I'm not suggesting Atlantic are doing this, but back in the days when shared hosting was more popular and hosts more predatory, it was common to see hosts offer deals like paying $99 for a year of hosting, they'd give that straight to the affiliate who referred the sale, they'd put the prices up 2-3x in year two, and enough people would stick around to make it all pay off.

Such a strategy could work even better with a VPS since it's harder to migrate away due to the more complex things people tend to do with them.