by Tom Sepper, December 6th, 2007 | 6 Comments
You know the old saying:
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
We couldn’t agree more!
Site5 Marketing Guru and Sales Team member Taylor Hawes was recently browsing website templates to get some ideas for the next major revision of our homepage when he came across an auction for a hosting template. It wasn’t the template that caught his eye. See if you can catch it:
Do you see it?
The plan specs, the reseller specs and text, the affiliate text.. straight from our homepage!
We don’t mind; it’s great to see the influence we have out there. 
by Tom Sepper, November 30th, 2007 | 1 Comment
I am pleased to announce that the Site5 AffiliateRewards program just got better.. in fact, it’s now 325% better! Effective immediately, future commissions earned from affiliate sales/referrals are now worth an incredible $85 each! Full changes are listed below:
Payout Levels
- For your initial account referrals, you will receive $85.00 each.
- If you refer 20 or more accounts in a month, you will receive $100.00 for every referral (including your first 20).
- Your minimum payout amount is $85.00.
So let’s do a little deep-thinking for a bit..
With just one affiliate commission, you could do any of the following:
What are you waiting for? Add the updated banners located within Backstage to your sites today and start making some cash! If you’re not already an affiliate, c’mon and get with the program!
by Kevin Hazard, April 17th, 2007 | No Comments
Following a bit engineering sneakery and upside-down, underwater development, we’ve got yet another announcement for you… A brand new, smooth and silky, blinged-out affiliate system: Site5 Affiliate Rewards!
This news may not sound like much to those who have not had to endure the trials and tribulations we have seen in integrating a third-party affiliate system with our home-made Synco account manager and Backstage customer portal, but you can believe me when I tell you that this release is p-h-e-n-o-m-e-n-a-l. In addition to its amazing design integration, Rails base, and slick ajaxy goodness, the new system expands our affiliate team to our entire customer base (rather than being an entirely separate entity), adds the ability to quickly and easily transfer affiliate funds to pay for your Site5 hosting account(s), and provides detailed information about the people you refer to join the Site5 community.
What’s the best part about the new system? All Site5 customers already have access to start affiliating (which sounds a bit dirty, I apologize), and all of our affiliates from the previous system can log into the new system with their old username and password to find all of their information (and referrals) smiling back at them along with a (probably more important) brand new tiered affiliate payout scheme:
- If you refer up to 9 new customers in one month, you get $20 per referral.
- If you refer 10-19 new customers in one month, you get $30 per referral.
- If you refer more than 20 new customers in one month, you get $40 per referral!
If you want the run-down, the skinny, or the basics of the affiliate process, pay attention to this paragraph because I will attempt to provide all three at the same time. As a Site5 affiliate, you will get your very own personal referral URL and a selection of Site5 banners (in case you are looking to spice up the graphics on your website). By adding our link and/or banner to your website, you will be sending your friends, acquaintances, readers, and serial-clickers to Site5’s page via your affiliate portal. If that visitor chooses to order a Site5 plan (which they are very likely to do since Site5 has one of the highest conversion rates in the industry) and remains a customer for 60 days (the length of our money-back guarantee), you get at least $20. Boom. What can you do with the money you receive (via PayPal payout, check, or Site5 hosting credit)? If you are lucky, you may be able to buy 6.667 gallons of regular unleaded gas in California. Isn’t that exciting?
What are you doing still reading this well-written, entertaining, informative blog? If you are a Site5 customer, you can jump in and affiliate to your heart’s content. If you are not a Site5 customer, go order a hosting account to join in on the fun!
Note: You may not have known that “affiliate” is an active verb, but it is, and through the use of context clues, you infer that it is fun to do.
If you are not a Site5 customer and are a bit timid with regard to fun-having, you can click the image below to sign up for a stand-alone affiliate account if you want to get your feet wet and make a few extra bucks referring some of your friends to our community… we won’t hate, we’ll appreciate. 
by Kevin Hazard, February 12th, 2007 | 7 Comments
Several scholars of love contend that Valentines Day is a ridiculous holiday created by greeting card companies to make money. Being of this mindset, however, does not necessarily mitigate your responsibility to express affection for the people closest to you (especially your significant others); have you thought about giving web hosting to your significant other for Valentine’s Day?
…
Well, to be honest, that thought shouldn’t enter your mind.
