingual: TranslatePress (free tier)
My site is English-primary but I’m setting up Greek and Spanish versions to triple my reach. TranslatePress free tier handles two languages; the paid tier ($89/yr) handles unlimited. I’ll upgrade when I have proven traffic in the second language.
6. Affiliate links: Amazon Associates + hosting affiliates
Amazon Associates is the obvious starting point — biggest catalog, lowest barrier, instant approval after first sale. The commission rate is low (1–4% depending on category, mostly 3% on electronics) but the conversion rate is high because everyone trusts Amazon checkout.
I’m also applying to hosting affiliate programs (Hostinger, Cloudways, Bluehost, SiteGround). A single hosting signup pays $60–125 vs Amazon’s $1–4 commission per sale. The audience match isn’t perfect on a consumer-tech site, but this article and 2–3 dedicated hosting comparisons should add meaningful revenue.
Mistakes I made (so you don’t have to)
1. Publishing 3 articles with TODO placeholders
My biggest unforced error. I was building 30 articles in batches and accidentally hit “Publish” on three single-product reviews that still had “TODO: 150 words on noise cancellation” in the body. They sat live for 17 days before I caught them. Google indexed all three with the broken content.
Cost: Those URLs would have hurt AdSense approval and SEO rankings. Fix: I rewrote them in-place with real content and submitted re-indexing requests via Search Console. Google replaced the cache within 7 days.
Lesson: Use WordPress’s draft status until an article is actually finished. Never publish from a template stub.
2. Forgetting to verify Search Console
I had 31 published articles before I verified the site in Google Search Console. That’s 17 days of organic search activity I couldn’t measure. Once verified, the data started flowing within 24 hours, and the picture of which articles were ranking became clear immediately. Lesson: Verify Search Console on day one. Submit your sitemap. Set up performance tracking BEFORE you start publishing.
3. Broken affiliate links on 3 reviews
Three of my single-product reviews had literal placeholder text — https://amzn.to/your-tag — instead of my actual Amazon Associates tag. Anyone who clicked “Check on Amazon” for those products would have generated zero commission. Cost: probably $50–100 in missed commission during the 17 days they were broken. Lesson: Test every Amazon affiliate link. Click each one and confirm the URL contains your tag.
4. Trying to apply for AdSense too early
I almost submitted my AdSense application at 10 articles. Reading the AdSense documentation later, that would have been a hard rejection. The right move is wait until article 25–30, then apply. Lesson: Read the affiliate/ad program documentation BEFORE you apply.
What I’d do differently starting today
Start with Pinterest from day one. I underestimated Pinterest as a traffic source — buying-guide content + visual product photos = goldmine. Each article should have 3–5 pins. Pinterest sends evergreen traffic for years.
Don’t translate prematurely. I set up TranslatePress for Greek and Spanish before I had any traffic in English. That was vanity, not strategy. Get 50+ English articles ranking first, then translate the top performers based on actual demand.
Pick a tighter niche. “Best Digital Buyers” covers earbuds, laptops, monitors, drones, smartwatches — that’s 8+ categories. A site about just earbuds, or just home office gear, would rank faster because Google rewards topical authority.
Build the email list from article one. ConvertKit free tier handles up to 1,000 subscribers. I added the signup form at article 25; should have been at article 1.
Costs to date (full transparency)
• Hostinger 24-month plan: $71.76 ($2.99/month)
• Domain (bestdigitalbuyers.com via Hostinger): Free with hosting
• Theme (Blocksy): Free
• Plugins (Rank Math, LiteSpeed, Wordfence, GenerateBlocks): All free
• Pexels API (images): Free
Total spent: ~$72. Income to date: $20.55 (first Amazon sale, May 13). By month 12 projection, with the planned content + hosting affiliate income, target is $300–500/month.
The honest TL;DR for someone starting today
If you’re reading this trying to decide whether to start an affiliate site in 2026:
1. Pick a niche you actually use products in. You can’t fake hands-on testing convincingly.
2. Buy 24-month Hostinger hosting ($72). Don’t overthink this.
3. Install WordPress + Blocksy + Rank Math + LiteSpeed Cache. Five plugins total. Don’t add more.
4. Write 10 cornerstone buying guides before you publish anything. Schedule them out over a month.
5. Verify Search Console on day one. Submit your sitemap.
6. Apply to Amazon Associates after article 10. Apply to hosting affiliates after article 25.
7. Start Pinterest from day one. Reddit answers from day 30.
8. Commit for 12 months minimum. Months 1–6 will feel like you’re shouting into a void. Month 7 is when search rankings stabilize and traffic compounds.
Three months in, I’m convinced the model works. The first sale is the hardest. After that it’s a content treadmill — write better articles, build more backlinks, refine the funnel.
Disclosure
Some links in this article are affiliate links — if you sign up through Hostinger, Cloudways, or Bluehost via my link, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. The recommendations are based on what I actually use and would recommend regardless of commission. As an Amazon Associate I also earn from qualifying purchases.