Possible SiteGround Affiliate Scam

Ozzyzig said:

It's disappointing that Siteground are doing this. I signed up as an affiliate with them a few years ago and never had any issues in terms of payout. I don't remember seeing a clause in the agreement that the sites need to be kept up to date for the commission to remain valid.

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https://www.siteground.com/term/8.htm

You should act in good faith to refer customers in good standing. Customers in good standing are hosting account owners who have provided valid contact information, are not flagged for high fraud risk, have active accounts that do not exceed any quotas or limitations as per the SiteGround Terms of Service and actively use their accounts. Active account usage is determined at our sole discretion and may be based on any of the following: number and frequency of logins into the User area and account control panel; frequency of new content upload on the account; number of visits on the website and the frequency of such visits; any other way that unambiguously demonstrates the user actively operates with the account; etc.

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Still a very shady way of trying to shave comissions.

nSnoopy said:

https://www.siteground.com/term/8.htm



Still a very shady way of trying to shave comissions.

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Thanks for that!

I wouldn't call it a scam but that's rough. With those T&Cs they can refuse to pay you whenever they like.

If it was me, I'd send them an email and politely explain the situation and why the websites don't need updating, then remind them subtly that I'd love to keep sending business their way and will work on sending more active customers in the future.

If you have no luck, you'll have to move on to another host and consider this a $600 lesson in the pitfalls of affiliate marketing.

From their perspective, they are paying out $50 for an annual plan that costs the customer around $70, so they're only getting $20 revenue before expenses. They'd rather have affiliates that bring in longer-term customers (I assume your leads only get the annual plan which then expires, that might be why it took them a year to tell you there's a problem).

That said, the right thing for them to do is tell you your leads are no good, pay you out and close your affiliate membership. But their terms let them just refuse to pay. Take your recommendations elsewhere.

I don't seem to understand the issue of updating content, what has that got to do with them paying the commission. What nonsense

thescrrr said:

Their speed isn't even good, I moved my sites to Cloudways, I pay less and my sites are like 10 times faster.

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also recommend checking out AWS lightsail - bit more manual but is VERY fast for WordPress (not tested with big site / lots of users yet)