Recruiting Webhosting Affiliates

NOTES AND RECORDING FROM WEBINAR 7 MAY 2020

FINDING WEB HOSTING AFFILIATES

The Webhosting affiliates sector is slightly more fragmented than some, covering hosting, domain names and web apps. The webinar looked at the types of affiliates and how you find them.

The usual start point in recruiting is usually a google search to find websites by keyword. You can then find out which websites are active with good SERPS. Its worth finding out where your your competitors are being promoted.

When I launched the program for Easyspace, I had gone through the same process as most other affiliate managers; the first decision is on which network to run with. It made sense to see where other hosting merchants were advertising and, as CJ Affiliate appeared to have the biggest number of direct competitors, it made sense to be there. After all, the affiliates I was after were already signed up to that network!

First job is identifying who your ideal affiliate is – and getting in front of them. There are several affiliate program listing websites, such as affiliateawesome.com and others where you can promote your program. You can also promote via Linkedin and Facebook groups, though as with any social media, messaging is of course ephemeral.

WHO ARE THE AFFILIATES?

So how do you identify your ideal webhosting affiliate publisher? As in most programs, the highest performers are likely to be cashback/loyalty and coupon/vouchercode. You’ll probably be all sorted out there.

You’ll also want to be listed on Hosting review websites – of which there are a lot. You’ll want to be on as many as possible but you’ll probably find out that getting listed as a new advertiser isn’t easy.

Make it easy by providing them with the content to fit their format. It saves them doing the digging and makes it more likely to be listed. You’ll also find that many of these, especially the higher traffic sites require a tenancy for top spot, or even for ‘above the fold’ placement. So, time for a bit of negotiation.

TYPES OF AFFILIATE

So who else is out there to connect with? As we’ve mentioned in other posts, there are anything from 10-20 different types of affiliate. Every list is different and CJ identifies 6 types of content affiliate alone!

AM Navigator has listed 20 types in a recent blog post, but for clarity, I’ll suggest 10 covers the main types.

• Cashback & Rebate
• Voucher / Coupon
• Blogger / Influencer
• ‘Content’
• Corporate
• Search & Social
• Email
• Reviews
• Remarketing
• ‘Software’ – and toolbars

Once you’re working deeper, you’ll identify the nuanced differences within each of these as well. You’ll also want to then adapt your approach for each type. But to start off, where do you go to find them all?

FINDING YOUR IDEAL AFFILIATES

Once you’ve picked off the obvious publisher partners, usually cashback and coupon/vouchercode, you’ll need to start widening your search. The first place is usually searching for your keywords in Google or your favourite search engine. If you’ve already ‘been there – done that’ you’ll know how easy it is to find thousands of websites. Not all of them are useful and not all will work with an advertiser on the affiliate model.

Your network may well provide some tools to identify potential affiliate partners, though these are variable in functionality. CJ, Partnerize, Awin and Shareasale all have well established (sometimes payable) tools. Some networks such as Affiliate Future are partnered with Publisher Discovery using our in-network Recommender tools, which apply AI to finding the ideal partner. You can see more on the effectiveness of this in the recent Performancein interview.

You can use SEO based tools as well, though you will get a mix of affiliates, influencers and general linking websites. You’ll still need to sift through using affiliate analysis to find actual affiliate publishers. Publisher Discovery does this far more effectively.

USING PUBLISHER DISCOVERY

I’d say (of course) that the beauty of using our platform for affiliate recruitment, is that the sites you see listed are all using affiliate links. It also shows how relevant each site is – and an idea of traffic. As the example here shows, the platform also shows how many advertisers they link to, other sites they own and social accounts connected. Where emails are discovered, users can easily reach out direct from the app: