Just to ensure everyone is clear, “CPA Approval Services” are completely ran and operated by fly by night fraud rings. If you do a few searches on Google you will find countless posts for people offering their “services” and “affiliates” looking for such help.
“Pay x amount of dollars for each account approved.”
“I will create a website optimized for CPA approval.”
“I can fill out CPA applications and do the phone calls to the networks for you or you can do them yourself and I will tell you what to say.”
I understand there are some newbies who feel the need to get assistance getting into a network, and at times some major networks might be a bit short with them. Turning to professional fraudsters is not the answer. A majority of “affiliates” who enlist these services are planning to run fraudulent traffic themselves. The sheer amount of services offered just further demonstrates the rising number of individuals who profit, at the affiliate and network’s expense. As with any business, it has to be successful for sub services to start popping up. Just think about all those nifty after market 3rd party Apple Gadgets you have.
Sites like Freelancer.com allow projects such as these to be posted without any restrictions (even though their code of conduct states fraud is unacceptable). I signed up for an account for the sole purpose of reporting these violations, of course no action has been taken. Most affiliate forums will ban you for posting or requesting services such as these. As an affiliate manager at GetAds who handles fraud first hand regularly, it is becoming easier to spot these services and deny such applications to our network.
It is extremely frustrating to see these projects post weekly and actual affiliates who don’t mind aiding these fraudsters. To give you an example, the latest posting on Freelancer, whose project creator is from China, looks like this;
“Hi guys,
I need someone who can help me get approved by some CPA network.
You must have experienced with CPA networks and know how to promote the offer with all kinds of methods.
I need the following networks account approved.
(He lists over 10 major networks)
You should have the experience about CPA approval.
You will do the application and make phone calls or connect the affiliate managers via AIM.
You can use any method just make sure you can get approved.
You will get paid if the application is approved.
Check account success through,I will pay $30-$80 per account approval.
If you are good at CPA approval, Please PM me the details (your experience, which CPA network accounts you have, your contact information etc.,)
I’m looking for people who can have long-term cooperation with me!
If you have any accounts want to sell than you can PM me too.”
This post was bid on by someone in the US who mentioned they are “doing this professionally…” As an industry, something needs to be done.
Don’t expect someone to do the work for you! I had an honest affiliate who used Freelancer to help him attain leads on an offer and was distraught to find that his marketing expert from Pakistan was placing leads. He ended up losing quite a bit of money and there was nothing I could do to help. If these “experts” truly knew how to run quality traffic, don’t you think they would do it themselves and cut you out of the equation? Take the time and do your research. Everyone is always searching for the easy way out but as the saying goes, “if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself!”
If you are concerned about getting into a network, the most important thing is to be yourself! Be honest about everything, where you are at with your affiliate marketing and you should have no problem. Most networks don’t require that you have websites. So, if you have an established site, that’s great. If not, don’t worry about it and certainly don’t make a crappy site just to have one (that’s more obvious). The network wants to talk to you, not someone pretending to be you. If you can’t manage to get your own real accounts…how can you expect to make real money?
