Affiliate Marketing: The Host and Post Strategy

We all know that we can advertise our website on search engines and from there, those interested can visit our site. Often our website is selling products for an affiliate company or partner network. Visitors enter the site once they see our ad on the search engine, and here they find various offers for specific products.

The Problem with Traditional Direct Linking

When someone wants to buy from our site, they are often automatically redirected to the affiliate company website. With that, we are pleased to have won a commission, and our advertisers are also happy to have gained a customer by selling their products. Historically, search engines like Google accepted such sites, and we must recognize that they were a reliable way to make money online.

However, the landscape has changed. In the same time, there are many sites where clicking on an ad redirects you directly to the affiliate company website where you can buy the products you want. Search engines are actively trying to get rid of such thin affiliate sites because they often act merely as a middleman without providing well-formed, original content. While there are still some search networks that encourage this kind of direct linking simply because it brings new visitors, major algorithms heavily penalize it.

Why the Host and Post Strategy Wins

If we think about the user experience, abruptly redirecting our visitors will only confuse buyers, especially those who are new to the online purchasing environment. We can do a much better job by hosting the forms and collecting leads on our own landing page as opposed to sending them directly to the advertiser's page.

Using the host and post method, we capture the data first, and then pass it securely to our advertiser via an API or backend process. It is highly recommended to focus our work on a specific niche or a certain type of product. These comprehensive review and lead-gen sites not only provide real value and education to internet users, but they will also stay profitable for a longer period of time than a typical 1-page affiliate site.

Future-Proofing Your Lead Generation Business

This “Host and post” method represents a massive opportunity for modern digital marketers. If we want nice, targeted content for our website that ranks well organically, then this is the time to pivot. In the future, semantic SEO and robust content architecture will play an essential role in the online environment, and this method of hosting your own forms and posting data will be the critical factor for sustaining long-term affiliate income.