11 Pieces of Advice on How to Work with СPA Networks

Advertising by means of the CPA (Cost per Action) model is the advertising with the payment for the action made. For e-commerce, it is, for example, the most often placed and paid by a user order, for the funds it is the loan granted. The work is going through a CPA network, where an advertiser exposes an offer and pays a certain commission or fee for the action made. Network (webmaster) members see the proposal (offer) and may start giving traffic to the advertiser's website to get the reward in case of successful completion of the paid actions.

Today we would like to share some pieces of advice on how to successfully work with the CPA networks.

1. Do not lose sight of your competitors

You should always know what your competitors are doing: how much they pay to webmasters for the order, what kind of tools for CPA networks they obtain and so on. Your offer needs to be at least no worse than that of your competitors, otherwise, the webmaster will not work with you and will quickly switch to those projects that are more profitable.

2. It is something machines do really better

In a CPA network, it is necessary to transmit information about the status of the orders, so that webmasters could get their money. It is very important to do it extremely quickly. Imagine that a webmaster brought to you an order January 2. He is waiting for the further reconciliation check. If the reconciliation check is manual, then the manager has to check 3-10 CPA networks. It takes much time, as it requires you to download statistics from Google Analytics, internal CRM, 1C, and so on. Each network is a separate file. Often such work is carried out only once a month because it is quite time-consuming. As a result, a webmaster will receive an order confirmation just in February. Then the CPA network will prepare a bill for February only in March. And as a result, the webmaster will receive a payment in March, already completely forgetting that he even gave traffic to your Internet project.

So, if you want the webmasters who are trying to work with your offer stay with you till the end, make sure to provide the automated reconciliation check. One could argue that a manual check gives more control. However, in any CPA network, there is such concept as hold, i.e time that is given to cancel the order confirmation, if it was made by mistake. Therefore, for the manager to keep an eye on the ball would be enough instead of making a myriad of routine operations manually. Lack of developers' resources is another objection. If there are many CPA networks then there is a need to set personal integration for each of them. This can really be a big problem if we are speaking about large projects, so in this case, it is easier to make the integration with the agency and then the agency will make the integration with all the CPA networks.

3. Use retargeting for the CPA networks.

Even if you buy retargeting in Google by yourself, do not miss the opportunity to use fully functional RTB systems. Working with them through a CPA network, you don't run the risk of overpaying, as these systems work on the basis of general cost.

Of course, systems that advertise you on RTB spend money on advertising, and the amount of money is comparable to that you pay for this channel. If you have a CPA network rate much lower than you can pay for the order, don't expect that webmasters from the CPA network will do this with a wave of a magic wand. You may set a separate rate for retargeting and let only trusted partners into it.

4. Sites of promotional codes are your staff of life.

The sites of promotional codes can give your project a substantial increase in traffic and orders. In order to achieve good results working with them, we recommend you to have two sets of promotional codes. You need one set to be constantly presented on the websites of promo codes; in such a way they will always have something to use to advertise you. You need another set with high discounts for some special activities, such as Black Friday, New Year, March 8, and so on. But you should remember that some of the orders from the promotional codes come as a result of the organic search requests like "the brand name + promo code", so when you work with such sites it is better to set a separate fee for them. You can quite easily estimate the proportion of such orders from the total number of orders. Just look at the number of requests per month for the phrase "your brand name + promo code" and "your brand name + coupon" and multiply by a conversion of 10-15%. That will help you to understand how many orders from promotion codes come from brand organics. As a rule, the sites of promotional codes bring much more orders than you can get by the brand organics.

5. Refresh the banners in СPA-networks regularly.

Almost every business is marked with seasonal demand. The greater the impact of seasonality on your business, the more often you will have to update the materials. The webmasters should always have relevant banners that will lead to current offers. In addition, the more often you update the banners, the more often you appear in the news feed of CPA networks and mailing lists. It allows you to attract more webmasters.

6. Develop friendly relations with your CPA networks managers.

The number of webmasters that will work with your offer largely depends on your manager. It is important to stay human in any situation and not to degenerate to the behavior that cries that you can do whatever you want if you pay money. It is especially crucial when you work with CPA networks. If you will have bad relationships with the managers, then they simply won't do their best to attract webmasters to your offer.

7. Inform your CPA network about upcoming events.

If you have a sale or a new collection, it is important to create the banners and to publish information about this. Webmasters will be happy to support your press event because it will let them earn more money due to the increased conversion.

8. Provide webmasters with as much detailed statistics and guidelines as possible.

As an advertiser, you always have more statistics. You always know better what categories are best sold, where an average check is bigger, where conversion is better and so on. Webmasters don't know that and they have to test it all themselves. Those tests may fail. Then the partner will refuse to cooperate with you. If you will regularly direct your webmasters, both of you will earn money from the same amount of traffic. Such information is a great press event for CPA networks. This will allow to keep a bigger number of webmasters as well as to attract new ones.

9. Attract webmasters on your own.

Don't forget that nothing prevents you from attracting large publishers by yourself. Follow the top-content resources in your category and offer them cooperation through one of the CPA networks. Also regularly analyze, who is working with your competitors. If you have better conditions, then surely you will be able to lure the partner.

10. Create a separate section for partners on your website.

Your website itself can be a source of attracting webmasters. In a special website section, you should describe the main benefits of cooperation with you as well as the CPA networks you are presented in. Also, specify the email address for webmasters to submit their questions. You will probably find out that your partners have got a lot of issues. And when you solve them all you will pleasantly surprised by the increased volume of traffic and quantity of orders.

11. Collect statistics for each webmaster separately and do not mix them.

In 70% of cases, advertisers do not separate marks of a CPA channel by the webmasters. As a result, a large number of webmasters are perceived as something average. However, in order to successfully manage a CPA channel, you should understand statistics for each webmaster individually: you will have an opportunity to understand to whom you have to say goodbye and for whom you would like to raise commission.

So, we discussed the basic rules of work with CPA networks, although there is a myriad of nuances. If you want the channel to have a lot of orders, it is not enough just to check orders manually once a month. Keeping CPA networks is based not only on manual or even automated reconciliation but a great volume of work, which is largely built on relationships with CPA networks and certain webmasters.

One SPA manager will hardly be able to perform such work in the organization without strong technical assistance and rich expertise. That is why I would recommend contacting the Agency that specializes in keeping CPA networks. In this case, the manager will perform strategic tasks, such as: to think over special conditions for different types of traffic, to inform about upcoming events, to keep the CPA channel from the part of the advertiser and to inform the agency about all the insides, as well as to assemble the inner analytics of what should be in focus of the CPA networks.

Good luck with the CPA networks and wait for our next article!