Peter Koning: Hi, this is Peter calling from Affiliate-Software-Review.com with an exclusive interview with Bluehost affiliate manager and Vice President of Business Development for Bluehost, Host Monster, and Fast Domain, Mr. James Grierson. In this call we explore why the affiliate program is critical to Bluehost growth, where they focus their marketing efforts, and it's not what you think, and a case study of a Bluehost affiliate who now earns five figures, and that's per month, while still in college.

 

This interview is part of my hosting affiliate secret series of interviews which you can find at affiliate-Software-Review.com.

Just sign up for free subscriptions today to be instantly alerted when more blog postings are made. Now, sit back and enjoy this thirty-nine minute call as I grill James on their affiliate program secrets.

Peter: Do I have you there James?

James Grierson: Yes, I'm here.

Peter: OK, great. So basically we wanted to get some of the top hosting companies' views and information on how they manage their affiliate programs and a little bit about your philosophy, platform, and how you motivate affiliates, how you recruit them, and how you find them and so on. So maybe you could start by just telling me a little bit more about what your role is and then lead into the affiliate program and how that's viewed within Bluehost.

James: OK. Yeah, I'm James Grierson, Vice President of Business Development here. I manage the affiliate programs for Bluehost, Host Monster, and Fast Domain. Those are our three brands. And currently, we are at about one hundred and eighty thousand... 1.8 million domains that we host. Basically, affiliate marketing to us is our most important marketing channel. We pretty much are exclusively advertising through the affiliate channel and so our affiliates account for probably around half of our growth.

Peter: OK. And how long have you had the affiliate program running?

James: We started the program... Bluehost started in 2003, and we started the affiliate program really shortly after it. We started in December of '03 with our company. I want to say it was the summer of '04 when we started with the affiliate marketing. So it has been going probably about five years.

Peter: OK. And has it been... Would you say it's been a success from the beginning as far as contributing so much to your growth?

James: Yeah, the affiliate program... I mean, in the early days, our first month of operation, I can't remember the exact number of customers that we had but it was somewhere between fifty and a hundred. Today, we grow by seven to eight hundred customers every single day. The affiliate program really was the jumpstart point for us when we launched that. That's when we started seeing, rather than fifty new customers in a month, we were getting fifty or a hundred a day and that's just grown exponentially from that time until now.

Peter: OK. Well, it definitely sounds like it's been a worthwhile marketing channel for you.

James: Yes.

Peter: I know some of the hosting companies are using Commission Junction, and some have their own in-house platforms, what do you guys have as far as affiliate management platform?

James: We have a couple of different programs that we use. We use our in-house program the most. All of your largest affiliates are in-house and it allows us to do some things with them that are a little different, as far as payout, payments, promotions, and things like that. It's a lot more flexible; however, we do use some of the affiliate networks. The two that we have accounts with are Commission Junction and ClixGalore.

Peter: Yes.

James: As far as the percentage of mix, I would probably say sixty percent of our affiliates use the in-house program, and then thirty percent are on the CJ, and ten percent are on ClixGalore.

Peter: Oh, yeah. Are they moving from one to the other, or generally when they start with one, that's where they stay?

James: We find a lot of the larger affiliates may start on one of the outside programs, and then once they learn more about it and want to make more money with us, then they will usually eventually switch to the in-house program.

Peter: OK. Once they start seeing some checks come in. [laughs]

James: Yes, exactly. And the reason for that is, you know, they understand some of the shortfalls of external monitoring versus internal and internally, the way we contract and monitor is a lot more accurate for them.

Peter: OK. Yeah, I have heard that some of the big networks are... I don't think they are doing it intentionally, but they are just, clicks do get lost and there are other ways of tracking who gets the credit for a referral that they don't really bother tracking or keep tracking, or maybe flash, cookies, or so on.

James: Exactly. And some of the largest problems are because it's external; they base everything off of a tracking cookie or a tracking a pixel firing, and a lot of browsers now with all the different scams, and phishing and all that kind of stuff that's running out there, they block a lot of methods. Now, even some of them default them as turned on, so that causes them to lose sales for the affiliates based on most tracking methods. So our internal system, we have built in a lot of different tracking pieces that we use.

