Affiliate programs, in my experience, do not pay much. Yet they do pay, so I stick with them. Currently I help drive business to Firefox, iTunes, Amazon and Dream Host, among others.
Dream Host, a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider (and the host of this site) has the most lucrative deal going. They offer $97 per referral for a new hosting client. It’s a brilliant offer. While they forgo income for year one by paying out the referral fee, they know they’ll make money in year two and three and so on. The offer also gets people talking about the brand, so it’s smart in every way.
Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine in Seattle, WA has really made this offer work for him.
In my two years of being with Dreamhost, I’ve directly referred 647 new customers. Dreamhost, being the cool company that they are, kicks users back $97 for each person they refer. Do the math. 🙂
Okay, I’ll do the math. $62,759. That’s 30 large a year for word-of-mouth and an online endorsement.
In related news, Dream Host had some service problems this summer, which they detail on the company blog in the spirit of total transparency.
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I have used Dreamhost to host my sites for a couple/few years now. I found them through referall from a Utah designer site and compared their deal to other similar companies.
While I have never used their referall program I can say that currently that I host ALL of my sites and several of my clients for for 40% of the price I paid to host ONE site with Utah’s Xmission.com. It is definitely a volume operation (300,000 domains I hear.)
While I have had a few weird things happen, there has been nothing that really totally displeased me – especially given there pennies-on-the-dollar pricing.
As to their communications, some are transparent while others are damn cryptic or prophetic and have me scratching my head for days. But I will say they have a sense of humor. This I can appreciate in any company. I’d recommend them, too.
You know, I’ve been to their site a bunch of time, even clicked on their referral banner to see how the program worked… but the program’s value never, ever registered in my mind.
Until now. How’s that for ad blindness? 😉