That title may sound extreme to you, but I mean it. Google anything along the lines of “best web hosting” or even “web hosting that cost $0.50 a month when you pay for two years using bitcoin” and you will see the same handful of hosting providers listed across hundreds of blog posts. Why? Affiliate programs.
Affiliate programs aren’t a bad thing. If you are a blogger or a podcaster like Tim Ferriss affiliate programs are a way of making money promoting something you were going to promote anyway, without passing a cost off on your audience. That’s fine, but some people change what product they endorse based on the affiliate programs’ commission. The YouTube video below shows how out-of-hand mattress review affiliates are.
Because of the way Google orders search results all these links POINT to the web hosts offering the largest commissions. This is why it’s hard to find a good web host. Godaddy DreamHost, Bluehost, A2Hosting, HostGator, and Hostinger are quite possibly not the best web hosts, they just offer a lot of money to those who say they are.
Many small providers, or providers who meet specific criteria, like already mentioned “web hosting that costs $0.50 a month when you pay for two years using bitcoin” cannot be found, because of pages of affiliate programs. I can name only one, web host that costs $0.50 a month when you pay in bitcoin. That host is nearly impossible to find on Google.
Short blog post, long SEO blog posts, and every kind of web app under the sun.
