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

In life, it’s usually easy to identify who’s confident.

And who’s not.

The same applies to businesses.

Let me show you how.

Topranked.io Affiliate Program of the Week — Goldco Affiliate Program

A brand name says a lot about a company. So when a company gives itself the second-best brand name, it means one of two things.

Either, they really are the second best.

Or, they’re so confident they’re the best that they don’t need to pretend to be the best with cheap tricks.

The latter is the case with this week’s top affiliate program — A1… err, I mean, A2 Hosting Affiliates.

Yep. They might be number two in name. But I can guarantee A2 Hosting Affiliates is number one in every other way possible.

Here’s a little more about A2 Hosting Affiliates.

A2 Hosting Affiliates — The Product

Join the A2 Hosting Affiliates program and, as you probably have guessed, you’re gonna be selling hosting.

You know, like good old-fashioned VPS, cPanel, Managed WordPress, and all the usual fair you’d expect at any good web host.

The only difference with A2 Hosting Affiliates is that you’re gonna be selling some of the best-in-class products in each of these categories.

Yep, go do a search yourself. Check out traditionally butal places like Reddit or TrustPilot.

You’ll see that, with A2 Hosting Affiliates, you’ll be selling a top-shef product no matter what part of the hosting market you go after.

Don’t believe me about A2 Hosting Affiliates?

Here, check out the TrustPilot rating.

And while we’re still on the topic of A2 Hosting Affiliates product, here’s a typical Reddit comment.

In other words, join A2 Hosting Affiliates and you’ll be partnered up with one of the rare hosts that won’t scare off your referrals if they do a little research before taking your A2 Hosting Affiliates recommendation at face value.

In other words, you’ll convert better with A2 Hosting Affiliates than with just about anyone else.

Also, before we move on to the A2 Hosting Affiliates commission rates, pay attention to the Reddit comment above. Especially about the “teaser” rates.

A2 Hosting Affiliates — The Commissions

A2 Hosting Affiliates commissions are a pretty simple affair. You’re basically going to get a flat CPA that only varies based on your sales volume.

Here’s how it works:

• 1-10 Sales: A2 Hosting Affiliates pays you $55/sale
• 11-15 Sales: A2 Hosting Affiliates pays you $75/sale
• 16-20 Sales: A2 Hosting Affiliates pays you $100/sale
• 21+ Sales: A2 Hosting Affiliates pays you $125/sale

The best part is, if you think you can swing a bit more than 21 sales a month, A2 Hosting Affiliates has another option for you — that is, reach out to your A2 Hosting Affiliates manager and negotiate a custom rate.

A2 Hosting Affiliates says you can do this right on their affiliate landing page.

A2 Hosting Affiliates — Nice to Haves

So far we’ve established A2 Hosting Affiliates has great products and great commissions.

But there’s a little more on the plus side for A2 Hosting Affiliates:

• A2 Hosting Affiliates drops 90-day cookies in users’ browsers.
• Deep linking to whatever page you want
• High conversion rates
• Real-time stats in your A2 Hosting Affiliates dashboard.

And, if that’s not tempting enough, I’ll leave you with this thought — A2 Hosting Affiliates paid its top affiliate $500k last year.

A2 Hosting Affiliates — Next Steps

If earning well north of a hundred bucks a sale selling a product so strong it sells itself sounds like your bag, then A2 Hosting Affiliates is probably for you.

But, if you’re still not sure, then go check out TopRanked.io for our full A2 Hosting Affiliates Program Review.

Or, just so the smart thing and get started by signing up with A2 Hosting Affiliates now.

Affiliate News Takeaways — Ripping Off Holywood Content For Fun and Profit While Everyone’s Looking the Other Way

One of the problems with the internet and the hyper-scale it implies is that it warps our perspective of scale.

“Big” is defined in units of billions, if not trillions.

Meanwhile, everything else is more or less considered “dead” or “irrelevant”.

The same logic applies to something that was once insanely popular and then lost popularity — the moment it’s no longer measured in the sorts of units usually reserved for hyper scale, it’s “dead”.

This is good news if you’re an affiliate.

Why?

Because it’s the moment when you get to sweep in and exploit an otherwise strong market while everyone else is looking the other way, distracted by the new shiny thing.

In other words, you can come in almost uncontested and make bank.

Of course, in some ways, this is all easier said than done. Identifying niches has never been easy, no matter what hacks you throw at the problem.

But, if you keep your eyes open and have the right mental frameworks in place, they’re sometimes handed right to you.

Here’s an example of an “everyone’s looking the other way” opportunity that just crossed my radar via this news story from a couple of days ago.

It’s titled, “Commentary, Behind-the-Scenes Features, Bloopers: What Did We Lose When We Said Goodbye to DVDs?”

