Do Cloudways Affiliates Make $10k Per Month in 2023?
Is $10k passive income every month possible as a Cloudways affiliate?
Hosting affiliate programs are a passive income cash cow, but what hosts offer varies wildly. If a host offers sub-par service and support, it’s harder to make recurring income as an affiliate because customers won’t stick around.
If the host’s dashboard is too confusing or it sucks for some reason, your readers will hate you.
Then there’s the affiliate income structure hosts provide –do they pay enough to justify the time spent promoting them?
As Cloudways affiliates and customers, we see both sides of the coin –and have made real money for simply telling readers what we use ourselves.
But we are leaving money on the table, I won’t lie. We don’t go far enough.
This article comes as more of a research project for myself, thinking out loud for you to read –we do alright, average income for this blog is already at 15k-20k USD per month. And Hobo went back to being a one man operation years ago. #humblebrag
I wanted to explore whether it was worth putting more effort into content related to Cloudways, to see if there’s potential to make 10k USD per month just on this one income stream.
If you want to skip ahead and take a look at Cloudways’ affiliate program as you read this, it’s right here.
Spoiler: I opted to start promoting Cloudways more –I mean, we already use them for this blog, we already make money promoting them, and the potential is bigger than what we’re currently doing. I’ll circle back near the end of 2023 with an update, but until then you can read what information led us to become more serious Cloudways affiliates.
Table of Contents
Is Cloudways the Best Web Hosting Affiliate Program?
Web hosting is a lucrative affiliate marketing niche –but success in a competitive niche like this boils down to identifying the right affiliate marketing programs to get behind.
Other than the commission offered, you want to know if the product is good and how well it fares compared to its competitors. How’s their support for difficult customers? You don’t want to invest time promoting a lame duck. You want the best web hosting affiliate program.
Cloudways Affiliate Program
We are strongly attracted to the flexibility Cloudways affiliates get in terms of their payment structure –smaller recurring payments for the life of the customer, or one-off bigger gains? Cloudways affiliate program gives you a choice where most don’t. And it drastically affects your passive income potential (more on that in a minute).
We’ve been affiliates for Siteground, BlueHost, HostGator, Linode, you name it –but to date, we’ve never really crushed it with those brands. We made money, but not Lambo money like we have with other offers.
Mainly because everyone and their grandmother knows about them, starts with them, and promotes them in one of their very first freakin’ blog posts. Trust me, we did that, too. Hosting is one of the first affiliate programs that will accept absolute beginners –so the competition on legacy hosts like the aforementioned is unattractive to me.
Blogs about blogging, everywhere.
Programs for legacy hosts are also rigid; Siteground didn’t pay me my commission unless the customer did something with their hosting, like build a website. That’s kinda’ whiny, shitty behaviour on part of a leading host because I generated a sale that didn’t refund –and frankly, we left Siteground for Cloudways because I think they lost their way. But I’ll save that for other Cloudways-related content that’s in the pipe.
Cloudways is new, it’s changed the game for bloggers who want the best for a fraction of the cost, and there’s a whole lot of people not blogging about them –yet. The Cloudways affiliate program is ripe.
Sign up for the Cloudways affiliate program.
What is Cloudways?
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting provider ideal for entrepreneurs, business owners, and individuals. Managed hosting helps its users to select from a range of leading hosting backend providers and build out their server to spec.
Simply put; the best (and cheapest) hosting is metered “pay only for what you use” and runs on developer-friendly platforms like Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, and others. These developer-friendly platforms are less friendly, however, to normies like you and me. Hard to use, often frustrating.
So Cloudways puts everything under a simple dashboard, easily configurable for beginners yet with functionality professionals appreciate. You can have a site on AWS, Linode, or whoever –and access all your sites in one place. The “managed” term refers to all that integration and automation they’ve done behind the scenes to make it possible (and really, really easy).
Even more simply put; Cloudways makes it easy for average bloggers to access high-end hosting at a price comparable to Siteground or other “beginner” hosts, with practically zero learning curve. You choose your backend provider, choose your hardware, RAM, etc –like a Subway sammich.
Cloudways is ideal for low traffic blogs and high traffic community sites alike. And since users only pay for what they use, it’s a win cost-wise for everyone.
Sign up for the Cloudways affiliate program.
Affiliate Tiers
As one might expect from a nerdy zero-bullshit company, Cloudways affiliate program comes with three payment structures for affiliates to ensure you make the most possible from your audience. These are:
Slab
Slab is performance-based, and the most straightforward model. 4 slabs define how much you will earn. Think of it as 4 levels you need to unlock to receive more commission per sale.
Say you bring up to 5 customers per month, then you’ll earn $50 per sale. If you bring 6-20 customers, you’ll move up the ladder and get $75 per sale. Similarly, for every 21-45 customers, you earn $100 per sale, and for every 46-80 customers, you make $125 per sale. This way, you can earn up to $10k every month!
