How to handle cash flow at higher volumes? (8)

I am curious to see how affiliates running big campaigns are spending so much daily without running out of cash/credit before the next payment from their affiliate network.

Do you have a bunch of credit cards? Really high credit limit? Or just got a pile of cash in the bank?

I'm currently running in to this issue and I would really like to scale one of my campaigns much higher but I don't have enough money to do it even though I've gotten my affiliate network to increase my payment frequency to twice per month. I've heard that some affiliate networks will float you some cash to keep the traffic and revenue coming in but I haven't tried asking my AM about this yet.

I always try to get payments from affiliate networks as fast as possible. If you do enough volume, ask for weeklies or faster payment terms. Having enough cash in your bank won't hurt either

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Of course a bigger credit card limit and bigger vashflow helps and is even mandatory at some point.

The more you have the longer you can wait for payments.

When you don't have that high spending limits then the best way is to work with faster payments.

Credit cards are the best way to go.

American Express is the most generous in terms of credit limits in my experience, although they have been tightening up. Also they typically charge higher currency conversion markups and interest rates if you don't pay your full balance off every month, so watch out for that.

If you want to pay in USD but don't live in a dollar based country I recently came across an interesting service. You can apply for a USD Amex card in the US, without a US social security number, provided you have a US address. You can take your credit history from Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico, NIgeria, South Korea or UK and use it to apply for US credit cards. https://www.novacredit.com/ I haven't tried it yet so would be interested in any feedback on how it works...?

Push for more frequent payouts and use wires, getting paid weekly is a standard thing when doing solid volume and wires come in quickly. So in the end, you only need enough cash to cover like 10-14 days. When running a few bigger campaigns at decent ROI, it only takes a few weeks (maybe 2 months max) to accumulate such amount of $$$ and from there on, you're free to scale to the moon

And of course, a bit of credit helps to start the cycle a lot

Everyone talked about credit cards already so I don't have much to add to that.

You need to work with your affiliate networks more on getting paid faster.

First of all, close mouths don't get fed. If you're getting paid biweekly, then shop around different affiliate networks. Find one that'll pay you weekly, and mention that to the original network.

I find it helpful in negotiations to understand and empathize with the other party.

The reason why they don't pay everyone faster is because they're taking on higher risk. Meaning what if you send $5k worth of leads to them, and they don't back out to the advertiser. The advertiser doesn't pay them and they're out $5k.

You're thinking..."No way, my leads are good"

How do they know that?

It usually comes with time. Some offers like lead gens take a few weeks for the advertiser to see the true value. It's also risky for them if they don't know where your traffic's coming from. No affiliates likes sharing their secret sauces, but what if sharing some of your creatives / traffic sources means they're more comfortable taking on the risk of paying you faster?

Affiliates should also think bigger picture.

Network A: Pays $5.50 a lead. Pays twice a month.
Network B: Pays $5 a lead. Pays weekly.

It might be worth it to go with Network B even if you'll profit less. More cashflow could mean more total profit. More cashflow could mean more volume which gives you more negotiation power in the long run.

Originally Posted by dr_ngo

Everyone talked about credit cards already so I don't have much to add to that.

You need to work with your affiliate networks more on getting paid faster.

First of all, close mouths don't get fed. If you're getting paid biweekly, then shop around different affiliate networks. Find one that'll pay you weekly, and mention that to the original network.

I find it helpful in negotiations to understand and empathize with the other party.

The reason why they don't pay everyone faster is because they're taking on higher risk. Meaning what if you send $5k worth of leads to them, and they don't back out to the advertiser. The advertiser doesn't pay them and they're out $5k.

You're thinking..."No way, my leads are good"

How do they know that?

It usually comes with time. Some offers like lead gens take a few weeks for the advertiser to see the true value. It's also risky for them if they don't know where your traffic's coming from. No affiliates likes sharing their secret sauces, but what if sharing some of your creatives / traffic sources means they're more comfortable taking on the risk of paying you faster?

Affiliates should also think bigger picture.

Network A: Pays $5.50 a lead. Pays twice a month.
Network B: Pays $5 a lead. Pays weekly.

It might be worth it to go with Network B even if you'll profit less. More cashflow could mean more total profit. More cashflow could mean more volume which gives you more negotiation power in the long run.

Cash flow problems is something I encountered when first scaling hard (hitting $20k - $40k adspend days).

What I did was open up a personal AMEX, a business AMEX, and got a few lines of credit from banks.

One trick with AMEX to get them to increase the limit they give you is to max the card out, then pay it all off the same day. Then max it out again, then pay it. Keep repeating this as many times as possible within a month.

For example if you have a credit limit of $20k. And you max it out and pay it 5 times within a month. You will have spent (And paid) $100k total. After a month or two call AMEX and ask for a credit increase. They will see that you were able to responsibly pay back your debt fast and will usually bump your credit limit.

EDITING TO ADD:
If you do this make sure you are using a reputable affiliate network / advertiser. And also make sure you aren't violating any restrictions the offer or affiliate network might have. Would suck real bad to have 100k on credit and not get paid for some reason.