I tried to sign up for the Hostgator affiliate program, but I am getting the impression they are a little retarded. For one their system does not accept any of my user names that I am trying. They are all unique and within their limits. Every time you get “dinged” for an error the entire form resets and you have to fill out from scratch again.
On one user name it suggested the name already exists. I do not remember signing up before, but hey – let’s use the email function to send me my password. Since I only use 2 unique email addresses for affiliate networks or programs I plug those into the form and hit enter. A “progress” window appears and never goes away. And of course I am not getting an email either.
So, tried again to sign up and again it bombs out on me with the message that the user name cannot be used …! Hm, my company name with variations is pretty unique in my opinion. And again, it resets the entire form.
In my opinion that is very stupid and unprofessional. I guess I am not going to sign up with Hostgator’s affiliate program. 
Too bad … I have a lot of web hosting related traffic that now goes to their competitors.
Oh, yeah – I just noticed that the “secure” website to sign up and to submit your SSN or Tax payer ID looks like this:
http://secure.hostgator.com/~affiliat/?_p=signup
Hostgator, just because you put the word “secure” into a URL or use it as the sub domain – it still does not make the transaction secure. There is no SSL cert configured and you are sending/receiving traffic on port 80 = clear text. I can manually add the “s” and I can bring up the SSL version – but with an error.
So, please if someone from Hostgator reads this – please fix the issues and you might make a professional impression + you might get more affiliates.
PS: By the way – I am in the process of moving some websites to a new reseller account at JaguarPC. So far I am very impressed with their support. They respond very quickly and did great work on all the tickets I submitted (quite a few actually). Check out JaguarPC for your web hosting needs. I do have a reseller account with them, but their normal shared hosting looks great, too.
Update 02-12-2009: I got contacted by Hostgator trying to get those issues solved. That surprises me in a very positive way. Thank you, Hostgator.
Update 2 on 02.12.2009: Read this as a follow up to this posting.
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