Already, just from the title, we have that one important element — the “everyone’s looking the other way” element. If you missed it, it’s right there in the bit that says “When we said goodbye to DVDs.”

Now, if you’re like anyone else, you probably felt no need to question that bit of the title. Everyone knows DVDs are dead.

Dito for Blu-ray.

But what if I told you there are still plenty of films selling hundreds of thousands, if not millions of DVDs and Blu-rays?

If you don’t believe me, go look at the data yourself. Here’s one data set from Nash Information Services’s “The Numbers”. (Admittedly, they did stop surveying almost a year ago. But still, I can’t imagine the numbers have tanked all that much since.)

Now, of course, the numbers here aren’t anything to write home about. Or, at least, they’re not if you’re currently running a giga-scaled streaming service.

But, for the humble affiliate like you and I, there’s more than enough steam left in this market to put a little bread on our tables… and maybe even the obligatory Lambo in the garage.

But as they say, before you get the Lambo, you gotta get that knawledge.

So here’s a little about what’s keeping DVDs and Blu-rays on life support.

To start with, let’s go back to the original article that started me down this path.

It’s largely about nostalgia, and the loss of all the “extras” that used to come with DVDs.

You know, the stuff like fancy menus, behind-the-scenes stuff, directors commentary, etc., etc.

Today, now that everything’s been Netflixified, that’s all gone. And, apparently, people miss it.

But then the article drops a little hint about something that could be interesting for us. Buried in a single paragraph in the middle of the article, there’s this line “A quick search on YouTube reveals that there are plenty of DVD menu fans: a tour of the Shrek 2 DVD menu has more than 2.5 million views.”

That video — the Shrek 2 DVD menu tour — was uploaded by a channel called Nostalgiavault. A relatively small-time channel that’s only got 35k subscribers.

My first reaction when I saw this was that the Shrek 2 video must have been some sort of fluke.

Especially when I clicked through to see Nostalgiavaults other videos, which are mostly retro game playthroughs.

Most of these videos barely even cross the thousand-view mark, with many sitting in the hundreds at best.

But then, if you take a closer look, something interesting happens.

Here’s a list of the channel’s top 50 most popular videos.

Title	Views
Shrek II DVD Menu Walkthrough	2600000
[2006 Version] Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Playhouse Disney	1600000
Finding Nemo DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 1)	1400000
Over the Hedge – DVD Menu Walkthrough	745000
Cars – DVD Menu Walkthrough	701000
Monsters, Inc. DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 2)	679000
Shrek DVD Menu Walkthrough	677000
Finding Nemo DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 2)	650000
PBS Kids 2005-2010	609000
Playhouse Disney Website	589000
Cars 2 – DVD Menu Walkthrough	578000
Monsters, Inc. DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 1)	575000
Shrek III DVD Menu Walkthrough	566000
Aladdin DVD Menu Walkthrough	511000
Ice Age II DVD Menu Walkthrough	510000
Finding Nemo – DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 1)	475000
Ice Age DVD Menu Walkthrough	475000
Shrek – DVD Menu Walkthrough	469000
The Cat in the Hat – DVD Menu Walkthrough	450000
SpongeBob: Nautical Nonsense and Sponge Buddies – DVD Menu	407000
Bee Movie – DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 1)	385000
Garfield: The Movie – DVD Menu Walkthrough	383000
Finding Nemo – DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 2)	378000
Sponge Out of Water – DVD Menu Walkthrough	366000
Scooby Doo (2002 Film) – DVD Menu Walkthrough	366000
SpongeBob: Sea Stories – DVD Menu Walkthrough	361000
Despicable Me 2 – DVD Menu Walkthrough	361000
SpongeBob: Lost at Sea – DVD Menu Walkthrough	351000
Finding Nemo – DVD Menu Walkthrough (2012)	341000
Pooh’s Heffalump Movie – DVD Menu Walkthrough	340000
Teletubbies PBS Kids	330000
Ooh & Aah Playhouse Disney	321000
Open Season 2 – DVD Menu Walkthrough	320000
SpongeBob: Tales from the Deep – DVD Menu Walkthrough	315000
Curious George: DVD Menu Walkthrough	306000
The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie – DVD Menu Walkthrough	301000
Handy Manny: Manny’s Pet Roundup – DVD Menu Walkthrough	299000
SpongeBob: Pest Of The West – DVD Menu Walkthrough	291000
Madagascar 3 DVD Menu Walkthrough	285000
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Custom Credits (Season 2)	285000
Ice Age: Super Cool Edition – DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 2)	280000
Veggietales – Jonah – DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 1)	270000
Madly Madagascar – DVD Menu Walkthrough	269000
Little Einsteins Playhouse Disney	269000
Sneak Peeks Menus	266000
Little Einsteins: Mission Celebration – DVD Menu Walkthrough	266000
SpongeBob Season 1 – DVD Menu Walkthrough (Disc 1)	264000
Backyardigans – Mission to Mars	259000
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – DVD Menu Walkthrough	255000
Playhouse Disney Jojo’s Circus	254000

See the pattern?