 

We basically assign an affiliate link to each affiliate, and then when a click comes through it hits our tracking server first before it redirects them to our home page and...

Peter: Oh, OK.

James: And what that does is we store as much information as we can gather from the user when they click through. So we are grabbing the referring URL, which is the number one most important thing, because then we can say 'OK, this affiliate, ninety percent of their sales are coming from this URL,' so we can track that. And that way if we don't have a cookie or anything left, we still know the URL and we can attribute it.

 

We grab the IP address of the user, we grab their little browser information string that tells us the version of the browser and everything, as well as we set the tracking cookie and everything in place.

So we use all those different methods together to ensure that the affiliates are getting properly credited. That way if the browser has third-party cookies turned off or they are blocking it, maybe they are running Firefox with that block plus and they have certain settings.

Peter: Right.

James: We are gathering as much info as we can to properly attribute the affiliates. So what happens is they go in, they make the purchase, and then at the end of our purchase checkout, it goes back and it says 'OK, yes it had the tracking cookie, this is the affiliate.' And if it doesn't have the tracking cookie, then it goes to the next best thing which is the referring URL and the IP address. And then it goes to the browser specifications. So it basically checks everything until it finds a math and then it will attribute it.

Peter: OK. OK. And are any of the features on your in-house platform or have they been developed because affiliates have asked for them, or is it more of things that you just felt that they would want, or things that would make your life easier, or a mix of all those?

James: Well, our philosophy on it is we want our affiliates to get paid.

Peter: Right.

James: And so we are going to do our darn best to track it and make sure they get their money, because the more money they make, the better they promote us.

Peter: Yes.

James: And so we want to make sure we are doing everything we can. So this has been a very proactive approach to affiliates. I know a lot of affiliate program mangers out there, they love getting the free sales. We don't want the free sales. We want to make sure the affiliates get what's due to them, because as they see their conversion rates with our program go up, compare it to our competitors, that's when they are going to start pushing us heavier... We are going to get a lot more business out of it in the end.

Peter: Yes. No, I agree with that. I think too many merchants only go 95% of the way and that's lacks 5% of making sure that the affiliates are getting credit for their work. A lot of cases, merchants don't really get the whole concept of the affiliating marketing because they think, 'Oh, well too bad. We will just skim those sales.' They are really... in a way their own greed is like kicking them.

 

If they were truly greedy, they would realize that's not the way to go. They would be totally honest and transparent and they will get more sales that way, right?

James: Exactly. And something that we do probably not a lot of programs will do is if the affiliate contacts me and says, 'Hey, I know this person. This is their name, this is their site, this is the day they signed up, for some reason it didn't track.' We will go back and we will credit their account for it and make sure that they get the credit that they deserve. It is not something where, 'Oh, sorry they didn't click your link. We don't have any record of it. You are out of luck.' It is more like, 'OK, great. Yeah, let's get you paid.'

Peter: Yes, yes. OK, OK. I haven't signed up yet as an affiliate, but do you support what are called sub IDs where an affiliate can track different sources of traffic that they might be sending you to see which is the best payout, or is there a profitable senior traffic that they are sending you, do you do that or do they have to have separate accounts?

James: No, we do setup sub IDS. So our basic tracking code would bluehost.com/track/james, for me.

Peter: Right.

James: And what I can do is I can add anything after james and it will track it as a separate ID. So if I want to do and then jameswebsiteone, jameswebsitetwo, jameswebsiteone/home page or websitetwo/aboutus page. I can put any type of sub ID that I want and that string can be as long as I want for accurate tracking. And then in our system, when you log into your statistics, it breaks that down and it shows by sub ID how many clicks, how many sales, and the conversion for that page so you can say, 'OK, this is my most effective page at converting my traffic.' Then you can focus your campaigns to driving people through that channel.

Peter: Exactly. Oh, OK, that's great. That's one of the differentiators between some hosting company affiliate programs. Some people don't have that, you just have your referring ID and that's it. You see that no way of knowing really where the sale came from as an affiliate.

James: Exactly. And what we also do is we allow you do deep link, so if you want to have a page that talks about our customer service, we show you how to deep link into the actual helpdesk.

