Have any of you tried affiliate programs to start your hosting business?

I know CIHost started this way and is now HUGE. But can anyone give me firsthand examples, or advice on starting one up? like, what king of script or software, how to spot fraudsters in an affiliate program, etc.

Thanks in advance!

We use iDevaffiliate, and it's decent enough. Not the greatest, but it works for our needs better then most other software...

The trick is to:

1) Make the affiliate program WORTH IT for your affiliates. Nobody is going to sell your web hosting for a $3 "paycheck" if they can get $100 per order from someone else.

2) Make it easy for them. Don't make your affiliates go and try to find information and banners, etc. Look at CIHost's program, and there are pages and pages and pages of information, guides, and whatnot.

3) You must have a good quality product.

Good luck!

I do a bit of affiliate marketing and it makes me some money by advertising products at 5-10% of the sale. But I run a hosting company and I have looked at using the affiliates to sell my product.

These guys are nuts! Everyone is paying $100 for a signup. That is a year of hosting at my cheap prices. And the likelyhood of anyone lasting a full year are slim.

The best program (syndicate) is cj.com. I looked at shareasle.com but none of the hosts had even 1 sale in the last 30 days. So I could not justify signing up, paying fees and geting nothing.

It seems like all the way around, people are paying more than its worth.

google ad words are good, but they are up to $8-$10 per click. You do not have to be a einstein to realize you will go broke at that price.

I hate to bring bad news. But that is just my experience. If you find anything that works, I would love to know what it is.

I was not aware that hosting firms do not do well through affiliate networks like shareasle. I guess that is why I see more companies switching to managing their own affiliate programs by utilizing the power of their own customer base...

As the owner of a couple of hosting resources, I am being contacted all the time (by phone most of the time), from companies advertising their affiliate programs.. And by the increasing number of them, I would say your observation is correct.

Best,

I think it has to do with the companies not paying commissions that are even remotely close to those offered by some hosts at CJ, and affiliates not seing value in promoting hosting companies at a discount.

As competition intensifies, the cost to acquire a hosting customer is increasing, and the necessity to have well designed advertising plans and budgets too.

Well affiliate programs are good if you are pulling in two or three customers every few days...if not then the affiliate is losing out in terms of trying to sell a product, and the provider is out the money because suddenly a sale costs the provider over $50 per sale....just isn't right. This is why providers should NOT accept every affiliate, these kind of signups should not be automated either. The applications should be reviewed closely.