Reseller and affiliate programs are popular ways for bloggers, individuals, freelancers, web designers, firms, and web developers to generate additional profits. While both resellers and affiliates act as a middleman between providers and customers, they are quite different in terms of how they work and what they offer.
In this article, we will compare reseller and affiliate programs and provide an in-depth analysis of their pros and cons to help you make an informed decision about which one is best for your business or personal goals.
Key Highlights
In this article, you will learn that:
- A reseller program is a business model where a company allows individuals or businesses to resell their products or services under their own brand.
- Affiliates typically promote the company’s products or services through a unique affiliate link and earn a commission for each sale or lead that is generated through that link.
- The reseller typically purchases the products or services at a discounted price and then sells them to customers at a markup.
- An affiliate program is performance-based marketing where a business rewards its affiliates for each customer or leads they bring to the company.
- The use cases of a reseller program are to offer additional services, start a new business, or grow a side hustle.
What is a Reseller?
A reseller is a company or individual who purchases web hosting products or services with the intention of reselling them to potential customers to upsell their services or start a web hosting business.
They act as a middleman between the provider of the products or services and the end customer. Resellers typically purchase these products or services at a discounted rate and then mark them up to make a profit.
This business model allows resellers to offer their customers a wider range of products or services without having to invest in the infrastructure or resources required to produce them. The hosting package provider will take care of the hardware, software and general infrastructure required to host the customers’ websites.
As a reseller, you can sign up for a reseller program and migrate your clients’ websites to earn more revenue and support them.
Use Cases of Reseller Hosting
In the web hosting industry, reseller hosting programs can be used in different ways. Understand the various uses of reseller hosting programs and determine which one aligns with your business objectives and goals.
Start A New Firm
As a reseller, you have the opportunity to enter the web hosting market and provide hosting services to your customers under your own brand name. This can be a great way to start a new business, as it allows you to offer a valuable service to your target audience or niche without having to invest in expensive infrastructure or server maintenance.
Before you start your reseller hosting business, it is important to:
- Create a proper business plan - This plan should include your target audience, pricing strategy, marketing plan, and customer service strategy.
- Differentiate your services from the competitors - By offering unique features, better customer service, or a more competitive pricing structure, you can attract customers to your business.
To start a reseller hosting business, you must purchase a hosting plan from a hosting provider. These plans usually come with a web-based control panel that allows you to manage your customers’ accounts and tools for billing and customer support.
Provide Additional Services
As a web developer or designer, offering reseller hosting services to your clients can be a great way to add additional revenue and value to your business. You can help your clients replace their previous hosting provider with your own reseller hosting brand or business. The parent company will handle server maintenance, uptime, support requests, and software updates on behalf of your clients.
- Offer hosting services to your existing pool of clients
- Doesn’t require any specific hosting knowledge
- Low startup cost
- Offers scalability, a great option for businesses looking to expand their offerings.
This allows you to offer hosting services under your own brand, while the parent company handles the technical aspects of maintaining the servers and providing support to your clients.
Develop A Side Hustle
Starting a reseller hosting service as a side hustle can be a great way to earn additional income if you already have a blog or website that discusses website-related topics. By including information about your reseller hosting business on your blog or website, you can attract potential customers who are in need of hosting services.
- By promoting your own brand, you can convince readers to choose your services over others by highlighting the benefits and features that your business offers.
- By providing information and guidance on hosting options, you can help readers make informed decisions and avoid the stress of choosing the wrong host or plan for their website.
If you have chosen any of the use cases above, you can read our step-by-step plan on how to start a web hosting business and become a reseller.
Best Reseller Hosting Providers
For more detailed information about the top reseller providers, including their pricing, features, and customer reviews, Check our best reseller hosting providers.
If you’re short on time, here are our top 3 reseller hosting providers that we believe stand out from the rest.
1. HostArmada
You can expect HostArmada’s reseller hosting to provide a perfect balance of price, features, and global reach. HostAdvice fully recommends their services. They offer four reseller hosting plans, with prices varying based on the length of your commitment to their billing cycle. Options include 2 years, 1 year, 6 months, and 1 month.
- White label features on all plans
- Free WHMCS tool (higher-end plans)
- Access to 50 to 200 cPanel accounts
- 99.9% uptime guarantee.
