How to start your CPA project

Get started with AlterCPA by reading this manual

Creating your project in affiliate business is a bit more complicated process than it might seem at first glance. In this section, we will try to talk about everything in stages and show you unforeseen costs and pitfalls along the way.

Step 1. Identify goals and objectives

Before you start building your project, be sure to determine the following points of your future plans:

  1. What role do you want to play? You can be affilate network, advertiser, merchandise supplier, service provider, affilate team, personal webmaster or combine all these traits.
  2. What offers do you plan to use? The platform is suitable for working with almost any type of offers: commodity, services, online stores, web services, info-goods, courses, gambling, betting, dating, nutra, crypto, dropshipping, applications.
  3. Where do you plan to get traffic from? You can receive traffic from your registered webmasters, internal arbitrator teams or third-party sources.
  4. Where will you process the orders? Incoming leads can be either proceses in platform internal call-center interface or transfered to third-party CRM and affilate networks.
  5. How many clicks and leads do you plan to have in your network? The platform has no restrictions on the number of incoming clicks and leads, but traffic volumes will be useful for estimating the required server capacities. For serious loads, it is possible to build distributed systems.
  6. Do you need our platform? Strangely enough, AlterCPA is not suitable for solving all tasks in the sphere of affilate networks. Check out the use cases, check out the FAQ, and watch the demo. If you have any questions or doubts, contact us - we will help.

Step 2. Prepare hardware and domains

AlterCPA Pro is not cloud solution, it is self-hosted server product. This means you need to have a server and domains. Depending on your tasks, the servers and domains may require several. Working with AlterCPA Cloud, you wont need the server for the platform.

What you really need

Without these purchases, the CPA platform can not be deployed at all.

  1. Server to setup the platform. The whole network will work on it. Not needed for AlterCPA Cloud. It is recommended to purchase a virtual or dedicated server based on the OS Debian Linux 11 (clean installation without control panel). When choosing a server, pay attention to the RAM. Usually ready-made configurations of popular providers with 4 GB of RAM will suite the average network with all other components. The server is purchased before purchasing a license - you will need its IP-address at the time of purchase. The average cost of such a server - from $20 per month. Favourite providers: Inferno (tariff Medium and above) and Hetzner (tariff CX31 and above).
  2. Main domain for control panel. It will become the address of your network. The domain is purchased before purchasing a license - domain will need to be specified at the time of purchase. The average price tag for a domain ranges from $2-20 for classical zones to $50 and higher for interesting zones. Promotions to domains at a low price are often at RegRu, lowest prices - at 2domains.
  3. Site storage domain. Never use the platform domain for the sites. It should be named like "shop" - for example: tvshops, bestshop, buyonline etc. Prices and advices - same as main domain.

What can be useful

These elements may be required for some network configurations, under high loads and other non-trivial cases.

  1. Separate server for site storage. At a high load, it is recommended to separate the landings and prelandings to separate server with the appropriate configuration. This server may have slightly less RAM, but a wider channel and more disk space.
  2. Dedicated IP-addresses for sites of landings and prelandings. For domains parking to sites with landings and prelandings, you may need dedicated IP addresses. Usually it's used to secure the network in case of complains on the IP address. Typically, providers give the ability to add multiple IP addresses to a single server, average cost per IP address - $2 per month, so mothhly price for server increases by $2-4.

Step 3. Required staff

Depending on the specific tasks, your staff may require the following specialists:

  1. Technical Specialist. For a successful network, you almost certainly need a programmer with knowledge of HTML and PHP. The tasks of this specialist will include: preparing sites for offers and cleaning downloaded sites from third-party code; setup and uploading landings and prelandings on servers; work with non-standard integration with partners. You can also require server support and support for the platform itself.
  2. Offer manager. Tasks: creation of new offers, setting prices and payments, configuring order distribution, monitoring of payments on the side of the system and payments on the side of the advertiser. Allocation of this functions to a separate post is mandatory for aggregator networks.
  3. Personal managers.The task of the personal manager is to maintain the webmaster on all aspects of working with the network: technical support, traffic quality monitoring, advices.
  4. Arbitration specialist. The presence of a full-time arbitrator or a small arbitration team is required for testing new offoffers, selecting optimal links for webmasters, ensuring stable traffic for important advertisers.
  5. Web developer. One full-stack or small team of designer and layout-maker. Will be usefull when you need to create new advertising materials for offers or to change the design of existing ones. Also help to make high-quality promotional materials for the network itself.

