Worth $500k but look at it now...

[aZooZa]

See this first:

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/sold-domains/109648-webhosting-co-uk-sold-500k-through-sedo.html

Then check it out as it is now:

https://www.webhosting.co.uk/

The WHOIS was updated on June 9th. I'm wondering what the deal is with this. Anyone know anything? Seems to be a wasted resource with piss-poor SEO at the moment...

Cheers

Dale

 

[Edwin]

Looks like their main site is at http://top10best.webhosting.co.uk/ - presumably because they're using it for PPC lead gen.

 

[aZooZa]

Yes, I see what you mean. The fatal flaw in that plan is that there's no incentive to click on any menu choices from the main domain page. So type-ins look like bleak revenue candidates...

 

[DaveP]

Dear lord, $500,000 and they left no budget for a good website!? What a waste..

 

[Retired_Member42]

That top10best sub domain ranks for a huge amount of web hosting keywords in the UK SERPs e.g. https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=web+hosting

I'm guessing they're not going to touch the webhsoting.co.uk homepage whilst that sub domain is working so well.

It's not a PPC play, it's dominating the organic results via questionable SEO practices.

 

[martin-s]

Interesting quote on their about us page:

Over 31,250 webmasters have found affordable and reliable web hosting to suit their needs at top10best.webhosting.co.uk

 

[diablo]

Dear lord, $500,000 and they left no budget for a good website!? What a waste..

The part of the equation you are missing is what the site is earning.

 

[Retired_Member42]

Especially seeing as a lot of (most?) hosting affiliate commissions are recurring monthly...

Really? I thought they were all one off payments? Who offers recurring?

 

[Murray]

The top 10 subdomain is obviously the landing page they want visitors to go on

They're doing it for some kind of SEO manipulation, not sure if there's any kind of real benefit to having the subdomain with the homepage linking to it or if it's just if they run into a penalty they can delete the subdomain and keep webhosting,co,uk clean or something else.

 

[Retired_Member42]

The top 10 subdomain is obviously the landing page they want visitors to go on

They're doing it for some kind of SEO manipulation, not sure if there's any kind of real benefit to having the subdomain with the homepage linking to it or if it's just if they run into a penalty they can delete the subdomain and keep webhosting,co,uk clean or something else.

I'm guessing that's what it is. I'm surprised it's not penalised already given the amount of spammed up domains 301'd to the top10best stuff. If I had to guess I'd say that's exactly what it is. Protection of their main domain.

 

[Murray]

I'm guessing that's what it is. I'm surprised it's not penalised already given the amount of spammed up domains 301'd to the top10best stuff. If I had to guess I'd say that's exactly what it is. Protection of their main domain.

Looks like they've had a couple of hits, aug & dec 2013

http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/top10best.webhosting.co.uk?db=uk

But nothing that's wiped them out

 

[Retired_Member42]

Looks like they've had a couple of hits, aug & dec 2013

http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/top10best.webhosting.co.uk?db=uk

But nothing that's wiped them out

Perhaps the webspam team aren't digging enough through the 301's and are just treating the sub domain at face value as it's quite clean in comparison.

 

[retired_member33]

Not the best way to use a premium domain imo but they still seem to rank wel for terms as web hosting, cheap web hosting etc..

 

[mtalk]

Wow thats a true premium name without its own identity I feel other than the cost it was purchased for.

 

[mdrussell]

Especially seeing as a lot of (most?) hosting affiliate commissions are recurring monthly...

Nope, most are 1-time balloon payments. Huge headline prices but they'll only pay you in 1 in 3, or 1 in 4 sales to make the numbers add up.

The hosting affiliate market is horrible. It's spawn the rise of EIG and others that give web hosts a bad name.

 

[Edwin]

It's not exactly a hosting company, but we still get cheques from AWeber (autoresponder/newsletter hosting service) for leads sent over a decade ago that keep on renewing their service. So there are decent recurring commission affiliate programs out there, if you can just sniff them out...

 

[Blossom]

Recurring commission is more of a US hosting thing.

E.g. Dreamhost: "And how much will you earn? You decide! Either get 10% forever of everything your referrals (plus 5% for people they refer!) spend on hosting with us, or choose to just get a $97.00 one-time payment (plus $5 for sub-referrals!) per referral"

 

[martin-s]

It's not exactly a hosting company, but we still get cheques from AWeber (autoresponder/newsletter hosting service) for leads sent over a decade ago that keep on renewing their service. So there are decent recurring commission affiliate programs out there, if you can just sniff them out...

We tried Aweber, but they haven't kept up with technology. There are much better alternatives now, not least sendy.co which is self-installed but mailed out via Amazon AWS SES.

 

[mdrussell]

I used to work for a company that were very close to EIG, so that's what led me to believe that the commissions were recurring.
Maybe that was just back in the day?

Thanks for the correction, though. Definitely gives other acorners some factual/up-to-date knowledge from someone actually from within that industry.

Some do, but it is still a small percentage. The vast majority are still one-time upfront high value amounts.

This said, 12-18 months of Panda and Penguin have hurt a lot of the thin/weak affiliate sites and we're starting to see a downward trend in affiliate - at least from the crappy top 10 list style sites.

Matt

 

[Edwin]

We tried Aweber, but they haven't kept up with technology. There are much better alternatives now, not least sendy.co which is self-installed but mailed out via Amazon AWS SES.

My post wasn't meant to promote Aweber - why should I? - but simply to point out that long-term recurring affiliate programs do exist.