I have been getting a large increase of traffic to the blog in the last 2 months which has led to an increase in people contacting me with questions and asking for advice in the same certain areas. Many of the questions I receive are duplicate questions and instead of answering the same question multiple times I figured I would just do a post on some of these questions.
Today I will be addressing the issue of getting accepted into a CPA network. It appears that many of the people trying to get accepted into these networks to do legit advertising are being denied because of the fact they simple don’t understand and know how to answer the questions on the application forms.
I myself, have never had any sort of a problem getting accepted into a network. Even when first starting out in this industry, it seemed quite easy to get in and start pumping out work for these companies. Part of that reason is because I learned the industry terms and information and didn’t act like a total “newbie” when approaching the networks.
Just think about it for a second, if you approach a network and tell them you are a total newbie yada yada, they aren’t going to really care if you are working with them or not. They want people who know how to promote their offers and know how to make them money. That is, afterall, why they are running a network, to make some fat cash.
Besides getting up to date on the basics of affiliate marketing, there are some other things that can flag a company from wanting to accept your application. When you first hit an application you are going to have to enter your name, address, city, state, zip, etc. That is all very self explanatory.
The next thing you are going to hit generally is entering an email address. When I signed up I used a gmail address with no problems, however I think times have changed and many companies are flagging accounts using free addresses. What you are going to want to do is appear more like a company or an experienced internet marketer, rather than some joe blow hoping to make some easy cash. This means go out and register a domain so you have a professional looking email, something like [email protected] will work just fine. I would also recomend taking the blowmedia.com and throwing up some sort of a simple site even if its a one page lander so that you look a bit more professional. Even this isn’t necesary but will help you out in the longrun.
TIP: If you REALLY wanted to be on top of things, and plan on taking up affiliate marketing as a full time gig, then I would highly recommend registering and setting up an LLC or S-Corp to make your company legit. The networks love this and almost always automatically accept you, plus they take you much more serious, in turn giving you higher payouts off the bat, and treating you like an asset, and not some newbie wasting their time. Not only is their that benefit, but you will also protect yourself legally and there can be some great tax benefits.
Once you complete that area, the application will generally ask for your EIN or social security number to confirm it’s you and so they can send you you’re 1099 tax information at the end of the year. This is all pretty self explanatory.
Next on the list is a phone number, you are going to want to make sure you enter a REAL phone number. These networks are going to want to call you 99% of the time and quick have a little chat to make sure you aren’t just out to scam them with fraud traffic. If you ignore their calls plan on not getting accepted. You need to talk to them and explain what you want to do, let them know how you plan on promoting, and give them an idea that you are going to bring in mass volume (which you really should) so that they have some sort of a reason to actually WANT you in their network. Another note to make about the phone number is….do NOT have some ghetto voicemail message. You want it to be professional. No company wants to call you and hear some akon ringback tone and then get a goofy ass answering machine message. They will automatically not take you serious.
Now is where most people start to get confused. On these applications almost all of them ask for your website url. Along with the url many networks also want to know what type of a site it is that you run and about how many visitors you get per month. This can be a conflict for many people because they don’t actually own a site yet…or maybe never will. DON’T let this hold you back. You have at least 2 options here to solve this problem. Either enter the domain that you setup for your professional looking email address OR just enter N/A. If the application asks what category your site belongs to, just choose anything, its not important at all. For the field asking for how many visitors you get, I generally just enter something like 100,000 or higher, since I do send at LEAST that much traffic….just not via a specific website. On rare occasions, you will run into a company that doesn’t know jack about affiliate marketing, and if you don’t have a high visitor count, they will flag or deny your app. This is generally due to the fact that whoever is reviewing the application just doesn’t understand the game and is kind of going off a simple algorithm to accepting and denying applications.
Now that you have all of that filled out, you are pretty much done, but there is still one more VERY important thing. The applications will generally ask you in one way or another how you plan on promoting their offers… There may be a drop down form or checkboxes allowing you to select the promotional methods you use, or there may just be an area for comments/site description.
Take me for example, I promote the majority of my offers through paid traffic, being even more specific via PPC and media buys. If the form has checkboxes or drop down forms, I simply check the PPC and Media Buy/Banner options. If the form has nowhere for me to express how I send my traffic, I use the comments/site description box to clarify that I will be sending the majority of my traffic via PPC and media buys. This allows the company to NOT worry about the website I have listed since they now know I will be sending that traffic NOT through a website, but via PPC and media buys.
TIP: One last thing to point out is that I also get many questions referring to what incentivization is. Incentivization is when you offer the visitor something in return for signing up for an offer. This can be anything from money to a free membership to a free report to free pictures/games/screensavors. I would like to make it very clear that MANY networks discourage incentivization and DO NOT like to deal with any publishers/affiliates who play around with it. Incentivization generally brings in lower quality traffic and lower quality leads. You do NOT want to associate yourself with bad traffic or bad leads. I would recomend AGAINST using incentivization and to make SURE NOT to ever indicate on your application that you work with incent offers.
This wraps up the signup process to guarantee yourself acceptance into any network you wish to join!
If there are any other questions, please comment and ask away. I am more than happy to answer any questions regarding the signup process that you may have.
Now go take this information and apply at all of the networks your heart desires. I have provided a great list of proven high quality networks who pay me on time all the time. Rest assured that you will have no problems getting in if you just follow this guide! 🙂
This will be the first time attending the summit with press credentials so I plan to actually try to get some decent sessions in and post some juicy info during and after the events.