To Web Hosting Talk members,

Please could you advise me on something. I currently run a webhosting business with few customers, and I wish to increase the amount of customers I have.

One way I thought I could do this is to offer an incentive. If someone signs up to a package for £50 a year for 3 years, which they pay for up front, they get:


1GB webspace and unlimited bandwidth
cPanel
and an iPod Nano silver 2GB (worth £100)
Please tell me any feedback you may have. I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks

Ollie

To Web Hosting Talk members,

Please could you advise me on something. I currently run a webhosting business with few customers, and I wish to increase the amount of customers I have.

One way I thought I could do this is to offer an incentive. If someone signs up to a package for £50 a year for 3 years, which they pay for up front, they get:


1GB webspace and unlimited bandwidth
cPanel
and an iPod Nano silver 2GB (worth £100)
Please tell me any feedback you may have. I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks

Ollie
I would not do that, instead I would do one of the following:

1. Start an affiliate program, use that money that you were for the nanos to offer money for customers. So offer £50 or something for new clients, start going after hosting related sites.

2. Instead of giving that to new customers maybe send a bunch to your biggest and most active clients as a thank you, then watch as your name gets spread in forums etc and its a good bit of guerilla marketing.

3. Maybe use overture/adwords with that money.

Just make sure your web page is up to speed with a clear arrow to signup, contact info evident, tweak to get the highest conversions possible.

Thank you for your feedback. I have one question though, where would I get the affiliates from? I looked into it a while ago and all I could find was affiliate schemes which you had to pay to sign up to as a marketer.

Thank you for your feedback. I have one question though, where would I get the affiliates from? I looked into it a while ago and all I could find was affiliate schemes which you had to pay to sign up to as a marketer.The cheapest and simplest software is:

http://www.groundbreak.com/

Lots of hosts big and small use it, you can set it up so potential affiliates can sign up and when they promote you and it takes care of handling the stats/credit etc.

To find them its like anything else, setup a page with lots of info, have banners and help them as much as you can. You can advertise on affiliate forums like wicked forums, digital point, sitepoint, here etc, you can do a lot of things like that.

OK, I will consider this one. But also could you tell me what you think of this one?

http :// www .cosmicperl .com/ affiliateclick.shtml

It's free and seems easy to install.

Thanks!

I've worked with many scripts over the past couple of years and I must say www.groundbreak.com was a bad decision...IMO anyways. The script seemed slow, demanding and was not the easiest to work with.

http://www.idevdirect.com/ is one I've been meaning to try but never had the time.

@ OP: That might be an effective strategy....for the client. But can you make money doing that?

OK, I will consider this one. But also could you tell me what you think of this one?

http :// www .cosmicperl .com/ affiliateclick.shtml

It's free and seems easy to install.

Thanks!The example is down so I can't take a look, keep in mind depending on what volume you are wanting the quality of your program is important. Ultimate Affiliate is cheap and you can mod the code or hire someone to add features its lacking. Besides that the big names are DirectTrack, MyAp (the best), and so on but those cost a lot of money.

Are you wanting to aim this then at your clients and WOM or at bigger sites and marketers?

@ OP: That might be an effective strategy....for the client. But can you make money doing that?Doing what?

Making only 50 pounds on a Web hosting package over a three year period of time.
Web hosting plan = 150 pounds for three years
iPod = 100 pounds
The difference is 50 pounds
That's a very small profit over three years' time.

Making only 50 pounds on a Web hosting package over a three year period of time.
Web hosting plan = 150 pounds for three years
iPod = 100 pounds
The difference is 50 pounds
That's a very small profit over three years' time.True but hopefully the business plan is a bit more complete, ie he knows his profit per package and he knows the cost of getting a new customer, you are leaving out a lot of things that are the core reason behind giving away an iPod, here are some examples:

Word of Mouth - someone who gets a free ipod for it is going to tell people and spread your name more then if not, so maybe instead of reffering 0 or 1 people he does 2 or 3 more. Then what is that ipod worth (Esp if he just gives away to current customers as a thank you or big clients)?

and

Upselling - how many clients upgrade, or buy other products from him, or buy web design services, or so on. This makes customers worth a lot more then 150 pounds.

Possibly, but you're right - it's something he needs to evaluate. Just giving away an iPod is not a good strategy.

Thanks to everyone who has helped me so far!

Well I have done the working out and the cost for each account for 3 years would be £20, and I can get iPod Nanos for £90, so I would make £40 profit. Would you recommend giving away something else perhaps? Such as an iPod shuffle new worth £55? Would people go for this? And why shouldn't I give away iPod Nanos?

Thanks to everyone who has helped me so far!

Well I have done the working out and the cost for each account for 3 years would be £20, and I can get iPod Nanos for £90, so I would make £40 profit. Would you recommend giving away something else perhaps? Such as an iPod shuffle new worth £55? Would people go for this? And why shouldn't I give away iPod Nanos?

I think any offer that gives client a tangiable product is good, If I were looking for offers I'd surely be attracted to one of thos Ipod offers

I think any offer that gives client a tangiable product is good, If I were looking for offers I'd surely be attracted to one of thos Ipod offers

Do you think an iPod Shuffle would be a big enough reward, or a Nano? Also, would there be any other rewards you would want?

Thanks to everyone who has helped me so far!

Well I have done the working out and the cost for each account for 3 years would be £20, and I can get iPod Nanos for £90, so I would make £40 profit. Would you recommend giving away something else perhaps? Such as an iPod shuffle new worth £55? Would people go for this? And why shouldn't I give away iPod Nanos?
I agree with GlobalWebDan, giving away an ipod with hosting accounts is not a good use of your money. There are far far better ways to use it to get customers incentives to sign up, heck even a coupon to make the first month cheap like 2 cents or something.

