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Some Big time Affiliates and how they Justify with Promoting BlueHost...etc ??

by discrat
15 replies
I know Pat Flynn is a very well respected Marketer who seems very ethical and very trustworthy.

I have enjoyed his Blog since I started in IM nearly 7 years.

One of his main revenue streams for his 80K+ Net income a month Business is selling Bluehost hosting. He consistently makes over 30K a month just for this one source alone.

I am NOT necessarily saying he is bad for supporting and promoting a Company who was acquired by the very questionable EIG . For those do not know EIG acquired smaller hosting companies like Bluehost and Hostgator.

People are dropping these Companies like flies because they have turned into a customer service nightmare .

From what I gather, EIG does not give a crap about quality and only cares about building a huge conglomerate.

And the news is now out ( for awhile actually) on the streets with their sub standard Service.

Making that kind of money with a company ,which up until last Summer was very reputable and reliable, must present a dilemma with Marketers like Pat .

Pat seems like a really great guy. But I am curios if anyone may know how he has approached this with his business ?? If he has even said anything about this mess with EIG and Bluehost ? Or maybe he has not ?? What are his feelings etc..etc. ?

It does not seem to have had any huge effect on his Affiliate earnings .



- Robert Andrew
#affiliates #big #bluehost #promoting #reconcile #time
  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    Originally Posted by discrat View Post

    .

    One of his main revenue streams for his 80K+ Net income a month Business is selling Bluehost hosting. He consistently makes over 30K a month just for this one source alone.
    Robert,

    There is your answer right there.

    He doesn't care if they have bad customer service. He is making a ton of money with them and he could care less if they are good to their customers or not.
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    • Profile picture of the author discrat
      Originally Posted by talfighel View Post

      Robert,

      There is your answer right there.

      He doesn't care if they have bad customer service. He is making a ton of money with them and he could care less if they are good to their customers or not.
      Can that be verified ?? Not trying to be disagreeable, at all . Just curious if indeed Pat has not mentioned the debacle with EIG or not ?

      I know it would be a tough call. Making the money like this and all of the sudden you pull the switch.

      Some people might ask "do you sell products that you truly, truly believe in " ?

      Wonder what hosting he uses ?
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      • Profile picture of the author talfighel
        Originally Posted by discrat View Post

        Some people might ask "do you sell products that you truly, truly believe in " ?
        If they are making money with it, that is all they care about.

        Bad and ugly customer service.....They could care less. That's the reality.
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      • Profile picture of the author Kay King
        if indeed Pat has not mentioned the debacle
        Maybe he doesn't view it as a 'debacle' - maybe he is happy with his personal situation and not interested in losing that income.

        There would be no point in him slamming EIG - it would be just one more marketer piling on and accomplish nothing except loss of income.
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        • Profile picture of the author discrat
          Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

          Maybe he doesn't view it as a 'debacle' - maybe he is happy with his personal situation and not interested in losing that income.

          There would be no point in him slamming EIG - it would be just one more marketer piling on and accomplish nothing except loss of income.
          Yes, and he just may be using Bluehost for his own business. And everything is working fine. I can see that
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      • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
        Originally Posted by discrat View Post

        Wonder what hosting he uses ?
        According to webhostinghero.com, Pat's site is hosted by Cloudflare (not an EIG company). However, they don't appear to have an affiliate program.

        .
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        • Profile picture of the author kilgore
          Originally Posted by Frank Donovan View Post

          According to webhostinghero.com, Pat's site is hosted by Cloudflare (not an EIG company). However, they don't appear to have an affiliate program.

          .
          Ha! I looked at that too!

          CloudFlare, however, isn't a web host. It's a service you put in front of your web host to speed it up and provide some security benefits (one of the benefits being that your actual web host is obscured behind CloudFlare's services).

