Free hosting still viable?

n0other

n0other

be like.no.other™
Dec 18, 2006
55
1
0
Some years ago this was a high profit niche, at least for site flipping. Model was simple, slap layered panel, get free hosting junkies signed up, push hostgator offers to them. Now sometime in the past hostgator put it in their TOS forbidding free hosters to affiliate. Question is, this niche still viable without hostgator? Had an idea to develop some competition for layered panel, not sure it's worth the time now.
 


n0other said:
Some years ago this was a high profit niche, at least for site flipping. Model was simple, slap layered panel, get free hosting junkies signed up, push hostgator offers to them. Now sometime in the past hostgator put it in their TOS forbidding free hosters to affiliate. Question is, this niche still viable without hostgator? Had an idea to develop some competition for layered panel, not sure it's worth the time now.
Click to expand...

There already is competition for LayeredPanel. PM me.
 
Aren't there loads of web hosts paying around $100 a sale? They don't all not allow free host traffic do they? Just send it somewhere else besides hostgator?
 
r3p1v said:
Aren't there loads of web hosts paying around $100 a sale? They don't all not allow free host traffic do they? Just send it somewhere else besides hostgator?
Click to expand...

Just wanted to post same thing. Its not that hg is the only hosting company having affiliate program.
 
r3p1v said:
Aren't there loads of web hosts paying around $100 a sale? They don't all not allow free host traffic do they? Just send it somewhere else besides hostgator?
Click to expand...
super said:
Just wanted to post same thing. Its not that hg is the only hosting company having affiliate program.
Click to expand...


HostGator paid $125/signup for any shared hosting signup if you have enough volume. That includes a monthly plan that costs $9.95 with a coupon code that lowers it to $0.01 for the first month.

That means HostGator was paying $125 for a signup where the cost to the consumer was $0.01, and there were virtually no upsells. So HostGator would need to have an average customer life of over 13 months to break even... and with free hosting traffic quality the average lifetime of a user was far lower than that.

So for a while people were taking advantage of HostGator's incredibly mispriced affiliate program and free hosts would upsell "1 cent hosting". All of the free hosting sites happened because an affiliate program that should've been paying $25/signup was paying 5 times that. Then HostGator realized what was going on and refused to pay all the free hosting companies (I have 5 figures in money that they owe to me from a couple years ago). Then hosting companies started disappearing and LayeredPanel began to die because its entire model was based on HostGator paying $125 for a shit quality sale.
 
A buddy of mine still runs a free hosting service and only has ads on his front pages. Makes about $400/month from it, too. But his server is more than maxed.

I think, though, the best way to make it viable is to start off with the free accounts and slowly start pushing paid accounts to people.
 
cardine: I am a peice of shit and flaked on ASW last minute, sorry I didnt make it. Would love to talk to you about it sometime though - where do you live anyways?
 
deStone said:
cardine: I am a peice of shit and flaked on ASW last minute, sorry I didnt make it. Would love to talk to you about it sometime though - where do you live anyways?
Click to expand...
Pittsburgh during the school year and Baltimore during winter holidays and during the summer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom