The Best Web Hosting Affiliate Programs

What is the best web hosting affiliate program on the web today? The answer to this question is going to be as varied and hotly contested as the thousands of opinions about the best web hosting company out there.

There really isn't a simple answer, if indeed there is any definitive answer at all, to either question.

As an affiliate there are hundreds of hosting companies who will pay you to promote their business. Some will reward you very well whilst others will barely pay you the price of a fast food lunch. With that in mind it seems fair to equate the dollar amounts you can earn with the attractiveness of the hosting affiliate program in question. Let's face it, why accept a commission of $10 when others are offering you $100 or even more?

But is this the only golden rule likely to affect your success as a web hosting affiliate? In a word, no. With all the competition out there for not only your patronage as a customer, but also as an affiliate, hosting companies need to offer attractive deals for both.

For you, as an affiliate, the first thing you need to establish is that you need to be working with a trustworthy, established company, preferably one that pays a decent level of commission. This is not an easy choice to make, because even when you think you have found the perfect company, you will also find plenty of negative comments about them online. The deeper you dig into the world of web hosting, the more you will realize that the online world is absolutely overloaded with nay sayers and complainants in respect of web hosting.

You have to remember that many people buy hosting that is completely unsuited to their needs, often because they have little idea of what their needs are likely to be. It is also very easy, in this day and age of instant gratification, for people to fire off an email or forum post in a fit of temper because of often minor irritations perceived to be the fault of their hosting company. They complain about response times, they complain about billing, downtime and server issues that affect their websites, even if a little patience would likely see the problems resolved. Yes, there are bad hosts out there as well as good ones, but often the loudest anti web hosting voices are perhaps not the ones to listen to for rational and balanced opinion.

I read a complaint recently from a man stating that hosting company A, his host, was more expensive than hosting Company B, and used that as a reason for switching. Sounds fair enough, but with hosting you usually find you get what you pay for and often, comparing two services is like comparing apples and oranges. On this occasion, the customer was moving from one deal to a completely different one and if you compared the two, you would see that he was getting far less than he was with his original host (with whom he had not had any problems). Should he run into problems with the new company he will complain very loudly, even though he could possibly have foreseen that buying a cheaper service would not provide the things he took for granted previously. So, who is really to blame? A hosting company that sets out the features of their service for all to see, or the customer who does not read them. That customer could soon be answering his own question about why his host was so much more expensive than his new one.

The point is, as an affiliate, just as a customer, you will never find a perfect hosting company.

When seeking the companies you feel you would like to work with, it is wise to check for large volumes of negative publicity and complaints, but don't take too much notice of a few sour comments from sour people.

Additionally, I would always recommend trying to find at least one company that is prepared to pay you recurring commissions. Yes, it is possible. The vast majority of hosting companies will pay you a one time referral fee, but there are those who will pay you for the lifetime of the referred customer. For you, this means regular monthly payments that will continue to roll in until the customer cancels their hosting.

That has to be a better deal for any affiliate. You may get a one off $100 commission from one company and that's nice, but if another is willing to pay you $10 every month your potential earnings are far greater, and, you don't have to keep doing the work. It's the classic residual income situation. As an affiliate, there is no reason why you cannot mix both types of affiliate program into your promotional strategies.

There is one hosting company that takes the recurring monthly commissions a few steps further and offers a multi tier compensation plan. In other words, you will not only be paid for your direct customers, but also for the customers they refer. Even better, they structure the affiliate program in a way that means even affiliates who do little in the way of bringing in new customers can still earn money from customers who are brought in by people above them in the affiliate "team". It's almost MLM, but it's genuine and enables the company's affiliates to cover the cost of their own hosting quite easily, effectively giving them free web hosting and furthermore, the potential to earn a very decent monthly income.

Whoever you choose to work with as an affiliate, the market is intensely competitive and selling hosting is not the easy money you might think. Having said that, commission levels are high and there is definitely money to be made. If you are seeking the definitive answer to the question "which is the best web hosting affiliate program?" it is unlikely that you will ever find it, the answers having far too much to do with consumer opinion.