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[Steven Johnson Contribution Level: 2]

Anyone with CURRENT experience with a web host offering commissions for referrals, please post your 2 pennies worth...

Selection Criteria:

I'm not looking for an expensive "catch-all" such as GVO or Verretek

I'm also not really interested in a relationship that pays a one-off finders fee and then cuts the affiliate off in month two.

Any company NOT using WHM/Cpanel is out of the running. Ideal would one that offers a WHM/reseller (at least as an option) and one that you can purchase your very own IP address.

It's shocking to me in this era of networking and social media marketing that such a company is so difficult to find.

[Richard Bravo Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 9]

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Steven your first obstacle will be finding a host that you can trust within the confines of your requirements.

I would suggest looking at the options available at HostGator.

1. You can signup as an affiliate and earn $50 one time commission.

2. Purchase a reseller account and selll hosting accounts yourself.
You can set your own price points. This would provide you with the residual revenue you are looking for. But as you can see there is more management involved. HostGator provides almost everything you need within cPanel to setup billing and customer accounts. And you can choose from several payment processors such as PayPal.

There are a lot of hosting providers out there that have similar plans and options.
I recommend HostGator because they are the most reliable, with the best customer service and support I have found in the 15+ years I've been online and developing websites ... and I've had accounts with a lot of hosts.

And one more thing to consider is that, again in my experience, selling hosting yourself can be a real pain in the rear. You sell it - You have to support it. People will come to you because you sold it. So ask yourself if that is something you want to take on.

Whereas, as an affiliate, yes the commission is one off, but all support can be directed to HostGator's professional support team. Just something else to consider in making your decision.
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[Steven Johnson Contribution Level: 2]

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Richard. BTW, clever signature here on BN! (and love the use of subdomains on your Twitter skin)

My own hosting experience dates to 1995 and Windows NT4. I've been using my own dedicated Linux servers since the late 90's. I also spent 5 years in tech support (mostly phone, but I've done email and live chat as well). I own a pretty extensive collection of camtasia videos about hosting (many of which I produced myself), so support issues aren't going to scare me away.

Mostly I was looking for a long-term monthly affiliate stream I could offer my team and not have to worry about doing the brick-n-mortar trenches work that comes along with also being the service provider - it's just not worth the trouble in such a cutthroat niche as web hosting. Especially when mlm and top tier direct selling are so lucrative.

[Richard Bravo Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 9]

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That's cool Steven.
So with all that in mind then I would look at a hostgator reseller account.
They have the billing and account interface in Fantastico and you can run it all through Paypal.
The whole thing is pretty automated. You can still direct tech support issues to HG directly; its completely within their TOS as long as you don't mind having your team talk to them instead of you. Or handle support yourself through ZenDesk or what ever you prefer.

As an example the Baby account retails on HG for $9.95 per month.
You could setup a reseller account and offer your team a similar package at $7.95 per month.
A Copper account for instance will run you $34.95. (80gb disk/700gb bw/unlimited domains)
You'll need roughly 4 customers to break even. Everything else is gravy.

The only drawback with the reseller account compared to selling a Baby account outright as an affiliate is the the Baby allows the user unlimited everything. As a reseller you don't have that option. You have to configure your packages within the confines of the resources alloted your account.

Of course you can always upgrade to larger packages and they have a VPS option as well as dedicated.

I've been with HG for a few years now, but I'm looking at MediaTemple right now for the cloud options for a couple of specialized projects. But HG has been more than adequate to handle my reseller customers. Only 2-3 complaints in 3 years and those were due to expiring domains they didn't know about.

Good luck on your hunt.

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[Matt Alston Company: Magnetic Sponsoring Contribution Level: 2]

Hey guys,

I know this is an old thread but many others read the forum.

I have 6 years experience using iPower.com and have had excellent results. They are a broad based host but I use their LAMP configuration under Cpanel. You can get windows server configurations if you are running windows apps, you can get dedicated IP addresses if needed, but I am using it for Apache web server with Mysql and Php.

There are various options including a good reseller plan, I used the resller plan a few years back but have gotten away from it. Now I specialize in building Wordpress blogs and internet marketing structures for clients and particularly the TF2 design. Many have clients have their own host account so I let them determine that.

Their customer service in excellent but I also have a level 2 technical contact for the times when things get strange.

I have an unlimited hosting account that I use for all my personal wordpress work, ftp transfer space, and internet marketing pages of all types.

[Terry Cline II Company: Global Domains International, Inc Contribution Level: 1]

Hello sir, I would like to recommend Global Domains International, you can get all the info you need by visiting their site http://www.website.ws, basically you sign up for hosting/domain/affiliate all for one price monthly and each time you refer someone to the products/services/affiliate you get paid monthly for it for each active person, if you choose to go with them let me know. My personal link is in my signature. Good luck with everything.

[Joe Pariseau Company: Magnetic Sponsoring Contribution Level: 2]

I second to Hostgator, the support is excellent. This host provider is trusted by a lot of network marketers and often called as a part of domain name-hosting combo with Namecheap. They are pretty reliable so I can say that the service is worth every penny.

Hope this helps.
Joe P.
aka Master Joeda