2. Verpex Hosting
You can take advantage of Verpex’s 90% off offer for the first month on their high-performance white label reseller hosting plans. This allows you to host your own customers and resell server space by renting out the allocated space from the plan. With Verpex, you have the freedom to customize and brand your hosting services as your own
- NVMe SSD disk space on every plan
- Unlimited bandwidth
- cPanel accounts
- Fully managed reseller hosting
- 24/7 technical support
3. ScalaHosting
As a reliable reseller hosting provider, Scalahosting allows you to build and grow your reseller hosting business. With their white-label hosting, you can put your own brand name on the products and services provided by Scalahosting and have the freedom to host unlimited domains. Try their service risk-free and cancel at any time if you decide it’s not for you.
- 100% white-label hosting
- 24/7 technical support
- No hidden fees
- Anytime money-back guarantee
Pros and Cons of Reseller Hosting
Reseller hosting programs offer the potential for additional income, but it’s important to weigh the potential downsides as well, as it may limit the growth of your business.
Here are the most commonly discussed pros and cons of a reseller hosting program:
PROS of Reseller Hosting
1. Low-budget startup cost: When starting a reseller hosting business, all you need is a website, a reseller package, and minimal startup costs. This allows you to start without dealing with the headaches of maintenance, operational costs, infrastructure costs, and other expenses that come with starting a hosting company from the ground up.
2. Facilitates business growth: As a reseller, you can earn more money by adding web hosting services to your existing business. This also means that you can keep a consistent flow of web hosting products and services as long as the parent hosting provider does not encounter any issues.
3. Scalability: Starting a web hosting business with a pool of customers or potential clients requires leaving room for growth. As a reseller, you can easily accumulate more resources from your parent host by choosing higher plans. Once you sign up more customers or attract more readers via your blog or marketing efforts, you can get customized and flexible plans to scale your business.
4. Grow your brand: As a reseller, the white label feature means that each of the products and services presented to your clients will show your name. This means that your clients will trust you for the service rendered and will instill that confidence in your brand in their minds. This will mean more money and business growth for you.
CONS of Reseller Hosting
1. Inability to resell at competitive prices: As a reseller, you will be competing with established players who may offer lower prices, making it difficult for you to earn consistent and stable profits. To differentiate yourself and earn a significant profit, you may need to invest a lot of time and effort in finding unique ways to stand out in the market. Additionally, it’s important to note that reselling hosting services may be easy to start, but the level of profit you desire may require significant hard work.
2. You don’t have total control: As a reseller, it’s important to understand that while you may have the ability to rebrand and resell web hosting services under your own brand, you do not have complete control over the technical aspects of the service. The parent web host is responsible for maintaining and managing the back-end infrastructure, and if any issues arise, you will need to rely on the host to resolve them. The quality of the hosting service will depend on the parent host, so it’s important to choose a reputable and reliable parent host to ensure the best service for your customers.
What is an Affiliate?
An affiliate program is a way for individuals or businesses to earn commission by promoting a company’s products or services.
To get into an affiliate program, an individual or business must first identify a niche they are interested in and create content for it. The company will then provide a unique link for the affiliate to include on their website or in their content. When someone clicks on this link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission.
For example, Amazon offers an affiliate program that allows businesses and bloggers to earn commissions by promoting their products. As an affiliate, you would work as a sales representative for the company by including links on your website or in your content. Overall, affiliate programs are a great way for businesses and individuals to earn money by promoting products or services they believe in.
Types of Affiliate Programs
There are three main types of affiliate programs:
1. Unattached Affiliate Program
These are basic pay-per-click affiliate marketing campaigns where the affiliate has no presence or authority in the niche of the product they are promoting. There is no direct connection between the affiliate and the end consumer, and the affiliate’s main role is to put an affiliate link in front of potential customers through various advertising platforms such as Google Adwords or Facebook ads, in the hope that they will click on the link, buy the product, and earn a commission.
2. Related Affiliate Program
This type of program is where the affiliate has some sort of online presence, such as a blog, podcast, videos, or social media, and promotes products related to their niche, even though they do not use them.
3. Involved Affiliate Program
In this type of program, the affiliate has used a product or service, truly believes in it, and personally recommends it to their audience. The product is integrated into its content and becomes a necessary part of the audience’s process.
Best Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs allow individuals or businesses to earn commissions by promoting products or services from a chosen brand. One can establish a profitable affiliate businessby creating a profile on an affiliate platform and selecting a brand to promote.
