Top domains and hosting products

What to promote in 2020

Affiliate channels have become a powerful tool for audiences to discover new products. Becoming an affiliate marketer is a big leap into the online world of monetization. It requires hard work, charisma, and perseverance to succeed.

Forrester Consulting conducted a survey that reported affiliate marketing will grow an average rate of 10% by 2020. The majority of companies surveyed revealed that their affiliate partnerships yielded more than 20% of annual sales. With these numbers, it is clear that affiliate marketing has come of age as a major contributor to sales for companies both big and small.

Given these statistics, it’s wise to look into trends and forecasts for the year to come. Keeping up with the latest developments will help you scale your business and rise above the competition.

The forecast for 2020

Taking a broad view for 2020, affiliate marketing will see a strong growth led by powerful content. Videos are continuing to lead the way for many affiliates, and those with a great creative hook and strong audio-visual skills will continue to benefit from this trend.

Indirect discounting is another trend to watch for 2020. Online stores were undercut with the ban on direct discounting via online platforms. With the rush to find an alternative, affiliate marketers were able to step in by charging a commission for traffic directed to sales websites. The indirect discount is where the affiliate marketers then share part of the commission with the customer in the form of a cash-back incentive.

Lifestyles across the globe are changing. With brick-and-mortar shops being consolidated or going out of business, online shopping is offering anything that can be shipped remotely to placate consumer’s needs. Why jump in the car and spend money on gas and time when you can take of those necessary tasks from your home office? More and more shops will be running affiliate programs to get in on the incredible ROIs possible. As an affiliate marketer in 2020, it’s a good time to leverage these trends to your advantage.

Namecheap’s Affiliate Marketing Tips & Trends for 2020 takes a deep-dive into recommendations such as:

Being phone-friendly

Optimizing for voice search

Turning your attention to influencer marketing

Prioritizing user-safety & security

Branching out in social media beyond Facebook & YouTube

What’s new in top domains?

2019 was an exciting year for lucrative domains. One of the biggest sales went to Super.com which sold for $1.2 million in the first quarter, with Great.com coming in second at $900,000. Cryptocurrency domain names featured prominently in popularity with names such as Tokens.com, Liquid.com, and Dax.com.

Unusual, creative domain names made a big splash in 2019 as well. Online.casino sold for $10,000, Design.online sold for $57,500 and Talk.show sold for $50,000. These big sellers demonstrate the rising popularity of alternative domains and the future of internet business.

Perhaps the oddest turn of events in domains came from France.com. A domain owned by a private citizen since 1994, the government of France seized the domain in a lawsuit. The original owner has now countersued and accused the government of cybersquatting. Mashable’s report hints that he may be able to get back his beloved France.com if only used outside the country’s borders. A strange legal case indeed, and one to watch!

According to Namecheap’s Domain Industry Report, .com is still the leader in domain extensions which serves as a global standard. gTLDs (generic top-level domains) remain .com, .info and .org, however newcomers such as .online, .club and .space are making big strides.

2020 is already seeing much of the same trends. However, as .com’s become more elusive, gTLDs will be the newer market to watch. For those interested in purchasing a catchy, stand-out TLD, now is the time.

What’s new in hosting?

Web hosting has evolved over the years to become more than just a place to park your website. Providers offer extensive solutions-based packages that offer comprehensive technical support to their users.

Shared hosting is a good option to consider when choosing a provider. A shared hosting plan consists of multiple websites that share the resources from one main server. It gives you access to a portion of those resources, making for a convenient and less expensive solution as a small business owner. A great low-maintenance option for building your online presence, there are some key points that customers should look for when considering which company’s plans are the best:

Bandwidth

Storage

Scalability

Customer & Technical Support

Location of servers

Easy account management

Website builders

SSDs (Solid State Drives)

Automated Backups

Last but not least: Pricing

Namecheap’s managed WordPress hosting, EasyWP, is a ground-breaking economical solution. With three plans to choose from, Starter, Turbo, and Supersonic, you can host your affiliate site with Namecheap and keep everything in one place. Cheap WordPress hosting with top-of-the-line amenities such as Namecheap’s in-house cloud storage, SSL backups, and more.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are highly-configurable options that provide a great deal more flexibility than shared hosting. A VPS server is still a shared environment, but differs in the way server resources are allocated. VPS is the right choice for developers, webmasters, and resellers who want to maintain the servers, and for any resource-intensive websites.

A VPS is a single physical server but is partitioned as multiple, separate servers. With shared hosting, all websites and other data on the server share the same resources, so if one website experiences a lot of traffic, it can affect the others on the same server.

Customer concerns shift with purchasing trends, and 2020 sees a few differences from previous years. Understanding this climate will help you to tailor your marketing program and get out on top of these worries to turn the focus back towards purchasing.

Acknowledge the challenges and build trust with your clients. Security is a big topic of the day. With rampant data breaches making the news, customers look to their web hosts for reassurance their site won’t be hacked or brought down by nefarious entities. Hosting security should always include encrypted storage, safety checks, and SSL certification. Mentioning this in the first minute of your video and at the top of your webpage will assure your audience that you’re sending them to trustworthy products and services.

Namecheap products

Namecheap offers a variety of hosting and domain options to feature to your customers. You can easily tailor your promotions to different subsets of your audience with the levels of service that Namecheap makes available.

For affiliate marketing, VPS Hosting is a great option for your own website. You’re probably strategizing how to scale your business rapidly, and that requires advanced planning so your website can handle the anticipated traffic growth. Starting off with VPS Hosting is a good idea so that you can be prepared for any spike in online attention to your website.

Namecheap VPS Hosting comes with SSD (Solid State Storage) that is 20 times faster than standard storage. Not only that, but VPS also offers fully equipped features with top-level security. Choose a plan that suits your needs: monthly, quarterly, or yearly.Dreaming of the perfect domain name for your nice new site? We always offer the newest Top Level Domains. Get creative with recently-released TLDs such as .to, .page, .app, and .travel. Bookmark the Namecheap TLD page to monitor the latest on upcoming TLD releases and promotions.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing can be an exciting line of work in today’s competitive world of online shopping, referrals, and entertainment. It takes dedication and creativity to build a dynamic audience of followers. The Namecheap Affiliate Program makes it easy with a simple set-up and high conversion rate. Converting that audience into a customer base is a rewarding and high-energy endeavor that, once it starts rolling, will turn into a robust online business.