Thirty days is enough time to get a real website live if every week has one job. This checklist gives you that job for each of the four weeks, a short list of tasks to tick off, and a finish line you can see: a live site with its first content on it. It is built for the 30 day plan to launch an affiliate website that a beginner can follow without having to decide what comes next.
Print it, copy it into a notes app, or keep this page open. The aim is that on any morning you can look at the list and know what to do.
Before you start: the one hour that sets up your month
Spend one hour on this before day one. It removes most of the small decisions that stall people later.
- Choose your working times. Pick the days and hours you will work each week and put them in your calendar. Four sessions of 45 minutes you keep are worth more than a heroic weekend you skip.
- Create one folder for the project, on your computer or in a cloud drive, and one notebook (paper or digital) for ideas, logins and questions.
- Write down your finish line in one sentence: “By day 30, my site is live with its basic pages and my first articles published.”
- Open the Guided Path on your first day and look at what the first tasks ask of you. You only need to know where week one begins. If you want a closer look at what it does for a beginner, this breakdown of the Wealthy Affiliate Guided Path covers the first weeks in detail.
- Decide where you will go when you get stuck. Section six below lists the options, so choose one now and you will not lose an afternoon wondering.
Having a repeatable order of work helps more than any single tool. If you want the reasoning, there is a full piece on why you need a proven workflow before you build anything.
Week 1: Get your bearings and settle on a niche you can live with
Deliverable: one chosen niche and a short written plan for it.
Week one is for orientation and one decision. You do not need the perfect niche. You need one you can write about for months without getting bored or running out of things to say.
- Complete your profile and look around the platform so the layout is familiar before you rely on it.
- Work through the first tasks in your Guided Path in the order they appear. Skipping ahead is how beginners end up with half-built pieces that do not fit together.
- Write a list of 10 topics you already know something about or are willing to research. Include hobbies, problems you have solved and subjects friends ask you about.
- For each topic, answer three questions in a line or two: Who has a problem here? What do they search for? What could I recommend that would help them?
- Cross off the topics where you cannot answer the third question.
- Choose one. Write it as a sentence: “My site helps [type of person] with [specific problem].” Use your own words, because you will reuse this sentence on your About page.
- Write 15 questions your reader might ask about this niche. These become your first article ideas in week three.
If you keep circling between two options, pick the one you could explain to a stranger more easily. Both can work, and a decision made this week beats a perfect one made next month. If you find yourself researching instead of deciding, this piece on why you are still planning instead of starting gives you the smallest next move.
Week 2: Build the site’s foundation and get the basic pages in place
Deliverable: a working website with its core pages drafted.
This week you turn the niche into a place on the internet. The site does not need to be beautiful yet. It needs to work, load, and say clearly what it is for.
- Choose a domain name or site name that is easy to spell and say aloud, and that will still fit if your topic widens a little.
- Create the website through the platform’s site builder and confirm you can log in to the dashboard.
- Pick a clean theme. Choose one that is readable on a phone and leave the heavy customizing for later.
- Set up your main menu with only the pages you actually have.
- Draft the About page using your week one sentence, then add a short paragraph on who the site is for and what readers will find. Only include facts about yourself that are true and that you are comfortable sharing.
- Draft a Contact page with a way for readers to reach you.
- Add a privacy policy page and an affiliate disclosure that says plainly you may earn a commission if readers buy through your links. Disclosure rules differ by country, so check the requirements where you live.
- Open your site on your phone and on a computer, and note anything that looks broken.
A common mistake in week two is spending six days on colours and logos. Treat the design as a first version. Readers care far more about useful articles than about the exact shade of your header.
Week 3: Write and publish your first pieces of content
Deliverable: your first articles, published on the live site.
With the foundation in place, the site needs content. Use the 15 questions from week one as your source and write the answers.
- Choose three questions from your list. Pick the ones you can answer most clearly, and avoid the broadest ones for now.
- For each article, write a one-line summary of what the reader will know by the end.
