Building your own affiliate network is a bit more complicated than it might seem at first glance. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process step by step and point out the unexpected costs and pitfalls along the way.
Step 1. Define Your Goals and Objectives
Before you start building your network, make sure you’ve settled the following points about your future plans:
- What role do you want to play? You can be an affiliate network, an advertiser selling goods or services, a media buying team, an individual media buyer, or combine several of these roles at once.
- What offers are you planning to run? The platform works with offers of almost any type. You can read about setting up a product network, an info-product network, or working with financial offers — and that’s only a quick overview of what’s possible.
- Where will your traffic come from? You can work with your own affiliates, or pull in traffic from third-party sources.
- Where will orders be processed? Incoming leads can be handled right inside the platform’s own interface, or sent off for processing to a third-party CRM or another affiliate network.
- What volume of clicks and leads are you planning to run through the network? The platform has no limit on incoming clicks or leads, but knowing your traffic volume upfront helps you size the server you’ll need. For serious loads, you can build out distributed systems.
- Do you actually need our platform? Strange as it sounds, AlterCPA isn’t the right fit for every task in the affiliate network business. Before you buy, make sure to check out the product overview and take a look at the demo. If you have any questions or doubts, get in touch with us – we’ll help you figure it out.
Step 2. Get Your Server and Domains Ready
The AlterCPA platform isn’t a cloud solution – it’s distributed as self-hosted server software. That means you’ll need to buy a server and some domain names. Depending on what you’re setting up, you might need more than one server.
What You Absolutely Need
There’s no way to deploy a CPA platform at all without these.
- A server to install the platform on. This is where your whole network will run. We recommend a virtual or dedicated server running the current stable release of Debian Linux x64 (a clean install, no control panel). When picking a server, pay attention to the RAM – off-the-shelf configurations from popular providers with 4 GB of RAM are usually a good match for a mid-sized network on every other spec too. You need to buy the server before you buy a license, since you’ll have to enter its IP address at checkout. A server like this typically runs around ₽1,000, or $15, a month.
- A primary domain for the control panel. This becomes your future network’s address. You can put the control panel on the main domain itself or on a subdomain (say, panel or cpa). You need to buy the domain before you buy a license too, since you’ll enter the domain (or subdomain) at checkout. Domain prices typically run anywhere from ₽60-600 for a standard zone up to ₽3,000 and beyond for a more interesting one. RegRu often runs discounts on cheap domains, while 2domains keeps its prices low year-round.
What We Strongly Recommend
You can get by without these at the testing stage, and some network setups won’t need them at all. But odds are, you’ll end up needing them too.
- A domain for landing pages. A classic product or info-product network will definitely need one. In general, you need this if your network will run its own landing pages (product and info-product networks always will; others, not necessarily). It’s best to make the name sound “shop-like” – think tvshops, bestshop, buyonline, that kind of thing. Pricing and advice are the same as for the main network domain.
- A domain for prelanders (aka bridge pages, transit pages, whatever you want to call them). You’ll definitely need one if you’re planning to run prelanders in your traffic. In practice, most affiliates end up needing them. It’s best to make the name sound “news-like” or “blog-like” – topnews, bestblogs, topreviews, and so on. Pricing and advice are the same as above.
What You Might Need
These elements can come in handy for certain network setups, under heavy load, or in other non-trivial cases.
- Separate servers for landing pages and prelanders. Under heavy load, it’s worth moving landing pages and prelanders onto their own servers with a matching configuration. These servers can get by with a bit less RAM, but benefit from a wider channel and more disk space. On top of that, some cloud server providers won’t let you add extra IP addresses to an existing server, so you’ll need to spin up separate virtual machines just to get dedicated IPs for your landing page or prelander servers.
- Dedicated IP addresses for your landing page and prelander sites. Pointing domains at your landing page and prelander sites takes dedicated IP addresses – one for landers, one for prelanders, respectively. Providers will usually let you add several IP addresses to one server; an extra address typically runs about ₽100 a month, so figure on an extra ₽100-200 on top of your server’s monthly cost. If your provider won’t let you use multiple addresses, see the previous point.
- A domain for redirects. If you’re only working with external offers, you can skip the landing page domain and set up a redirect domain instead. It’s best to make the name sound “jump-like” – jumpto, jmp, goto, that sort of thing. Pricing and advice are the same as for the other domains.
- Multiple servers for load distribution. High-traffic projects can benefit from a special role-distribution setup. You can read more about it in the documentation, in the “Performance Optimization” section.
