For a lot of people who only make money online through programs such as Adsense, the thought of promoting affiliate products can be quite daunting; there are many decisions to make around which products to choose, which affiliate networks to sign up to and so on. Another decision to make is how to promote the products, whether it be through positive reviews of the product, or by making up a sales page.
For those looking to get started making money from affiliate schemes, a good place to start is to promote web hosting companies. These affiliate schemes are ideal because if you already run any websites, you’re likely to have tested the service from some hosting companies, and you’re also likely to have a good idea of which companies are genuine and popular.
There are millions of people searching every day for reviews of web hosting companies, so by writing a couple of positive reviews of companies which you’ve used, and adding your affiliate link, the conversion rates should be excellent, you only need to worry about attracting traffic to your reviews.
Many of the top hosting companies such as Godaddy and Hostgator offer very attractive affiliate packages; rather than a standard percentage of the initial sale like you may expect from most affiliate companies, web hosting companies often offer a fairly large, one off payment if any users sign up under your link. In the case of Hostgator, the payout is equal to the cost of several months’ hosting.
The beauty of taking this route into affiliate marketing is that your website ends up paying for itself, assuming you get at least a few people a year signing up under your affiliate link; if you host your website with the same company as you’re promoting, you should never have to make any payments after the first couple of months’ hosting, as the affiliate income should outweigh the costs of hosting the website.
One issue with setting up a website reviewing hosting companies is that it becomes very difficult to attract traffic from search engines; there are hundreds of websites dedicated to reviewing hosting companies, so without a strong budget for search engine optimisation and backlinks, your website is unlikely to top the search results. However, by promoting your reviews through places such as webmaster forums and article directories, it is fairly easy to generate enough traffic to make money.
Because of the need to constantly promote your reviews in order to generate any traffic, using hosting companies’ affiliate schemes isn’t always a great long term option; most top affiliate marketers look to build an affiliate website which will continue generating organic traffic automatically through search engines, leaving them free to concentrate on other areas. However, for getting started in affiliate marketing and learning the trade, promoting hosting companies is an ideal way to start getting involved.
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