Peter: OK.

James: ... Or how to deep link into the features page or anywhere you want, so you don't just have to send them to our home page and that helps. We want you to get that person to our site so that we can set the tracking information so you can get the sale. We know that most people don't sign up instantly; they are going to come back. They are going to do research for a day or two, go look at the different hosts out there and then they are going to pick their hosts and come back.

 

So we set our cookies for ninety days, as well as our tracking cable I was telling you about. That's actually set for longer than ninety days. If they come back and they purchase two or three days later, which is 99% of the case, you are still going to get credit for it.

Peter: Now is it the first affiliate or the last affiliate or...?

James: We do last affiliate wins. We strongly believe the final place that they click through is the guy that got him over the edge.

Peter: OK, OK. They are ones that need the sale basically.

James: Exactly, so the last person to get them to click through is the one that got them to actually go through and purchase, so that is the person we give the credit.

Peter: OK. Now you said that it's contributing, the overall affiliate programs, its contributing to half of your growth. As far as a rough percentage, would you say that's bringing in about 50% of your revenues?

James: The affiliate program, I would say it brings about 50% of customer base.

Peter: OK.

James: So on a daily basis, we are doing 700 new customers, I would probably say 300 to 350 of those are coming from the affiliate program.

Peter: OK.

James: As far as revenues, the revenues is a little different, because on the affiliate program, our main goal is to break even on year one.

Peter: Yes.

James: So, we have a high payout because we want you, the affiliates, to come in and bring the new customers and then we feel it is our job, so we pay out the bounty to the affiliate basically saying, 'thanks for bringing us a new customer. Here you go, we are going to pay you essentially what a year of profit would be for us.' And now it is up to us to keep that customer happy and make them renew their account next year so that we can actually make money.

Peter: Right, right, right.

James: So our revenues coming in, we have that. Then, we also have a few upgrades. Some people need to have a SSL certificate or they are going to need a dedicated IP and things like that, so I can't attribute half the revenues, but I can attribute half of the growth.

Peter: I see. OK. It's basically seen a breakeven customer acquisition program really in the first year.

James: Exactly, and that's why we base it off of a CPA model because we are looking at this saying, 'OK, the cost for is to get a new customer, if we were to do radio, or TV, or newspaper, magazine ads, or anything like that versus the cost of having an affiliate refer somebody to us. We prefer the affiliate model because it's trackable.

Peter: Right.

James: You know, I can't track... I can track a little bit what a radio ad does, but I can't do it with exactness and say, 'OK, for every hundred customers or people who click through to my website, I am going to 'X' percent of sales,' and so that's why we prefer the affiliate method because it allows us to be much more exact in our marketing...

Peter: Yes.

James: ... and it allows us to tie an exact dollar amount to that and say, 'it is worth X dollars per customer.'

Peter: Have you tried any of those more traditional advertising channels, and if so, how does the ROI compare with the affiliate channel?

James: We haven't tried any off-line media buys.

Peter: OK.

James: We have done sponsoring of events and we have done a lot of online traditional just advice and they are not as effective as affiliates.

Peter: OK.

James: Affiliates, we know that their bottom line is what do I have to do to get somebody to buy this product? And by doing a CPA model versus a CPM, or any other type, or cost per click, or anything. When we do it that way, it takes some of that... it drives the affiliate to be successful, and when they are successful, we are successful.

Peter: Right. It's more of a win-win.

James: Exactly.

Peter: Yes, OK. And which affiliates would you say are the best performance for you, because there is the old rule that in 95% of your affiliates, well 5% of your affiliates bring in 95% of the affiliate income, is that the case with you guys? Are there certain types that you would say are more successful than others?

James: Oh, definitely. We have over 50, 000 affiliates, and just like you said, I probably have a hundred to two hundred of those that consistently send us sales and 49, 000 something that will send us a sale of a referral once every year or two.

Peter: Right.

James: The biggest difference we find is (a) the best affiliates have the most traffic coming to their site; (b) their site is related to hosting in some way. Either it provides the software service or software-type solution that needs hosting...

Peter: Right.

