Bluehost Affiliate Program Review
Any blog or website launched online requires a host. With the help of Bluehost, one of the most well-known hosting companies, operating and managing a website/blog should not be a hassle anymore.
So the purpose of running the Bluehost affiliate program is to recruit people with an appealing online presence to attract more users to sign up for web hosting. If you are looking for a high-converting program to strengthen your affiliate profile and earn more passive income, this article reviews everything you need to get started with becoming a Bluehost affiliate.
About Bluehost
Being a widely trusted hosting provider since 2003, Bluehost is the first address that comes to mind whenever a WordPress user wants to have their site hosted. Their high-quality services come at reasonable prices, providing users with valuable features that help grow their blogs.
These include registering domain names, hosting clouds, SSL certificates for free, and a wide range of effective tools for you to manage and maintain your page properly. That is why Bluehost is the ideal choice for web setup and management in a straightforward, affordable way.
About Bluehost Affiliate Program
Regardless of whether you are a beginner or a professional affiliate marketer, choosing to be a Bluehost affiliate would be an excellent means of support to monetize your blog. Recently, the company migrated the affiliate program from their system to a third-party platform called Impact Radius to improve affiliate referral tracking.
This program brings plenty of benefits to its affiliates with user-friendly registration and tracking processes, generous commissions, and rich resources to help affiliates succeed in working with it.
Since the program is designed to pay affiliates for recommending Bluehost’s services, it offers generous commission rates and diverse marketing tools for your own business growth.
Next up in the Bluehost affiliate program review, we will demonstrate how it works, which products to advertise, how to become its affiliate, and other relevant information for you to consider.
Bluehost Affiliate Program Cookie Duration
The program you use will decide the embedded cookies’ length from Bluehost, specifically a 90-day cookie duration for their affiliate program. Therefore, if a follower clicks on your link to buy a hosting plan, the sale is open for 90 days until finalization so you can receive the credit.
Bluehost Affiliate Program Commission Rate
Bluehost affiliates get paid through a tiered commission structure, with a base rate of $65 per sale and the potential to gain up to $125 per sale. There are 4 tiers to its commission structure:
- Tier 1: $65/sale
- Tier 2: $85/sale
- Tier 3: $105/sale
- Tier 4: $125/sale
To be qualified for higher tiers, you need to make a specific number of monthly sales; for instance, you must earn a minimum of 10 monthly sales to reach Tier 2. The highest commission you can get is around $2,500 per month.
How Much Can You Make From Bluehost Affiliate Program?
When researching how much an affiliate makes from earning commissions, there are a few factors to consider. First, how much traffic does your website currently have? Those who reach high-income levels usually have regular traffic from promoting a more profitable niche.
Moreover, think about the amount of effort going on behind the scenes. Some affiliates promote Bluehost products and services endlessly, thus gaining thousands of dollars a month. If you only promote Bluehost affiliate links casually, you may not earn much, but still enough to be a good source of side income.
Who Should Join Bluehost Affiliate Program
Wondering whether you are a good fit to join this web hosting affiliate program? While Bluehost does not require much for its membership registration (other than a decent website with considerable traffic), some genres would suit the program better than others.
Influencers
Although you cannot use social media platforms for advertisement in this program, influencers operating a separate blog would be ideal candidates to become Bluehost affiliates. Having an extensive reach and a highly engaging audience for their content, an influencer has a high chance of succeeding as an affiliate.
Technology Bloggers
People who operate technology blogs are likely to experience great results from their Bluehost affiliate links and overall marketing efforts. This is because when individuals or businesses develop their online presence, they usually seek advice from these content types. Consequently, it gives blog managers a leg up for their affiliate marketing opportunities.
Work-From-Home Websites
Due to the rise of working from home and switching lifestyles to digital nomads, many people are on the hunt for sources that bring a stable passive income. Not only can you optimize them for yourself, but you can also motivate others to enhance their online presence and guide them on the way to bring you significant traffic.
What are the requirements and rules of Bluehost Affiliate Program?
