A CPA network's catalog has hundreds of offers, each with an eye-catching payout in the first column. But the payout is only one line of the offer page. Next to it sit the approval rate, hold, geo, allowed traffic sources, creative requirements, call center hours and a dozen notes in small print. Those are what decide whether the payout turns into money in your balance. We covered affiliate networks themselves and how to choose one in the article on CPA networks; this one goes a level deeper, into how to choose an offer.
What an offer is and what is on the offer page
An offer is an advertiser's proposition with working terms: what to promote, to whom, from where, and which action gets paid. A CPA network's offer page usually includes:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Payout | How much you get for one approved action |
| Conversion action | What gets paid: a lead, sign-up, deposit, purchase, install |
| Geo | Countries traffic is accepted from, sometimes with different payouts |
| Approval rate | The share of leads the advertiser confirms |
| Hold | How many days a conversion is reviewed before it is credited |
| Traffic sources | Which traffic types are allowed and which are forbidden |
| Creatives and landers | Ad requirements, ready-made promo materials |
| EPC / CR | Network-wide earnings per click and conversion rate, if shown |
| Restrictions | Caps (daily limits), lead acceptance hours, audience age, duplicate rules |
If a line is missing, ask the manager before launch, not after your first rejected lead. Below we go through the main lines in detail.
Payout: look at expected revenue, not the rate
A high payout is attractive, but on its own it says nothing. What earns money is not the rate but the rate multiplied by the share of approved actions.
Say you are comparing two offers in the same vertical and geo (the numbers are made up):
| Offer A | Offer B | |
|---|---|---|
| Payout per approved lead | 30 $ | 22 $ |
| Approval rate | 25% | 50% |
| Expected revenue per lead | 7.50 $ | 11 $ |
The offer with the lower payout earns almost one and a half times more per lead. And if offer A also has a long hold, you will see its money later, which slows down how fast your budget turns over.
Pay attention to the payout model too: CPL pays for a lead, CPA for a conversion action such as a deposit or purchase, RevShare a share of the advertiser's revenue. The further the paid action is from the click, the higher the payout and the greater the uncertainty.
Approval rate and hold
The approval rate is the share of leads the advertiser confirmed. In e-commerce offers this usually means a call center call and a paid order; in finance, an approved application; in subscriptions, a payment. The rate on the offer page is a network average, and on your traffic it can be different: it depends on audience quality, geo, time of day, and even on how honestly your creative describes the product.
The hold is the period during which a conversion is reviewed and not credited to your balance. The longer the hold, the more working capital you need: you pay for traffic today and get the money weeks later.
How to read statuses in reports (lead, hold, sale, rejected, trash) is covered in conversion statuses.
Tip. Ask the manager why leads get rejected on this offer. "No answer, duplicate, wrong number" is a normal picture. A vague answer or a refusal to explain is a reason to be wary.
Geo: where the offer accepts traffic
Geo determines the payout, the cost of traffic and the advertising requirements.
- Payout by geo. The same offer often pays differently in different countries. A high payout in an expensive geo is not necessarily better than an average one in a cheap geo.
- Landing page language. Make sure there is a landing page in the right language for your geo, and that the call center speaks the audience's language.
- Regulation. Finance, gambling and health are governed by different rules and licenses in different countries. More in the article on restricted ad categories.
- Time zone. The call center works certain hours; a lead left at night may go cold before the call.
How markets differ in income and competition is covered in Tier-1, Tier-2 and Tier-3 countries.
Allowed traffic sources
This is the most important line for compliance. The advertiser specifies where it accepts traffic from: social, search, native, push, contextual, email, incentivized traffic, brand keywords. Every restriction has a reason, from brand reputation to lead quality.
What to check:
- Your source is on the allowed list. If it is missing or explicitly forbidden, do not launch. Conversions from a forbidden source will be rejected, and your network account may be blocked.
- Brand traffic. Many advertisers forbid bidding on searches with their brand name, because they do that themselves.
- Incentivized traffic. If people are paid or given a bonus for the action, that almost always needs separate permission.
- Format. Sometimes the source is allowed but the format is not: native yes, popunder no.
If a source is not on either list, get written confirmation from the manager.
Creative and landing page requirements
The advertiser has its own rules for presenting the product, and they do not replace the ad platform's rules; they add to them.
- Claims. You cannot attribute properties the product does not have: guaranteed income, a cure, instant results.
- Brand use. Logo, name and the faces of company representatives only within what is allowed.
- Testimonials and celebrities. Fake reviews and fake celebrity endorsements are forbidden by advertisers, by ad platforms and, in many countries, by law.
- Disclaimers. Financial and medical products often require risk warnings.
- Ready-made landers. If the network provides tested landing pages and pre-landers, start with them: they are already approved by the advertiser.
How to build ads that meet both the advertiser's requirements and the platform's rules is covered in compliant ad creatives. Check the ad platforms' own requirements in their help centers: they change regularly.
EPC and CR: how to use the network's numbers
EPC (earnings per click) is the average revenue from one click. CR (conversion rate) is the share of clicks that became conversions. Many networks show them on the offer page, and they are a useful benchmark, with caveats:
- the numbers are averaged across all affiliates, sources and geos;
- they are skewed by traffic from large teams with proven campaigns;
- new offers show unstable values on small volume.
Use the network's EPC to narrow your choice, not to make the decision. The decision is made on your EPC, the revenue per click of your own traffic, which you learn after testing. Formulas and how the metrics relate are in affiliate marketing metrics.
A simple rule of thumb for a test: if your EPC is below your cost per click, the campaign loses money at any volume. If it is above, you have something to work with.
Caps, duplicates and other restrictions
The small print on an offer page often matters more than the large.
- Cap: a limit on conversions per day or week. Leads over the cap may go unpaid. Find out how the network tells you the cap is reached and what happens to traffic above it.
- Duplicates. A repeat lead from the same person is usually not paid. Find out how the advertiser identifies a duplicate (phone, email, device) and over what period.
- Age and audience. Many products have age restrictions and a ban on targeting vulnerable groups.
- Lead acceptance hours. A call center that does not call at night gets cold leads, which hurts the approval rate.
- Minimum payout and schedule. How often the network pays and from what amount determines how much working capital you need.
How to tell an offer does not fit your traffic source
Sometimes the offer is good but the campaign does not work. Signs of a mismatch:
- the landing page converts, but the approval rate stays below the network average: the source's audience is not the one the product is designed for;
- lots of cheap leads that get rejected as off-target: the creative attracts the wrong people;
- almost no conversions with a normal pass-through to the offer: the product does not interest this audience, or the landing page does not inspire trust.
In these cases, it is not necessarily the offer you should change: sometimes a new creative, geo or source format is enough. But if two or three creatives show the same picture, the offer does not fit this traffic.
How to test an offer
- Pick two or three similar offers in the same vertical and geo.
- Same conditions. Same source, same creatives, same audience; otherwise you are comparing campaigns, not offers.
- Split the traffic. Each visit goes randomly to one of the offers according to set weights.
- Tie the click to the conversion. The click ID goes into the affiliate link and comes back in the postback; how this works is explained in the article on click ID and SubID.
- Wait for approvals. Compare approved conversions and revenue, not leads, and account for the hold.
- Compare EPC and ROI, not CR: an offer with a high conversion rate and a low approval rate loses.
More on setting up a test in the article on split testing offers and landing pages.
How to compare offers in ArtisanClo
In an ArtisanClo flow in a mode with a tracker, you can add several offers and distribute traffic by weight: each click goes to an offer with a set probability. The ad link does not change with the number of offers; the offer is chosen for each visit after all the checks.
- Each offer has its own affiliate network. On the offer card you pick a network from ready-made templates, and the dashboard shows the postback URL to paste into the network. The click number goes into the offer's parameter and comes back with the conversion.
- Lead and sale price is set per offer and used when the network does not send an amount.
- Network statuses are translated automatically: approved becomes a sale, pending becomes hold, refund becomes rejected, fraud becomes trash.
- Money by offer. In "Reports", the "Money by slice" table sliced by offer shows clicks, conversions, revenue, cost, profit and ROI; the EPC, CPA and "On hold" columns can be switched on too. Revenue is attributed to the click date, and payouts on hold are not counted as revenue.
- Offer split test. In "Diagnostics", the "Auto-tuning" tab has an offer split test block: a verdict on the best offer appears once confidence reaches 95% and each offer has at least 100 visits.
- Branches (from the Professional plan) let you send different visitors to different offers, for example by country or device when an offer pays differently by geo. Geos you have no offer for can be sent to the network's smartlink.
A catalog of affiliate networks with ready-made postback templates is on the affiliate networks page.
Common mistakes when choosing an offer
- Choosing by the highest payout. Without approval rate and hold, it is a lottery.
- Ignoring the traffic source list. The fastest way to lose both your conversions and your network account.
- Drawing conclusions from leads before approvals. A week later, half of the leads may turn into rejections.
- Comparing offers on different traffic. Then you are comparing sources, not offers.
- A creative that promises more than the product. It hurts the approval rate, breaks platform rules and costs you the advertiser's trust.
- No postback. Without tying clicks to conversions you will not know your EPC and are deciding blind.
The short version
A good offer is not the one with the highest payout in the catalog but the one where payout, approval rate, hold, geo and allowed traffic sources add up to profit on your traffic. Read the whole offer page, follow the advertiser's and the platform's rules, test two or three offers under the same conditions, and decide based on your own EPC and ROI after approvals. Where to start in the profession as a whole is covered in affiliate marketing for beginners.
