How Pay Per Call Networks Function | Pay Per Call Masterclass

Pay Per Call Masterclass
How Pay Per Call Networks Function

PAY PER CALL NETWORKS
THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO

How Networks Function
The purpose of a Pay Per Call Network is to take the business development burden off of the Affiliate and
Call Buyers, while reducing everyone’s risk. This means they spend a lot of their time finding multiple
buyers and sellers to gain as much coverage and capacity as possible. They all use technology and
manpower to manage their entire business.
Publisher A Buyer X
Network
Publisher C
Publisher B Buyer Y
Buyer Z

Team Members that May Work for Networks
Publisher
● Affiliate Manager
● BizDev
● Quality Assurance
● Compliance
● Media Buyer
● Graphic Designer
● Website Designer
● Website Developer
Advertiser
● Advertiser Manager
● BizDev
● Compliance
Operations
● Comptroller
● Accounts Receivable
● Accounts Payable
● Network Manager
● Director of BizDev
● VP of BizDev
● Software Developer
● Social Media
● Content Manager
Management
● Chief Executive Officer
● Chief Financial Officer
● Chief Marketing Officer
● Chief Operating Officer
● Chief Revenue Officer
● Chief Technical Officer

Here are some of the responsibilities and daily concerns of a Pay Per Call Network:
● Call Sellers (Affiliates / Publishers)
○ Traffic Sources
○ Marketing Methods (Compliance)
○ Consistency of Volume
○ Communication
○ Payout
○ Quality Assurance
○ Accounts Payables
● Internal Publisher Team
○ Asset Creation
○ Media Buying
● Call Buyers (Advertisers)
○ Hours of Operation
○ Capping / Volume Limitations
○ Concurrency
○ Payout
○ Campaign Conversion
Requirements
■ Duration
■ Geographic Location
■ Acceptable Demographics
■ IVR Responses
○ Quality Assurance
○ Accounts Receivables

Here are some of the responsibilities and daily concerns of a Pay Per Call Network:
Call Sellers (Affiliates)
● Traffic Sources
● Marketing Methods (Compliance)
● Consistency of Volume
● Communication
● Payout
● Accounts Payables
Internal Publishers
● Asset Creation
● Media Buying
Call Buyers (Advertisers)
● Hours of Operation
● Capping / Volume Limitations
● Concurrency
● Payout
● Campaign Conversion Requirements
○ Duration
○ Geographic Location
○ Acceptable Demographics
○ IVR Responses
● Accounts Receivables

Pros and Cons of Working with a Pay Per Call Network
Pros:
● Faster payments
● Less financial risk (Sometimes)
● Business development support
● Compliance (Sometimes)
● Buyer management
● Greater geographic coverage
● Wide offer selection
● Exclusive campaigns
Cons:
● Harder to work with when new
● Lower margins (Networks take 35-100%+)
● Lack of visibility
● No control over buyers
● No control over QA process
● Favoritism
● Little recourse over disputes
● Potential mismanagement of funds

Getting Started with Pay Per Call Networks
Just because a Network has multiple buyers,
large geographic coverage, and says they
have plenty of capacity does not mean they’re
going to have 100% coverage.
Globally, 25% of all calls anywhere in the world
abandon due to lack of capacity.
This is because call flow is entirely
unpredictable and there isn’t an easy way to
solve this problem so you simply need to be
aware of it and build your business
appropriately.

Networks need to try and keep all their buyers at maximum capacity at all times to preserve access to
that capacity to maintain their relationships.
This means rarely do they have large amounts of overflow capacity to handle spikes in call flow. If they
do, its to lower or poor performing buyers they prefer not to send the volume to, thus affecting your
conversion rate.
Otherwise their buyers would have agents sitting idle, creating significant overhead, and lower agent
productivity. Call centers and buyers always want as little idle time as possible.

For instance, if you’re sending calls to a network and another Affiliate ramps up their flow, you may start
dropping calls because the buyers don’t have enough capacity to handle the spike. Networks will not
reimburse you for advertising costs if they don’t have the capacity to handle your calls, and most of the
time they’re not going to notify you that they’re overflowing because its not in their best interest for you to
be out looking for more buyers. Luckily for them, most Affiliates don’t realize this is happening so they
don’t implement their own tracking platform to watch the network’s activities.
A campaign inside of a network may have 1 buyer, 5 buyers, or 50 buyers depending on the type of
campaign and the geographic restrictions. Rarely will a network transparently tell you how many buyers
they have, how much capacity they have, and what their other publishers are sending.

Network Routing Plan Example:
Regardless of campaign, most routing plans have similar properties. In the below example we’ll assume
that the Network is paying you $8 per call as long as it has a 2 minute minimum call duration.
Buyer Capacity Payout Geography Duration
Super Calls 6 / 8 $17.50 CA, TX, NY 1:30
Call Market 4 / 6 $19 West Coast 2:00
Call Center X 3 / 10 $16 Nationwide 2:00
Blue Calls 2 / 5 $18 East Coast 2:00
Jim 1 / 1 $25 Nationwide 0:00

Optimizing Your Call Flow
Call tracking software allows you to create your own network of buyers and load balance your call flow
across them based on whatever criteria makes you the most money. It also gives you complete control
and full visibility of your complete call flow from end to end.
The most practical setup for new Pay Per Call Affiliates is typically to pick a niche and find a few Networks
that already have campaigns. That way you have optionality for where your calls go, and the ability to use
your ability to instantly divert calls as bargaining power.

Multi-network Routing Plan Example:
In this example, Network A is claiming they can handle unlimited call capacity, 24/7. This is entirely not
possible and a warning sign you should be aware of. Anyone that claims they can take unlimited amounts
of calls isn’t giving you the full story. Remember, humans have to be available to take every call or the
callers will hangup!
Network B has given you a cap of 100 calls per day to fill without providing any concurrency limits. This is
also a problem because they’re not telling you how many simultaneous calls they can handle into their
buyers.
Buyer Capacity Payout Geography Duration
Network A ∞ $12 Nationwide 1:30
Network B 100 Calls / Day $12 Nationwide 1:30

Both Networks claim to have nationwide coverage and will pay out after the call length has reached 1
minute and 30 seconds.
Let's assume you were able to generate 100 calls and used your call tracking platform to load balance the
calls evenly to both networks. The great thing about calls vs clicks is you really only need a few of them to
understand the productivity of a Network’s backend buyers.
The following results turned out to be drastically different:
Based on a few simple metrics it's absolutely clear that Network B is a better partner, and statistics like
this are very common when testing.
Buyer Calls Sent Conversions Payout No Connects
Network A 50 8 $96 16
Network B 50 19 $228 2

How Pay Per Call Networks Function | Pay Per Call Masterclass

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