We can offer you our technical specialists and offer managers. Read more about our support solutions in "Services" section.

This list does not specify the bookkeeping, call center, marketers and other "standard" personnel for any company. The technical specialist is a critical and necessary person within the network, can also combine the functions of a web developer and offer manager. The functions of the personal manager and the arbitrator may be performed by the network manager for the first time.

Step 4. Purchase license and deploy the platform

When you have a server and a domain, you can start purchasing a license. You can do it on purchase page. You should sign up and sign in to do it.

Which option to choose?

We recommend that you consider two approaches to obtaining a license:

  1. For doubters. If you are not totally sure that your project wil succeed, purchase license for 1 months. This time will be enough to test your concepts. If successful, go to the full lifetime version. Starting expenses: nearly $380 ($350 for the license, $20 for basic server, from $10 for 2 domains).
  2. For self-confident. If you are already working in CPA and just plan to transfer all your work to our platform, purchage lifetime license. Setup and deployment is included in it. Starting expenses: nearly $5070 ($5000 for the license, $50 for good server, $20 for 2 domains).
  3. Totally low-cost option. If you want the cheapest test, buy a cloud license at the "Start" tariff for a week and a domain for a promotion. Starting expenses: $36 ($35 for the license and $1 for the domain).

How does the purchase and start process take place?

Your sequence of actions when buying about this:

  1. Read the installation manual. Depending on your version: AlterCPA Pro or AlterCPA Cloud.
  2. Buy the server and domain. We described it earlier and in the manual.
  3. Purchase license. You can do in the purchase page by entring domain and IP-address. Notice, that only one active license can exist for one domain.
  4. Pay for the license. You can pay for the license directly from the site with cryptocurrencies or Capitalist service. Feel free to contact us in case of problems.
  5. Run the installation. You already read the manual in first step.

Recommendations for starting by vertical

We have compiled useful recommendations for launching the network in different verticals:

Step 5. Preparing your network for work

So, you have your network set up, you got your access keys and opened shiny green interface. What should you do next?

  1. Read the manual. Yes, we are sure you still haven't done it. Now it's time to read "Working with your network" with your first steps. Add at least one offer and supplier with that manual.
  2. Prepare the technical support. We strongly recommend to have technical specialist in your staff for network support, without our technical service If you need, you can order standard support package or one-time consulting.
  3. Integrate with your advertisers. It is described in "API integration" and "External offers" sections of the manual.
  4. Integrate with your traffic sources. If you want to get traffic from third-party networks, prepare accounts for them as described in this manual.

Step 6. Keep your eyes open

When the network is launched, you definitely need to keep everything under your control:

  1. Check webmasters. Before making a payment to the webmaster, be sure to check his orders for the presence of fraud. For product networks, this is done by analyzing the buy-out of goods on the webmaster in the section "Delivery Analysis".
  2. Check payments. If you work as an aggregator, check regularly the paymetns on the side of your partners. Make sure that payments on the side of your system do not differ from the payments on the side of partners, to whom you send traffic.
  3. Check your transactions. Mandatory record all transactions of funds for advertisers and agencies. Verify the data on the amounts on the account of your partners on the side of your system and on the side of the accounting department of your partners.
  4. Check backups. We have no doubt that you make backup copies of your server. It is built in AlterCPA. Periodically test them for integrity.

Step 7. Force Majeure and Emergency Incidents

If everything suddenly breaks down and nothing works, contact us - we will help!