It’s a very lucrative model that’s motivating for high-performing affiliate marketers and rewards them for extra customers every month. Since it’s a CPA-based model, it’s perfect for performance marketers, entrepreneurs, and extensive media publishers.
Sign up for the Cloudways affiliate program.
Hybrid
This is a more relaxed approach to earning commission from Cloudways affiliate. If you prefer earning a stable, passive income over time instead of making a commission per sale, hybrid is for you.
In the hybrid model, affiliates get paid for the entire lifetime of the customers they bring. The affiliate first gets a $30 upfront bonus and continues to earn 7% for their customer’s invoice for as long as they use Cloudways.
The best part about this model is that you can get the customer once and earn for as long as they stay with Cloudways. Plus, the bigger their invoice gets—for example, when they upgrade their storage or hosting plan—you get a bigger commission!
So this is an ideal way to make money for the long term without having to bring in new customers every month.
This makes it an ideal plan for freelancers, digital agencies, bloggers, and developers.
Sign up for the Cloudways affiliate program.
Custom
If you’re an affiliate ninja, this plan is perfect for you. Once you bring over 80 customers per month, you can unlock the custom plan and earn over $200 per conversion!
There’s no shortage of opportunities when working as a Cloudways affiliate. What I love about their program is that they reward their affiliates based on their performance. This keeps affiliates motivated and tuned in for the long run.
For instance, Tom Dupuis, a full-time affiliate marketer, makes over $10k every month using Cloudways affiliate.
Is Cloudways the Right Choice for You?
While we’ve discussed the generous commission you can earn with Cloudways affiliate, you might still wonder if it’s worth all the hype.
So let’s see why Cloudways affiliate is the perfect choice for you, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned affiliate.
90-day cookie
The affiliate tracking cookie is active for 90 days –that means your potential referrals have 3 months to chew on it before they sign up and you’ll still get a commission.
If you’ve ever promoted other hosts, you’ll know that having an active cookie this long is kinda’ rare.
3 payout methods
Cloudways has 3 payment methods that affiliates can choose from to get paid; via PayPal (threshold $250), via Wire Transfer (threshold $1000), or apply your earnings to your own Cloudways balance (threshold $100). Personally, I’d opt for the wire transfer option and use Wise to get paid.
Referrals count once the customer has paid two months of invoices, which is fine because I don’t know anyone who buys a hosting package for under two months.
Competitive platform
Cloudways blows its competitors out of the water with impressive and competitive features. And no, that ain’t hyperbole.
For starters, users can select from a list of 5 leading hosting providers—DigitalOcean, Vultr, Google Cloud, AWS, and Linode.
Plus, users can have their application on WordPress, Drupal, Magento, WooCommerce, and many more, which are readily backed by Cloudways.
As an affiliate, this means it’s easier for you to attract more users for the platform across various professions.
Low churn rate
The wealth of benefits Cloudways offers has earned it 4.6 ratings on Trustpilot, #1 on G2, and has an NPS of 73.
And if that wasn’t enough credibility, it has a churn rate of under 3%.
As an affiliate, you can be sure that this platform attracts and retains customers who, if you refer, will continue to reap competitive commissions.
Advanced analytics
With analytics on Cloudways, you can track and monitor the progress of your conversions.
But that’s not all.
The Sub ID tracker lets you learn which channel and campaign brings the most conversions. You can see if the conversion is coming from email, website, ads, or other channels, which gives you insights into which channel is performing the best, allowing you to leverage the same.
They accomplish all of this on their own affiliate platform, not that of a third-party. Seasoned affiliates will understand how much it blows when a partner switches from Refersion to Impact Radius, or whatever. You gotta’ change links –even having to change it once is too many times.
Reliable support
Finally, Cloudways offers its affiliates end-to-end support.
Their team of representatives will take you through the onboarding process so you learn all the nitty gritty. Further, their Learning Resource Library contains books to level up your online business game. And the best part is their monthly newsletters that will satiate your appetite for continued learning.
I’ve used their support as both a customer setting up my BuddyBoss install, and as an affiliate getting information to write this article. They unconditionally came through in every expected way.
Join the Cloudways affiliate program.
Join Cloudways Affiliate
Cloudways offers a very competitive affiliate program ideal for freelancers, bloggers, influencers, YouTubers, performance marketers, and entrepreneurs alike. The Cloudways affiliate program has a payout structure that will work for everyone.
Can you make $10k per month passive with it? Our peer Tom does, and I’m going to circle back to update this article after I prove it to myself down the line.
Getting started is as simple as setting up an account, and if you ever get stuck, their customer support team will help you overcome any obstacle.
Selecting the right affiliate program can make or break your passive income in a pool of choices. With Cloudways, you can be assured of earning the biggest bucks and continue earning for a long period –promoting a lesser-known yet superior hosting brand.
So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for the Cloudways affiliate program and generate some extra cash helping users grow their own online business.