Giving it away as an incentive for people to sign up is not needed IMO and from experience I would say it doesn't increase conversions, if you want to increase conversions really work on your web pages to make them more appealing, work on landing pages for specific client types or ads you are doing, work on say making people coming off searches you rank for or advetise on land on pages with dynamic titles reflecting those entry keywords. And if you want to give the nano away email your current client base and offer it as a WOM offering, so if any of your current clients refer someone who stays for at least 60 days they get a free one...

If I were to do an affiliate system, would you say this would be a good choice?

http://www.twsc.biz/php_affiliate_script.php

It seems to be a good choice and is cheap.

Not sure, I haven't seen that one either :) , from the screenshots it looks ok, you might email them and check on how it will work for you as a hostin company, aka how do I delay payment for 30 days or 60 days depending on which you choose, make sure you can set it how you want you know?

Have you compared the cost of advertising through Ipod's to other forms of advertising even if as simple as banner ads?

I think giving away an iPod Anything would be a bad idea. I mean, sure you might encourage a few signups, but that just seems a bit... gimmicky?

Think about this -- if it costs you $90 per customer to do that, how many customers would prefer paying $60 for 3 years of hosting instead of getting a $90 iPod which they're likely not interested in?

If you're going to give something away, target it towards your actual audience. In fact, I would guess it's very difficult to find one thing that all customers would like, so I would try to talk to many companies about ways to offer their services to your customers. Imagine if you find 5 companies that are actually related to hosting in some way (SSL certs, merchant accounts, ppc/advertising companies, licenses for game servers, licenses for other software, .....), you could let your customer choose which they would prefer.

Not only that, you should talk to the companies about it for one VERY important reason: hosting isn't the only market where advertising is outrageously expensive. They may be willing to offer very deep discounts to you since it's basically advertising with a fixed cost to them (which is almost a holy grail).

One other thing to keep in mind is that this might not be the most effective form of advertising for you (it is advertising, after all!). What if you get 2 customers for offering an iPod but you could get 3 or 4 customers by spending that $90 somewhere else? My gut feeling would be to spend it more on other advertising and maybe work with some companies to offer discounts on common hosting services.

Well I was looking into all this an I feel that it is hard to get people to sign up as an affiliate, and also if I get Pay per click advertising this does not guarantee sales, so I could end up spending £150 to find I get 1 new account at £40 a year.

Do you think it would be a good idea to give a free iPod shuffle to customers, which would cost £55? This would mean I get £60 profit over 3 years, that's £20 a year. And it could spread by word of mouth??

Also, if anyone has ideas to get new customers through a way that makes me stand out from the rest, other than giving out incentives, please let me know.

Thanks everyone!

Well I was looking into all this an I feel that it is hard to get people to sign up as an affiliate, and also if I get Pay per click advertising this does not guarantee sales, so I could end up spending £150 to find I get 1 new account at £40 a year. This totally depends on what keywords you are doing and what market you are focusing on, if you are a niche host or general hosting, if you are doing landing pages etc. To be good at using PPC to get customers you need to know a lot about PPC, you def need to use landing pages as that can double or tripple the amount of people sign up. I recommend reading all your can online about PPC optimization, marketingsherpa.com, and lots of forum posts... You will also get the most out of it if you track keywords and sale and split test your landing pages religiously.

Also, to find affiliates takes time but if you offer prompt payments, if your payments are competitive, esp in the UK market there are lots of forums you can post on, you can email people etc, that is nice as you know what you are paying per customer and all the work of finding affiliates is yours. Or you can always outsource to an affiliate agency.

Do you think it would be a good idea to give a free iPod shuffle to customers, which would cost £55? This would mean I get £60 profit over 3 years, that's £20 a year. And it could spread by word of mouth??No from exp that doesn't work.

Also, if anyone has ideas to get new customers through a way that makes me stand out from the rest, other than giving out incentives, please let me know.
Have you tried local advertising?

search google for ideas
http://www.google.com/search?q=good+ways+to+advertise&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

these forums have loads of good ideas, sitepoint forums have good suggestions, digital point, wicked fire, start reading some marketing online stuff...

I think you're asking for a lot of fraudulant orders with free ipods.

I would make sure that I get payments first for the three years through Paypal.

Also, what would you want as a free gift? My target audience is people with not much experience with websites.

I would make sure that I get payments first for the three years through Paypal.

Also, what would you want as a free gift? My target audience is people with not much experience with websites.You are missing the point, free gifts are not a good way to go, they do nothing for you in most of our opinions, better to spend that money on other things like advertising, etc...

I'll try to be simple: I would not buy a hosting plan because it came with a "free gift". I don't think many folks would. Sure, you'll get some clients, but they'll be very high maintenance, and I don't think you realize that you just won't make enough to maintain them.

I think you're asking for a lot of fraudulant orders with free ipods.

I agree with that! Affiliate programs seems a more interessant approach

One way I thought I could do this is to offer an incentive. If someone signs up to a package for £50 a year for 3 years, which they pay for up front, they get:


1GB webspace and unlimited bandwidth
cPanel
and an iPod Nano silver 2GB (worth £100)
Please tell me any feedback you may have. I would greatly appreciate it!


Its a great idea, although I'd recommend giving a lot more space with the unlimited bandwidth, say 10Gb, and maybe drop the price a bit as well.

Ok, sarcasm mode off, how long will your "business" last if it's gettinga Nett income of circa £15/year and the client does actually use the resources you've allocated ?