The TopRanked.io Weekly Digest: What’s Hot in Affiliate Marketing [++ A2 Hosting Affiliates Review]

Quick Disclosure: We’re about to tell you the A2 Hosting afiliate program is pretty great. And we really mean it. Just know that if you click on a A2 Hosting affiliate program link, we may earn a small commission. Your choice.

If you’re old enough, then you probably remember phone books.

And if you do, then you probably remember the first SEO hack from back when the SERPs were yellow and the algo was an alphabetical ordering system.

And if you don’t remember those days when AAA111 was a legitimate business name, then fear not.

Those days aren’t over.

TopRanked.io Affiliate Program of the Week — A2 Hosting

When you’re so confident your business is good enough that it’ll beat all your “A1” competitors, what do you call it?

How about A2, as in A2 Hosting?

And with that, we just introduced our affiliate program of the week.

So let’s take a look at what A2 Hosting has to offer.

A2 Hosting — The Customer Perspective

There’s not much point in telling you about the A2 Hosting product itself here. Most of you should at least be familiar with what to expect from a modern web host, even if you’re not familiar with A2 Hosting itself.

So instead, I’m going to tell you how great A2 Hosting is from a customer perspective, starting with the A2 Hosting Trust Pilot page.

That’s about as high as it gets.

But it gets better.

Often, when you opt for a host with decent customer service (which the A2 Hosting rating confirms you’re getting), the usually lose a little in customer service. Here’s an example of what Hetzner looks like in comparison, even though most people have no problem with the product:

But here’s where A2 gets interesting. When you pull up a price-weighted comparison between A2 and more pure-play cloud providers, the value is there. Here’s a comparison between similar servers from A2 Hosting and Digital Ocean from VPSBenchmarks:

So the price-to-performance ratio is better, the customer service is better, plus you get access to a bunch of normal people stuff like WP hosting and managed servers that the cloud guys don’t do.

In short, A2 Hosting delivers a very strong product, no matter how you look at it.

A2 Hosting — The Affiliate Perspective

Now for the fun bit — the A2 Hosting affiliate program (which apparently pays $500k annually to its top affiliate).

There’s a bunch to like about the A2 Hosting program, starting with the commissions.

Sales Per Month	Commission per Sale
1-10	$55
11-15	$75
16-20	$100
21+	$125

And, if you’re really good, A2 Hosting actively encourages you to reach out and negotiate a better deal.

And now for the other things we like about the A2 Hosting affiliate program:

• 90-Day Cookie Life
• Post Affiliate Pro control panel
• Deep linking allowed
• High conversion rates
• Great affiliate managers

A2 Hosting Affiliate Program — The Wrap Up

That should do it for now. If you want to take a closer look, you can head on over to TopRanked.io for our full A2 Hosting affiliate program review.

Or, if all you want to do is get started, head here to sign up as an affiliate with A2 Hosting.

Affiliate News Takeaways — A Right to Repair Deep Dive

Unless you’re a John Deere-ridin’ farmer, or a Louis Rossmann lover, I’m willing to bet one of two things.

My first bet is that you’ve never heard of the “right to repair” movement. And if you have, then my other bet is that you probably didn’t pay much attention to it.

So why am I making this bet, you ask?

Well, this week, I want to tell you that you should be paying attention to it. And, before you ask why you should be paying attention, here, let me give you the answer.

The “right to repair” movement could make you a stack of money.

Are you paying attention now? 

Good.

First, a little background

Once upon a time, back in the good old days, when something stopped working, you didn’t just throw it out and buy a new one.

You fixed it.

But slowly, as the years passed by, your friendly local TV repairman fell by the wayside, only to be replaced by bars full of “geniuses”.

Now, of course, the usual explanation here is that it’s simply more economical to buy new than to repair something. After all, when modern goods are churned out by offshored labor and automated doohickeys, how can the local repair guy possibly compete with brand new?

And, besides, modern devices are so complex that you need post-grad studies in electronics before you should even crack the case.

And, if you look at things a certain way, this is kinda true.

But, of course, as thousands of owner-operated phone repair shops have shown (in partnership with Chinese counterfeiters who figured out they, too, could make phone parts), the whole “it’s cheaper to just buy new” thing is also a bit of a lie.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped the “it’s too expensive/complicated” logic from being stretched to its limits over the years. And, the canonical example pf this is, funnily enough, good ol’ John Deere.

In Deere’s case, they deployed every trick in the book to try and block farmers from repairing their own equipment. This included requiring special tools to install/remove parts, putting software locks in place to disable a tractor if a new part wasn’t ‘activated’ by a John Deere mechanic, only making spare parts available to their own repair centers, and the list goes on.

And, as it turns out, this kind of stuff is really bad for business when you’re a farmer. After all, when time is literally money and the tractor stops working mid-harvest, you don’t want to get it towed to a John Deere repair center 200 miles away where it will sit for a month. You want to fix it right then and there.

And, once upon a time, that’s what they did.

Naturally, as Deere made repairs increasingly impossible, this had made farmers madder and madder. And that motivated them to pick up their pitchforks (because the tractor wasn’t working…) and get out on the campaign trail.