James: ... Or they are doing a review on our types of services, or they are doing a technical review of certain things and they just have postings to the site because that's the target audience, the techy people who are likely to start their own service. Then, we also have a large group of business opportunity-type sites that promote us, where they are talking about eBay stores or setting up your own eCommerce or something like that. So those are all the different channels that do really well for us. I can't say one is better than the other because we have top performers in each category.

Peter: Right, right, right, but basically their audience has to fit your audience, right, to be truly successful?

James: Exactly, that's the number one thing. The demographics of who are they targeting, what are the eyeballs they are getting to their website, and do they match up with our profile? Our profile, it is hard to say because we have teenage kids that run websites, we have professionals running their company sites, and we have the bloggers, and the eCommerce. There is such a great mix that fits our demographic that it's hard to say. We've got some... they call themselves the mommy bloggers, you know?

Peter: Yes. I know all about them. [laughs]

James: Yes, and the mommy bloggers, we have some that send us quite a few referrals. So I can't profile it and say, its only one niche market that will bring in sales. All of them can do very well, but it is a matter of how they present it, if the message is correct and it matches with their audience, it is going to be successful for them.

Peter: Right, right. Now, when you do your annual sort of all advertising budget for the whole business, do you put aside any money for advertising your affiliate program? Or would you say you are spending most of your time and money on advertising your service and doing something else with the affiliates to get them to come to you? How do you view marketing of the affiliate program?

James: Marketing of the affiliate program is something that I personally feel we need to do better at. We have hundreds of new affiliates sign up every day. And quite honestly, I don't know how they find out about us. [laughs] I can attribute it to a lot of people are learning about affiliate market and our industry is a great industry to do it and stuff like that.

 

So that's probably the bulk of our new affiliates are coming from, companies and people, individuals talking about online marketing and affiliate marketing and doing courses and classes and guides of how to get started. That's our number one resource for that.

As far as marketing budget, we have never actively marketed our affiliate program. We have never done any type of online ads or anything telling people to come join. Everything that we have done has been strictly just... we have it on our website.

All of our customers, when they log in or when they call in, we have a message that plays, 'Did you know you could earn some money by referring your friends and others that you know to our posting platform?' and that plays during the whole message when they are on the phone and stuff.

So, that is mainly how we do recruiting is, we have a lot of affiliates who are our customers.

Peter: Yeah, OK. It's basically your own customers, and then it's probably also the fact that the way you focus on treating your affiliates and making sure they are getting credit. That's coming back around to new science because the affiliate do talk in different forms and maybe that's explaining why you are getting so many signups.

James: Definitely.

Peter: New affiliates, just because they do talk and you are probably being mentioned here and there, right?

James: Yes.

Peter: Yes, OK. And then do you spend much time with your top affiliates, with relationships, and motivating them or would you say it is more based on them... like you reacting to them inquiring, they need a banner here or there? How much help words or proactive motivation are you doing with your affiliates?

James: As an affiliate manager, I make myself as available as I can be. All of the top affiliates, I am more than happy for them to put me on their instant messenger and things, so quite a few of them, that's how we keep in contact. We will IM each other whenever there are new promotions or anything coming up, or if they have a question, I have been in online and media marketing for quite a long time.

 

So, a lot of times our top affiliates will say, 'Hey, we are making some changes to the site. Will you look at it and give us some feedback?' I will go through their site with them and say, 'You know, I think you could change this part, move this over here," so I try to make myself as helpful as possible to make sure that they are successful.

Then, when we make types of changes like that together, I monitor very closely their statistics shortly for a week to two weeks afterwards to make that, 'Yeah, the conversion rates are going up. The traffic is going up,' or it's going down.

I notify them, and I also watch daily, all of your affiliates, to see the trends. I look at it and I compare the last 48 hours to the last week, and I compare the last week to the last month.

I look at those statistics and look for any trends that are negatively impacting the affiliates so that I can notify them and say, 'Hey, something's changed. Your traffic is down,' or your conversion is down. Let's see if we can fix that,' so I work very closely with them. I am available by email, instant messenger and phone, pretty much all day every day.

Peter: OK. And then do you have any sort of little success stories of some of your affiliates?