Here are the top 3 affiliate programs to consider:
1. Amazon Associates
As an Amazon affiliate, you can join the Amazon Associates program, one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the world. This program helps content creators, publishers, and bloggers to earn commissions by monetizing their traffic. By using the easy link building tools, you can recommend Amazon products to your audience and earn up to 10% commission from qualifying purchases and programs. Amazon’s competitive conversion rates can help maximize your earnings potential. This program is a great way to earn extra income by promoting Amazon products to your audience.
2. ClickBank
As a ClickBank affiliate, you have the opportunity to join a program that has paid over $5.7 billion in affiliate commissions in the last 5 years. With over 100,000 affiliates recommending winning products on the ClickBank marketplace to their audiences, you can earn money by promoting products without creating your own. ClickBank’s track record, amazing offers, reliable payments, and high-quality products make it a great platform to grow your affiliate business. By joining the ClickBank affiliate program, you can take advantage of the earning potential and resources available to help you succeed.
3. eBay Partner Network
As a member of the eBay Partner Network, you have the flexibility to choose the affiliate model that best fits your business. Once you’ve chosen a model, you can integrate it with eBay’s global inventory. As your users engage with the eBay platform and make purchases, you will earn a commission on each qualified sale. The eBay Partner Network provides a unique opportunity for you to earn revenue by promoting eBay’s wide selection of products to your audience.
Pros and Cons of Affiliate Program
Affiliate marketing is not a “get rich quick” scheme and requires effort and research to be successful. It depends on the relevance and demand of the niche and the perceived value of the promoted product or service to the audience.
Here are some of the most popular pros and cons of an affiliate program:
Pros of Affiliate Program
1. Easy to start: Affiliate programs are relatively easy to get started with compared to starting a reseller hosting business. All you need to do is understand what an affiliate link is and how to create one. Once you have your unique link, you can promote it on your website or through other social media marketing channels.
2. Consistent passive income: Earning consistent passive income through an affiliate program is possible, but it requires effort and understanding of what it takes. Building trust with your audience is crucial, as it will lead to them trying out the products or services you recommend. By offering value through your website content or social media channels, you can earn money without worrying about operational costs. Additionally, you can have multiple affiliate partners as long as they align with the needs of your audience, increasing the potential for sales.
3. Less task and commitment: Running an affiliate program requires less commitment, responsibility, and tasks compared to reseller programs. There is no liability on your part, and your only task is to promote a third-party product or service on your website that your audience can benefit from. You don’t have to worry about delivering the product/service or providing customer support.
Cons of Affiliate Program
1. Sales are not guaranteed: Even if a customer clicks on an affiliate link, they may not be ready to make a purchase at that moment, or the product or service may not be what they are looking for. Additionally, many affiliate programs only pay commissions on confirmed sales, so even if a customer clicks on an affiliate link, the affiliate will not earn a commission unless the customer actually makes a purchase.
2. Commission based: The profit earned is directly tied to the number of conversions or sales made through the affiliate’s promotions. This means that the potential profit is limited and cannot be increased through upsells or additional infrastructure investments, as is possible with a reseller program. Additionally, the revenue may be uncertain and depend on the sales performance of the affiliate.
Reseller vs Affiliate Program – Which One Should You Choose?
Whether to choose a reseller program or an affiliate program depends on your goals and the nature of your business. Both types of programs can be beneficial, but they are suited for different types of individuals.
- A web designer or developer may find a reseller program more beneficial as they can upsell their services to their clients.
- A blogger or influencer may find an affiliate program more suitable, as they can promote a company’s products or services to their audience and earn commission from successful sales.
Both reseller and affiliate programs have their own set of benefits and drawbacks.
Reseller programs generally:
- Require more involvement, offer more control, and demand customer support.
- Demand a greater commitment and investment of time and resources.
On the other hand, Affiliate programs:
- Are more passive, with less involvement in the day-to-day operations of the business, and do not require customer support.
- Are commission based and success depends on the sales performance of the affiliate
Ultimately, it’s important to carefully evaluate your options and determine which program aligns best with your business goals and audience.
Next Steps: What now?
- Find the Best Reseller Hosting Plan or Affiliate program
- Build a Website
- Promote your product or service
Further reading – Useful Resources
Here are a few additional resources you can explore to delve deeper into reseller vs affiliate programs:
