The Approval Checklist CPA Networks Never Hand You

You pull up a CPA network’s advertiser application and stare at the field asking for your website. You don’t have one yet. The next field wants proof of results. You don’t have that either. So you either lie a little to sound bigger than you are, or you close the tab and tell yourself you’ll apply once you’re ready. This is the exact wall Vic Strizheus addresses in this session, and his answer isn’t a trick. It’s a short list of things networks are quietly checking for before they ever hand you a dashboard.

Getting approved as an advertiser, he’s clear, is nowhere near as hard as getting approved as a publisher. But that doesn’t mean you walk in blind. A network is sizing you up in the same thirty seconds you’re sizing them up, and most applicants have no idea what they’re actually being judged on.

What actually gets you approved as a CPA advertiser?

None of what follows is mandatory. You can get accepted without any single one of these in place. But each one makes the reviewer’s decision easier, and stacking a few of them together changes how the whole application reads.

• A site of your own, even a simple blog, so there’s somewhere a network can go to see who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. No central hub means you’re a name on a form and nothing else.
• Some kind of track record you can actually point someone to. Not a number you say out loud, something you can show if they ask you to back it up.
• A video presence. If you’ve already put yourself on camera and gotten those videos in front of people, it signals you’re not brand new to marketing.
• Treating CPA traffic as a long-term piece of your business rather than something you try once and abandon if the first campaign is slow.

The proof piece is where people get themselves in trouble. It’s tempting to round up, to imply a bigger history than you actually have, especially when you’re staring at a blank application and feeling small. Vic’s instruction here is blunt (“always be truthful always be up front” is how he says it on the recording). If a network asks you to show something and you can’t, that’s the moment the relationship sours before it even starts. Better to skip the claim entirely than to make one you can’t back up.

What changes once you’re actually talking to a network?

Getting the account opened is only the first hurdle. What happens in the conversation after that, in Vic’s telling, matters just as much as the paperwork. He calls it posture, meaning the way you actually talk when someone from the network gets you on the phone or in an email thread. Sharp, certain, clearly someone who knows the game, not someone fumbling for words.

This shows up hardest during negotiation, and his instruction is specific about what not to do. Never argue with your account manager. Never get confrontational trying to win a point your way, especially on your first deal with them. You’re stepping into their world, not the other way around.

make your account manager your ally

That’s the whole posture in four words. You’re not trying to beat the network in round one. You’re trying to survive round one so there’s a round two. Vic is direct that the balance of power flips once you’ve actually done business together: after a round or two, you get more room to negotiate, more say over how a campaign gets structured, more ability to shape things toward how you want them to run instead of how the network initially set them up. The account manager who liked working with you the first time is the one who gives you that room the second time.

What do you do if they say no?

Vic doesn’t pretend rejection won’t happen. He says plainly that a first-time application stands a real chance of getting turned down, and that the answer to a no is not discouragement. The move from there isn’t to argue your case or reapply with a louder pitch. It’s to follow up, stay easy to work with, and let the relationship do what the first application couldn’t.

Underneath all of it is a simpler discipline that has nothing to do with charm. As Vic Strizheus puts it in his closing note, “know your numbers know your conversions know your opt-in rate your earnings per click your earnings per opt-in” is the habit to build before the first conversation ever happens. A network that sees you can talk fluently about your own conversion data is looking at someone who treats this as a business, not a hobby with a login. That fluency is also what lets you actually run the campaigns once you’re in, instead of guessing at what’s working.

None of this is complicated, and that’s sort of the point. A blog you actually maintain, results you can show without flinching, some video presence, calm posture on the phone, and a habit of following up instead of arguing. Stack those together and the same application that gets a stranger rejected gets you a yes, and a much easier second and third conversation after that.

The full session goes deeper into how Vic builds out the account-manager relationship over time and what he tracks week to week once a campaign is live. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

All right, so now I’m going to share with you, um, a few ideas, give you a few tips on how to get, um, accepted, all right, into a CPA network, whether it’s a publisher or, or, or an advertiser. And of course, in this example, we’re going to be, you know, we’re looking to get accepted as an advertiser, which is not as difficult as being accepted as a publisher, I’ll tell you that much, okay? But this will help. Now, this does not mean that you need to have all these things in place, you know, or otherwise you’re not going to get accepted, uh, but these will help, all right? So, uh, you know, if you have one or more of these, it will help you. Now, that does not mean, I want to emphasize, it does not mean that you need to absolutely have all this stuff in place, okay, in order to get accepted. You’ll, you know, you can still get accepted without any one of these, uh, but when you have these, it will be a lot easier for you to get accepted, okay?

So, having your own site, and this can be as simple as a blog, okay? So some, you like your own central hub. Why is this important? Well, a lot of times, you know, CPA networks will look at you, and they will look at, you know, your, uh, your thing, you know. What, what are you doing? You know, who are you? Is there a place to where they can go to learn more about you, right? To find out, you know, who you are, what you do, you know, what you stand for, what you stand against, you know, what your stuff is, all the good stuff. And if you have a central hub on the CPA network, you know, you can get accepted, and accepted as an advertiser. And if you have a central hub on the internet, if you have a central place to where people can go to, you know, your blog is a perfect example, if you have that, to where you can send people to you and they can check you out, right? They can see there’s a little bit about your buyer, or maybe you have some testimonials about, you know, from people that you dealt, you know, that you did business with, uh, or, you know, you, whatever, right? Whatever the, the normal blog, you know, um, stuff that people put on a normal blog, you know, you, you’re talking about, you know, specific topics, right? Um, that will be beneficial, okay? So think about that.

Another thing is, uh, proven data, if you, if you can show this, okay? If you can, when you talk to a network, and you can say, you know what, I’ve made, you know, fifty thousand dollars in the last year, I’ve made ten thousand dollars in the last 30 days, I’ve made over a million dollars, you know, and you can, you can have, you know, some kind of, uh, proof with, you know, for that, that would be, um, a big, big help, okay? So if you don’t have that, obviously you’re not gonna talk about any of that stuff, because you’re not going to be able to talk about any of that stuff. Because, you know, if you say, hey, you know, I’m this big shot, and I, you know, I made, you know, gazillion dollars last year, and they say, hey, do you have something to back it up? Can you actually, you know, can you show us some, some, some proof? And, uh, you’ll be like, oops, right? So never say something that’s not true. Always be truthful, always be up front, okay? But if, you know, if, if, if something is not going to serve you, like if you’re just getting started, never, ever say that, you know what, I’m just getting started, I’m just this, you know, this newbie who is trying to make money, okay? Never say that. You want to be, um, you know, you, you want to, you want to come across as somebody who, uh, who knows what they’re doing. How well are you knowing in the industry, okay?

So this, um, your videos can help with this, okay? We talked about video marketing in the last, in the last module, right? So we talked about how to get your videos distributed, we talked about how to, you know, how to shoot videos, how to get yourself out there. And again, I’m telling you, this is probably not something you’re going to do right out of the gate. You’re not going to be able to do it right out of the gate, right? This would probably something that you will need to build up to, okay? But definitely CPA in marketing, or CPA traffic, or playing with CPA networks, should be on your agenda as a long-term, you know, as a long-term, uh, you know, business, uh, decision. Does that make sense? As, as something that you want to do long term. Because when you get here, when you, when you play the game, you know, with CPA networks, your business is, it’s so much easier to scale your business, I’m telling you, my friend and your friends. Because I’m telling you, my friend, I, right, for when you come to a CPA network, you know what, you already have some videos, you already have your own site, right? You already have some kind of data going on. So again, hopefully you can see, as we progress through this course, things are coming together, right? And, and you can see how one thing can lead to another other. When you combine all these things together, man, you become an absolutely unstoppable marketer, and you can do whatever the heck you want to do, and nobody can control you. Make sense? Alright.

So, your posture, okay? Just the way that you talk, right? How do you talk? Are you, you know, are you like lost for words? Are you someone who is very uncertain, right? Or when you talk to a CPA network, you’re sharp as a tack, right? You’re, you’re enthusiastic, you know your stuff, you know your game, right? So your posture is gonna be very, very important, especially when it comes to negotiations.

And also, last thing I’m gonna leave you with, this is, this is with follow up and being supercool, okay? Again, make your account manager your ally. Be very, very cool with, and never, never, never, ever, ever, ever become, for comfort, comfort, what’s the word I’m looking for, confrontational with them, okay? Never, never try to argue with them. Never try to, you know, stand your, you know, to cut, to kind of the, so, you know, nigga, you gotta, you know, nigga, you gotta kinda like, you know, nigga, you gotta like, um, never, never try to win the case your way, especially if you’re just getting started. I, you know, you always want to, again, you’re stepping into their world, okay? Again, you want to be cool. You want to negotiate, but in a cool way. There is a fine line, and I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, right? Uh, but see, once you establish a little bit of a business with them, once you do a little bit of business with them, you know, then second round, third round, fourth, whatever, then you will have a lot more, you know, a lot more, um, um, leeway with them, right? You will, you will have a lot more power, um, and, and you will have, you know, you, you will be able to kind of control, and, you know, and turn, um, your campaign in the more, in the way to how you want it to go, instead of how they want it to go in the beginning. Does that make sense, my friend?

So again, getting accepted is not really that difficult, um, but just know that, you know, if you just apply for the first time ever, uh, there is a good chance you may get, you may get rejected. But don’t get discouraged, you know. Just follow up, be super cool, and, you know, chances are really, really good that they’ll accept you, um, especially, you know, if you’re applying as an advertiser.

And, um, but again, in closing, I’m just gonna stress this, okay? Know your numbers, know your conversions, know your opt-in rate, your earnings per click, your earnings per opt-in, okay? Travel time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and value will really, really be beneficial for you, um, because with that knowledge, you can take your stuff to the stratosphere quicker than anything else possible, okay? Than with anything else possible.

So, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this kind of stuff. I hope this, this kind of opens up a little bit, you know, a little bit bigger picture for you of what’s available out there for you as a marketer, right? Um, again, something that work your way to, you know, to towards, okay? You want to step in this game, it’s awesome, okay? It’s awesome. We’re gonna be talking more about this as we progress into our trainings. And yeah, if you have any questions, you know, ask me on the live coaching call that we have coming up. I appreciate you. Thank you for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next module. I had a lot of fun filming this, even like, even though my voice is shot, as you can probably tell. I apologize for that. But hey, you know what, it’s not about my voice, it’s about the message. So I hope that this stuff kind of makes sense to you, and I look forward to seeing you more in the, you know, in the upcoming modules, and also on life coaching. Shiki boom, thank you for watching, I’ll see you later.