After a lot of discussion we have decided to close down the CPA Network. If you just said to yourself, “I didn’t even know they had their own CPA network”, then you can skip this whole post. We had a good run but there are several reasons we’re closing it:

– fraud is sucking the life out of us daily
– the margins are 20% maximum, about 5 to 10% on average and that’s not good enough for the amount of crap you deal with daily
– we have other projects that have a far better roi that we are going to focus on
– we realize that a staff is needed to run a network and we are not at the point in our lives where we want to work out of an office and babysit staff

This is all part of me trimming the fat and providing a better experience on my core business sites and allowing me more time to go back to being an affiliate on a larger scale again. So please take down all your links to the network effective immediately. You have until July 31st to remove the completely, otherwise you will not be paid for any traffic after that date. We will be paying anyone owed money from the network on schedule. (Most are still 30 day net terms). Meaning July’s payments will be made at the start of September. June’s payments are going out beginning of August.

I have nothing but respect for any CPA Network owner. If you’re not one, you will never fully understand the massive amount of crap they put up with daily. We learned a lot and the biggest lesson was, we don’t want to be a part of that side of the business at this point in time. It’s sleepless nights, it’s a rollercoaster of monster months, then losses because you had to cover for a flakey advertiser or two. Some affiliates are awesome, but some are just plain assholes. The sheer volume of CONSTANT fraud going on from unscrupulous affiliates is mind boggling. We had some very good systems in place to catch them, but catching them daily trying anything they can to game the system wears on you. If the meatheads who do all the fraud actually did the work instead of trying every shortcut known to man, they’d make far more money.

I’m sure I’ll be called a failure because of this decision. But I’m far from that. The more you fail in life the better off you’re going to be. If you never take a shot at anything, you’re settling for nothing. I succeed BECAUSE I fail. I fail alot and that makes me very successful in my business. I could probably keep the network going, but the roi just says no. This is what life is all about, making the tough decisions no matter the reprecussions are.

We had a great run, but we’re going to leave this side of the business for now. Never say never though. We may relaunch down the road with a physical office, a fraud department and a staff of 10 to 20 or so.

When one door closes another always opens…