James: Yeah, I will share one in particular. About a year and a half ago, I had a college student from Kentucky contact me. He said, "I got this website and some guy just offered me thirty-thousand dollars for it, and it's just sitting there doing nothing.' He was like, 'Why would somebody do that?" [laughs] And he hosted the website with us. I guess it was a little bit of luck on his part to talk to me about it, but I went to his website, and I am not going to say which one it is, but it had a hosting word in the URL.

Peter: OK.

James: And I went and looked it up and did a little research on his site, and he was ranked on quite a few hosting keywords for his domain.

Peter: OK.

James: And so I said, you know, the reason that person wants it is because you're in Google for 10 or 15 really good keywords and you're not far from the top of the listings on those, and if you make this and this and this change to your site and you start doing this and this, you're going to be able to be very successful as an affiliate marketer. And he had never done affiliate marketing, really.

Peter: OK.

James: So I introduced him to our program. I explained to him how, I'm totally open to him [laughs] setting up affiliate programs with all of our competitors and stuff, and so he went and did so, and I told him that day, I said, "You'll make more per month than what this person has offered you if you give it a year."

Peter: OK.

James: And so I basically pointed him in the right direction, got him set up on all those programs, and he started link building and writing articles and getting a decent amount of traffic on his site, and this summer in June he surpassed $30, 000 of revenue just from us on his website, and he had other affiliate things he was doing as well. So I know that he's extremely successful now, and he's not even done with college yet.

Peter: [laughs] Maybe he's not going to make it.

James: [laughs] Yeah. So, that's one of the great success stories, and I have actually worked with quite a few people and helped them get started. I can't do the work for them, but I'm more than happy to help the share the knowledge that I have to help them be a good affiliate for us.

Peter: Oh, that's a great success story, yeah. I think that will really get some people motivated. And I know you said you don't really do that much marketing of your affiliate program, but just talking to me and getting this out there on my blog will definitely, I think, make Bluehost a great showcase of a good affiliate program, and I'm sure you'll get some signups from me, too.

James: Hey, I really appreciate it. It has been great.

Peter: Now, we were talking about success, but I have to talk a little bit about the dark side too.

James: OK.

Peter: As I indeed mentioned, you are paying up front, like in a CPA model.

James: Yes.

Peter: Tell me a bit about some of the issues that that brings, because as soon as I heard CPA I was thinking fraud, because I know that in any CPA program you have to really watch that people aren't so-called "acting" as a customer just so that they can then have a friend get the commission and then they back out somehow and you've actually lost money. So, is that an issue for you, and how have you managed to overcome that?

James: It has been - it was a very large issue in the past.

Peter: Yes.

James: Especially with foreign affiliates. We had a lot who would sign up for a hosting account, wait until they got paid, and then issue a chargeback or somehow get their money back, and then they also had the check from us.

Peter: Yes.

James: We also had quite a few that used stolen credit cards or stolen PayPal information to purchase accounts, and then they would get paid on the affiliates as well.

Peter: Yes.

James: So, those are problems that you're going to have in any type of CPA model.

Peter: Right.

James: It has been a long [laughs] a long and arduous task to be able to overcome, and it's one of those things where no matter what you do as an affiliate program and whatever changes you make, they're going to find a way to still do it.

Peter: Yes.

James: And so as an affiliate manager, I look at it as a way to minimize that risk and to lower the amount of fraud that is possible. So, just like a good security and alarm system for your home, it's going to deter the day-to-day thieves. It's not going to stop the professionals.

Peter: Right.

James: So, some of the things that we have in place is, our affiliate program, if you sign up in-house, you're going to notice right away just signing up that it's a little bit - we require a little more information than some people do.

Peter: OK.

James: We require that every single affiliate has to have their W-9 turned in if they're in the US or a W-8BEN tax form if they're foreign.

Peter: Yes.

James: We require to have quite a bit of their personal information on file. You know, we need all their contact information, address, phone numbers, emails, all that kind of information is required. And then in our rules, you'll notice if you look at our affiliate terms that we hold the payments a little longer than some would like.

Peter: Yes.

James: It's great to get paid ten days after, but due to the fraud issues and stuff we pay within 60-90 days.

