If you have a blog or website and some decent traffic to it, you can monetize that traffic and earn money through Hostgator affiliate program. For more information on what an affiliate program is or how does affiliate marketing work, please read my post – What is Affiliate marketing and how to make money from affiliate marketing.

How to Join Hostgator Affiliate Program

Joining the Hostgator affiliate program is easy, all you need to do is visit this link and click the big sign up button.

Hostgator-affiliate-program

In the next page, you will see a form which you need to fill up. Hostgator uses Impact radius so if you already have an Impact radius account, you can use that instead of creating a new one.

hostgator-affiliate-form

While filling up the form, you will need to enter your website’s URL, choose a currency, enter your residential or office address. Make sure you fill these details correctly and choose the right tax settings in the next page. If you are a self employed person and do not have a business entity associated with your website, choose “Self proprietorship” in the next page.

Once you go through the form, fill it up and submit your application, you will receive an email from Hostgator. Click the “Validate Email address” button to validate your email address and you are all set.

hostgator-affiliate-program-email

This will validate your email address and your application will be submitted for review. You will receive another acknowledgement email from Hostgator which will read as follows

Thank you for applying as a partner of HostGator.com. Your application will be reviewed and processed as soon as possible. When we have completed the processing, you will receive a confirmation about your application status

That is all you need to do to join Hostgator affiliate program. Your application will be reviewed in 3-4 days and once it has been approved, you will receive an email in your inbox which will confirm that your account has been setup and it is ready for action.

How Do You Get Paid Through Hostgator Affiliate Program

Here is how you get paid.

Once your application is approved, log in to your Impact radius account and grab the tracking link. You need to embed this link in your website or blog posts.

When a visitor clicks this link and reaches Hostgator.com, avails a plan or web hosting subscription. then a sale is generated. When this sale is made, it counts towards your account since the visitor clicked a link in your website, reached hostgator.com and then purchased a plan.

The more valid sales are generated, more is your payout. You can choose to get paid via Checque, ACH or PayPal. Personally, I prefer using PayPal for getting my affiliate payments since it is hassle free and automatic, which doesn’t need any involvement from my side.

The rate of payment depends on how many sales are generated through your Affiliate link in any given month. Here is the breakup from Hostgator’s website.

1-5      ……………..  $50 /signup
6-10    …………….   $75 /signup
11-20  …………….   $100 /signup
21+     ……………    $125 /signup

As you can see, more the number of sales, more is the rate of commission per sale. So let’s say if 2 customers clicked your affiliate link and converted into a sale, you will be paid 2 X $50 = $100. But if you can ensure that 20 people clicked and converted into sales, then the rate will go up and you will be paid 20 X $100 = $2000 per month.

My Experience with Hostgator Affiliate Program

I have been able to earn a decent figure through Hostgator’s affiliate program. It depends and varies from month to month but overall, I get paid around $200 a month from one of the small sites I have regarding web hosting. Here are some of the do’s and dont’s which you should keep in mind if you want to earn money through hostgator affiliate program. These tips will help you optimize your website or blog for success in making money promoting hostgator’s affiliate products.

  • Content and Theme Match : Your website is the starting point which will decide whether you are able to make any money or not. Make sure the content of your website is relevant to the product that you are selling. In this case, the product your website promotes is web hosting solutions from Hostgator. So it goes without saying that the content of your website should match the theme of the product you are promoting. You will get best results if the content is aligned with the product that is being promoted. You can still get moderate success by promoting it on a different niche site  but I highly doubt whether that success can be sustained over a given period of time.For example, I have a small micro niche site related to Fashion and lifestyle and I did try promoting Hostgator affiliate program on that website. That website has more traffic compared to the web hosting site I have but it did not generate any revenue at all, since the content and theme is a mismatch for the product that is being promoted.

    Before jumping in, please ensure that the content of the site matches the theme of the product that you are promoting, You are better off creating a separate micro site for web hosting, which is exactly what I did to ensure I make some revenue promoting the products on a site that makes sense. It is worth the effort since you can join other affiliate programs related to web hosting and promote different plans, subscriptions and products as per the content that you write.

  • Traffic Your website should have decent traffic, if you want to make revenue on a regular basis. You won’t have much success with affiliate marketing if your site is brand new and has no  or little traffic. My affiliate income revenue kicked in when I had more than 2000 page views a day and slowly it climbed up as I reached 10,000 pageviews a day. For success in affiliate marketing, you will need quality traffic in your website first.
  • Authority, trust and name: Success in affiliate marketing cannot happen overnight. It takes lot of patience, hard work and good will before you are able to make any revenue. Make sure the content that you write in your website is top notch and your readers derive real value out of your content. Only after your readers derive value from your website, they will start trusting you and only after they trust you, then will buy the products that you promote. It doesn’t happen overnight and it will take you couple of years to reach there, depending on the nature of content that you write and what authority that site has with its readers.
  • Do not try to fake it : It goes without saying that you should not try to fake an affiliate sale, tell your friends to click affiliate links on your website. It won’t work that way. An affiliate sale is counted only when the visitor buys the actual product and uses his credit card, clicking links will not result in any affiliate revenue. So keep in mind that an actual sale has to happen first and only then you will make revenue.

I will share more experiences in coming days on best tips and tricks to increase your affiliate income revenue by promoting products on web hosting. Meanwhile, if you have any questions, feel free to use the comment form below and I will be happy to answer them.