- Outline each piece with a title, four or five headings and a sentence or two under each.
- Draft the first article in plain language, as if you were answering a friend. Short paragraphs, specific examples, no padding.
- Read it aloud once. Wherever you stumble, rewrite the sentence.
- Add any images that help explain the point, and give each a short description in the alt text field.
- Publish the first article, and then draft and publish the second and third.
- Add a link from each article to at least one other page on your site, once you have more than one page to link to.
If drafting from a blank page is slow, use the Writer inside the platform to produce a first draft from an outline, then edit it so it sounds like you and every claim in it is true. Check any fact, price or product detail against the original source before it goes live. A draft is a starting point, and you are responsible for what gets published under your name.
Three finished articles are enough for this week. Reaching three is a better outcome than starting ten and finishing none.
Week 4: Check your work, fix the rough edges and open the doors
Deliverable: a checked site that is open to visitors.
The last week is for quality control and for telling people the site exists. Most of the work is small repairs.
- Read every page on the site from start to finish. Fix typos, unclear sentences and any place where the meaning is vague.
- Click every link, including menu items, links between your own pages and any affiliate links. Fix the ones that fail.
- Check that each article has a clear title, a short introduction and a final line that tells the reader what to do next.
- Confirm that your disclosure and privacy pages are published and linked in a footer or menu.
- Look at the site on a phone and confirm the text is readable without zooming.
- Make sure the site is set to be visible to the public and not hidden or in a maintenance mode.
- Share the site with one or two people you trust and ask them one question: “What do you think this site is for?” If the answer is not your week one sentence, adjust the homepage and About page.
- Write down what you want to do in week five: the next five article topics from your list.
“Open the doors” does not mean a launch party. It means the site is public, it works, and you can point to it. That is the finish line.
When a week runs over (and why that is allowed)
Some weeks will take longer than seven days. A site build can hit a technical snag, a niche decision can take extra thinking, and real life gets in the way. Running over is normal, and it does not mean you have failed.
Use a simple rule. If a week’s deliverable is not done by the end of the week, take the unfinished items and give them the first sessions of the next week. Then shorten something less important: fewer articles in week three, a plainer design in week two. Never skip the deliverable itself.
What does not help is abandoning the list and starting again from scratch. Keep the order and keep going. A site finished on day 36 is live, and a site restarted three times is not. If you are wondering what a realistic result looks like in this early stretch, what your first 90 days should actually look like sets honest expectations.
Where to ask for help the moment you get stuck
Getting stuck is part of every build. The useful habit is to ask early, before a small question has cost you a week.
- The Guided Path itself. Re-read the current task and check that you have done everything above it. Many problems come from a skipped earlier task.
- The community. Post your question with a clear description: what you were trying to do, what happened and what you have already tried. A specific question gets a specific answer.
- Live classes. Live inside Learn runs classes with recordings, so you can watch a session on a topic you are stuck on.
- Your notebook. Write down each question as it comes up. Often you will find the answer a day later, and the list also shows you which topics to Focus on next.
If you are unsure whether your problem is big enough to ask about, read how long is too long to struggle alone. A good rule is that if you have been stuck on one thing for more than a session or two, ask.
Day 31: what to do next, and where the steady plan continues
On day 31, take a few minutes to look at what you have: a live site, a clear niche sentence, the basic pages and your first articles. Then choose your next small target and do not wait for a perfect moment.
- Save a copy of this checklist and note which items took longest, so you can plan time better next month.
- Pick your next five article topics from the question list.
- Block your working sessions for the next four weeks.
- Read the plan for the middle of your first 90 days: What Matters After Day 30 picks up exactly where this checklist stops.
The checklist ends here because the next phase asks for different work. In the first month you build and publish. After that, you keep writing, improve what exists and learn from how readers respond.
If you are ready to start week one with a clear path and people beside you, join Wealthy Affiliate through my link and open the Guided Path on your first day.