If you are considering a web hosting plan as your Valentine’s present for the love of your life, I would heavily advise against it. Valentine’s Day is one of the few holidays that your safest bet is to go with the status quo: Flowers, chocolate, and poetry are all great choices (though you might want to consult a better source for the poetry). In controlled test scenarios, we found it more likely that the one would be slapped for giving web hosting in lieu of a “classic” Valentine’s Day present than the recipient declaring it to be the most romantic gift they had ever received.
Don’t get me wrong, web hosting is an amazing present to give and to receive –especially if it is one of Site5’s plans– but you should probably give it as a “day before Valentine’s Day” gift, an “in addition to already purchased classic Valentine’s Day present” gift, or an “I’m sorry I forgot Valentine’s Day” day-after gift. Then again, let’s be honest… in the third case, you need to be buying and giving as many things as you can get your hands on to make up for that neglect.
Unfortunately, we misplaced the book in which we archive the names and addresses of each reader of this blog. Typically, this would not be much of a problem, but we really wanted to send out a little somethin’-somethin’ to every one of you readers in return for your love of this humble weblog. Luckily, we were able to come up with a solution: free Site5 wallpapers! We know your natural inclination is to bounce off the walls with excitement, but we would ask you to calm down… We don’t need any Site5 Valentine’s Day Jubilation-related injuries. Each of the designs below was masterfully crafted by our very own Rod Armstrong with a little skill and a lot of love (awwww…), so we hope they can brighten up your desktop.
With tongue-in-cheek sincerity and lightheartedness, we wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day! Let us know if you would like any of the designs in a different size (since they are all ~ 1280×1024). If you want to wish us a Happy Valentine’s Day in return, you can either leave a comment or just order a hosting plan.
by Kevin Hazard, January 29th, 2007 | No Comments
If you’ve frequented Site5’s home page over the last few years, you are well aware that our main area of consistency is in our impressive lack of consistency. If you have joined the game late, you can use an internet archiver like the Wayback Machine to get a blast from the past and see how our site has changed over time. Click the thumbnails for a larger screenshot.
Rod already wrote a great post to break down the hosting industry’s aversion to change, so I will share a bit of our experience in having a dynamic site. Recently, I was surfing Technorati, and I saw that CSS Mania added a page to rank Site5’s design, so I decided to take a walk down memory lane to see how far the site has come in the past eight years.
I didn’t include screenshots of the infamous “bright pink” design, the “orange is the new pink” design, the “baby blue” design, nor the “neon green isn’t used enough” design, but the first few iterations of Site5’s homepage do well to show how the site (and the company) has evolved to the current state.
There is a huge learning curve in site design. Because Matt and Rod built our site from the ground up as their earliest html/php projects, the first designs were probably as much limited by ability as they were designed with intent. I posted a list of pet peeves which these old pages vehemently violated, but we have learned a great deal about effective web design from these prior versions. Effective site design should be seen as a continual process, not a goal to reach and forget about.
In my extremely biased opinion, Site5’s homepage layout has come to be one of the best in the industry in its usability and aesthetics, and I would attribute a significant amount our order growth to its dynamic nature and all of the personal touches. Either that, or Matt and Rod are the type of people who are wont to change things up every now and again. After all, they’ve been co-authoring the Site5.com website for over eight years now. That’s a long time on the Internet.
The Value of Change
Static web pages are boring. The fact that a company is exciting does not automatically translate into that company’s web page, and with the expanse of the internet, you risk a significant amount of traffic when you ignore this important aspect. I know the arguments for establishing a “look and feel” for a company in a branding sense, but at some point that becomes a cop-out for not being creative enough to adapt to how your company is growing and changing. The best part about the value of a dynamic site is that it can be done without significant changes to the site’s design if you want to keep that “look and feel.” You can change images, mix up colors, or revamp content to make your site worth visiting again… If you never change anything and don’t offer any kind of residual value for future visits, you implicitly plant a “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt” mentality in your visitors.
We have learned from experience that dynamicism (still making up new words when applicable) does not necessarily entail going the way of every “nex-gen” fad, but often you can learn a lot about design from current popular opinion. Even if they only give you ideas for minor tweaks, you have avenues to make your site re-visitable in some capacity (letting visitors take something new from your site the next time they visit). If you are an anti-establishment, anti-majority, free spirit, you can get ideas of how to rid yourself of any potentially incriminating popular design ideas.
I, personally, will simply maintain my original style of adopting fads several years after they fall out of popularity. If you will excuse me, I need to get to a Magic Card/ POG conference in my backward jeans, unwashed flannel shirt, Timberlands, and Kangol.