In comparison with other affiliate programs, the Bluehost program requires fewer criteria to partner with it and promote its products and services. To be eligible for their approval, your blog or website must have at least 1,000 monthly visitors. It proves that your channels receive a good amount of traffic and are able to promote Bluehost effectively.
Payout rules for customers
Despite paying out on upgrades, downgrades, and new customers, there are several restrictions in the Bluehost affiliate program.
For example, you will only be paid for upgrades and downgrades that occur during the first 1 year of a buyer’s account.
In addition, your audience needs to at least sign up for their 12-month hosting plan for you to receive commissions.
Here are additional details you should know about this program:
Term: The Bluehost affiliate program lasts for 1 year. You can renew your membership for another year at the end of your term.
Termination: The company reserves the right to eliminate an affiliate’s membership for any reason, including but not limited to
- Breaching the program’s terms,
- Generating fraudulent or spam,
- Engaging in other activities that Bluehost finds inappropriate.
What Products Can You Promote?
What Products You Can & Cannot Promote?
Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Online Strore Hosting, WP Pro Hosting, VPS Hosting
As a prestigious company, Bluehost provides various types of web hosting for every need. If you simply run a blog, their affordable packages are great for maintaining your online presence. Alternatively, if you have particular security requirements for your site or run a large company, they can also help with such unique circumstances.
The following list introduces available Bluehost products for your promotion as their affiliate.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most standard form of web hosting, allowing you to get your blog/page online and active. It comes with crucial services that work for most available websites.
Regardless of being sufficient for the majority, you should not opt for this type if you have an extensive website or require higher security.
WordPress Hosting
This hosting package is the one you need if you own a WordPress blog and manage it via the respective platform, including making new posts and performing routine updates and maintenance.
It is among the useful but low-budget WordPress hosting providers and comes with a free domain in a year. You will also have access to their customer support from multiple channels.
Online Store Hosting
If you are operating an online eCommerce store that sells niche products/services, Bluehost offers a tailored hosting package for that specific industry. Understanding that online stores require multiple needs related to connectivity and speeds, the company incorporates all essential elements into one hosting package.
WP Pro Hosting
The higher-end hosting package for WordPress users best fits a blogger who manages multiple websites simultaneously. It is called WP Pro, helps you run more than one website, and provides various premium features to its users.
VPS Hosting
Large corporations often require high-level hosting, as do websites with many moving graphics. Bluehost’s VPS plan understands these insights and delivers the necessary solutions to operate your online platform smoothly without interruption. There are seamless integrations and interactions included when you choose this product.
What You Cannot Promote
As a part of the Bluehost affiliate program, you can only gain commissions after a visitor clicks on your affiliate link and purchases a hosting package. As a result, while this company offers other services for email and marketing, you will not get paid by referring to them.
Pros & Cons of Bluehost Affiliate Program
Every popular affiliate program has its fair share of pros and cons. Here are the benefits and drawbacks that you should take into account before partnering with Bluehost.
Pros of Bluehost Affiliate Program
Attractive commissions
The Bluehost affiliate program impresses many people with an attractive commission of $65 for each successful sale. This rate is higher than the $50/sale that its close competitors, like Hostgator or SiteGround, offer their affiliates.
Moreover, the amount of commission you can earn through this program is limitless; therefore, your earnings will be better if you are able to drive more customers to Bluehost.
Tiered commission structure
By default, its commission begins at $65 for every qualified hosting package sale. However, it is possible to bump your rate from $65 to as high as $125 per sale. As you can see, its tiered and well-thought-out commission structure is a significant advantage for hard-working affiliates.
So if you are gaining more sales through your affiliate links, contact your affiliate manager and ask them to help you obtain that commission bump.
Zero transaction fee
While you need to pay an extra fee for most PayPal transactions, Bluehost covers all additional charges for their affiliates. Consequently, if your commission in a month adds up to $1,000, the program will send the entire amount without deductions.
