Gadooney.com
A Complete Guide to Affiliate Marketing
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Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Hosting
(0)One Web hosting question that crops up a lot is what exactly is “shared hosting” or “dedicated hosting”, and which is best for affiliate marketing.
Shared hosting is by far the most common and is what most people are familiar with, as far as what you see offered at sites like HostGator, AN Hosting, and GoDaddy. These packages are very affordable (often less than $10/month) and come with lots of bells and whistles, as far as letting you put unlimited domains on your site, create unlimited mySQL databases, and provide lots of storage and bandwidth.
The reason they’re called “shared” hosting packages (and the reason that they’re so affordable) is that your websites are stored on a server with many other customers, most of which are exactly in the same boat you are. They may have one site, a handful of sites, or even 20+ sites in their accounts, but they’re not high-traffic sites, getting a ginormous amount of traffic. This lets hosting providers put a ton of these sites on a single server without any huge downside, as the cumulative traffic and load on the server is kept to a reasonable amount, due to the nature of the sites.
While most of us don’t by nature like to share, there’s usually no downside, as far as your sites being up and open for business. Occasionally a site on a shared server will suddenly get a huge spike of unexpected traffic and this will cause all of the sites on that server (including those owned by complete strangers like you) to bog down or become inaccessible, but it’s a pretty rare occurence and most hosts provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee and will refund you for any time your site was down or inaccessible.
One nice thing about shared plans is that they’re completely managed for you by the hosting provider, as far as security and support, and you have to know very little to get up and running.
As mentioned, shared hosting plans start off really cheap but can scale up to reasonably expensive plans, if you have lots of sites and get a decent amount of traffic. Some people like the fact that they’re completely managed by someone else, so some customers stay on shared hosting plans, even when they have tons of sites and tons of traffic, and simply upgrade to plans that provide more storage and bandwidth (which still share a server with other sites but typically with fewer other customer accounts).
Dedicated hosting is a bit different. They’re similar in nature, as far as paying a hosting provider for space on a server, but in this case you have the entire server dedicated to your sites and don’t share space with any other customers. This guarantees better performance for popular, high-traffic sites, and it also usually means you have greater control over your sites, as you often have more direct access to the server management.
It depends on the host and what licenses they have, but with dedicated packages you typically get access to WHM and cPanel interfaces, that let you handle many routine tasks associated with your server. With shared plans you often have to request a new domain or new mySQL database to be offered, creating a ticket for it, and waiting on support to take care of it; all those steps can be done yourself in seconds on a typical dedicated hosting account.
You’ll also often get the added perk of being able to act as a reseller through your dedicated hosting account, which simply means that you can add customers beneath you, who pay you for hosting their sites on your server, just as if they’d signed up for a normal shared hosting account.
Dedicated hosting packages can be managed or unmanaged, as far as whether you get a lot of support and security help or whether you’re essentially on your own, as far as ensuring that the lastest versions of scripts and programs are up-to-date and secure on your server. Because of all the nice perks and bonuses, dedicated plans are a good bit more expensive, starting at around $100/month for the cheapest unmanaged plans and around $200/month for managed dedicated server packages.
As far as what’s best for affiliate marketing, if you’re just starting out, you should always go with shared hosting. Always. We all start out with grand plans but it’ll likely take you years until you grow your sites and traffic to the point that a dedicated plan makes sense. While switching plans or hosts can be annoying, it’s not rocket science, so there’s no reason to start out with a bigger package than you need for the foreseeable future, as you can always expand or switch later when the need arises.
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Finding a Web Hosting Company
(5)One of the common myths that still abounds is that setting up your own Web hosting is difficult, expensive, and requires a ginormous amount of technical know-how. The reality is that getting your own Web host is simple, cheap, and requires only the technical know-how of clicking a mouse.
Technically speaking, you can actually make money via affiliate marketing with just a free Blogger account, so you don’t even have to pony up cash for a hosting package. I highly recommend that you don’t go the free route, though, as hosting is dirt cheap and it’ll open up many nice options for you that you won’t have with a free service like Blogger.
I recommend keeping it simple when you get a hosting package, and to not get bogged down in details. Hosting is becoming more and more commoditized as time goes by, and these days there’s very little difference in most packages, and they’re generally in the same ballpark price range. Don’t worry about how many gigs of traffic you get and how many users that is and how much storage you have, etc. Pretty much any entry-level package you get will be just fine your needs when starting out and you can always upgrade your package later if you need to.
Here are a few things to look for when selecting a Web host:1) Unlimited domains: Most hosts offer you the ability to put an unlimited number of domains on your hosting account at no extra charge. This is a good thing, as you’ll be creating a number of sites over time and you want to have room to add them to your hosting package at no extra cost. It’s fine if they’re just name-based domains and not unlimited domains with a unique IP address.
2) Support for WordPress and mySQL: I’ll touch on this more later, but the best way to get started with affiliate marketing is to use the WordPress blogging software as a content management system (CMS). When I say “support for WordPress” I basically mean that it’s a nice bonus if you can find a host like HostGator that offers an add-on package that makes implementing WordPress very simple. You can install WordPress on just about any hosting package that offers you mySQL databases, but some hosts make it very easy to install.As far as mySQL databases, look for a host that provides you with unlimited ones, and preferably one that allows you to create the databases yourself. This is pretty common and isn’t hard to find. If they insist on creating the databases on their end, that’s cool and not a deal-breaker, it just adds an element of complexity as far as contacting customer support and waiting for them to create the database. Wordpress requires a mySQL database to work, so that’s why it’s listed here as something to look for.
3) Good customer service: Pretty self-explanatory, but you don’t want to be waiting for days to get a domain added to your hosting account.
4) Shared hosting is fine. When you have an empire of affiliate sites and ten billion unique users each day, then yeah, you need to go the dedicated server route. But for most of us normal affiliates, shared hosting is perfectly fine.
And that’s pretty much it. For comparison sakes, my hosting package at the moment is for 25 gigs of data transfer, 100000 MB of storage, and unlimited domains and mySQL databases, for $12/month. Anything in that ballpark is more than enough to serve your needs.
Below are some hosts that offer good entry-level packages that I’ve used in the past and have had good experiences with, that offer all of the above goodies: