EDGE TRAINING CENTER CPA BLUEPRINT The Complete Guide To Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks Getting accepted by the CPA networks is one of the major stumbling blocks for most Internet marketers new to the CPA business. Most of the networks make it hard to get accepted so that only those who put the effort in get in. By doing this they wean out the just playing around crowd from the serious marketers. This guide will show you exactly what you need to do and what you need to say to get into the top networks. If you follow the plan, then you should have no problem whatsoever. So let s get started. Building A Site To get accepted by most of the networks you are going to need to have your own site. Now you can get away with having a hosted blog on blogspot or wordpress, but it will make it extremely difficult, and the affiliate managers will generally ask you more questions, so my personal preference is to create a site from scratch hosted on your own domain. Take a look at the one that we built. http://www.chictastic.com/ Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks 1
Now this site was created using Wordpress with a theme that I purchased and the content was scraped from various different sites. Now before you say it, yes this is wrong, but remember I am only putting up a site here so that I can get accepted by the networks. Once this has been approved this site will be removed. If you don t want to take this approach then simply build out your own site and add content. Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks 2
Personally I would stay away from gambling sites (unless of course you are in this business and are approaching CPA companies that specialize in it) as I find they are more difficult to get approved for, instead pick something generic and which fits with your CPA company. Getting Some Advertising On The next step to getting approved is to get some ads on your site. Remember, the affiliate manager who is going to review your site will want to see that you are actively running promotions. Do not put AdSense on. Speaking to a couple of ad managers that I know, the general consensus is that they don t like to see AdSense unless you are a large and respected brand site / well read blog. The best approach to take here is to sign up for a Commission Junction account as they approve you straight away then apply to a couple of the companies in your niche. If you apply to some of the companies who review your site first and you get rejected by them it is a good indication that you are going to be rejected by the CPA companies too, so figure out what the problem is before you submit to the networks. As you can see above we have put a few offers on our site to show that we run promotions. Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks 3
Email Collection Most of the CPA networks run a lot of email only campaigns, that is you can only promote the offers via an email promotion to your list, so affiliate managers on the whole like to see a sign up for our newsletter kind of deal. If you look at the bottom of our test site then you will see that we have implemented a slide-up banner to get people to sign up for our list. (The software to do this is now included as part of your Immediate Edge membership) Applying To The Networks Now like I said above, some of the networks can be pretty difficult to get into so I like to use a trading up method of applying. What you are effectively doing is applying to the easiest networks first, then using them as references to get into the more difficult networks. So letʼs start with the easiest first. NeverBlue http://www.neverblue.com These have a good range of CPA offers and are generally the easiest to get accepted by. They also do weekly payouts which is great for cash-flow. COPEAC http://www.copeac.com Another easy network, but you will need to put some information into the comments field to make the process smoother. Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks 4
Once you have an account at either of these services then you should put some of their offers on your site and apply for the other networks. The Next Step This is crucial. Most CPA networks employ staff to filter out applications. This will either be done through them phoning you up and asking you some questions, or it will be done through what you put on the forms. In the next section I am going to be looking at some of the typical things you will get asked, and give you some guidance on what to put. But... This still doesn t mean you are going to get in. What you really need to do here is pre-empt the validation process... What I mean by that is, once you have applied, give it 24 hours and contact the affiliate manager directly. This shows you are serious, and after answering a few question you will get pretty much accepted straight away. True, it s a little scary, but armed with the right information will only take a couple of minutes. Answering The Questions Letʼs have a look at some of the typical questions that you will get asked, and define some of the terms that you will be expected to know in the CPA world. The first and most common question is... How will you drive traffic to the offers? There are multiple answers here, and I usually start with: Email promotions to my mailing list. You need to show that you are professional here, tell them you have a big list, give them details on your open rates, delivery rates, response rates. etc. Let them know that the list has been self built and that you have developed trust with your subscribers etc. (you are making this up of course ;) Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks 5
PPC Advertising. We all know what this is... Adwords. You will often get asked what your daily advertising budget is and you should put something realistic in here, say $350. Now be careful though, the affiliate manager (if you are speaking to them rather than just filling in a form) may ask to see some of your promotions. You should have a long tail keyword up and working, showing your ad in Google just in-case. I am saying long tail here because you donʼt want this costing you any money while waiting to get accepted by the networks. Contextual Advertising. Now this category can cover a variety of different advertising types so I will list a few of these below. PPC. I know I have just covered this but PPC is also a form of contextual advertising. CPV/PPV. This is cost per view or pay per view advertising. In essence you bid on your keywords and these are inserted into sites. When clicked / hovered over, the visitor is show a full page unblock-able pop-up. You are paying for the view. I like CPV advertising because it is usually cents on the dollar in comparison to AdWords and tends to convert pretty well. I will be covering this in-depth in this course. Search Bar / Tool Bar Advertising. Basically offers are presented in toolbar that the user has installed. Search Engine Advertising. When a user enters a search into a sites search engine which relates to the keywords you have bid on, your offer is shown. Organic Search. This is of course getting your pages ranked in Google for your keyword phrases related to your offers. I generally just go with PPC, CPV, and of course email promotions. So thatʼs the type of promotions that you run, now letʼs go through some of the other questions that you are likely to get asked. How many monthly visitors do you get? I usually go for 5,000-15,000 unique visitors a month. This is a big enough number so that they know they are going to get traffic from you, but not to big to get them looking for the data. Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks 6
How long have you been in online marketing? Anything over a couple of years. The thing is to make you look like you know enough and have been around long enough to know what works etc. Do you do this full time or part time? You really should go for full-time here. Say you have been doing it part time for a couple of years and have finally switched to full time a couple of months ago. What Type Of Products Do You Plan To Market? You should say products that fit with my existing sites such as ʻxʼ but I also run other promotions independently etc. What other CPA networks are you using? Just name one or two other ones, but also say you still use Commission Junction as you have some very good campaigns working there too. Getting Rejected It will happen... But donʼt worry, you are going to get accepted by most of the networks, and the ones that donʼt accept you, ask them why, and attempt to fix it. To be honest, it is usually because they donʼt have enough information, so more often than not another phone call will get you accepted. Here are some of the main reasons you will get rejected. 1. You gave them a number that didnʼt work, or you didnʼt answer the phone when they called you. I know you canʼt be in all the time, but try and give a cell option too, and if you do get rejected, then call them. 2. You donʼt sound professional enough. They have asked you some questions and you didnʼt give them the answers they wanted. I would work on one application at a time, and refine your process. Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks 7
3. Your site wasnʼt good enough. Now you donʼt have to have an amazing site here, but obviously spammy sites will get you rejected. 4. You didnʼt know the terms. Make sure you understand the CPA terms and also look at the rules on that particular CPA companies site. 5. You donʼt present a big enough earning potential. By that I mean you said you werenʼt spending too much money on AdWords / advertising etc. Most account managers equate that to low income. Applying for the CPA networks isnʼt hard, and like I said, you are pretty much guaranteed to get rejected at one point or another, but if you follow these simple rules then it should increase your chance of getting accepted considerably. One final thing, make sure you also have an AIM account and Skype account set up as this is the preferred method of communication for most affiliate managers, and if their is a space for one on a form, then put it down, if not, put it in the comments boxes. Getting Accepted By The CPA Networks 8