How does CPA affiliate marketing work?

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), otherwise known as Cost Per Action, is a form of affiliate marketing where advertisers pay for a specific form of acquisition or action to be taken. Acquisitions can range from clicks to requests for service, to filling out forms, to installs and downloads depending on the details of the contract. CPA affiliate marketing has become a multi-billion dollar industry and many affiliate marketers partake in CPA affiliate marketing without even realizing it. CPA is simply a certain form of affiliate marketing.

Unlike other forms of Internet marketing, I believe that CPA is very simple, although successful implementation is anything but simple. The brief explanation is this

How Does CPA Affiliate Marketing Work?

When it comes to affiliate marketing, CPA refers to the ways in which you can earn income without making a sale. For example, some companies, such as insurance companies, will simply pay you for a hint. If you send someone to your website and that person fills in an insurance quote form, that may be enough to get a decent income.

Another example is graphic advertising through Google Adsense or Media.net. I personally use both services on some of my blogs and basically get paid only for someone who clicks on an ad.

I may be thinking ... "But Mike, I NEVER click on ads! How can that make you earn money?

First of all, I am not saying that Google Adsense or Media.net ads enrich it, because they are certainly not the most profitable monetization methods. You will also need a fairly significant amount of traffic for graphic advertising to work for you. While graphic ads CAN generate full-time income, I have personally found that graphic ads are the "icing on the cake," so to speak. Between the Media.net ads and the Google Adsense ads, I earned approximately $ 45,000 last year. Keep in mind that CPA advertising revenue has taken me YEARS to build, but that is not a pocket change! So, although I don't think that the CPA should be your main monetization plan, you shouldn't ignore the CPA either.

The Key Differences Between Affiliate Marketing And CPA Affiliate Marketing

Although CPA affiliate marketing is a type of affiliate marketing, there are some key differences. Affiliated vendors are basically proxy advertisers who work to promote a brand, as well as its products and services. Affiliated sellers are paid every time someone makes a purchase according to their recommendations.

Let me give you a specific example. I have a website that reviews dog food at DogFoodInsider.com. On that site I have an affiliate association with the Amazon Associates Affiliate Program. If someone clicks on any of my links to Amazon.com and makes a purchase, I get a commission. It doesn't even matter what they buy, so my comments can be honest. I can promote only the highest quality dog ​​food and I get paid to do it! Very good, right?

But unlike traditional affiliate marketing, the CPA does not depend on a sale. Instead, you are really only creating a potential customer for another company. The CPA is often compared to lead generation rather than direct sales. You'll notice that on my dog ​​food review site I also have some Media.net graphic ads, so that site has a good combination of CPA and direct sales affiliate revenue. Diversification is the only way to truly survive in the long term online!

The Benefits Of CPA Affiliate Marketing

CPA affiliate marketing has many benefits. For the most part, it is really passive. Of course, you must create content that receives enough traffic to capitalize and monetize, which is NOT a simple or "passive" task, but once I have a written article, it takes me 2 seconds to place a Google ad on my site. So all I have to do is leave it there while Google optimizes the ad for me and see the clicks.

For other types of CPA affiliate marketing, such as when a more specific task is required, payments can be quite substantial. For example, suppose you have a website that compares car insurance. Instead of promoting a single brand with the hope of obtaining commissions of new sales and subscriptions, why not make people get a quote from 5 or 6 different insurance companies to see which one comes out with the best price? If you have a CPA affiliate association with all those insurance companies, ALL will pay you, regardless of who gets the sale. Then, you can see how profitable CPA marketing can be and you don't even have to sell anything!

Which Should You Choose?

The best part of CPA affiliate marketing is that you can use it on almost any blog or website, no matter what your current monetization methods (or plans) are. You can easily integrate both types of affiliate marketing into your website if it is well designed, receives enough traffic and fully discloses its content to its partners. With your website and social media accounts, you can run affiliate and CPA marketing campaigns without problems and have a variety of ways to generate revenue. As I have shown you, I personally use both and have discovered that they interact very well.

How To Get Started In CPA Affiliate Marketing

What is CPA affiliate marketing? If you are interested in looking for CPA as your primary form of affiliate marketing, I would say that the first place to start is to investigate the different CPA affiliate networks that exist. As with becoming an affiliate, before applying to any CPA network, do a little research to see if the company offers the services, the payment structure and the variety you need to succeed.

Once you have reduced your CPA networks, you must submit an application to the networks. You probably want to build your website and start receiving some traffic before applying, since many CPA networks have an approval process. They want to see that your site is already attracting specific visitors who may be interested in your CPA offers, therefore, do not request it too soon. Affiliate marketing should be seen as a long-term strategy. First build your site, get some visitors and then monetize it.

To get more information about the process I use to create websites that generate income, you can get information about the CTPM process here.

So, yes, CPA networks are quite particular about who they let in because their model is based on their legitimacy, so it can be rejected. I know this can be daunting at first, however, here are some tips I recommend to apply so you have a better chance of acceptance:

• Even though CPA does not rely on having a website, it’s good to have an already established website with a daily stream of visitors to your site.

• Have a domain based email as it gives you more credibility.

• Be honest about your past history, site traffic, and conversion rates. If you lie about your traffic volume just to get accepted, they will find out and it could ruin any future relationship you could have with them.

• Don’t give up. If a network turns you down, work on building your audience and then when you have higher numbers, re-apply.

If you are just starting out in affiliate marketing, I definitely recommend working with a company like Wealthy Affiliate. While there are a million different people, “guru’s”, and services that claim THEY can teach you how to be successful online, I really only recommend Wealthy Affiliate as they give you all the tools and services you’ll need in one place, along with the training to learn how to put it all together. It’s a fantastic resource.

Some Tips For Successful CPA Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

Once you have a CPA affiliate network membership, it’s time to set up a successful campaign. While simply blogging and creating content is a great strategy to gaining traffic in order to promote CPA offers, there are some other marketing strategies you can integrate. Here are some of the things that I have done that have helped me be more successful with my CPA strategies:

1. Create a landing page: Landing pages are different than regular blog posts or pages on your site. A landing page is a specific page that you can “funnel” your website traffic into. While blog posts should mostly be made to educate, inform, or entertain your website visitors, your landing pages should be the main selling pages and optimized for the most clicks and conversions. Find ways to link to your landing pages from your blog posts and you have an effective strategy.

2. Have fun with a splash page: Splash pages are an introduction page users see before entering a website. A splash page is a fun and flashy piece of content that contains everything from music to animations to graphics. A splash page is a way to get visitors excited to engage in your site or a way to prompt them to take a specific action. Anytime someone visits a website for the first time they have their guard up. A splash page is a great way to instantly give a certain personality to your website.

3 Use paid advertising (with caution): In some cases, paid advertising can be hugely profitable. For example, using Facebook Ads to drive clicks or using Google Adwords to drive traffic to your site. When paid advertising works, it works very well and really can earn you a significant income very quickly. However, paid advertising is very difficult and usually you will lose money before you make money, so set a budget and use it cautiously.

These are just some of the techniques I recommend for CPA affiliate marketing. There are dozens more examples of affiliates making great money through CPA.

Whether you are just starting out or looking for a way to expand your current business, I definitely recommend looking into CPA affiliate marketing. It’s a great business strategy that has helped me diversify my offerings, works seamlessly with my other affiliate partnerships, and helped me expand my revenue streams into other areas like social media. I definitely would recommend all affiliate marketers check it out.