Bluehost Affiliate Program (Updated 2023)
It seems like every blogger promotes Bluehost. Every ‘’how to start a blog’’ post says that Bluehost is the best hosting for new bloggers.
Ever wondered why? It’s because the Bluehost affiliate program has a very high affiliate commission.
Bluehost affiliate program commission is $65.
No wonder everyone wants to be a Bluehost affiliate.
Bluehost is also a reputable company with the best hosting services for new bloggers. They have free domain name registration, free SSL certificate for 1 year, and 24/7 support ready to help you with any problems you may have along your blogging journey.
As an affiliate marketer, you should promote products that can help your readers and those you have used yourself.
Bluehost Affiliate Program Overview
Commission: $65
Cookie Duration: 90 days
Where to Join: Impact
Payment Options: PayPal, Wire Transfer
If you only promote products based on just the commission, you will destroy the trust you build with your readers sooner or later, as many high-paying affiliate programs offer low-quality products.
As a Bluehost affiliate, you will earn a high commission, but at the same time, you will recommend quality hosting to your audience.
These two factors combined make the Bluehost affiliate program very attractive to any affiliate marketer.
Bluehost Affiliate Program
For a very long time, Bluehost has had an in-house affiliate program that could have been joined through the Bluehost website.
In 2022, Bluehost announced that the Bluehost affiliate program is moving to the Impact Radius platform.
It is no longer possible to join the in-house affiliate program. Bluehost affiliates that were part of the in-house program had to switch to Impact till July 29, 2022. After this date, all Bluehost affiliate links from the in-house program stopped earning commissions.
If you don’t use an affiliate link management plugin, it can be really painful when this happens. In this case, you would have to go through all your posts and change all Bluehost affiliate links to the new ones you get in Impact. I recommend checking my post about the best affiliate marketing tools to be prepared for such situations.
Bluehost affiliate program also used to be on CJ Affiliates, but I could no longer find the program in 2023. It seems you can now join in only through Impact Radius.
To join the Bluehost affiliate program, go to the Bluehost affiliate landing page, and at the top, click "Join Now." This will take you to the sign-up page on Impact Radius.
Once you apply, you should get a reply from Bluehost within 48 hours. During holidays, it can take longer.
Currently, the acceptance rate to the program on Impact Radius is 35%.
Even though it may not seem it is a high acceptance rate. For example, the Shopify affiliate program has just 12%.
How does Bluehost decide who can be a Bluehost affiliate?
Unfortunately, Bluehost does not have any specific requirements.
Bluehost only mentions that you need to have a website and some traffic.
We require that applications be submitted with a functioning URL that has relevant content and seems to have some reasonable amounts of traffic driven to the site to ensure that both the affiliate and Bluehost have a mutually beneficial partnership.
Nevertheless, nobody knows what Bluehost considers to be a reasonable amount of traffic.
If you don’t have a website, you will have to create one.
If you plan on focusing on the Bluehost affiliate program, I recommend starting a website with Bluehost hosting. As a Bluehost customer, you can write better hosting reviews and put together better tutorials as you will have personal experience with the interface.
What Products Can You Promote as a Bluehost Affiliate?
Bluehost is best known for its hosting but also provides domain services.
Hosting
Bluehost offers different types of hosting. The most popular and also the cheapest is Bluehost WordPress hosting. Bluehost also offers VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, and other types of hosting.
WordPress shared hosting is the most popular as it is perfect for people just starting a new website on WordPress. However, no matter what plan you choose, you can always install WordPress.
Bluehost has a fixed commission and does not differentiate between what hosting package your visitor has bought. If someone buys expensive dedicated hosting from your Bluehost affiliate link, you will still receive the same commission as if someone bought the cheapest WordPress hosting.
The same applies to hosting upsells like domain privacy. If someone buys any hosting add-ons, your commission will stay the same.
It seems that most of the Bluehost affiliates think that the commission gets raised as everyone also recommends buying the add-ons.
