What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an arrangement where an online retailer pays a commission to an external website for traffic or sales generated from its referrals.
These programs are a wonderful way to earn passive income from promoing other people's products and services. Affiliate programs involve two parties, a company or brand that wants to advertise and a publisher, usually a blogger or influencer.
The publisher (blogger) applies for the advertiser's affiliate program. If they are accepted they become eligible to promote the advertiser's products and services.
Approved publishers (bloggers) place ads for advertisers on their web pages with their articles and other valuable content. They will earn a commission when someone clicks the blogger's affiliate link and makes a purchase. We'll cover the Hostgator affiliate program in detail in this article.
To implement an effective marketing plan, that works well to earn the most money, it's a great idea to think about the "kinds" of products and services that will be a good fit with the niche the topics you cover in your blog and social media posts.
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It also requires that you know your audience (ideal customers) and the types of content your readers are looking for. The better you are at knowing what your readers want and placing relevant affiliate links on your blog with content that makes their lives better, the more you will earn.
Once you have an affiliate ad/content combination that works, you can scale it up and drive more targeted traffic to your affiliate sponsor (Hostgator).
How the HostGator Affiliate Program Works
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This will require knowing where your target audience hangs out and how to get your message in front of them. Test your content with different audiences and track the results to learn what is most profitable.
The Hostgator Affiliate Program
Today, we'll discuss the Hostgator affiliate program and how it can help you. Their program is managed by Impact Radius. During sign up make sure to read the program guidelines and disclosure requirements to ensure that your account will remain in good standing. If you don't follow their rules, your account can be shut down at any time.
As part of the affiliate program you will be using Hostgator's tools in your promotions.
Their affiliate tools include a number of banners in a variety of sizes, text links and even customizable links that can be used to track your results. This makes it so that you don't have to worry about trying to come up with images for your posts or social media campaigns.
They also run lots of promotions and specials that you can use offer to attract people who are looking for the services that Hostgator offers.
With any affiliate program, it's important to know how you will be paid (flat fee, recurring fees or a percentage), how often you will be paid, and the method used to receive your payment (check, PayPal, direct deposit, etc).
For an affiliate marketing program to work, there has to be a traffic source that delivers a steady stream of visitors who are interested in the products and services that the sponsor offers.
You can obtain traffic in a number of ways and from a number of sources to create profitable results with your affiliate marketing efforts.
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In the meantime, you can still get started as quickly as possible, by using paid ad sources like Google Adsense, Facebook ads, Twitter and Pinterest ads to drive traffic to your affiliate links.
Before starting with a paid ad, make sure your ad will attract an audience that to will be most likely to buy web hosting. For example if you're adverting on Pinterest you'll need an image that is sized to 1000 x 1500px and has an aspect ratio of 2:3. Next, you'll want to make sure the image displays your advertising message.
Use an image provided by Hostgator or create your own image that gives your readers a specific benefit. When readers click on your image you want to send them to place that will enable them to sign up or make a purchase.
You can lead readers to the Hostgator website, one of their deals, or you can lead them to a landing page that has a tutorial video with a call to action that allows them to sign up. Once they sign up you can lead them to Hostgator's site.
With paid traffic, it's important to watch your advertising budget and track your results using a program like Google Analytics.
The ultimate goal when monetizing your blog is to build targeted traffic. The more interested eyes you have on your blog posts, the more potential you'll have to encourage readers to buy.
Start with a small budget until you see how well your ad performs. Once you test and tweak your links to the point where you're getting the desired results, you can increase your ad spend.
To learn more about testing a tweaking your ads to get the desired results, purchase A/B Testing: The Most Powerful Way to Turn Clicks Into Customers on Amazon.
For example, free and organic traffic can come from regularly posting on social media, groups and forums.
Direct traffic (someone types out your web address or URL) can come from offline marketing methods like business cards, car signs, flyers, billboards, and stationery. Paid traffic sources can include Facebook ads, Google Adsense and a number of other PPA, PPC and PPV sources.
You'll have an even better chance to succeed once you have found the traffic sources (free or paid) where your ideal prospects routinely hang out.
Once your content starts appearing in the places where your ideal prospects hang out, you can start a dialog and eventually convert them into paying customers by baffuilding an email list.
How the HostGator Affiliate Program Works
The HostGator affiliate program is pretty standard. We'll explain everything you'll need to know to determine how this program can boost your bottom line.
