Dear Tenko Nikolov,
A couple of days back I got an email that SiteGround is going to suspend all those accounts which have not generated any sale for the last six months. The mail did not specify whether the suspended affiliates would ever be able to make their accounts again. Anyway, for a second let’s forget it. SiteGround is a good web hosting company. Especially when it comes to the support system of the company. Just a few months ago, I reviewed SiteGround thoroughly and afresh. I weighed and examined minutely every single aspect of this company and it was only when I was fully satisfied that SiteGround is a reliable host, I listed its review on my website inrealsense.com. This whole process like anything which you do painstakingly took me a good many days. Put it this way, any review or comparison done impartially and meticulously takes an unbiased or a professional blogger this much time.
On inrealsense.com, as a rule, I do not accept even the sponsored content of any type until I am sure of the product’s reliability and features. On the whole, I should say I am an unbiased blogger who earns money by promoting only good products. Never have I put my personal interests over a user’s interests, nor have out of greed I promoted a bad product. Because as I just wrote, what I ultimately value is my users faith in me and users’ interests have always been my priority. Promoting a bad product and misleading a user can get me money once but can never get me a returning user. The last thing I can think of is being called a cheater, a rogue or a dummy reviewer.
I put SiteGround to every kind of test I could come up with and felt that it was a genuinely reliable host and it qualified by all means for being on the list of my top recommended hosts. So SiteGround finally ended being the second on my list of top recommended hosts. Here one thing I should mention is that of all five companies that make the list, only two offer affiliate earning. The remaining three do not help me earn anything yet it does not stop them making my list and I have added their affiliate links. And that’s because what’s most important to me is what’s best for my customers. Quite a few visitors come to these hosting companies daily through my website, if I may say so myself. But whether they make a purchase or not, it’s entirely up to them. My job is sending visitors to affiliate websites. Now an affiliate marketer can’t help it if those visitors do not buy your hosting, or owing to some problem with your affiliate software an affiliate does not receive credit for a sale.
Your affiliate software does not keep any record of a referring URL (I mean for affiliates. Whether you keep such a record for yourself, I don’t know.) And as far as I think, this software filters many clicks too. Anyway, it’s your own policy and I have nothing much to say in this matter. I have to admit that an affiliate program is for the profit of a company and if the company feels that an affiliate is not benefiting it, the company may stop it or may disqualify a lot of affiliates like you are going to do.
If there has been no sale for the past six months, why in the first place would I ask you to let me be in your affiliate program? I wouldn’t. If there were no sale for such a long time, I would rather be berating your hosting and add to my list iPage or BlueHost, the cheap hosting providers which sell much more. It would do me good. But I would not do so, because doing so would be like cheating myself rather than my readers. As long as your hosting company is good and keeps providing satisfactory and quality services, it will be on my list. Even if you disqualify me.
It all comes down to the fact that the affiliates you are going to disqualify mean nothing to you. Was it for nothing what they wrote to promote and encourage your company? Does it mean nothing to you that they have been taking pains to tell their visitors of your website and send visitors to your websites?
Nobody would argue if you disqualify an affiliate who long ago signed up and has done nothing significant for your company for ages- did not write a review, did not send visitors to your website. It seems really logical. Now think the another situation. How can you blame an affiliate who has been regularly sending visitors to your website over the last six months, but these visitors do not buy your products? Who is to blame? You are to blame, whether you admit it or not.
If a visitor does not buy your product, the problem should be with your pricing policy. Just think a moment, who would buy your hosting, if he gets just scant storage and few visitors per month at a high price (Even if you invoke the reliable support). When a customer comes to buy a shared hosting, he has on his mind: a better hosting with an economical price not a better one which cost him an arm and a leg. So do not make affiliates scapegoat and do a little self-analysis and self-observation. Give a moment to think why your hosting sells less compared to other good hosting providers.
When you run an ad-campaign on Google or Facebook, do you pay them in accordance with your sale? No. you pay them in accordance with the traffic. What I want to say is that it really matters if someone bolster up your website by promoting it and by writing good reviews on it. If a reader finds a goods review of you on my website and is tempted to visit you, no matter he at the time does not make a purchase there, but your website would definitely be in his good books. And it is highly likely that in the future he decides to buy your services.
So if I have any say in this matter, I would say in my opinion to disqualify all the affiliates who have not generated any sale cannot be justified. At least the affiliates who wrote unbiased and reliable reviews about SiteGround, helped SiteGround get visitors should not be disqualified and SiteGround really needs to think it through. The rest is up to you.
Shams, a professional blogger, has expertise in WordPress and Web Hosting. He is used to playing around with WordPress plugins, themes, web hosting services and some other innovative stuff regarding web design. He sifts out good stuff for web designers and reviews it to help them choose what they really need.
Being an energetic tech enthusiast, he regularly pens down breaking news and tutorials related to technology particularly Smartphones and other gadgets. Sometimes writes tech tips too. It was the dawn of Internet age when he started dabbling in it and has since been delving into the realm of the internet. He occupies a permanent burrow in virtual world.
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