Starting a CPA network?

Please check the following article .

Case Study: Starting a CPA Network w/ HasOffers | Trev 2.0

You can get some ideas .

Thanks Mike, had checked that one previously, too bad he doesn't update how it goes.

Any more tips/ideas/advices?

Starting a CPA network is pretty easy with hasoffers (they offer free trial). But running a successful CPA network is another thing. It depends on many factors like: your starting budget, your promotion strategy and payment terms etc..

Unfortunately i don't have a ton of information to pass on in terms of the tech side when starting a network. But some major issues I've seen at my time at COPEAC from both new and well known networks that you should be aware of:

1) Compliance is crucial. Having certain pre-cautionary measures in place to identify rouge publishers, during the approval process and once you have publishers sending traffic. Publishers sending 1-5 leads in an hour then ceasing traffic, publishers signing into their account with a different IP every time, address changes on a frequent basis from the same publisher, simple things that would raise red flags can often get over looked when you're dealing with multiple things.

2) Choosing the right advertisers or networks to work with. You'll need to float money for some advertisers, managing your cash flow will be essential to ensuring timely payments to publishers while having enough cash flow in the bank to hire staff, develop a tracking system and so on. Running credit checks on direct advertisers can be a valuable tool to get a feel for their track record in terms of stiffing networks / publishers on payment.

3) Customer Support is the USP. At the end of the day 80-90% of the networks out there will promise the same things, top converting offers, weeklies / dailies, access to creative teams, and the list goes on. I think the way a network, new or old separates themselves in the industry is the people they employe to deal with advertisers / publishers. Solid account managers or account exectuvies that know what they're talking about, understand the industry, and how it works is vital.

I wish you the best of luck and if there is anything i can do to help you during the process please feel free to reach out to me.

Stephen@Imminteractive.com

It takes a lot of hard work and dedication, do not think you will make it over night. Also try and get as many JV as you can. Also try and swap Ads and email list. Hope that helps a little.

I am also very interested in this so thanks for the great replies everyone.

I used to own one, but shut it down. It was a 24/7 job and I don't like jobs. You get to deal with affiliates who are a-holes, they expect you to be available 24/7 and even if it's new year's eve, you better be waiting by the phone or email to respond to them or they're going to post on all public forums about how your network doesn't care about affiliates.

Then you get to deal with people trying to rip you off, both merchants and affiliates daily. You get to deal with fraud every single day almost every second of the day. You get to figure out that the guy doing huge numbers on credit reports is actually scamming people on Craigs list to do it and now the merchant isn't paying and you have to prove to the affiliate who is scamming you (and knows they are), that they did it.

You get very very low margins, meaning you must do big volume to make any significant money. You get shifty networks that charge you $1,000 per month then the day your renewal goes through, they jack up the price to $3,000 per month without so much as a phone call. Then they LOCK you in and demand payment for the next 12 months even though they totally screwed you over. Then you get merchants who don't pay you, but you STILL have to pay your affiliates or else your network is done for. For me that was over $100,000 in loses covered out of my pocket. Then you get Affiliate Managers who disappear on you for 3 weeks because they were in a car accident in the hospital but you couldn't reach them and nobody in their family had the brains to tell you about this. Then they come back and act like nothing happened and demand payment for the 3 weeks they disappeared. Then you get snotty little ******* affiliate managers who are there to learn everything they can from you because their goal is to start their own network and take all your affiliates with them, but don't worry, they'll be your best friend while they're "employed" by you.

Then if that's not enough, you get to experience absolutely zero affiliate loyalty. They will jump ship for a penny more from another network, then play networks against each other to get 2 more pennies out of the network they left.

Not sure if I missed anything, but let's just say if I ever did it again, it would be TOTALLY different then my first time around. I have the utmost respect for any network owner now as I know exactly what they go through and more power to them for keeping at it. My network did profit, but the headaches just made it not worth it in the long run.

Do you have enough capital?

I've read it's pretty much a waste of time and money. Too much competition. You have to have serious $ to build your affiliate base up!

Hello friend,
When I started my career with SEO services, I asked on a forum if it is good or bad to start. Most of the people were saying like today that there is much competition this and that. But I started and today I am earning good with my services. I my self is going to start a CPA network soon. I already know that there are thousands of CPA networks already running which will be my competitors but I really don't care about them. I know what I have to do and how I have to get my way in this industry. I KNOW IT IS TOO DIFFICULT. Every thing successful story has a beginning and it will be our beginning. What I want to say is:

*If you want to start a network just do it and find your ways
*If the owners CB and CJ are successful then you can be successful as well. Only thing is that you have to struggle in the same way with double speed.
* Never get disappointed with any negative feedback just look what is positive for you.

That will help you I hope my friend