Did you know that you could make more money per sale for some of your affiliate promotions?
I have been using and promoting Hostgator hosting on and off and I have noticed that I’ve been making $50 per sale in 2013. This amount surprised me because I remember making $100 per sale back in 2009. I started digging around and I realized what went wrong and why the commission was cut in half.
Hostgator runs two (2) affiliate programs that I know of. One is their own, in-house affiliate program and the other is managed by Commission Junction (CJ). The in-house affiliate program is based on performance and pays you a higher commission when you make more sales. The CJ affiliate program is fixed at $100 per sale.
When I started promoting HG I did it through Commission Junction so I earned one hundred dollars per sale. However, when I took a break from internet marketing in 2010, my CJ account was deactivated because it became “dormant” or simply inactive. When I tried to login into CJ in 2011 or 2012 I got a message that the account is deactivated. I didn’t care enough to contact Commission Junction so I went to Hostgator and signed up to their affiliate program directly on their website – this is how I managed to miss out on some cash.
Hostgator in-house affiliate program is performance based. If you make 1-5 sales per month, you earn 50$ per sale. $75 for 6-10 monthly sales, $100 per sale is you make 11-20 monthly sales and $125 per sale is you make more than 21 sales in a given month.
Hostgator CJ affiliate program offers a fixed $100 commission per sale. Either you make 1 sale per year or 1,000 sales per day – you will be paid $100 per sale. This is a better option for me at the moment.
- If you are making over 20 sales per month – you should go with HG in-house program.
- If you are making fewer than 10 sales per month – you should do it with Commission Junction.
- If you are making 11-20 sales per month – you can go with either or, the commission is the same.
Always Look For a Higher Commission.
- Many companies run affiliate promotions on different networks and you should always verify which networks pays out the highest commission and apply with them.
- If you are making a lot of sales for a publisher, you should contact them directly and negotiate a higher commission, this works very well on CPA networks.
- Many networks offer performance based commissions. For example Amazon offers you 4% per sale when you just start but this quickly goes up to 6%-8% if you are bringing in a lot of sales – so sell more.
- Some programs offer recurring commission and I simply love such programs. Recurring means that you are always paid a commission as long as the person you referred remains a paying customer. Wealthy Affiliate Business Training offers recurring commissions, many list building services pay you monthly as well and you should consider becoming an affiliate for such programs. A simple one time $50 sale can turn into thousands of dollars over the years.
Do you have any tricks on getting a higher commission per sale? Comment below!
– Alex
You can reactivate your CJ account without contacting them. Mines got deactivated last year for non-activity but I can’t remember what I did to get it reactivated but it didn’t involve contacting them. The instructions I think are right on the screen.
Just note that you can’t be an affiliate of both the CJ program and the in-house program. There’s something in their terms about termination if they catch you using both (which to me doesn’t make sense). I chose to go with the in-house program because then you can create your own coupons and stuff.
Two tier affiliate programs are great too. There are some good ones on Shareasale including one that pays $50 on every sale made by someone you referred to their affiliate program. So all you really got to do is promote the affiliate marketing program instead of the product but I find that a lot of people won’t get active with promoting. If you do refer a super affiliate though, then you’re earning $50 bonuses without much effort.