Peter: Right.

James: And that allows us to verify that the credit card is not stolen and prevent fraud that way, and it also gives a little more time for us to make sure that the affiliate that is sending us those new sign-ups has a consistency to the - I call it the quality of the sign-ups coming in. If we all of a sudden get 50 sign-ups from one place and then the next week all of those cancel, then we know there's a problem.

Peter: Right, right.

James: So, we monitor all of that quite heavily to see the quality. You know, I've got my own statistics that I can't share.

Peter: Right.

James: But I know usually with 30-90 days the quality of the affiliate, how good their customers are going to be, and then we can extrapolate that out and say, "OK, this affiliate we can plan on this happening over time with them as their site grows in popularity," etc.

Peter: Right. And then actually, sometimes earnings per click, it can be a bit deceiving too, right? Because if one affiliate has crazy high conversion rates and they're sending a low number of clicks, that's also - that's not necessarily a good thing, right? It could mean that there is something funny going on.

James: Exactly. And so we look at those. Most people don't - they think that they're slipping under the radar a lot of times, because they're like, "Oh, I'm doing it through CJ." And that's one of the things. We actually don't allow a lot of foreign countries to join our external affiliate programs because the monitoring is not as stringent for us.

Peter: Right.

James: And so through our in-house program we can monitor it a lot closer and we can also see - like I said, we track the IPs and the browsers; we track everything that we can on customers coming in. So we can very quickly say, "OK, this one affiliate had 100 sign-ups in the last two months all from the same IP address and the same browser configuration and the same..." and it's very obvious somebody is sitting there testing credit cards or whatever. [laughs]

Peter: Yes.

James: So, it's one of those things where we've got the ways in place to track it. Our fraud prevention on the sign-up is very high. We also verify every single customer that signs up, so if somebody signs up they get a call from us within the next 24, 36 hours verifying that they purchased the account with us. That one check right there gets rid of most of our fraud attempts.

Peter: Right, right. It sounds like you've got it under control but at the same time you appreciate that you're never going to have a 100% fraud-free affiliate program.

James: Yes. The main goal is to have it as low as possible.

Peter: Yes.

James: And I think we do a pretty good job on that end. Just on the credit card front, I mean, if you have a very high fraud rate and chargeback rate, you're going to have issues as a merchant with Visa, MasterCard, American Express.

Peter: Yes.

James: So that's something that we have to do out of necessity for our business, as well as it helps our affiliates greatly, because if they had somebody sign up and then it was cancelled, we can tell them why and provide that data back to them. We can say "It was a stolen credit card," or "They've issued a chargeback right after it was done so there was something wrong with that transaction."

Peter: Yeah, yeah, right. OK, and I guess like anything they're just going to move on to some other silly program where the managers aren't as vigilant, and they'll just keep trying, like you said.

James: [laughs] And that's exactly what happens. We want to make it painful enough for the fraudsters that they'll go somewhere else. [laughter]

Peter: Now do you go to - it sounds like you're basically the affiliate manager for Bluehost. Do you do any other - is there any other training that goes on internally with the sales guys, or are there other affiliate managers that work for you? How are you organized and what kind of training do you do?

James: As far as training, we do train all of our customer support reps on the basics of the affiliate program, so if somebody calls in and talks to them, they'll be able to point them to how to sign up and the terms and the payment terms and all of that stuff. So they're fairly knowledgeable about the basic information. As far as any of the in-depth things, like the ways to do all the deep linking and that kind of stuff, my goal has been to make it so that most affiliates, if they don't ever want to talk to somebody, can do it themselves, so our documentation is pretty thorough.

Peter: Right, OK.

James: If it goes beyond the documentation, then it's something that is pretty substantial and they'll need to talk to me about it.

Peter: OK. And do you go to any shows or Internet marketing conferences or affiliate conferences, or is it more like the hosting conventions you go to, or...

James: We mainly go to the hosting conventions.

Peter: OK.

James: So, we've traditionally been in our niche market. You know, we'll go to the HostingCon and the Parallels and CPanel and all of the hosting-related shows, but as far as affiliate marketing shows, it's something that I've looked at doing, but we have not attended any as of yet.

