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When it comes to affiliate marketing, hosting is a juicy industry with high commissions. In fact, it's not uncommon to see commissions well north of $200, which… well, you know how numbers work. That's high!
Beyond that, you have a growing number of people looking for recommendations for hosting. More and more businesses are moving online, and it seems like even your grandma is getting ready to start her own lifestyle blog.
When it comes to choosing a platform to build that website, most people choose WordPress. In fact, WordPress powers almost one-third of all the websites on the Internet, and it's especially popular with first-time webmasters.
Here's how the threads of those stories connect to create a great affiliate marketing opportunity:
Lots of people want to build a website. People need web hosting for their websites. Most people will choose WordPress as the tool to build their website. Ergo, lots of people are looking for web hosting for WordPress.
So if you can guide people toward web hosting that's going to make it easy for them to create and manage a WordPress site, you're putting yourself in a great position to make the sale.
Enter Kinsta…
What Is Kinsta?
Kinsta is a popular managed WordPress host. That means they only host WordPress, which, if you recall from a moment ago, is by far the most popular way for regular people to build a website.
By focusing exclusively on WordPress, Kinsta is able to offer lots of value-added features like:
- Pre-installed WordPress sites (so you can sell visitors on how easy it is to get started)
- Automatic backups
- Easy staging sites so that people can test changes
- WordPress-specific performance optimizations
They also do really well in independent performance testing. For example, here's what Review Signal had to say about them:
“It's almost boring writing about Kinsta. 100% uptime. 0 Load Impact errors. 3 Load Storm errors. Another Top-Tier performance that I've come to expect.”
All those factors mean that Kinsta is a pretty easy sell to people who are looking to start a WordPress site. And more importantly, those things mean:
- Higher conversion rates
- Lower refund rates
- …more money in your pocket
Kinsta's Affiliate Program Is Built For Passive Revenue
There's also another thing that makes Kinsta's affiliate program unique for generating passive income.
With most hosting affiliate programs, you get paid a one-time commission. So you might get a big upfront payday, but that referral will never put another cent in your wallet after they sign up.
Sure, that kind of is passive income. As long as you have a steady stream of people coming to your site, you'll keep pulling in money. But your revenue is still dependent on you being able to continue successfully marketing your site.
If your traffic dries up, so does your revenue.
Kinsta's affiliate program takes a different approach, though.
First off, you do still get that big upfront payday — Kinsta's initial commission ranges from $50 to $500 depending on which plan a user signs up for.
But here's the really interesting part:
Kinsta also gives you an ongoing 10% commission for as long as that person remains a customer.
That's a big deal! That really is passive income. Your site could fall off a cliff in Google tomorrow, but you'd still be earning commissions without even needing to get out of bed.
Kinsta's churn rate is also under 5%, which means that most Kinsta customers stick around and become long-term customers (and long-term passive revenue for you).
You can play around with the calculator on Kinsta's affiliate page to see how that passive income can quickly build up:
Behind the recurring revenue, here are some other reasons to consider the Kinsta affiliate program.
No Volume-Based Commission Tiers
With Kinsta, there's no gut-wrenching feeling of “if I could've just earned one more commission I would've doubled my commission rate.” Instead, you get the same commission whether you refer one sale or 100 sales (of course, your passive recurring income will grow a lot faster if you refer more people).
Prorated Commissions If Users Upgrade After Signup
While there are no volume-based commission tiers, Kinsta does offer four different commission levels depending on the plan a user signs up for:
- Enterprise plans – $500
- Business plans – $150
- Pro plan – $100
- Starter plan – $50
But here's the cool thing:
Your commissions are calculated over a 60-day period. So if someone signs up for a Starter plan and then upgrades to a Pro plan within those 60 days, you'll get paid the prorated commission for the percentage of those 60 days that the customer spent on the Pro plan.
Here's an example of how that works:
A Custom Built Affiliate Dashboard With Real-Time Tracking
Kinsta didn't like the existing affiliate solutions so they built their own affiliate system, complete with easily accessible reports:
Beyond just generally looking pretty nice, the custom dashboard gives you a ton of options for tracking your affiliate efforts in real time.
All your data shows up right away, and you can drill down to see exactly what's happening with each referral, including information about both your one-time and ongoing commissions.
60-Day Tracking Cookies
The people you refer won't always be ready to buy right away. Especially in the hosting industry, people like to poke around and see what their options are.
That won't affect your commission, though, as Kinsta has a 60-day tracking cookie.
That means you still get credited for the sale if:
- You refer someone on Day 1
- They leave without buying
- They come back on Day 59 and make a purchase
ITP 2.0-Ready So You Don't Lose Safari Commissions
ITP, short for intelligent tracking prevention, is a setting in Apple's Safari browser that limits which cookies web-based tracking solutions — like affiliate programs — have access to.
So if you use an affiliate program that isn't ITP 2.0 ready, you could be missing out on 15%+ of your commissions (that's Safari's market share).
Kinsta's affiliate program only uses first-party cookies, though, which means that all of your Safari referrals will still be properly tracked and credited to you.
How To Get Started With The Kinsta Affiliate Program
To get started building a passive income stream with the Kinsta affiliate program, you can head here to sign up.
And once you've signed up, you can join Kinsta's official Make Money with WordPress Facebook group to learn how to more effectively boost your affiliate income.
