It’s been a long time coming, and what I think has been a long drawn out death. But I think CPALead has finally become a victim of it’s own success and is about to be flushed down the loo.
I think we need to go back to a very old post of mine. I think it was one when I first started blogging aswell, but it always remains a favourite. Check it out here. The gist of the post is that CPALead were allowing “fake content” sites to be put through CPALead. Being that a user could fill out an offer, and realise that there is no content behind the gateway, it was beginning to build a bad name against CPALead. People were by and large, finding a way around the gateway, simply because they could not trust that there would be content behind it.
This was small fries in the big picture, as we would later find out.
The next problem was that they started neglecting what got them going in the first place. You see CPALead wasn’t always a gateway company. It had something called the “Active Display Tool”, and it basically showed every survey that they had on the network to a user. The user could then fill out these offers, and be credited with ingame credits, cash, tokens, really anything. It is pretty prevalent on Facebook games nowadays, but it wasn’t so way back then. I used the ADT once, and found it a bit clunky, and impossible to style. They claimed they were going to update it and make it more modern, but it never really happened. Infact there was a period of several months when you couldn’t use the ADT at all, they pulled it right from the market. And there in lies the problem. CPALead were now considered the “Gateway” company. Sure they still had users who were using the ADT, but CPALead supported this very poorly. I remember getting fairly bland responses when I needed support. And with the tool being pulled for months at a time, most (if not all), users switched to another network that better supported them.
This doesn’t seem important at all. CPALead are raking it in with the Gateway. But the issue is now that they are a one trick pony. Should the gateway go down the pooper, they don’t even have their small pool of “ADT” publishers to fall back on.
Most recently, there has been an upheaval from CPALead to remove publishers promoting copyrighted content. I’m not about to sit here and criticise this action (Actually, I will a bit, just a tiny bit though!), because at the end of the day. Copyrighted content such as movies and such, are illegal to distribute. From what I have seen and heard, Publishers started getting ultra competitive in their niches, and often SEO’d a site so much that it was up there ranking with the movie corporations own sites. Something I have learnt working in the real world in IT, is that everytime I have gone to an interview, they always know someone who worked at my last job. A number often knew the CEO etc. And so with movie corporations getting their knickers in a twist about all this copyrighted content, it literally was only a matter of time before it worked back to CPALead and it’s advertisers. CPALead started canning publishers who were using copyrighted material, or atleast removing the best offers from them.
Fair play. At the end of the day CPALead have to protect their business. But you now have to wonder, just how many publishers in CPALead were promoting copyrighted material. It obviously wasn’t high on the agenda when the CPALead owner made this post on digitalpoint forum :
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1849000
We have someone asking how to monetise their MP3 search engine. And the CPALead owner jumping in and telling them to use their network. I don’t want to get into whether a MP3 search engine is illegal or not and whether it is just using google etc, but when it comes down to it, if this person was a publisher of CPALead this month, they would have been canned. Also note the date of the post, it is only the end of last month. Seems we have done a full 180.
As I say, I am not rubbishing their actions. I think they are valid. But it remains to be seen whether they can survive without these publishers onboard.
I’ve talked about CPALead to a couple of people, and basically said what I have said here. And they have agreed with me, to the point of whether they can survive. The issue of facebook always comes up. A growing number of people, that sometimes included myself, have been trying to make ludicrous amounts of money from Facebook. Just by creating simple web pages, creating a fan page that links to that page. And then saying “Look what this teacher said to get fired!”. And ofcourse you have to fill out an offer to view it.
Trust me. This shit won’t last long.
Yeah so we are all banking it hard right now and everybody seems to be pillaging CPALead for all it’s worth. But the fact remains that Facebook is one of (If not the biggest depending on what report you read), websites on this earth. There is just no way that Facebook are going to allow people this to continue going on. To think this is just nieve. Facebook don’t even need a reason to can your fan page, so don’t try and say that you are doing nothing illegal. They can boot you whenever, for whatever.
To sum it up. I think the words “Faulty Management” sit with CPALead like two peas in a pod. I’m not going as far to say that the people there are idiots and should never be running a business. But there has been a number of mistakes that I think were always going to end in disaster. I can even remember not that long ago, everyone’s gateways going down because the server crashed, and this was on a Saturday. And CPALead apparently didn’t work weekends so it just sat like that for a few days. Just crazy in all honesty. O well, it was nice working with yah.
I work with CPAlead (small time publisher)… I make around 2-3 K a month using PPC & Mobiles (no copyright content). I must agree that CPALead is going down the drain. Lately their support is non responsive and you can’t get an straight answer to WHY some people are getting blacklisted from high pay offers (if you consider 5 bucks for a mobile high paying)
I also predict that FB will blow UP in anger and perhaps go after CPAlead HARD. Just look at CPALead marketplace… Every ad is about FACEBOOK !!! “selling updates”, “selling 3steps”, lol its getting to the point where I can’t stand it anymore. Also that site has been breached many times (by hackers). I have provided proof many times to the staff but they just cover it up and blame things on “false positives”
They don’t want to cause a stampede that’s why.
