Bluehost Affiliate Program Review
We’re continuing our series on some of the top affiliate programs out there with a review of the Bluehost affiliate program.
In today’s post, we’re looking at absolutely everything you should know about it, from how difficult it is to join, if it costs anything, what products you can promote, and what commissions you can expect. Read on to find out more!
Bluehost Affiliate Program Review
What is Bluehost anyway?
Bluehost is one of the oldest and perhaps among the best-known companies in the field of web hosting. The brand has been around ever since the beginning of the 2000s and it has been recommended time and again for its services and for the support it offers to its customers.
The affiliate program you might want to join was created back in 2004, so it is fairly old itself, which means that enough time has passed in order for the company to improve it gradually.
In any case, the company is so popular these days that you are not going to go through a lot of hassle to recommend it to your blog audience. People trust Bluehost enough, so that’s one less thing to worry about.
How to become a Bluehost.com affiliate
It would be ideal if you yourself were a Bluehost customer so as to be perfectly acquainted with the services offered by the brand. From what we could tell, that doesn’t seem to be a requirement.
Therefore, if you get web hosting from a different provider, you can still recommend Bluehost products and make a commission doing that.
One thing we do have to note about the entire process is that you cannot use an affiliate network to become a Bluehost affiliate. You will have to complete the sign-up process on the company’s website, but rest assured that it is quite simple and doesn’t even take up a lot of time.
As is the case with any other program you might ever be interested in joining, there will be certain Bluehost affiliate requirements. You will first be asked for some basic information such as your website’s URL, your name, your email, and your payment info (mostly your PayPal account).
You will then have to fill out one of two forms — the W9 one designed for people located in the United States or the W8EN for individuals who are not citizens or residents of this country.
Once you have read all the Bluehost affiliate terms and filled out all the forms, you will have to wait for a reply from the company’s representatives.
Fortunately, it doesn’t seem that they take long, so you might get your answer in a matter of one to three days (naturally, if you fill out the request on Friday, you might get your reply on Monday or Tuesday of the following week).
Affiliate marketing Bluehost dashboard
You’ll be glad to know that the interface, once you are allowed into the program, is very easy to work with. You get all of the stats you need to find out how you are performing and what services your customers are choosing.
On the left, you’ll see your earnings for a selected period of time, and then you’ll visualize the number of clicks and signups you’ve managed to collect in the same date range.
The dashboard also makes it easy for you to look at the settings, read the terms again, or contact someone to ask them a question, in case you’ve run into an issue that needs fixing.
And of course, you can also come across your Bluehost affiliate link. You can customize it as per your wish so that you use it with other marketing materials that come from the company or that you might be allowed to use as per Bluehost’s terms (banners and the like). Once you start using the link, you’ll see all the stats you need to be aware of in the dashboard.
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What can you promote?
We know that Bluehost deals with web hosting, so that’s all good, but let’s take a look at some of the other products or services you might be able to promote to your audience and earn commissions from them purchasing them.
The company sells the following:
- Shared hosting
- Dedicated hosting
- VPS hosting
- WordPress hosting
- WooCommerce hosting
- Domain names
Bluehost has a pretty neat website builder these days, which can be used by anyone, regardless of their previous skills. There are three main plans available for this feature and they include all the other things, such as a free SSL certificate, the domain for one year, hundreds of design templates, the hosting itself, as well as email marketing.
The cheapest plan costs $2.95 per month, the average one (made for small businesses and ecommerce shops) is priced at $9.95 per month, while the largest one available costs $24.95 per month. These are all discounted prices that people can benefit from during the first 12 months of using the service.
Once a year has gone by, the prices are different: $10.99/month for the Basic plan, $14.99/month for the Pro plan, and $24.95 for the largest one, also known as ‘Online Store’.
The Shared Hosting plans are just as affordable, with the Basic one starting at $2.95/month (normally $9.99) and the largest one being priced $13.95/month (normally $28.99).
As it was to be expected, dedicated hosting costs considerably more, so the Standard plan is priced at $79.99 (discounted) per month, with the full price being $119.99.
In any case, most of the other services are quite budget-friendly and customers can rest assured that they can always talk to someone from the support team.
Read more: Builderall affiliate program review
How much can you make with the Bluehost affiliate program?
Your Bluehost affiliate earnings will obviously depend on the amount of traffic you get on your blog or website and the number of conversions you get, too. If you manage to do a good job of convincing people to try out the company’s products, you might actually make a pretty decent passive income.
You also don’t have to restrict yourself to creating a review of Bluehost services since they are so varied. You can suggest people to get hosting or use the website builder if they have no technical skills, for example, and you can do so in the other content pieces you regularly publish on your blog.
As for the typical Bluehost affiliate commission rate that you can expect, we’ll just say that it’s much higher than you might expect. You get $65 for every person that you get to sign up for a plan, whether that is a yearly plan or one that spans over a period of three years.
Some affiliates, particularly those that have excellent performance, can negotiate their commission rate and can even reach the threshold of $100 per sale. But for that, you’d have to make sure you refer customers to Bluehost on a regular basis.
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Bluehost affiliate payout
Bluehost affiliate marketing largely relies on PayPal, so if you currently do not use this financial service or for some reason, you’ve had your previous account banned, you might not even be able to become a Bluehost affiliate at all.
The payments are processed instantaneously through something called MassPay. There aren’t any fees (besides the PayPal ones, of course) you can expect.
While the date you can expect your earnings to hit your account is the 16th of every month or the last day of that particular month (whether that be 28, 30, or 31), there is a waiting period that the company uses to make sure that the commissions are OK in every way.
While some companies use the NET60 system, meaning that you have to wait for two whole months before being able to withdraw your money, it actually tends to vary with Bluehost. In general, you can expect the verification process to last anything between 45 and 60 days.
Read more: Systeme.io affiliate program
Pros and cons to being a Bluehost affiliate
As is the case with any other affiliate program out there, regardless of its niche, there are both advantages and disadvantages that you have to consider before deciding to market anything to your readership.
We’d say that one of the most significant pros would have to be how easy everything is. Creating an account for Bluehost affiliate marketing doesn’t take a lot of time and you can also find out in a short amount of time whether your application was approved or not. The dashboard is also very easy to work with and shows you all the info you need.
It’s quite nice that Bluehost doesn’t refuse any applications from people who do not already use their services. Anyone is free to join and there’s also no cost involved in the process.
Creating an affiliate link is super easy and so is customizing it. You can make your own banner ads without having to embed any complicated code or anything else.
Wrapping up some of the reasons you should consider becoming a Bluehost affiliate, we’ll also add the fact that the basic packages do not cost a fortune. So even if someone gets the most basic plan and pays just $3 per month for a year (meaning $36 off the bat), you will still get your $65 commission.
But Bluehost affiliate marketing also comes with a fair share of cons. One of them is the somewhat long waiting period (45-60 days before your commissions are approved). Then there’s the fact that you have a withdrawal limit, so even if you make a sale and you get $65, you can’t withdraw that money until you’ve registered at least one additional sale. But once the 2 sales are done, you don’t have this limit anymore.
Something else that might not make this program right up your alley is the fact that if someone goes from the Pro plan to the Basic one, for example, your earnings will experience a deduction in this sense. But in a way, that’s something you ought to have expected.
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The Bluehost Affiliate Program vs. Other Web Hosting Affiliate Programs
Bluehost vs. HostGator
These two are a little different. Although both companies offer very similar services, the affiliate programs are shaped uniquely. For example, HostGator has a tiered system where if you refer between 1-5 people per month, you make $50 per each. But if your referral number goes up, so do your earnings.
We suggest checking out our HostGator affiliate program review for more information.
Bluehost vs. A2 Hosting
This one is a little different in that although it has the same tiered payout structure as HostGator and the other program we will discuss below, it’s a little more difficult for affiliates to get to the threshold. For example, while on HostGator, you could reach the $75 commission by referring 6 people, with A2 Hosting, you need to refer at least 11.
There is a 90-day tracking cookie available, so at least there’s that. Also, A2 Hosting does not use the Net60 system, so you’ll be able to get paid after 45 days instead of two months.
Bluehost vs. SiteGround
SiteGround has also gotten very popular in the past few years and once the brand solved some technical issues they had over a period of time, they got right back on track to offering excellent services.
The SiteGround affiliate program is basically much the same as the HostGator one in that it uses the same tiered system and the money that affiliates can make with it are also identical.
Read more: Best home security affiliate programs
Final thoughts
While you shouldn’t solely focus on the money you can make by promoting web hosting services, we’d say that with Bluehost, you have a pretty good chance of creating passive income with as little effort as possible.
If you’d prefer something that can make you even more money, perhaps it would be time for you to look into services like Flywheel or Kinsta (both of which have a commission that can go up to $500).
All in all, Bluehost is a good company, so if you were to choose between several different providers, we’d say that it would be the winning one.
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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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