I'm planning on promoting a hosting company as an affiliate. I realise that it's a very competitive market, so maybe I'll narrow things down e.g. hosting for WordPress. I'm not sure of the best approach and I would appreciate any advice. Thanks Mark
I would highly recommend you specialize in a particular hosting niche such as wordpress hosting, cloud hosting, magento hosting etc. I would then build a reference site or blog about the topic. You could publish articles such as five best social media plugins for magento or how to setup a magento store. You could then promote your articles using your digitalpoint signature, writing guest posts for other blogs etc.
Yes I agree to go with promoting specific niche hosting such as VPS, Wordpress etc.. General hosting is super competitive but finding a sub category within it should be easier. Very good money too if you get it right! Good luck!
Thanks for the advice. I'm going to set up a reference site for WordPress, specifically for beginners. I'll use forum signatures and guest posts as suggested, as well as other direct traffic methods. I'll also use SEO as well.
I have found forums are an excellent place where you can share and exchange your ideas / knowledge with like minded people. You GAIN more by sharing your knowledge / experience with others. It also makes other people aware of your website / business.
Have a blog and write articles that a person who was considering starting a wordpress site would be looking for, like "can you do XYZ with wordpress?" and explain how to do it. You can also blog about Wordpress tips and tricks that a more advanced user might be looking for because those people might be on the market to upgrade their hosting. I wouldn't write so much about how to do something on a specific cost because the people searching for that information are probably already customers of that host and aren't going to get you commissions. Just try to get in the head of the prospective customer as much as you can and write content to answer their questions and concerns. The easiest sort of SEO is to create content that people are searching for targeting less commercial terms (like how to configure something in wordpress) and then try to get that traffic interested in hosting, rather than trying to rank for something like "wordpress hosting" which will be very competitive.
lol @ people still trying to start their own hosting companies What is it...every 100,000 hosting companies 1 are successful. And the ones that are successful are owned by multi million dollar companies. And every 1,000 successful hosting companies there is like 1 that shines and provides a good service.
but he's not starting his own hosting company, he said he is going to promote another company as an affiliate...
Seems like you’re doing the right things to promote your site and make money off of it. So long as you focus on a buyer related KW you should be OK with the conversions. Forums is a great idea if you’re subject is dealing with anything make-money related of which hosting is. Awesome! Wow you’re very enthusiastic...
Yeah its going to be tough to find some good keywords with a hosting company, but if you put in the work it will pay off. Best of luck.
I would have to agree with most of the others here. Your best bet is to try and specialize in one niche of the hosting industry. It might not have to be only Wordpress, but may just CMS's in general. Another option would be to focus solely on dedicated servers or virtual private servers..
This is pretty much what I'm planning. It seems that the indirect route is the best due to the sheer competitiveness of the web hosting market, even if you drill down a bit. The way I see it, anyone getting into WordPress will need hosting, and although some will already have hosting many will not.
Try offering a 30 day free trial coupon code to your users, so they can test out the hosting, and after they see it's a good service they will hopefully renew hosting with you.
If you take time and effort and put it into focusing on those few people who are interested and once and a while start with promotions (Not to big of one) but a considerable one that will turn all other competitors heads. That will give you the rift such as ' Namecheap ' did.
Most hosting companies like host gator allow you to promote their service using coupon codes. That's an easy way to sell their service, since new customers will be getting a discount or special of some sort. Ask your hosting company if they offer coupon codes for you to use in promoting their service. Wishing you all the best.