Yup, We’ll Pay for Your Hosting…

I have had the opportunity over the past two weeks to carry the news of ServInt’s LA launch to several well known tradeshows that are popular with our clients. Last week I attended both the PubCon and DevConnections conferences in Las Vegas. This week I’ll be at both Interop and Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. I’ve already got to meet a number of clients face to face, which is always fun. I’m going to meet more this week and I can’t wait! I love to hear how our products are being used to build new companies, and I like to hear feedback of all kinds directly from our customers. It’s the way we grow and improve.

I was surprised to have one particular conversation with multiple people, on something I thought was fairly common knowledge. It made me want to get a blog post out as quickly as possible.

More after the jump…

At PubCon I met three different clients, all bloggers, who said the exact same thing to me. The following is paraphrased, but not much, as each conversation was shockingly similar:

Client:
“I’m a happy customer. If you pay for my hosting I’ll blog about you. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

Me:
“You know we do that, right?”

I went on in each case to describe our affiliate program, and how we provide 100% of the value of a month whenever a customer signs up through an affiliate link. I described how bloggers talking about their experiences, frankly, sells a lot of hosting. I talked about how quickly stuff adds up and how we’ve recently needed to start cutting big checks to our top affiliates because they’re making way more from us than they could ever use in hosting credits.

And the response was mixed at first.

What one guy said was that he thought it’d just be easier if he agreed to post once a month about us and we give him a free account and neither of us ever worry about payments going either way. Another said that it sounded like it’d be hard to set things up. To them I responded “Why sell yourself short?” and “It’s easy! And if you don’t find it so just write us and we’ll walk you through every step.”

Our affiliate program is a goldmine for people who use it right. If you have popular content you’re not going to want to settle for just a free account. If you don’t, to be honest a free account wouldn’t last long anywhere – but in general the ability to track the progress and effectiveness of what you’re doing is important for all parties. And that’s what the affiliate program does.

A few weeks ago, ServInt’s Business Intelligence Manager, Eric Morales, wrote a blog post on this exact subject. The post outlined creative ways to use affiliate links in social media as well as tips on navigating a typical affiliate program using ServInt’s as an example.

If you’re a client and you sign up for our affiliate program and blog about it, history has shown that you’ll make money. You may get your account for free for awhile. You may do better than that. The point is that we’re happy to pay for your hosting. You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours.

In the meantime, see you in New York!

Photo by corey olsen, whose wonderful Polaroid blog is here.