5 Best Hosting for Affiliate Marketers
Affiliate marketing is one of the many ways you can monetize your website or blog. It’s also one of the most cost-efficient ways to earn money through your website, as it requires very little in the way of investment, yet, depending on the affiliate program and the domain in which you’re activating in, it can be a very profitable means of capitalizing on the earning potential of your website.
As one of the oldest forms of online marketing, affiliate marketing works based on referrals. If you own a website or blog in a particular niche, let’s say you do reviews on kitchen appliances, you can enroll in an affiliate marketing scheme and refer visitors via affiliate links to the site of a certain manufacturer in return for a commission after the purchases made by the visitors you referred. Commissions offered for affiliate marketers vary from niche to niche and company to company, but affiliate marketers usually receive anywhere between 5% to 10% of the product’s purchase price. Amazon affiliate websites are quite popular with affiliate marketers, but IT related review websites are also a lucrative affiliate marketing field.
While for the most part, the content and niche of an affiliate marketing site determines its success, choosing the best platform for building an affiliate marketing site and choosing a good hosting can both have an important role in the success and performance of such sites.
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$3.95 / mo |
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# 2 |
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$3.49 / mo |
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$3.95 / mo |
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$3.96 / mo |
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$5.00 / mo |
Building an Affiliate Marketing Site with WordPress
If you’ve found your niche and you’ve decided to try your luck as an affiliate marketer, you’ll need to choose a good platform for your online marketing site. As far as content management systems go, WordPress is probably the CMS with the most benefits lined up in its favor.
As a content creator, you may not know your way around intricate website building tools or methods, which is why opting for a free to use and no-hassle platform like WordPress is the most time-efficient way of building your own affiliate marketing site. WordPress is one of the most user-centered website building tools in existence, it’s easy to maintain, it’s easy to install on any web hosting account, and it’s highly flexible, meaning that you can create any blog or website you envision for your online marketing site. In fact, its popularity among affiliate marketers is also proven by the many themes and plugins that are available for these types of websites.
If you’ve chosen the WordPress theme you want to go with, next up you need to choose a hosting provider for your website.
How to choose a web hosting for an affiliate marketing site?
By choosing a bad hosting for your website you may inadvertently put roadblocks in the way of your success. If you build your affiliate site with WordPress, searching for a good hosting will be much easier as some of the best hosting providers have WordPress optimized hosting plans available to meet all the hosting needs of websites using this CMS.
There are various types of hosting plans from shared hosting to VPS and dedicated hosting. The best-in-line hosting providers have the advantage of scalability, which means that you can start by hosting your website on a shared hosting and if and when your website will require more in terms of hosting resources, you can seamlessly upgrade your existing plan to a more resource abundant hosting plan. Shared hosting plans are the most affordable hosting plans available, however, pricing is not what a good host is all about – reliability in terms of uptime, security, and performance are pivotal elements of a good hosting.
To help you in deciding over a particular hosting provider and shared hosting plan, in our next segment, we’re going to elaborate on the best hosting providers for affiliate marketers.
Best Hosting for Affiliate Marketers
The hosting providers listed below have several years of experience in providing web hosting services and hosting plans that meet the demands of all types of websites from small personal blogs to giant eCommerce websites.
BlueHost
BlueHost is a well-established and reputable hosting provider that it’s best known for its well-constructed shared hosting plans, and it’s the number one hosting provider recommended for WordPress sites. This aspect is also reflected by the features of their hosting plans that all include 1-click WordPress installation. Customers choose BlueHost for the secure and reliable hosting environment they offer and the generous hosting plans that are on the affordable end of the hosting spectrum. BlueHost also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
BlueHost have three shared hosting plans – the Basic, the Plus, and the Prime plan. Prices range from $2.95/month for the Basic plan to $6.95/month for the Prime plan. While their smallest plan comes with 50 GB storage space, all other shared hosting plans have unmetered bandwidth and storage, as well as hosting for unlimited websites. Plans also come with a free domain, online marketing credit (Plus and Prime plans), and spam protection (Plus and Prime plans), site backup and domain privacy (Prime only). The Plus plan is the most popular BlueHost shared hosting plan, and it currently costs $4.45/month.
BlueHost also offers several managed WordPress hosting plans, which are suitable for high-traffic websites that need extra performance and enhanced security.
InMotion Hosting
InMotion has a long-standing history of providing hosting services. Their hosting plans are chosen by users for the abundance of features they offer and for their competitive prices. InMotion’s hosting plans are slightly more business oriented, however, they do offer shared hosting plans for all types of needs.
