Web Hosting Affiliate Tip: Three Things Not To Do

If you are a Commission Junction affiliate, chances are that sooner or later Web Hosting Affiliate programs will catch your attention. These programs are probably among the most lucrative ones and some will pay you as much as $150 per referral/sale. This is also true about Web Hosting providers that are not Commission Junction advertisers.

So there was a time when these programs caught my attention as well. After I have learned about the lucrative side of being Web Hosting affiliate I literally signed up for every Web Hosting affiliate program that was available at Commission Junction and then I added few more providers to my list that operate their affiliate programs independently. My intention was to create this super big web hosting review site that of course will generate tons of money. Unfortunately I have done it without making much research beside familiarizing myself with Terms and Conditions of each affiliate program. This was the biggest mistakes I have done so far as an affiliate. Here are what I consider three things I failed to do before promoting web-hosting providers.

1. I should have limit the number of web hosting providers to begin with.At the time I was familiar only with three web hosting providers. And fact only these three providers had produced some results down the road. Unfortunately my thinking at the time was “the more the merrier”. But the simple fact that over the past six months almost every provider had modified their hosting plans by either changing the price, offering more storage and bandwidth, I spent much time to make sure that these changes were reflected in my website as well.
2. I did not research my competition.This one required one simple step- to Google the phrase “web hosting reviews“. I did that later on and of course I was shocked by the shear number of websites competing for this phrase, providers and affiliates alike. While I do not believe that simple number of competitors should scare anyone, after taking a closer look at some of the sites I realized that my reviews where nothing comparing to some other site. In fact my reviews closely related to the possible commission. The more money affiliate program offered, the “better” my reviews where. And of course I completely avoided “negative” reviews. Now I realize that negative review does not necessarily make your website less valuable, in fact it can contribute to make your website more genuine and unbiased.
3. I did not research my potential clients.This one had an effect of lightning in the clear sky. When time came to think about people who may be purchasing web hosting plans, I realized that my fellow affiliates will constitute big percentage of possible audience. So will webmasters and blogers. All of who are well aware about affiliate programs and are not likely to click through my links, especially if they can get money back using their own affiliate links.

Why do I write about things I have done wrong you may ask? Well it will serve two purposes, it will remind me about these mistakes and hopefully I will not repeat them in the future but most importantly it may help you to avoid the mistakes I have made in case you are considering to promote web hosting companies.