Friday the 13th! What should you expect from a day like this? A fresh AlterCPA v 3.13 release, of course! Everyone knows that installing updates on a Friday spells trouble, and installing version thirteen on Friday the 13th spells a fun weekend! So now we’ll tell you what two months of development went into, to make that weekend fun turn out especially wild!
Once again we’ve managed to ship our most extensive update yet, in terms of the sheer volume of reworked and new code. The whole approach to handling leads has been completely rethought. Starting with version 3.13, the AlterCPA platform supports different CPA models.
AlterCPA has always been built around the CPS model — payment for a confirmed lead. Now you can choose what counts as a confirmed lead. Under the CoD model, a lead counts as confirmed for the affiliate only once it’s been bought out by the customer. Under the CPL model, working for valid leads, only leads that end up trashed will count as cancelled. And under the CPA model, literally any lead that enters the system counts as confirmed. Advertisers, meanwhile, will keep working in their own CRM with real approvals, cancellations, deliveries and returns, while the affiliate only sees the lead status determined by the offer’s chosen model.
To make life better for fans of traffic you’d never call product traffic, we’ve brought traffic sources to life. From now on, this isn’t just a useless list on the offer page — it’s a tool that directly affects payouts. You’re free to set different payouts for the traffic sources allowed on an offer, and, for visual convenience, tie those sources to offer goals too.
Owners of large resources have something to celebrate too — premium traffic will no longer go to waste on generic pages, since we’ve now added deeplink support. An affiliate can easily send a visitor to whichever specific page of your large site they see fit, without being limited to the set of entry points you provided.
We try to keep up with the latest security trends, so we tried to put a condom on AlterCPA. The data center staff didn’t appreciate our enthusiasm and kicked us out of the server room. So we settled for full HTTPS support instead. Secure connections now work not just for the network’s main interface, but for every site that’s part of it. Parked domains will also get their own SSL certificate automatically within an hour of activation. All Flow links will switch over to HTTPS as soon as it’s technically possible on their domains. Note that for existing users this functionality requires additional server configuration — get in touch with us for a consultation.
As we all know, affiliates never find out what’s going on inside the network. So to show them you’ve genuinely rolled out an update, we’ve built a dashboard! For everyone except call center operators, the home page now shows the network’s latest news, your personal manager’s contact details, and the most useful traffic performance and quality metrics.
Now let’s quickly run through the changes that are undoubtedly important but not as extensive, covering network administration and configuration:
– The offers section now has handy activity filters and sorting settings. Also, after editing an offer you’ll now return to the page with your filter still applied, instead of the full list.
– Manual payouts now support setting commissions through the standard interface. You can sketch out a list of commissions for different user categories by passing a “base” payout amount through the API.
– The built-in accounting module got a new interface, splitting balances from payment statistics. Receivables and payables moved into their own section, and accounting can now show the movement of funds by user.
– The reference directories now let you configure a list of call issues, plus discounts and markups, for the call center.
– A new section with handy utilities has appeared: changing a site’s domain and redirect URL, updating data files on servers, quickly adding and removing users from an offer’s white and black lists, and an out-of-turn recheck of accepted orders’ status.
– The API request log is now much more detailed and got search not just by user ID, but also by offers, sites, clicks, orders and Flows.
– The action log now includes the user’s IP address and browser, which will come in handy for tracking admin actions.
Attention! Very important! Installing this update causes very high load on the database. We strongly recommend scheduling it for your network’s lowest-activity period. Friday the 13th evening works just fine.