If someone had say… a SEO product that auto created forum profiles. And someone used it far too aggressively and it all came back to the developer. The developer would have to take action, but if he told the client, “Look, your linking campaign is too aggressive, tone it down or I will revoke your license”. That person will then post on probably every forum possibly, and make others “fear” that they will be kicked off aswell.
CPALead don’t want to come out with a straight answer about why Mobiles are being removed, because it would cause people to fear whether they will wake up tomo and have their offers removed.
Admin Note : This comment is for real, I was going to send it to spam. But it was too funny to pass up. So I allowed it through :p
They should be closed by now, so that the user can access those websites that requires surveys. You’re the employee of this company. Why didn’t you get the information about the status of the company?
I’m from the Outside Country which I have to pass those god damn survey from CPA. Especially if there’s no survey and I have to come back for another day. As the day goes by, it still the same! The head of that company should be killed! And if you’re against me. Best if you’re not to go against me if you don’t want any consequences
I won’t give my critique of CPALead because it would be biased but we are getting a lot of users coming over from CPALead to Adscend media. It seems CPALead isn’t what it used to be. Most users are earning WAY more with us compared to them. Check here (hope you don’t mind the link)
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=cpalead+vs+adscendmedia+epc&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=fe1aaa5787174fa
Drop me a line sometime if you would like to run a test with us and compare your own results.
Jeremy
Adscend also does not allow Copyrighted content, nor will they be able to stand up to Facebook. Nor do they offer a ADT.
You may have better payouts, but in the context of this article it is about CPALead publishers getting a big roasting turd planted on them by way of crappy customer support.
Btw, I don’t use CPALead a whole lot much anymore
Hi,
I think Adscend Media is such a great company that I have to say I’m very impressed with their response and organisation as a whole.
Way back before joining Adscend media, I made some research online about scam/non-paying/etc CPA Networks, and all I got about them were just commendations and good feedback almost( well, about 92% ) everywhere I saw.
This is a personal testimony.
Pls, Mr.Jeremy and the crew, i like to say to you all—Keep up the good work.
It’s no wonder they pay more than CpaLead does. I’ll be keeping a close eye on them though…
Thanks to Mr.Pyrogenic, Thanks for your great tools here.
Sam
It has been a long time coming, I had noticed “crap hitting the fan” as early as last year.
There has not been one single time where I received appropriate support for an issue with this network.
Beyond the scope of what you mention, regarding servers going down on saturdays… is my major issue with CPALead doing this multiple times without publishers notice. The issue however is not 100% the server going down, I also witnessed network scrubbing to 90th degree multiple times as well.
They did it at a specific time each time, during a period that would normally equal thousands for the people pushing the content.
Funny how it all worked out.
Cpalead support is ignoring tickets, particularly those that chase for payments that have not been made from 2 months back.
They also ignore emails, pm and post in forum. They act like they’re so surprised you have not been paid and say things like “all payments made on monday…must be your bank slow in processing” bullshit.
Just go to dpforum and you’ll see many people who have not been paid even though they announce “audit is officially over.”
Over but they still pretend nothing is happening with the outstanding payments – PUI!!!
CPALEAD is a wonderful company, they were the first company to hit a home run on mobile in the content lock / gateway space.
I remember when mobile went live on their gateway in October 2009… if you check their Alexa after that it SKYROCKETS going from 2,000 to 500…. thats such a major move…. I’ve worked with many companies as a media buyer and breaking 1,000 even for a week is an accomplishment… CPALEAD had so much traffic if you checked their advertisers LPs…. they’d go from 500,000 to 1,000, and then off the grid when they droped… very cool to watch
CPALEAD 100% dependent on mobile to get where they are… and now that the mobile companies have cracked down on mobile they really dont offer content locking affiliates anything special except their organizations large infrastructure and salary base which affiliates have to pay for through the margin they take. Wha are they ate like 20+ people atleast?
Admin Note : Removed advertising. Will allow the comment as it adds to the discussion. But if people want to contact you, they know where to go.
mobile explained: every mobile subscription has a life time value. if a lot of your subscriptions get canceled right away the carriers will complain, even fine you and pay you less per subscription or life time value. the mobile offer owner gets all that shit slammed on his desk and he unloads it to one of his big publishers like cpalead. they get a warning first to improve the traffic quality or they later on just get cut off.
if you got banned from the high paying offers on cpalead or any other network… well, your traffic must suck a lot. end of story ;