Peter: Well, I've been to Ad:tech and Affiliate Summit. I can't recall seeing any hosting companies at either one. Affiliate Summit is probably the best show for affiliate marketers and people in the affiliate industry. Like, if we had networks, CJ would be there. Even Google is there.

James: Yes.

Peter: But I happened - I mean, I can't recall seeing actual hosting companies. There are some merchants there - like, let's say, travel merchants from - whatever - Costa Rica. Eco-tours, setting up an affiliate program, so they have a little desk there. But I would guess it wouldn't make sense to be there, at least as an exhibitor, but you might want to check it out as a delegate because, you might find some really good affiliates there.

James: Yeah, I think we have plans to do that and I know a lot of our bigger affiliates do attend those shows, and so that's something that we've been looking at doing just so we can be there and get to have some more face-to-face meetings with our affiliates.

Peter: Yes.

James: And that way people will be able to get to know us a little better.

Peter: Yeah, I think it's an opportunity for a hosting company with a good affiliate program to be out there. I mean, you don't have to be out there with a big booth and all that, but just for networking and for some good PR with those affiliates that you're already working with, and they'd probably introduce you to some other as well.

James: Yes.

Peter: So, I just want to wrap it up here, I guess, really. What would you say makes your whole affiliate program unique? What is it about the Bluehost affiliate program?

James: I think the main things - I don't want to just talk about the affiliate program in general, but the main thing that sets us apart in the industry of hosting...

Peter: Right.

James: ... And why our affiliate program works and is so successful, it's due to the product quality that we provide. Most of - when I say half of our sign-ups come from affiliates, the other half we attribute to our branding and referrals by word of mouth, because we don't do any other media buys, and due to that we know that people are signing up because somebody says, "This is a great service."

 

And what sets us apart, some of the main things is - our tech support is 100% here in our Provo, Utah headquarters building. We have over 250 employees, we train them, they're knowledgeable, and we answer the phone in less than 30 seconds. That's really what one of our main selling points is, that when people need help, there's a way to get in touch with us.

We have phone support, we have chat support, and we have online help desk and ticket support, and due to that, word of mouth travels.

We have a very good name in the industry for providing that high level of service, which in the end results in affiliates being able to get better conversions because they're selling a product that people can go out there and look at and research and see good things about.

Peter: And those customers will stay with you, maybe, longer than they might somewhere else?

James: Yes, correct.

Peter: OK, that makes sense. OK, was there anything else you wanted to mention about the affiliate program in particular or anything new coming out that you want to point out as far as promotions or anything else that you wanted me to publish?

James: Currently, I think that's about all of the information I've got on the affiliate program. Our hosting plans are always increasing. We try to make it easy for you to send us new customers, because we only have one plan for them to choose on the home page so they don't get confused and "Oh, what do I need to buy?" They just come in, they sign up, and we make it as easy as possible, where a lot of hosting plans you have to pick and choose and select all these different features that they want turned on and stuff, and that all affects the overall conversion rate. So our goal is to make it as simple as possible.

Peter: Right. And it's basically - there isn't really a lot of choice, you just keep it simple.

James: Yeah. We give them all the features that they can want. You know, there are certainly things, like if they want SSH access, we do provide that. We require a little more security verification of the user before they are allowed to do that, but it's not a separate plan. They can get it and it's all included in one price.

Peter: Right, OK. Thanks. Well, James, I just wanted to thank you for this call, and I really appreciate it. I think we've got some really good information about your affiliate program and Bluehost overall, and I look forward to getting this up on the blog and getting this transcribed and put up there, and I'm sure it will send you some more affiliates and definitely some more customers.

James: Sounds good. Thank you so much for the call. [theme music]

Peter: OK, thanks a lot. Take care.

James: Goodbye.

Peter: I hope you enjoyed this interview. To receive instant alerts when more interviews in this series are available and to receive free affiliate industry and strategy tips in my newsletter, just sign up for free at my website, affiliate-software-review.com. Thank you very much, bye. [music]

REFERENCES

Visit BlueHost here (with my affiliate link)

Visit BlueHost here (naked non affiliate link)