Even if the commission was raised, I would still not promote them. None of the Bluehost upsells are worth the money, but that’s just my opinion.
Domains
Bluehost is also a domain registrar, so you can also promote domains. Bluehost provides a widget allowing your readers to check domain availability without leaving your website. If the domain is available, they click on a button and are redirected to Bluehost, where they can register it.
However, please note that you will not receive a commission if someone registers just a domain.
You only receive a commission for hosting purchases.
So why am I even mentioning domains here?
Because Bluehost offers a free domain for 1 year with all their hosting plans. Logically, most people who register domains also need hosting, so purchasing Bluehost hosting is a great deal if someone wants to start a new website and they don’t have a domain registered yet.
Bluehost Affiliate Program Commission
Bluehost has a high $65 commission that you receive for each customer who completes the order process for any of their hosting packages.
Your commission can be raised to up to $130 per hosting sign-up if you constantly get a lot of referrals every month.
Bluehost does not have a specific sales tier established for raising your commission.
Once you generate a couple of monthly sales, contact Bluehost and ask if your commission could be raised.
I contacted Bluehost after getting only around 10 referrals a month, and they raised my affiliate commission to $85.
The sooner you contact Bluehost for the first increase, the better. If you already had 20 referrals, you would get an increase to $85. But if you asked earlier, you could already have a second increase and earn over $100 per referral.
However, even if your commission isn’t raised, the default $65 commission is still huge.
You may be wondering how Bluehost can afford to pay such high commissions.
Hosting is a type of service for which website owners must pay continually. You simply cannot have a website without hosting.
Hosting companies know that most customers stay at least a couple of years, so they can afford to pay higher affiliate commissions.
Your Bluehost affiliate link has 90 days long cookie and last-click credit policy.
Since the program is hosted on Impact, you can withdraw your commission with PayPal or a wire transfer.
Can You Make $1000 a Month as a Bluehost Affiliate?
For most of my affiliate program reviews, I write a paragraph about the difficulty of earning $1000 a month, which is a benchmark many new affiliate marketers have.
For affiliate programs with low commission, such as the Walmart or Target affiliate programs, you usually need to have at least 5000 visitors a month reading your content with affiliate links to generate $1000 a month (provided you have a good conversion rate). With the Bluehost affiliate program, it’s different.
To earn $1000 a month with a $65 commission, you only need to generate around 15 sales.
Fifteen sales are not that many. If you had a 1% conversion rate, you would need only 1500 people to view your content to make $1000 a month.
However, you have to keep in mind that Bluehost is one of the most popular affiliate programs, and so there are a lot of Bluehost affiliates you have to compete with.
The competition is even tougher than competitive Amazon Associates since with Bluehost, you only earn a commission for generating sales for a single product: Bluehost hosting.
Amazon has an enormous number of products, so even though there are many Amazon affiliates, you can find products to promote that are less competitive.
Bluehost affiliates promote a single product, so you can imagine how competitive the keywords around Bluehost hosting are.
The commission is high, so you need to generate fewer sales, but those sales won’t be easy.
The keywords that bring you the highest conversion rates, such as "Bluehost review" or "how to start a blog," are very competitive.
How to Make Money With the Bluehost Affiliate Program
Making money as a Bluehost affiliate isn’t easy, but that doesn’t mean you should not join the program.
You will have to put more effort compared to less competitive affiliate programs, but it’s well worth it.
Once you receive your first email from Bluehost informing you that you have earned your first $65, you will have a fantastic feeling and be pumped to put even more effort into Bluehost promotion and earning more.
Below I list some examples of how you can approach promoting Bluehost.
Write Blog Posts About Starting a Blog
Didn’t you just say moments ago that ‘’how to start a blog’’ posts are super competitive?
Countless blog posts target this keyword, and your chances of getting to a higher-ranking position are slim.
But you can write a niche article on how to start a blog.
A friend had a big success targeting the keyword "blog for dad."
You have to do keyword research and look for relevant keywords with a decent search volume and lower keyword difficulty.