High conversion rates
If you search for “the best web hosting affiliate program” or “the best shared hosting providers” on the Internet, it is no doubt that Bluehost will pop up at the top results. From our perspective, this program has massive popularity growth due to its considerable conversion rates and other benefits like affordable plans, free SSL certificates, etc.
In general, its lead-to-sale ratio is higher than those offered by most competitors on the market.
Low entry barrier
The Bluehost affiliate program is completely free of charge and easy to join, so all you have to do is follow its Bluehost affiliate login process (demonstrated below). Although the whole procedure is automated, you will need to wait a bit more for approval from Bluehost. After being accepted, the program will provide a tracking link for you to hop into product promotion immediately.
You may find some other affiliate programs having stringent conditions for entry, such as reaching a specific number of page views or subscribers per month to have your account approved. The good news is that Bluehost does not request those with their potential partners.
Dedicated support team
Whenever you suddenly experience a malfunction on an online platform, you will need all the help to deal with it. Being an industry leader in their niche, Bluehost understands that their customer support team needs to be dedicated with expert skills to assist their partners and users.
In fact, as soon as you become their affiliate, you will be assigned a manager who is always available for support, advice, and insight. Furthermore, the company also provides comprehensive knowledge bases with helpful guides and videos to solve your problems.
Cons of Bluehost Affiliate Program
Limited withdrawal
The program’s policy states that new affiliates must make at least 2 sales or earn $100 in commission before being able to withdraw their earnings. Also, you will have to experience 45 to 60 days of its commission holding period.
Unable to re-apply with the same domain
Once your application to Bluehost is submitted, and for whatever reason, it is rejected – you cannot use the same domain name to apply again.
Requires top-notch SEO skills
Aside from advertising Bluehost’s products, you will promote your content with affiliate marketing as well. That is why the content on your website or blog needs to be top-tier SEO friendly.
With quality content, your site can rank well on popular search engines like Google and also generate more click-throughs on your affiliate links and online banners.
Downgrade penalties
According to this web hosting affiliate program, if one of your referrals decides to move their plan from VPS hosting down to Shared hosting, it will reduce your commission from future earnings.
How to Become a Bluehost Affiliate?
To apply for Bluehost affiliate program membership, follow each of these steps:
Search for Bluehost affiliate login > Sign up to create a new affiliate account.
Fill your information in the Affiliate Signup form, including your email address, username, password, and PayPal email address > Click Sign up to proceed.
After that, you will be directed to your Bluehost Affiliate dashboard and required to insert your tax information. Bluehost will not transfer any payment to your account if you fail to complete this tax form.
Click Settings > Tax form to provide your tax information. If you are a US citizen or organization, complete Form W-9. And if you come from another country, fill out Form W-8BEN.
That’s everything! You can begin promoting their products from now on. Click Links on the top menu bar for unique tracking links, and start creating your first affiliate links, widgets, and banners.
How to Promote Bluehost Affiliate Program?
Signing up for the Bluehost affiliate program is just the beginning. To start getting money from this platform, you will need to come up with the best monetization strategies to promote Bluehost’s products and services on your pages.
Create How-to Guides
Being an affiliate means more than earning commissions; it is also about educating your audience to increase reliability. Because of that, you can provide them with comprehensive guides that are engaging and high-quality, including particular keywords like:
- How to build a website using WordPress
- How to register for Bluehost
- How to move a website to another hosting provider
Now, you might be thinking such posts are extremely competitive. The truth is there are innumerable posts targeting the same keywords on the Internet, and you may also worry about never reaching the first result page with these posts.
However, since your website is brand new, having such content can still drive traffic and increase the click-through rate on your blog.
Post A Bluehost Review
One crucial thing you should do as a Bluehost affiliate is to write blog articles about Bluehost’s features or website hosting in general, which helps leverage your affiliate sales. Keep in mind to always insert your tracking links to these affiliate marketing articles so visitors can click on them and be redirected to Bluehost.
