Golden Goose Marketing

Have you ever found yourself reading an affiliate marketing training course that absolutely insisted that you needed to buy dedicated hosting from their suggested host?  If you’ve read many ebooks, you probably have.  Ebook writers have strong incentives to make these kinds of suggestions, given the large commissions awarded to hosting affiliates.

I’ll be honest, though.  Not every affiliate needs a dedicated hosting plan.  It really depends on your budget, the amount of traffic you expect to receive, and the amount of variance you can reasonably expect.

If you can afford it, a dedicated server is ideal for almost any active affiliate.  Multiple shared plans can work well, too, but they give you far less control over speed and reliability.  You have no ability to know whether a single user on the server will do something to jeopardize the stability of YOUR site.  A good hosting company can dramatically minimize the odds of that happening, but the best protection is knowing that you’re the only one on the server.

A typical dedicated server package will cost anywhere from $100-200/month or even more, depending on the features, customization, and the amount of support you need from a hosting company.  For someone without a highly technical background, I would recommend getting a dedicated package with a well-known provider like HostGator that will give you the full support you need in the event of any problems.  They can also give you a huge amount of help when it comes to security issues.  Security is one area in which you definitely don’t want to leave things up to chance.

If you’re a new affiliate with a brand new site that doesn’t need to be able to handle thousands of visitors daily, a shared plan is most likely going to be the most cost effective solution.  For example, if you’re building simple SEO sites, a niche blog, or a small datafeed site, shared hosting shouldn’t give you any trouble.  On the other hand, if you’re going to be paying for very large amounts of traffic, it would be silly to use a shared host and risk paying for traffic that lands on a crashed site.

If you’re not sure about what you’ll need, talk to other affiliates or even your affiliate manager.  If your budget can handle it, always err on the side of buying a better hosting plan.