I’ve been trying to clean up the language on my blog to seem a bit more professional. Taking my skills on to consulting for small businesses that want to expand online requires me to seem a little more squeaky clean. However, when I hear about new affiliate marketers that say they’re on a budget and can’t afford to spend money on “expensive” hosting, leaving them with cheap shared hosting for their tracking and landing pages, I just want to rip my hair out.
“IT’S A TRAP!”
No, really – it is. The idea that you think you will save money by using shared hosting is one of the worst traps you can get yourself into.
Let me tell you a little story. Way back when, when I was a little nooblet of an affiliate marketer just getting off the “I’ll make millions of dollars with Amazon and eBay” train and just hopping on to the “Well, everyone is talking about dating affiliate marketing so I’ll try that” train, I was using shared hosting. I didn’t really have any money to my name except the leftovers of a $20,000 student loan for one year of college. I obviously wanted to minimize costs, so shared hosting seemed the way to go. I wish someone could have heard me think that, then punch me in the face and tell me what an idiot I was.
So I started putting up ads, set a low $25 dollar budget and rather watch stuff like a hawk, I went to bed and hoped I didn’t just spend $25 for nothing. The next day I wake up and look at Facebook to see I spent all $25. Probably one of the most stressful mornings I’ve ever dealth with at that point. I saw about 70-80 clicks or so (clicks were cheap way back when). Okay time to check stats, right? WTF? 15 clicks to the offer and 1 conversion. Alright… I was happy about getting 1 conversion, but where the hell did my traffic run off to?
I checked my Prosper202 install and same thing there – 15 clicks.
It was my crap shared hosting. Shared hosting is notorious for being pitifully bad at handling surges of traffic. I wouldn’t doubt that I sent all 80 of those clicks in a half an hour, probably faster. If not for the traffic I was sending, someone else on this server (probably shared between hundreds of shared clients) was making my traffic get throttled of timed-out. People weren’t even able to load my P202 redirects. I’m don’t know the technicalities of hosting (so maybe one of you more savy guys want to help explain), but shared hosting sucks.
If you are serious about becoming an affiliate marketer and using paid traffic, it is time to upgrade your hosting to something better than HostGater or GoDaddy’s $3 a month shared baby plan. A VPS/dedicated server gives you tons more resources to work with and lowers the chance of you getting throttled and losing all that paid supply (traffic) due to congested shared hosting. I guarantee if you are using shared hosting with affiliate marketing and aren’t profiting yet, that hosting solution is 90% of the problem. A VPS/server will save you money, while on the contrary shared will cost you hundreds more!
I’ve recommended these guys again and again, but if you need hosting, go with Wiredtree. Tons of coupons all over the Internet, great deals, excellent support, etc – Wiredtree just can’t be beat in my book.
