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 plan to play? You can be an affiliate network, an advertiser, a supplier of goods or services, an affiliate team, an individual affiliate, or combine all these roles.
  2. What offers do you plan to place? The platform is suitable for working with almost any type of offers: goods, 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 work with external affiliates, your own internal affiliate teams, or receive traffic from third-party sources.
  4. Where will you process orders? Incoming leads can either be processed within the platform’s own interface, or transferred to third-party CRM systems or affiliate 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 affiliate 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 a cloud solution, it is a self-hosted server product. This means you will need to purchase a server and domain names. Depending on your tasks, you may need several servers and domains. Working with AlterCPA Cloud, you won’t need the server for the platform.

What you really need

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

  1. Server to set up 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 a control panel). When choosing a server, pay attention to the RAM. Usually ready-made configurations from popular providers with 4 GB of RAM will suit a small network in terms of all other components as well. 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 is around $20 per month. Favourite providers: Inferno (tariff Medium and above) and Hetzner (tariff CX31 and above).
  2. Main domain for the control panel. It will become the address of your network. The domain is purchased before purchasing a license — it will need to be specified at the time of purchase. The average price tag for a domain ranges from $2-20 for classic zones to $50 and higher for interesting zones. Low-price domain promotions are often available at RegRu, and consistently low prices at 2domains.
  3. Site storage domain. Never use your main domain for hosting sites. It should be named something close to “shop” — for example: tvshops, bestshop, buyonline, and so on. Prices and recommendations are the same as for the network’s 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 onto a 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. For domain parking on sites with landings and prelandings, you may need dedicated IP addresses. This is usually done to protect the network in case the IP address gets blocked due to a complaint. Typically, providers allow adding multiple IP addresses to a single server; the average cost per IP address is $2 per month, so it adds $2-4 to the monthly cost of the server.

Step 3. Required staff

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

  1. Technical specialist. For the network to run successfully, you will 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 of third-party code; setting up and uploading landings and prelandings on servers; working with non-standard integrations with partners. Server support and maintenance of the platform itself may also be required.
  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 these functions to a separate post is mandatory for aggregator networks.
  3. Personal managers. The task of the personal manager is to support the affiliate in all aspects of working with the network: technical support, traffic quality monitoring, guidance.
  4. Affiliate. Having a full-time affiliate or a small affiliate team on staff is required for testing new offers, selecting optimal bundles for affiliates, and ensuring stable traffic for important advertisers.
  5. Web developer. One full-stack generalist, or a small team of a layout designer and a graphic designer. Useful when you need to create new advertising materials for offers or change the design of existing ones. They will also help 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 the “Services” section.

This list does not include bookkeeping, the call center, marketers, and other “standard” staff present in any company. The technical specialist is a critical and necessary person within the network, and can also combine the functions of a web developer and offer manager. The functions of the personal manager and the affiliate may initially be performed by the network’s manager.

Step 4. Purchase a license and deploy the platform

When you have a server and a domain, you can start purchasing a license. You can do it on the 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. Classic start. If you are not completely sure whether your project will succeed, purchase a license for 1 month of the cloud version. This time will be enough to test your concept. If successful, move to the professional license with a support package. Starting expenses: nearly $400 ($390 for the license, $10 for two to three domains).
  2. Ultra-low-cost option. If you want the cheapest possible test, buy a cloud license on the “Start” tariff for ten days and a domain on sale. Starting expenses: $81 ($80 for the license and $1 for the domain).

How does the purchase and start process take place?

Your sequence of actions when purchasing is roughly as follows:

  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 a license. You can do this on the purchase page by entering the domain and server IP address. Note that only one active license can exist per domain.
  4. Pay for the license. You can pay for the license directly on the purchase page, using cryptocurrencies or the Capitalist service. Feel free to contact us in case of problems.
  5. Run the installation. You already read the manual in the 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 the shiny green interface. What should you do next?

  1. Read the manual. Yes, we are sure you still haven’t read it. Now is exactly the time to check out the “Working with your network” section, which describes your first steps. Add at least one advertiser and one offer following that manual.
  2. Prepare the technical support for your network. We strongly recommend having your own technical specialist on staff to support the network, without relying on our technical service. If needed, we recommend getting a standard support package or one-time consulting.
  3. Integrate with your advertisers. It is described in the “API integration” and “External offers” sections of the manual.
  4. Integrate with your traffic sources. If you plan to receive orders from third-party affiliate networks, prepare accounts for your partners 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 affiliates. Before making a payment to an affiliate, be sure to check their orders for fraud. For product networks, this is done by analyzing the buy-out rate of goods for the affiliate in the “Delivery Analysis” section.
  2. Check payments. If you work as an aggregator, regularly check the payments on the side of your partners. Make sure that the payments on the side of your system do not differ from the payments on the side of the partners to whom you send traffic.
  3. Monitor your finances. Be sure to record every movement of funds on the balance for advertisers and agencies. Verify the account balance data for your partners on your system’s side against the data on the accounting side 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!