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  1. #1

    Hosting Affiliate Programs?

    What is your opinion on hosting affiliate programs?

    Any good bad or ugly?

    Thanks,

    Sincerely,

    Paul Kleinmeulman
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  2. #2
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    worse , in my case.

    you have 0.01 success in these programs.

  3. #3
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    I think some affilate programs work very well such as clanservers.com, they're program works brilliantly but you must give the affiltrate a good insentive!

  4. #4
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    at a very rare case those works, most donot work as the visitor just uses your link to visit their site and next time they go by directly not come to your site.

  5. #5
    Well with the right system they add cookies so when they come back you get the comission. That's how my system works.
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  6. #6
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    I would think most affiliate programs would cookie the visitor. If you are looking into one specific affiliate program - just ask them how long till the cookie expires.
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  7. #7
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    I can only advice you not to trust on companies thta offer more than 25%-30% of their sales revenue.

    Best Regards
    Dimitar
    DawHB.com - Web Hosting Blog | VPSHostDir.com - VPS Hosting Media

  8. #8
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    I'm trying to figure out what the nature of the original question is.

    I thought the question was to any hosting companies out there to give him feedback about the quality of the different affiliate programs that he could set up for his own hosting company. Some companies manage their own programs and some use sites like Commission Junction and some use a combination of both. I think he wants feedback on the quality of those options. Is that the question?

    Two things that I've seen that I have to completely disagree with:

    1. They have no success - tell that to the companies that do quite well attracting new customers using affiliate programs. Consider this an advertising expense. If you can distribute the number of people who will advertise for you to hundreds or even thousands of people then your only expense as a host is a portion of the sale to the referrer. It's usually a one-time commission and you could have a customer that hosts for a number of years. I think those who believe that affiliate programs do not work frankly don't know what they're talking about.

    2. Most do not work as the visitor just uses your site to visit the link and it is rare that it does work. Not true. Some affiliate programs convert better than others. It depends on the quality of the site, the quality of the copy, what others think about the service, the prices, and features. An affiliate program for a site offering 1 GB storage and 10 GB bandwidth for $19.99/mo will convert horribly but to say that they just don't work at all is just not true.

    Anyhow, the original question was a bit vague.
    Rich
    Husband, Father, Retired Marine, Geek

  9. #9
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    Jun 2005
    Location
    Chicago, IL
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    Lpanel has a nice affiliate program built into it. Just find the signup form at lpanel/signup/affsignup.php. Works great...

  10. #10
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    Affiliate programs for hosting can work. We mainly target on website designers and give 20-25 sales revenue max. The suc6 ratio for us is higher then 0.01 as mentioned earlier.

  11. #11
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    There are companies that have almost totally focused on their affiliate program.... and it works for them, for some in quite a spectacular way...

    You do need attractive commissions though. There is what I would call an affiliates market out there, and there's a lot of competition.

    Some hosts will tell you that affiliate programs are no good, but they fail to let you know that they pay/have paid $10 per sale (just an example). Some affiliates know quite well how much it would cost a host to get a sale via other advertising means (banners, Adwords, Overture etc), so they know (roughly) how much they should/could be paid.

  12. #12
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    There are companies like iPowerWeb that will pay the affiliate $100 (the whole first year of hosting!) just for one sale, which is unreasonable for hosts just starting out, as they don't have that much money to invest. There are others that offer a nice commission, but you will need to invest a good amount of money to be able to compete with other web hosting company's affiliate programs.

    Many hosts find a lot of success with affiliate programs, but you have to do it right. I completely disagree with spechackers. If you do it just right, it will be successful. Amazon.com started the whole concept of an affiliate program some years back, and that is one of the things that helped grow them into what they are today.
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  13. #13
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    Originally posted by ldcdc
    There are companies that have almost totally focused on their affiliate program.... and it works for them, for some in quite a spectacular way...

    You do need attractive commissions though. There is what I would call an affiliates market out there, and there's a lot of competition.

    Some hosts will tell you that affiliate programs are no good, but they fail to let you know that they pay/have paid $10 per sale (just an example). Some affiliates know quite well how much it would cost a host to get a sale via other advertising means (banners, Adwords, Overture etc), so they know (roughly) how much they should/could be paid.
    I couldn't agree more Dan. I find it kind of short-sighted for some companies to pay affiliates so little when they could pay over $3 a click on Google and then hope to convert one in every 20-30 clicks and deal with click fraud and impression spam. I guess their attitude is to let affiliates figure out a way for them to avoid spending $50-$90 in advertising to get one client and then only share $10 with the person who brings them a client for $0. Just strikes me as incredibly cheap.
    Rich
    Husband, Father, Retired Marine, Geek

  14. #14
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    There are companies like iPowerWeb that will pay the affiliate $100 (the whole first year of hosting!) just for one sale, which is unreasonable for hosts just starting out, as they don't have that much money to invest.
    That amount can be considered as excessive or it can at the very least be argued that one could pay less and still be able to attract a lot of affiliates. However, we must also be aware and admit that far too many hosts start out without any kind of advertising plan (and budget) and try to cater to the international market. The reality of things often hits them like a brick wall and they realise that their pricing (for some reason) doesn't even account for advertising costs properly (or at all).

    The irony is that a new host is actually the one that needs to pay for advertising. A good, established, quality host, can often rely partially or even totally on cost free word of mouth.

    DevilDog, we're on the same side of the barricade, so it's only normal for us to see things in a similar way.

    I do feel for the hosts though, as only two years ago the highest affiliate commission in the hosting market was some $40-$50. As the market gets more crowded, advertising costs rise. Survival of the fittest comes into play, and the victims of this process (hosts) sure don't like the situation.

    Anyway, as you stated, probably the biggest advantage of an affiliate program is that the host can pay only for results (sales), as opposed to clicks or views that come with no guarantee.

  15. #15
    There are companies like iPowerWeb that will pay the affiliate $100 (the whole first year of hosting!) just for one sale, which is unreasonable for hosts just starting out, as they don't have that much money to invest.
    $100 really isnt alot to pay for a sale. The fact that it represents a year of revenue to the host is more a statement of that hosts business model vs the cost of the affiliate payout. We pay around half of that - and will probably raise it eventually. However, we have very few packages where $100 = a year of service, therefore, we would not consider that to be an unreasonable amount for generating a sale...
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  16. #16
    Originally posted by fcolor
    I can only advice you not to trust on companies thta offer more than 25%-30% of their sales revenue.

    Best Regards
    Dimitar
    Why would you say that? I offer 25% revenue a month to affiliates. I am a small company and little overhead so I can afford to offer these commissions.
    Jeffrey Nikoletich
    Xfernet - http://www.xfernet.com

  17. #17
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    I can only advice you not to trust on companies thta offer more than 25%-30% of their sales revenue.
    Are you referring to recurring commissions? If you're not, and you can attract affiliates at those rates, then "more power to you!"; however, to say that other companies should not be trusted because the offer higher commissions, is not exactly correct IMO.

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