If you missed it, it’s that four out of every five are a “DVD Menu Walkthrough” video.

And might I remind you this is all from a relative nobody — an obscure YouTube channel with just 35k subscribers.

And yet, this low-effort content has nabbed them, quite literally, tens of millions of views.

For the top 50 videos, I counted 24.6M views all up.

Now, I have no idea what the earnings are like in terms of YouTube ad rev here for this sorta niche. But, if you apply a rule of thumb, like the $2-$12 per 1K views rule, that works out to something between $50-$300k just for the top 50.

And, PS, this channel’s DVD menu walkthroughs playlist is not only much deeper than what’s in the top 50, but the view numbers start to plateau in the 100k-200k range, which means there are literally millions of views I’m not counting here.

In other words, this guy’s basically made an easy six figures just for uploading a bunch of DVD menu walkthroughs to his channel — content that takes no longer to make than whatever the runtime for the video is.

And remember, this is some obscure YouTube channel with just 35k subscribers.

A YouTube channel that’s cranking out the views without any real effort, nor any of the usual YouTube shenanigans.

Now, of course, going out and grabbing this guy’s playlist of DVD menu walkthroughs is an easy place to start if you wanna get going in this niche yourself.

But, with a little more “knawledge”, you could maybe walk yourself right into some even more obscure niches that still have plenty of legs.

In other words, niches where no one’s looking because they think it’s really truly dead dead.

To illustrate what I mean here, take a look at this chart.

After you get over the streaming subscriptions curve, the first thing you should notice is the difference between DVD/Blu-ray and VHS. Specifically, the fact that DVDs didn’t just “replace” VHS — they more than doubled VHS sales within a few short years.

Any guesses as to why this happened?

My guess is that people weren’t just buying new releases on DVD. It’s that they were also re-purchasing DVD versions of films they already owned.

And then they were re-re-buying DVDs they already owned.

And that was all because of the thousands of “special editions”, “collector’s editions”, and exclusive “box sets” that flooded the market.

And I don’t think they were doing it just to make pretty-looking shelves…

Just re-arranged my friend's DVD collection. How long before he notices? pic.twitter.com/ikLrzDERLB

— Bloody Disgusting (@BDisgusting) December 9, 2016

Take this Blu-ray release of Citizen Kane from 2011 as an example. It was moving unit volumes of 5 figures a week if The Numbers data is halfway accurate.

And, given it’s an early-40s movie, I somehow suspect those sales were more about getting all the extras that came with the release, and less about watching some grainy 1940s flick in glorious 4k Ultra-HD.

But hey, that’s just a theory.

But here’s something that’s not a theory.

If you go and search “citizen kane dvd menu walkthrough” on YouTube, guess what you won’t find?

That’s right, you won’t find a Citizen Kane DVD menu walkthrough.

Dito for Blu-ray.

Now, what was that thing I was saying about everyone looking the other way because they thought something was dead?

Takeaway

Let’s get one thing straight here.

This isn’t a “Gen Z hipsters looking for some retro nostalgia” piece like that story we did last week about cassette tapes. (See our Goldco Affiliate Program review edition for more.)

This is a story about movie lovers going on the hunt for all the extras and behind-the-scenes stuff they lost when streaming took over.

Now, of course, there are going to be dozens of ways to capture this sort of niche outside of YouTube.

But, just for the sake of simplicity, let’s pretend you want to do this on YouTube.

And let’s also say you also wanna earn a little more than the chumps relying solely on the YouTube “partner program” for monetization.

The answer here is obvious — pimp some great products alongside your videos (as long as those products have affiliate programs tied to them, that is).

As for what products, here’s a little lazy marketing research done in the only way I know how — with memes.

Now, see that first “sponsor”.

Wanna know a fun fact about that sponsor?

Yeah, that’s right, you don’t have to wait to become a successful YouTube star for a rep to reach out to you.

You can just go sign right up with their affiliate program and start monetizing today. (See our full NordVPN Affiliate Program Review for details. And, while you’re at it, also see our PureVPN Affiliate Program Review for another option in the same space.)

Now, see the second “sponsor”?

Wanna know a fun fact about that sponsor?

Yeah, same deal — see our Squarespace Affiliate Program review here.

But, as before, don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to what every other YouTuber is selling.

So why not give A2 Hosting Affiliates a shot while you’re at it?

Squarespace proved YouTube works for this sort of product. A2 Hosting Affiliates will probably just pay you better.