Fast forward to today (actually, it was 4 days ago…), and the angry farmers are starting to make progress, with a district court judge throwing out Deere’s attempts to get the farmers’ case dismissed.

Of course, that doesn’t mean much in the short term. (John Deere’s repair business is apparently worth as much as 6x its equipment sales business, so don’t expect this to end soon.)

But, in the short term, there’s a lot more going on (and that’s where the money for you is).

There’s More to This Than John Deere Tractors

While angry farmers might be one of the pioneers in the whole right-to-repair movement, they’re not the only ones.

In fact, over the last year or so, the whole thing has been gaining a whole lot of steam.

Lawmakers, for one, are starting to take action here.

• The White House put out an executive order to try and combat “unfair anticompetitive restrictions on third-party repair or self-repair of items”.
• The FTC has committed to bringing “an interdisciplinary approach to this issue”.
• At least half of US states are looking to introduce right-to-repair legislation.

But, what is perhaps most promising here is what the EU is up to. It put out a right to repair proposal earlier this year. And that was recently adopted by the EU parliament.

On the repair front, that means manufacturers will start being compelled to make repair information and manuals available, along with access to spare parts.

And that’s kind of a big deal.

And it also means it might not be long until we start seeing some of this being put into practice. (If you ever wondered why Apple recently switched to USB-C, that was the EU’s fault… apparently, the EU market is big enough that manufacturers will at least consider complying.)

Consumers Aren’t Waiting Around For Courts and Lawmakers

If there’s one thing that the average consumer has in common with an angry farmer, it’s that, when sufficiently motivated, they can achieve a lot all on their own.

As it turns out, some farmers just turned to hacking their John Deere so they could get back to fixing it themselves… and playing Doom… but that’s another story.

And, in the case of consumers, more and more are starting to turn to so-called “repair cafés”.

In some ways, these cafés are a lot like the whole “maker space” thing that started getting big a few years ago. People get together, share a space, share some tools, share their know-how, and then put that shared stuff to work. The big difference being that, instead of getting together to “make” stuff, they’re getting together to fix stuff.

Of course, the concept itself isn’t entirely new. Wikipedia dates the first one to 2009.

What is new, however, is the sudden growth in the whole movement. Between inflation making people think twice before buying new, and Gen Z’s green-minded circular economic thinking finally hitting adulthood, turns out repair cafés are getting kinda popular.

And this isn’t just about fixing electronics, either. Other fix-it-up type things, like mending clothes, are also growing in popularity.

Takeaway

Even before the whole right (and will) to repair movement became a thing, catering to the DIY fixer-upperer crowd was already a reasonable business. (Ever heard of iFixit?)

But, right now, it looks like something a bit bigger could be brewing.

On one side, there’s a growing base of consumers who actually want to repair their own goods.

And on the other side, there are lawmakers who are actively trying to make this possible for everything from smartphones to washing machines.

And if you put the two together, that smells like a hotbed of niche opportunities to me, whether it be running ads while doing local SEO for repair centers and cafes, or promoting the “best DIY toolkits” on Amazon… there are a lot of opportunities here.

You could even start promoting hosting to people looking to set up their repair cafe/business websites. A2 Hosting is just a click away:

Closing Thought

Recently, I discovered Rob Henderson’s newsletter.

And it’s really good.

So I started digging through the archives and thought I’d share an old post with you — Be Wary of Imitating High-Status People Who Can Afford to Countersignal.

In it, Rob talks about the perils of blindly imitating people who are more successful than you. Specifically, he talks about “countersignalling”. That’s a way of saying “doing low-status things to actually signal that you’re high status because your status is so high that you can afford to do low-status things.”

Here’s an example:

Now, here, the need for any aspiring CEO to be wary is pretty obvious. Even if pot is legal and all that, it’s still not a great look in front of certain investors. (And as for why this is countersignalling — Musk showed he’s high-status enough to get away with it.)

Later on, Rob then applies this principle to something more familiar to him — becoming successful as a writer.

He explains that there are certain things that successful authors do that aspiring authors shouldn’t. An example he gives is playing the humility card too much by not self-promoting. Already-successful authors can get away with it because they’ve got the press/PR people/fans/etc. talking about their work. Undiscovered authors don’t.

As for how this applies to any of us, that’s simple — next time you look to a high-status person for mindset/life/whatever hacks, be wary before imitating.

Sure, maybe Musk is also known for his “never give up” attitude. But maybe that’s not something you should blindly apply to your situation — maybe a fail-fast mentality would be better.

As for what you’re supposed to do if you’re going to stop looking to the ultra-successful, Rob has this to say:

“If you are relatively early on your path, it is natural to seek advice from those who have achieved astounding success in your area of interest. You’d be better off, though, asking people who are on a similar trajectory as yourself, but a little further ahead. If you’re a white belt and want to level up, don’t ask the black belt (or red belt) what to do. Ask the purple belt.”

Or, said another way, if you want to promote A2 Hosting, don’t go and ask PCMag what they do (you probably stand no chance against them in the SERPs). Instead, go ask another affiliate who’s just one level higher than you — their advice will probably be more relevant.

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

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