Here too, you can choose from three shared hosting plans: Launch ($4.19/month), Power ($5.39/month) and Pro ($8.99/month). The most popular shared hosting plan is the Power plan, which includes the following features: free SDD, free domain, 90-day money-back guarantee, free no-downtime website transfer, free data backups, SSH Access, unlimited disk space and unlimited monthly transfers, free advertising credit, free 1-click installer, free website builder (BoldGrid), 50 MySQL & PostgreSQL Databases, and the possibility to host 6 websites on one account.
Affiliate marketers with WordPress websites can benefit from InMotion’s WordPress-optimized web hosting, which comes with WordPress pre-installed, drag and drop website builder, free themes, full support and unlimited hosting so you can enjoy a trouble-free and performant hosting experience.
HostGator
HostGator is another big name hosting company with several years of experience in providing reliable hosting services. They are mostly known for their affordable feature-laden shared hosting plans. Some of the best features lined up by their shared hosting plans include: unmetered disk space and bandwidth, unlimited domains allowed with some plans, instant backups, 45-day money-back guarantee, free Google AdWords and Yahoo/Bing credit, unlimited MySQL databases, audio/video streaming, latest cPanel, SpamAssassin, Open SSH, etc. The smallest shared hosting plan, the Hatchling plan, has a starting price of $2.43/month, while the Baby shared hosting plan costs $3.48/month. For a starting price of only 5.23/month, you can choose the Business plan, which comes with a free dedicated IP and Private SSL for free.
HostGator also has WordPress cloud hosting plans with auto-backups, global CDN for increased speed and performance, automatic malware removal, free migration, 24/7 support, Google AdWords Credit, one-click restores and enhanced usability.
As an affiliate marketer, you have the liberty to select a plan that meets your current resource demands and scale up later, should it become necessary.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is the cleanest web hosting provider around. Since their launch in 2008, GreenGeeks have relied on green energy to power their services. But they are not just the most environmentally conscious web hosting providers out there, they are also an award winning hosting provider with excellent web hosting packages, 24/7 customer support, huge customer base from over 150 countries, and 99.9% server uptime guarantee.
If you’re only just starting out with your affiliate marketing website or you’re already doing affiliate marketing on a professional level, GreenGeeks have a hosting plan for every category of needs. If you’re at the very beginning of your affiliate marketing endeavors, GG’s shared hosting plan or WordPress hosting plan are both an excellent choice in terms of web hosting.
Currently, both hosting plans are available for a starting price of $3.96/month. What features can you expect for this price? The shared hosting plan comes with unlimited web space and data transfer, unlimited domain on one account, free domain name registration or transfer, free website migration, free website builder tools, free marketing and SEO tools, 30-day money-back guarantee, SSH Access, free Spam Assassin protection, free backups, 1-click installer and a plethora of other features. The WordPress hosting plan includes Git pre-installed, WP-CLI & SSH (Shell), CDN, Brute Force & DDoS Protection, etc.
ASmallOrange
ASmallOrange is a US based web hosting company that has been in the hosting business since 2003. They provide all types of hosting services for all kinds of websites. Their shared hosting plans come with premium features such as SSD servers for ultimate performance, 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7 support, free domain and hosting for unlimited websites included with some of their plans, cPanel control panel, one-click WordPress installation and WordPress-optimized hosting environment, Weebly website builder, IP blocking support, password-protected directories, free daily backups, hotlink and leech protection and several other features.
Shared hosting plans are constructed in a way to meet the hosting demands of small to large sized websites. You can select from the Tiny ($2.92 per month), Small ($5 per month), Medium ($10 per month), and Large ($20 per month) plans. Each plan comes with certain amount of storage and bandwidth so you can choose the exact plan that best meets your resource needs.
The variety of their hosting plans and their reliable services coupled with premium features make ASmallOrange a top-of-the-line hosting provider for affiliate marketers.
Conclusion
While shared hosting plans are indeed the most affordable, good web hosting shouldn’t necessarily be pricey. With the premium features lined up by the shared hosting plans listed above, you won’t feel like you’re settling for second best. By choosing a shared hosting plan as a starter web hosting for your affiliate marketing website, you’re minimizing your investment costs. As your website grows and develops, you’ll be able to anticipate whether your current hosting plan will be able to handle the influx of traffic on your website. In any event, you’ll be able to seamlessly scale up with any of the above hosting providers.
