What features are important as an affiliate when looking for a host?

[MrSpeed]

What features do you like as an affiliate when looking for a host?
Here are some thoughts...
--cheap virtuals
--multiple third level domains
--good stats package
--stats across all domains (is this possible)

What Else?

[Kandevil]

Excellent reliability, nothing worse than paying for your clicks and then having your page down so you can't make any money on the visitor.

I'm glad Tradedoubler themselves are moving host soon, their downtime costs me money, I hope their recent issues are soon resolved.

[Felina]

Reliability is one big component for sure, but also the amount of time it takes them to answer support tickets..

[nativenewyorker]

The host should have a good neighborhood not filled with spammers that will get you banned by Google.

Ted

[Chris_R]

Every host promises they are better than everyone else and 95% of them suck.

It takes a while to find some good ones.

I have yet to find a host that is good at everything.

[MrSpeed]

Part of the problem is with all the reseller and co-branding, colocating out there. It's tough to decide which host is the real deal and who has a server in their basement. Not that some of these aren't good but you may get into a rut of comparing apples to apples.

[Nick_W]

Seperate IP's

Very important if you're going to be 'playing the game'.

Nick

[AthlonInside]

I don't think unique IP are important nowadays with so many virtual hosts our there making a majority of the web.

[supercod]

Where your IP is located helps, I feel.. For example I have servers in UK, US and Canada. In Google CA I rate highly for some of my keywords that don't show on Google.com and the same is true of Google UK. I can only put this down to Google working out where my IP allocation comes from and so makes a decision as to if my site is more for the home market it's based in that not. I know there is a ton of other things involved but I think that's one of them.

[ppg]

I don't think unique IP are important nowadays

could be wrong, but I think what Nick is referring to is that if you have a bunch of sites for different programs you don't want it obvious that they're all owned by you, especially if you're pushing the envelope so to speak in optimisation techniques.

[Nick_W]

100% Correct! ;)

Nick

[martinibuster]

Ok, I'm not an affiliate marketer yet, so I have a question:

Isn't allocated bandwidth an issue?

If generating traffic is important then I would imagine that having unlimited bandwidth, or cheap bandwidth, is important (and I suppose that goes hand in hand with having a bandwidth light site design).

[nativenewyorker]

martinibuster said:

I would imagine that having unlimited bandwidth, or cheap bandwidth, is important

These "unlimited bandwidth" hosts typically have many clauses within their TOS that limit what you can do with that bandwidth. First appearances can be deceiving.

Ted

[MrSpeed]

I would imagine that having unlimited bandwidth, or cheap bandwidth, is important

Be wary of "unlimited bandwidth". A lot of times hosts will throttle the sites. Bandwidth is not that expensive. If your burning enough that you get past your plans limit then hopefully your revenue covers it.