Cost per action (CPA) marketing is a form of affiliate marketing in which you earn a commission if you can direct users to perform a task like filling out a form, downloading software, or performing some other action.
These forms can range from a single email submission to a much longer form with multiple fields. What makes promoting CPA offers attractive is that the user does not have to buy anything and is just required to enter their personal information.
So how do you find these types of CPA offers? There are many advertisers who have their own in-house affiliate programs, but the easiest way to access hundreds of CPA offers is to join a CPA affiliate network as a publisher.
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What is a CPA affiliate network?
A CPA affiliate network is a company that works as a middleman between advertisers and publishers. They host CPA offers from their advertisers and then have their publishers (affiliates) push the traffic to these CPA offers and take a percentage of the lead value. Some of the CPA networks are DMS, Global Wide Media, Market Health, MaxBounty, Performcb, and CashNetwork.
For example, an advertiser might pay the CPA network $15.00 for every lead generated on the network and the CPA network might pay a publisher (you) only $13.00 for every lead generated taking a $2.00 commission cut.
When you get accepted into a CPA network and log in, you will see the different CPA offers and choose which ones you want to promote based on the payout and the earnings per click (EPC).
When you apply to an affiliate network, inform them that you have been an affiliate marketer for more than 5 years and promote offers through PPC, email marketing, blogs, video marketing, articles, social media, etc. You don’t want to sound like a novice who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Tell them what they want to hear. Build a social media blog or WordPress website; they will ask for it.
CPA networks are set up to pay you after a period of time like 30 days (net 30) or 60 days after the end of the month. They usually send you a check or have it wired to your bank account.
You will be assigned a dedicated affiliate manager. Your affiliate manager’s job is to help you with information on the offers so you can succeed. The fact is the affiliate manager makes more money if you make the CPA network more money.
Hence, they can provide you with valuable information about CPA offers like which traffic source works well for that offer, etc. Your affiliate manager can also increase your payout if you are sending them good leads and if you request it.
Developing a good relationship with your affiliate manager is very important. They can give you valuable information that can turn a campaign you are running into a six-figure campaign.
The simple process to promote a CPA offer:
1. Pick a broad market
2. Pick a good CPA offer
3. Conduct competitive intelligence
4. Select traffic sources
5. Select targets and build ads
6. Set up third-party tracking
7. Optimize as traffic and conversion results come in
8. Scale
Selecting a Market
These are the major markets you can choose offers from:
• Health & Fitness
• Relationships
• Beauty
• Personal Development
• Insurance
• Survival Market
• Baby
• Family
• Biz Op & Make Money
• Marriage
• Diet
• Finance
• Cooking
Selecting a CPA Offer
The importance of selecting the right CPA offer can’t be overstated. You want to be certain that the CPA offer you select gives good earnings per click (EPC). This is where your affiliate manager can help you with some good information on the offers and their earnings per click.
A rule of thumb is to only promote offers that have at least an EPC of $0.50, otherwise, you are going to have a tough time finding good quality traffic to send to the offer that will cost you less than $0.50.
Competitive Intelligence
Always spend some time doing research on the market you want to promote a CPA offer for. The research will give you better insights into the demographics of the market and the type of people to most likely respond to your ads. There are free and paid tools to do this research. Some are Google keyword planner, Google trends, SpyFu, and iSpionage.
Traffic Generation
There are free and paid traffic methods. Free traffic refers to search engine optimization and social media traffic which takes 3 to 6 months or more to start seeing results. Paid traffic methods are fast, predictable, and scalable. It’s like turning on the faucet whenever you want to and also controlling how much comes out.
With paid traffic methods, you will set up pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns with keywords, ads, and campaigns to drive traffic to your CPA offers. There are many PPC traffic sources such as Google Ads, Microsoft ads, Facebook ads, etc. There is also email traffic. With email traffic, you can create an email list of prospects for your niche and create an autoresponder series of emails that go out to your email list daily. You can offer an ebook, an outline, or another lead magnet to get prospects on your list.
You can also drive traffic to your CPA offers from Social Media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Tiktok, Snapchat, and many other platforms. You will need to set up an account and provide value as you grow your audience. As your audience grows and interacts with you, trust is built and you recommend products and CPA offers.
Web 2.0 platforms can also be used to drive traffic to your CPA offers. Some of the popular Web 2.0 platforms are Tumblr, Medium, Hubpages, Wix, Weebly, Webs, Livejournal, etc.
Tracking
As discussed above regarding Affiliate marketing, you will have to track your campaigns to find out which ones are profitable and which ones are not. To effectively do this, you will need a 3rd tracking platform like Click.org, ClickMagick, Redtrack, or Voluum. These were discussed earlier concerning affiliate marketing.
CPA Networks
DMS
Global Wide Media
Market Health
MaxBounty
Performcb
CashNetwork
The Bottom Line
CPA Marketing is a form of affiliate marketing that is easy to set up and can be very profitable. With CPA marketing, you don’t need the prospect to buy any product for you to earn a commission. Instead, it only requires certain actions like filling out a form or submitting their email for an offer. CPA marketing is a lead generation system that businesses use to acquire leads.