This affiliate program is for publishers who have an audience of people who are looking for products like web hosting, domains and services related to building a blog or website. This is an excellent program for businesses like web and graphic designers, tech coaches, and business coaches that help users create an online presence.
You can earn as much or as little as you like with a minimum of $100.00 (two signups) to receive a payout. The image below breaks down how much you will receive per sign up. This is a really simple way to get paid for driving traffic to HostGator's products and services.
While HostGator is generous with their commission structure, affiliates won't earn a dime unless their target audience is interested in building or upgrading their web presence. So when considering this program, consider your audience.
Are you someone who helps your website visitors set up blogs and websites? Does your business attract web and graphic designers, developers, bloggers, and people who need quality domains, hosting and other related services? Are you able to build a Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest ad that will drive enough traffic to make this program profitable? The goal is to find an audience of people who want these kinds of services.
Another great group to target would be anyone who is interested in affiliate marketing, and those who are using a free blogging platform like Blogger.com or WordPress.com who want to switch to a self hosted platform like WordPress.org.
The term, self hosted means you rent server space from your host (a company like Hostgator) and you use an open source platform (like WordPress) to run your blog. That gives you the freedom to provide content that includes advertising your business opportunities without worrying about being shut down or limited.
Commission Structure
With this affiliate program, you're paid for each qualified sign-up. The commission ranges from $65.00 – $125.00 depending on the number of people you sign up. You can set your payment method to EFT (direct deposit) or PayPal (minus a 2% processing fee).
When you do the math it's a pretty sweet deal. If you sign up 21 people in a month, you can earn $2625.00. Sign up 11 people and earn $1100.00. If you only sign up 1 person in a month, that's $65.00 which will buy a tank of gas or a few household necessities. Who doesn't want an extra $1000 per month? You really can't go wrong promoting this program.
Target Audience
Just think about all the people who want to work from home. If you're good with WordPress, your a web or graphic designer that provides services to businesses, it's not a hard sell.
If you're doing that kinds of work, it won't be hard to find an audience that is interested in domain registration or transfer, web hosting and blogging. Basically you want people who are starting a company or business opportunity. Anyone who recognizes the benefits of having a blog or website and reaping the benefits of everything that goes with it.
If you offer a blogging course this program would be a good fit, because you could offer your students the hosting plans provided by Hostgator.
That would include anyone who wants to build a blog themselves, graphic designers, marketing agencies, website designers, bloggers and more.
The Hostgator affiliate program will enable customers to purchase domains, hosting and website packages.
HostGator’s promotions are geared to people who are buying web hosting packages for themselves or their clients. Their deals are a great fit for new and seasoned bloggers and website owners, as well as people who are interested in affiliate marketing.
Learn More About Affiliate Marketing
The Pros
This program gives affiliates a flat fee for each qualified referral customer that signs up for services. You have the potential to earn up to $125 per sign up, depending on how many people you refer over the course of a month.
So for example, if you refer 1 - 5 sign ups per month, you will receive $65.00 per sign up. If you send 6-10 signups per month you will receive $75.00 per sign up. Take a look at the image above to see exactly how much you would be paid at each level.
When you do the math, it's easy to see that this is a great way to earn, even if you refer 11-20 people per month you can make a nice bit of income. If you refer one signup, that's $65.00 more than you started out with.
- There are lots of banners and images to use in your campaigns which makes it easy to place affiliate links on your blog, website or social media.
- There is no cost to join the program and no requirements for a certain amount of traffic. However, the more traffic your website receives, the better.
- As an affiliate you'll receive updates on regular specials (like Black Friday and Cyber Monday) and year long promotions that you can promote to keep customers coming back.
- They pay a minimum of $65.00 (see the image above) per sign up.
- There are tools located in your back office that will help you track clicks and sales data, but you have to make sure to cut and paste the HTML code provided in each ad to the right places and include your affiliate code to receive credit for the sale.
The Cons
- Commissions are one time payments, versus the recurring payments that some other affiliate programs offer.
- Commission Fees will accrue and only become payable once you provide all relevant tax and address documentation.
- Actions are locked 2 day(s) after they are approved by advertiser. If actions are not locked after 3 month(s), they are rejected.
- Each Affiliate is required to submit a W8/W9 tax form to the Affiliate Platform before any Commission Fees shall accrue.
- You get paid on a monthly basis versus weekly or bi-weekly.
With the simple commission structure and the popularity of blogging, affiliate marketing and making money from home, there are many opportunities to earn a nice commission with this program.
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