Web Hosting Affiliation

The web hosting industry has developed in the same time with the Internet from the need of businesses and individuals to host their web pages and files online. Getting into web hosting affiliation will let you access new streams of revenues by promoting services needed by anyone looking to set a website or have private email accounts. There are many products and complementary services to choose from when entering the hosting affiliation business, from the standard hosting accounts to web domain registrations. As an affiliate in web hosting there are several standardized marketing options to choose, mainly banners and text links.

As with any other affiliate businesses, working in the web hosting affiliation requires access to users/visitors to promote to. Among the most common channels used to promote affiliate services are websites/blogs, email marketing lists, a mobile apps, a social media group or any mix of above. If you lack any of these channels, you may want to check our guide to getting a website online as this is the quickest way of getting started. As soon as you have access to such marketing channels, you are just one step away from becoming a hosting affiliate.

Getting Started with Web Hosting Affiliation

To get the best conversions possible in affiliate business, one needs to promote the right products to the right audience. For our example, to get the best conversions in web hosting affiliation, you may need access to users in need to get a website online or those looking to change their hosting based on various criterias. While the audience in web hosting seems more niche when compared to travel, it offers good revenue opportunities. Therefore, if you are running a technical blog, or you’re into web development services, you can complement your revenues with deals from the hosting affiliation industry.

What is Web Hosting Affiliation?

While web hosting refers to hosting accounts (online spaces for hosting files, web pages) it can be widen with many complementary services such as web domain registrations, web development, SEO services (Search Engine Optimization), web monitoring, and at one level even online payment processors for those looking to set an Internet shop.

Identify the Best Program to Promote

Operating as an affiliate in web hosting industry requires you to promote such services. In order to make the best out of this business by identifying the product that may have good conversions with your audience.

Success is directly dependent on promoting the right product to your audience, otherwise you may waste valuable traffic and their time. While most hosting services offer quite similar promotional materials and services, some may still be differentiating by key options like language support (for non English users), hosting environment options (Windows or Linux hosting),  backup services and more.

Check our web hosting affiliate programs directory for a list recommended programs.

Selecting the Hosting Product

There are many choices when it comes to web hosting services. Firstly, web hosting options may be required by an individual for a personal website or blog, or businesses for large websites, online shops or internal collaboration tools. For theses case there are different options to promote, like:

• regular hosting accounts (for individual or smaller web projects)
• VPS hosting (Virtual Private Server – for dedicated resources, but still cheaper than an entire server)
• dedicated server (for complete dedicated resources like hosting space, processing power, memory)
• cloud hosting (for scalable resources, required by large enterprises)

Selecting the Brand

As conversions are directly impacted by this choice, selecting the right partner to promote is highly important. You need to offer a good conversion funnel to your users, like for example if your audience is mostly German, redirect them to a hosting partner which offer a German version of their website.

Therefore, when choosing the web hosting partner or brand you should make sure it is a stable company, offering the services which you are looking to promote to your audience and ideally more if upgrades are required, a hosting company that tracks your sales and calculates your commissions fairly.

Payment models

CPA – the CPA model is popular mainly among wen hosting and web domain registration affiliate programs. On the CPA payment model, the affiliate gets paid a predefined amount for each new sale referred.

Revenue Share – Revenue Share pays the affiliate a share of the money spent by the visitors referred to the affiliate program. This means the more money a user/converted customer spends, the more money an affiliate would earn.

Start your Marketing Campaign

You have the marketing channel and you have selected the hosting operator to promote. Now it is the time to start your marketing campaign. Depending on the audience type and marketing channels you have access to, you can start writing content and publishing affiliate links and banners so you can refer new users to selected hosting affiliate programs.

As a website owner, you will be required to include banners and/or affiliate links within your content. For best conversions possible we recommend integrating hosting brands and complementary services within your article content. Simply publishing some banners may not give the best results – therefore we recommend you go the extra mile here, and be innovative in terms of how you promote the hosting service to your users. For example, as a tech blog owner you may want to write about the easiness of creating a website today, by using special features available with selected hosting providers. Similar, you can also try to push web domain registrations here, although the hosting company will most likely have this service included.

For the case you own a mailing list – then this would require creating an email template and content along with a call to action for your subscribers to buy a hosting service with the program you are promoting. Ideally this is used for promoting special deals, limited in time, which can return better conversions.

Optimizing affiliate revenues implies a bit more than just a quick implementation of banners or affiliate links – it also requires checking data constantly like website traffic and conversions, try to set different channels for different approaches and see which ones have the best returns as this can easily mean doubling down on your earnings or losing potential revenues.

PROS

• high CPA revenue – you can create a nice revenue stream with CPA offered by various hosting providers which can be between $50-$150 per client for a regular hosting account
• wide range of products and services to promote in this industry, from web hosting services to complementary services

 

CONS

• high competition in web hosting affiliation makes it sometimes difficult to enter this industry and earn commissions
• the need to continuously update promotional offers as hosting providers come up with monthly deals for new customers, and as an affiliate you need to be able to capitalize on these deals

 

FAQ

• Can I work with a web hosting affiliate program if I don’t have a website? Yes, you can. You can still promote if you have access to an audience like mailing list, social media group, or maybe you will simply buy out media (banner placements, pop-unders, interstitial ads). Spam is not tolerated by most programs, therefore if you will be buying media placements, then speak with the affiliate program representatives for pre-approval. Hosting affiliate programs, like in any other industry, also have restrictions on PPC campaigns (keywords bidding restrictions)
• Can I work with multiple affiliate programs and/or brands? Yes, you can. Affiliate programs in web hosting do not restrict you in working only with their brands.
• Can I buy a hosting account from my own affiliate links? Yes, you can, but the terms of such self-purchases may differ from an affiliate program to another. Some programs may be OK with this practice and pay you the commission on the purchase you made, while other may not accept this.
• Can I refer my friends to the brands I am working with? Yes, you can. This is absolutely fine with all affiliate programs.
• How does the affiliate program know which are the customers I referred? The most common way of tracking users is by using the affiliate links. These affiliate links set a cookie in the visitor’s browser when clicking on that link. Cookies are small tracking files that are used widely by all websites for various purposes, including affiliate tracking. These cookie usually have an expiration date, which means that if someone who clicked on your link makes a purchase with the hosting provider at a later time (not necessarily same day as clicked on the link), you will still be credited for that client. Cookie duration differs from a program to another and from a product to another, and can be anywhere between several days validity to lifetime.

Website Examples in Web Hosting Affiliation

• www.hostingreviews247.com

Request for Updates / Additions

If you think some info needs to be updated on this page or you would like to add new info that would benefit our users, please get in touch with us and let us know what changes you have in mind for us, the article you want updated and external references if necessary to support your updates.

Join the Affiliates.Wiki Forum for discussions on web hosting affiliation and other interesting tips and resources.