You can also include diverse multimedia content, such as videos, images, etc., in these posts for better visuals and increase their engagement. Furthermore, it is better to review the Bluehost program honestly and compare it with competitors so that readers can easily recognize its advantages and benefits.
Consider the following content options:
- Top 5 reasons to use Bluehost web hosting
- Alternatives for Bluehost
- Bluehost review (include a part on why it is a great provider for new bloggers)
- Bluehost vs. GoDaddy
The more value you bring to your website visitors through high-quality content, the more likely they will become paying Bluehost customers. Gaining more interest in this web hosting company has never been easier with various review topics to write about.
Produce Videos
Another brilliant method to catch more attention to your affiliate links is to live stream about web hosting on a Youtube channel. These ideas can help you promote Bluehost hosting via your video-making channel.
Introduce Bluehost features in a video
In your videos, talk about the features you like and which could be better. You can also mention available plans, including dedicated server hosting and shared hosting. Attach your affiliate tracking at the end of the video to encourage viewers to sign up for Bluehost right away.
Make videos about product comparison
Consider making a series of videos comparing Bluehost with another web hosting affiliate program, such as SiteGround, GoDaddy, InMotion Hosting, etc. Point out the main differences in their features, prices, services, and more.
Do a video for FAQs
If you can make videos about common questions related to Bluehost and web hosting, they will bring more views to your Youtube channel. Since people are always looking for answers to their inquiries, they will trust you more if your resources provide the information they need.
Email Marketing
In 2023, the number of email users is forecasted to reach 4.37 billion people worldwide, and the majority of them access their email accounts at least once a day. Plus, many prefer to receive emails related to business.
Nonetheless, most cancel their subscriptions for a few reasons, such as getting too many spam emails without relevant information. So be careful when using email marketing for Bluehost promotion.
First, you should ensure that the emails carry helpful content. Secondly, mention upcoming promotions like Black Friday offers to motivate your audiences to purchase from Bluehost. Do not forget to embed your tracking link.
When applied correctly, email marketing can boost sales, gain new customers, and maintain engagement with them.
Bluehost Affiliate Program’s Alternatives
After our detailed Bluehost affiliate program review, if the platform does not appeal to you or your content, take a look at other attractive affiliate programs on the market. A lot of high-paying programs are available online to be Bluehost alternatives, so this list compiles the most beneficial affiliate programs for you to choose from.
Shopify Affiliate Program
If your content focuses on eCommerce and you are seeking a good program to advertise this niche, check out the Shopify affiliate program. Being the top online store platform, Shopify has a large audience and highly engaging customers who are willing to experience all the features they provide.
HostGator Affiliate Program
HostGator affiliate program is one of the most popular opponents of Bluehost for beneficial web hosting plans. Aside from their available multiple packages for customers, they also designed an affiliate program for publishers.
In case Bluehost does not meet your requirements, sign up for this program instead to drive traffic to your affiliate links.
GoDaddy Affiliate Program
If you are in search of a decent affiliate program with more diverse products and services, the GoDaddy affiliate program should be your target for membership registration. Not only do they have domains for sale, but GoDaddy also has useful products like a website builder.
As part of this program, you will be able to reach a larger audience to promote their available items.
FAQs
How do I get paid on Bluehost?
After being a member of their affiliate program and reaching the minimum $100 threshold, you will be able to take out your funds from the affiliate account. It is available either through direct deposit or PayPal.
How to withdraw money from my Bluehost affiliate account?
To transfer your earnings from the Bluehost account to your bank account or PayPal > Visit your affiliate dashboard via Impact Radius > Go to your earnings report > Click the withdrawal button.
Is the Bluehost affiliate program worth joining?
The Bluehost affiliate program is perfect for those wanting to get money online since it is built for affiliates to advertise Bluehost products and services.
Conclusion
Among many ways to earn money online, promoting web hosting products is undoubtedly the best way to generate a passive income. If you are looking for a reliable web host to boost your affiliate income, the Bluehost affiliate program, with its high conversion rate, should be the first choice that comes to mind.