          It can be pretty hard to track down the actual hosts for sites using CloudFlare, but as far as I can tell I think he's on linode.com -- which, actually does have an affiliate. Not that it matters all that much. I think it's perfectly reasonable to be an affiliate for something you don't use yourself.
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          • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
            Originally Posted by kilgore View Post

            Ha! I looked at that too!
            CloudFlare, however, isn't a web host. It's a service you put in front of your web host to speed it up and provide some security benefits (one of the benefits being that your actual web host is obscured behind CloudFlare's services).
            It can be pretty hard to track down the actual hosts for sites using CloudFlare, but as far as I can tell I think he's on linode.com -- which, actually does have an affiliate. Not that it matters all that much. I think it's perfectly reasonable to be an affiliate for something you don't use yourself.
            Ah, thanks. I only had a quick look out of curiosity. I agree that it doesn't necessarily matter if he's an affiliate for a different host, although a Whois lookup does gives Bluehost as his domain registrar.

            .
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    • Profile picture of the author kilgore
      Originally Posted by talfighel View Post

      Robert,

      There is your answer right there.

      He doesn't care if they have bad customer service. He is making a ton of money with them and he could care less if they are good to their customers or not.
      Since I can't read Flynn's mind, I can't say whether or not he cares -- but I do think he should care.

      Promoting one shoddy product -- especially one so central to his customers' needs as web hosting -- can seriously jeopardize your customers' trust in your recommendations for all the other products you promote or sell. And it's also not like he either will make $30K with Bluehost or nothing at all. I'm sure he could find another host to promote, make a similar amount of money and keep his integrity.

      That said, it is also possible that his customers haven't had issues with Bluehost. I personally have no experience with them or any EIG company so I certainly don't have any opinion on the matter. But while it certainly does seem they get a bad rap around here (and very possibly deservedly so), it's also possible that other people like them.

      But to the larger question of large earnings promoting a shoddy product, I don't really think it's much of a dilemma. Integrity has to come before profit; otherwise, lack of trust will get in the way of profit anyway.
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        I agree with you completely, Robert.

        I'm constantly surprised by the people I see right here, still promoting these now-EIG-owned companies. To be honest, I suspect that most of them - perhaps through some combination of inertia and fear? - are taking a short-term approach of deciding to keep their heads in the sand, over this issue.

        .
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  • Profile picture of the author techservice
    Robert I runs loads of sites on Bluehost shared, they still offer me a good service, though I agree there is much better options now.

    Promoting BH is much more ethical than many IM products out there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ron Killian
    Course not like BH has been bad forever. Not like it's always been a bad product. Like Hostgator, they use to be good.

    Sad though, that some are jumping to the conclusion that he only cares about the money. Short sighted.
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    • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
      Originally Posted by Ron Killian View Post

      Course not like BH has been bad forever.
      BlueHost was originally owned by fundamentalists that suspended accounts for hosting pages with bad words on them. You were even at risk of suspension if someone dropped the f-bomb in your comments section.
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    Originally Posted by discrat View Post

    One of his main revenue streams for his 80K+ Net income a month Business is selling Bluehost hosting. He consistently makes over 30K a month just for this one source alone
    The absolute #1 commandment of reading the forums and blogs is to never believe income claims. Ever.

    These new era "get rich" preachers know that transparent income reports are a big newbie draw and they've really run with the concept. Many bloggers now do it, but we have no way of knowing if the income claims are true. They could be printing false income reports to drum up interest in their blog that otherwise wouldn't exist.

    What makes me really skeptical of Flynn is that security guard website of his that he claims makes over $25,000 per year from AdSense. That's a lot of money for a site that involves such little work.

    If he is making the money he claims to be making, he should pay an established accounting firm to audit one of his income reports. That would provide a huge credibility boost. Even I would take him seriously after he did that.
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  • Profile picture of the author a2hosting
    Interesting...I can say from a competitive perspective, it can be difficult to compete in the affiliate realm against these guys. In general they are cheaper and can pay a higher CPA. It's up to us other hosts to offer high quality services to hopefully attract some of these types of affiliates.
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