Once your domain has a bigger DA (domain authority), you can try to target keywords that are a bit competitive, but in the beginning, the key to success is finding keywords that are easy to rank for.
Include Bluehost on Your Resource Page
Resource pages are popular both with bloggers and website visitors.
People are often interested in knowing what tools the particular blogger uses and recommends.
A resource page helps people decide what tool to choose and discover new tools they didn’t know existed.
Resource pages can earn you a lot of commissions, especially if you have an audience that follows and trusts you.
Publish a Bluehost Review
Many people know about Bluehost and hesitate about whether it is the right hosting for them. People who search for Bluehost reviews are ready to buy, so reviews tend to have very high conversion rates.
If you are a Bluehost customer, you can give your readers a better insight into what Bluehost hosting is like. You can create various tutorials and show them how user-friendly the hosting is.
However, just like with the "how to start a blog" keywords, don’t expect that you will rank for "Bluehost review." It’s also very competitive.
Nevertheless, you can still benefit from having a Bluehost review on your blog.
For instance, you can link to the review from other posts on your blog when suitable.
You can also link to the review from your resource page.
Compare Bluehost With Other Hosting Providers
Bluehost is obviously not the only hosting provider; there are many options.
Big hosting companies have strong marketing campaigns, so almost everyone has heard about a few providers.
You can provide your readers with a detailed comparison so they understand the differences and make a good decision.
However, again most keywords related to hosting comparison are very competitive, and you have to spend some time looking for good keyword opportunities.
If you write a review on Bluehost vs. Siteground, you will not get any visitors as you will never be able to rank such a post.
Take your time and do proper keyword research first before writing any comparison.
Then use SEO tool like Surfer to optimize your content as much as possible.
Bluehost Banners
Most Bluehost affiliates promote Bluehost through banners inside of articles and sidebars.
On Impact Radius, Bluehost provides you with banners of all sizes.
Banners are the easiest method how to promote Bluehost but use it only as a complementary method.
In general, banners have a low click-through rate and don’t bring that many referrals.
Bluehost and PPC Campaigns
The Bluehost affiliate program, just like almost every affiliate program, forbids bidding on branded keywords and trademarked keywords.
You can’t link directly to Bluehost or mention the Bluehost name in the ad copy.
But you can bid on any keywords related to starting a blog and link to your articles with your affiliate links.
However, CPC (cost-per-click) for the best keywords is high.
I would not recommend trying PPC to any new Bluehost affiliate.
PPC can take your affiliate business to the next level, but it is also the hardest to master and can lead to big losses.
Promoting Bluehost as a Website Developer
If a client needs a website, they also need a domain and hosting.
Website developers or digital agencies can easily make extra money with the Bluehost affiliate program.
Clients often won’t have hosting and will ask for a recommendation. All you have to do is send them your Bluehost affiliate link.
I managed to earn quite a lot this way when freelancing on Fiverr.
Conclusion: Should You Become a Bluehost Affiliate?
For a good reason, the Bluehost affiliate program is many affiliates' number one affiliate program.
You get to promote quality hosting for a high $65 commission. Not that many affiliate programs have such high commissions.
If you want to be successful with affiliate marketing in the long run, you need to build an audience and gain their trust. You can only achieve that by promoting products your readers can benefit from.
Bluehost is great hosting with fantastic support, so as a Bluehost affiliate, you promote a quality product and earn a high commission.
What’s also great about promoting Bluehost is that the product is relevant to pretty much any audience.
No matter your niche, some visitors will always want to start their own websites and need hosting.
Nevertheless, the Bluehost affiliate program also has its cons, particularly very high competition. There are just too many Bluehost affiliates.
It doesn’t mean you can’t be successful; just be prepared that it won’t be easy.
Hi, Blogging Lizard.
Hope you are doing well. What an amazing content you wrote. Really an outstanding. I need your help if you can help me to suggest the more way to increase sale with Bluehost affiliate program. Thanks!
Hi Amit,
I am well, thank you. Hope you too. How do you currently promote Bluehost?