Closing Thought

One of the interesting things that’s come from watching the US election is watching the vibe shift from the Democrats when sleepy Joe’s puppet masters retired him from the race.

In a word, the entire campaign became a whole lot more “optimistic” in its energy.

Or, at least, that’s the basic vibe I’m getting from the general adjectivese I’ve been seeing in the press these days… to be honest, I haven’t really been following the campaign all that closely myself.

At the same time as all of this has been happening, I also just saw this post on X by Paul Graham, which basically says liberals are more depressed because they’re more pessimistic.

The reason seems to be that liberals are less optimistic. pic.twitter.com/Or5dIrYL8b

— Paul Graham (@paulg) August 21, 2024

Funny combination, right?

No, not pessimism and depression. That bit’s normal.

I’m talking about the bit about an “optimistic” democrat campaign targeting a largely “pessimistic” demographic.

That’s the weird bit.

In any case, whether the strategy makes logical sense or not, there’s one thing that’s hard to ignore — the polls suggest it’s working.

That suggests there might be something to this whole selling optimism to pessimists thing.

And hey, why not?

Think about it like this.

What is pessimism at its core?

Is it the sort of hardcore pessimism we usually associate with the word? The sort that thinks everything’s f***ed, no matter what it is?

I’m going to argue that, unless we want to reclassify pessimism as a mental illness, then that’s not what pessimism is. Just the same as I don’t think all optimists are optimistic about everything, no matter what.

Again, that would be a mental illness.

If you don’t know what I mean here, think about it like this.

Imagine you had to turn up to some government-mandated job in some government-controlled industry where you’ll earn your government-subsidized salary which you’ll then spend on your government-produced bread.

And, if you don’t do all of this precisely as and when the government tells you, you’ll get your government-owned hind thrown in a government-operated prison.

I.e., imagine you were living in a full-blown communist state.

Somehow, I imagine a pretty big whack of our more optimistic population might just turn a little pessimistic under this regime.

In other words, optimism, pessimism, whatever — quite often, they’re more of a reaction to a state of affairs than they are a set-in-stone mental framework by which each will live his entire life.

In fact, I’m going to go one step further and say that the average person with a negative emotional state doesn’t actually want to be in that state. 

They want the opposite.

Let’s continue our communist thought experiment to illustrate.

Cast your mind back to your government-controlled life.

Imagine a government-sponsored goon telling you to “stop being such a pessimist, look at all this government-backed gruel you get to eat for free. How could you not be an optimist?”

Chances are, you’re still gonna be a pessimist. Even if you don’t want to be one, per se.

But now imagine David Hasselhoff rocks up and says, “Hey quick, Jump in my car motherf***er, we’re gonna party like it’s 1989!”

(Yeah, that photo’s totally real and not AI-generated.)

Suddenly, I reckon you’re gonna get a little more “Hooked on a feeling”.

And that feeling’s probably gonna be optimism, even if you were a hard-core pessimist before.

And that could just be a little bit of what’s going on with Kamala.

Think about it.

If you’re the sort of SJW who’s been frothing about DEI for the last few years…

No, not that DEI… this DEI…

Then maybe, just maybe, you might be more open to a little bit of optimism if that optimism is coming from the ultimate DEI hire herself.

And you wanna know the greatest thing about optimism?

Apparently, if the research is to be believed, “Optimism plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.”

Now let’s try and apply this.

Cast your mind back to our news story above — the news about finding niches where no one’s looking.

Do you think the same logic might apply to “emotions” and marketing?

Somehow, I suspect there aren’t a great deal of marketers with “optimistic” messages targeting “pessimistic” consumers.

So here’s your chance.

Go find a pessimistic population.

Figure out what’s making them pessimistic.

And now tailor an optimistic message that presents itself as a cure to their woes.

Do this right, and they’ll probably welcome you into their lives as though you were the sort of Hasselhoffian, wall-smashing figure we were imagining before.

(And yes, that’s another historically-accurate photo.)

Chances are, if the strategy can work for the Democrats, it’ll also work for you.

As for how you’re actually gonna monetize any of this, just make sure you keep the optimism high by keeping your optimism high.

The best way to do this is to partner with a good affiliate program. A2 Hosting Affiliates is probably a good place to start.

__

(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

DISCLAIMER: This article was written by a third party contributor and does not reflect the opinion of Born2Invest, its management, staff or its associates. Please review our disclaimer for more information.

This article may include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “estimate,” “become,” “plan,” “will,” and similar expressions, including with regards to potential earnings in the Empire Flippers affiliate program. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks as well as uncertainties, including those discussed in the following cautionary statements and elsewhere in this article and on this site. Although the Company may believe that its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, the actual results that the Company may achieve may differ materially from any forward-looking statements, which reflect the opinions of the management of the Company only as of the date hereof. Additionally, please make sure to read these important disclosures.