Step 3. The Staff You’ll Need
Depending on your specific needs, your team might require the following specialists:
- A technical specialist. For your network to run smoothly, you’ll almost certainly need a programmer who knows HTML and PHP. Their job covers: preparing sites for offers and stripping third-party code out of downloaded sites; setting up and deploying landing pages and prelanders on servers; and handling non-standard integrations with partners. You may also need them for server upkeep and maintaining the platform itself.
- An offer manager. Their responsibilities: creating new offers, setting prices and payouts, configuring order distribution, and monitoring payouts on both the network’s side and the advertiser’s side. Splitting this off into its own role is a must for aggregator networks.
- Personal managers. A personal manager’s job is to support affiliates on every aspect of working with the network: technical support, traffic-quality monitoring, and answering their questions.
- A media buyer. Having an in-house media buyer, or a small media buying team, is essential for testing new offers, finding the best combos for your affiliates, and keeping traffic steady for key advertisers.
- A web developer. Either a single all-rounder or a small team of a designer and a front-end developer. Handy whenever you need to build new creatives for offers or redesign existing ones. They’ll also help put together quality promo materials for the network itself.
This list leaves out bookkeeping, the call center, marketers, and the other “standard” staff any company needs. The technical specialist is a critical, must-have person for the network, and can double up as the web developer and offer manager too. The personal manager’s and media buyer’s duties can be handled by the network’s own head for a while at the start.
Step 4. Buy a License and Deploy the System
Once you’ve got your server and domain in hand, you can go ahead and buy a license. You can do that in the purchase section – you’ll need a registered account.
Which Option Should You Pick?
We recommend weighing two approaches to buying a license:
- If you’re not sure yet. If you’re not 100% sure your project is going to take off, buy a license for 1-3 months. That’s plenty of time to validate your idea. If it works out, move up to the full lifetime version. Starting costs including deployment: around ₽11,000 (₽6,000 for the license, ₽3,000 for deployment, ₽1,000 for the server, ₽300-1,000 for two or three domains).
- If you’re already confident. If you’re already working in CPA and just planning to move your whole operation onto our platform, get the full version right away. Server setup and deployment are free with it. Starting costs: around ₽62,000 (₽60,000 for the license, ₽1,000 for the server, ₽300-1,000 for two or three domains).
How the Purchase and Launch Process Works
Your general sequence of steps when buying looks something like this:
- Set up the server. You can follow the ready-made setup guide from our documentation.
- Order the license. You can do this in the purchase section by entering your domain and server IP address. Keep in mind that only one active license can exist per domain.
- Pay for the license. You can pay right on the purchase page via Robokassa, or use one of the alternative payment options. Russian legal entities can also work under a contract with payment by bank transfer. If you run into any payment issues, get in touch with us.
- Get your license file. As soon as your payment goes through, a “License” button will appear on the licensing page – click it to get the altercpa.txt file with your license key. You’ll need to put this file on your server.
- Download the installer. Once you’ve bought a license, you can find the right build of the platform for your server in the download section. The installation process itself is covered in the documentation. For extra peace of mind, you can also have our own specialists set up the server and install the system for you.
Step 5. Get Your Network Ready to Run
So now you’ve got a network up and running, you’ve got your access keys, and you’ve opened up that cheerful little green interface. What’s next?
- Read the manual. Yes, we’re pretty sure you still haven’t read it – now’s a good time to check out the “Working with the System” section, which walks you through your first steps. Follow it to add at least one advertiser and one offer.
- Arrange technical support for your network. We strongly recommend keeping your own technical specialist on staff to support the network, rather than relying on our support service. If you do need us, we recommend our basic support package or one-off consultations.
- Set up integration with your advertisers. In practice, advertisers usually prefer working with their own CRM systems rather than the affiliate network’s CRM. You can read more about this in the “Integration with Other Networks” section of the documentation.
- Set up integration with your traffic sources. If you’re planning to pull in orders from other affiliate networks, set up accounts for your partners following this guide.
Step 6. Keep Your Finger on the Pulse
Once your network is up and running, you need to keep a close eye on everything, without exception:
- Check up on your affiliates. Before paying out an affiliate, always check their orders for fraud. For product networks, this means looking at that affiliate’s goods buyout rate in the “Delivery Analytics” section.
- Keep an eye on payouts. If you’re operating as an aggregator, regularly check the offer payouts on your partners’ end. Make sure the payouts in your own system match the payouts on the end of the partners you’re sending traffic to.
- Track your finances. Make it a rule to log every balance movement for advertisers and agencies. Reconcile the account balances your system shows for your partners against what your partners’ own accounting shows.
- Check your backups. We have no doubt you’re already backing up your server. Test those backups for integrity every once in a while.
Step 7. Force Majeure and Emergencies
If everything suddenly breaks and nothing works, write to us – we’ll come to the rescue!