In the last years, the progressive miniaturization of magnetic storage devices has imposed the necessity to understand how the physical properties are modi- ed with respect to the bulk when the dimensions are reduced at the nanometric scale. For this reason an accurate method of preparation and characterization of nanostructures is extremely important. This work focuses on the magnetic and transport properties of cluster-assembled nanostructures, namely cobalt nanoparticles embedded in copper matrices. Our setup allows us to independently control the mean cluster size, the concentration and the chemical composition. The cobalt cluster production is based on magnetron sputtering and gas phase aggregation. The performance of the source permits a wide range of cluster masses, from one to several thousand atoms. As a rst step we studied the role of inter-particle interactions in the transport and magnetic properties, increasing the cobalt nanoparticle concentration (from 0.5% to 2.5% and 5%). Our results demonstrate the necessary precautions and constitute a solid basis for further studies of the spintronic properties of granular systems. Finally, in order to describe the intrinsic magnetic properties of cluster-assembled nanostructures, we prepared strongly diluted samples (<0.5%) for di erent cluster sizes from 1.9 nm to 5.5 nm. We found that the magnetic properties are size-dependent. Using a complete magnetic characterization, sensitive to the change in the e ective magnetic anisotropy, we show that the magnetic anisotropy is dominated by the contributions of the surface or of the shape of the nanoparticles.