There are many ways to monetize online – AdSense, Affiliate Marketing, and CPA Marketing. If you have tested AdSense and Affiliate marketing and still not convinced, I would suggest you try CPA Marketing.
In this guide, I am going to share with you everything regarding CPA marketing, why it is beneficial, how it is different from affiliate marketing, and a lot more.
What exactly CPA Marketing Mean?
You must have heard CPA marketing a lot of times, especially when you are into the digital marketing business.
The full form of CPA is Cost per Acquisition or Cost for Action.
It is a kind of affiliate model with a twist where a user earns a commission after taking a specific action. This action can be a simple one like filling an online form or a complex series.
Mainly such actions include receiving a quote, making a purchase, signing up for a free trial, or filling out a form.
It is considered easier and simpler than affiliate marketing. The main reason for this is, here you are paid to send a lead. Once the traffic you are sending gets converted into a lead, the next job of the specific network is to convert it into the sales. No matter what it is, you would get a monetary amount for a lead.
Why CPA Marketing is Lucrative?
There are numerous other methods to monetize online. Among them, CPA marketing is an ideal choice. It is because of the following reasons:
1. It Offers Higher Value Chain:
You definitely want to earn the maximum amount of money from a website. You wish to rank up top on the value chain.
The example of a value chain for digitally used products is somewhat like money > product owner > affiliate > lead generator (CPA) > publisher (CPC/CPM, AdSense).
Considering the value chain, you will see that the banner ads, AdSense, CPM/CPC can position you down in the value chain.
Alternatively, when you sell your own offering, which is the case when you are an affiliate or CPA, you are positioned higher on the value chain.
An important thing to consider is that physically available products involve 2-10 times more people like warehouses, distributors, suppliers, and more. For this reason, Amazon Associates can earn 100 bucks when a person purchases a laptop of around $2500.
This does not mean you must not promote physical products on your platform. The important thing to note is that commissions on physical products can be lesser than those earned through digital products.
2. Advertising through Integrated Channels:
The other good thing about CPA is that you don’t have to promote your website with ugly AdSense banner ads or blocks.
Moreover, it is possible to seamlessly integrate the CPA offers into your website. It implies you run a legit branded website while benefitting from huge commissions and CTR.
Differences between Affiliate Marketing and CPA Marketing
There are numerous differences between CPA and Affiliate Marketing.
In CPA, a person is paid to complete a specific action, which could be as simple as filling a form or take a desired action. On the other hand, in affiliate marketing, you are paid when someone makes a purchase.
Users find CPA a lot easier than affiliate marketing for a major reason. In CPA marketing, you are paid for sending a lead. The traffic sent by you is converted into a lead and then your next task is to convert that particular lead into the sales. But even if you are unable to convert it into sales, you will still be paid for the generated lead.
The other prominent differences between Affiliate and CPA marketing are:
- You can expect fast payment in the CPA network than what you get in the affiliate marketing network.
- In an affiliate network, you work as your own, while in CPA marketing you are appointed an affiliate manager that guides you for best shares and offers ways to let you make more money.
- Once you become an integral part of the affiliate network such as Clickbank, ShareASlide, or more, in most of the cases you can fast get the affiliate links for promotion. Moreover, in CPA, it takes more time to become a part of the network and you have to seek approval for CPA that you intend to promote.
Steps to Successful CPA Marketing:
1. Look for an Offer:
The initial step is to look for an offer and promote the same. It is essential that you find the perfect offer for your website.
For example, OfferVault.com and oDigger are Google of CPA, which aggregate innumerable offers from prestigious CPA networks.
You can conduct the search based on price, network, category or keyword.
Some of the commonly used terms, which you may encounter while making a search are:
- Display – It includes banner ads and text links.
- Only – It is related to using a specific traffic source, such as organic search or email.
- Incent – It is the abbreviated form for incentivized, which implies you can bribe the users with a free download or product.
- Zip Submit / Email – It is a simple offer for CPA that is ideal for traffic that is untargeted. Users offer their zip code and email only.
- Lead – It is the most common term in CPA marketing where a person submits its email, name, address, phone, and other details.
- Install / Download – You are paid when a person installs or downloads a piece of software.
- Pay-Per-Call – You are paid when anyone who calls after getting on the affiliate link.
- Trial – It is when the user signs for a free of cost trial for your service or product.
- Publisher – It is the person promoting the offer.
- Pixel Fires – It happens when a person clicks on the link.
- AM – It is a short form of Affiliate Manager who is the person to contact within the network.
- CA/FR/US – The offer is valid in that particular country.
- Revenue or Sale Share – It is when you earn a commission for every sale.
When an offer seems good you can hit the listing. You may determine the details. Such listing usually gives in-depth information on the CPA offer such as what your user requires doing and what sort of traffic is permitted.
When the offer looks good, you may hit the button ‘full landing page review.’ It will show you the page that users will check when they click on the particular link.
Important aspects to consider when looking for a landing page:
- Make sure your landing page looks professional and clean.
- Avoid incorporating more fields on a page as it can reduce the conversion rate.
You can find an offer depending on your niche and that perfectly fits the website topic. In this case, you may check CPA offers, which appeal to the demographics of your traffic.
2. Become Part of a Network:
If the offer appears good, it is the right time to join the network, which runs that offer. You can apply to the offer by clicking on the button ‘join the network.’
In order to join a CPA network, you have to talk to someone through the phone. You may even have to fill out a form.
Tips to Get Approved By a Network:
The CPA network does not intend to make things complex. They simply want to ensure that you are a legit business, which will offer them actual leads.
Hence, it is better you stay transparent. For this, you may follow some tips:
- Check the Whois – There are a few networks to check whether the ‘who is address’ of a website matches your email address or not.
- Call them prior to receiving their Call – Don’t try to hide below the radar screen. It is best to offer your network a call before applying. It shows you are the actual deal.
- Stay Honest – Most of the applications hold a part in learning more regarding the experience of online marketing.
3. Create a Website Around the CPA:
Once you joined the network and hold an offer of CPA, it is time to join it into the website.
One of the important things you know regarding CPA is that it lets you create a website to appear Fortune 500, even if you are promoting $1.25 zip/email submits.
Avoid wasting the chance to create your website appear legit. But there is no need to advertise directly for generating money from your website.
Moreover, I have found that the more volume you incorporate your advertising, the greater are the conversions.
It holds very little advertising for the banner.
4. Fetch Huge Traffic to Your Website:
Once you linked a network and send an offer, it is time to gain traffic to the website.
There are numerous ways to bring traffic to your portal. But some of the common strategies, which CPA marketers can use are:
- PPC Ads
Facebook Ads and Google AdWords are examples of PPC ads, which are highly popular to gain traffic to the CPA.
The best thing about PPC is that it can be started right away.
However, there is a limitation as well. You must hold more money into the ads. As soon as you stop spending money, your revenue can decrease to zero.
- Social Media
Different social platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook can be highly promising for your business. All such platforms can bring you offers among the correct people.
However, it works similar to SEO in a way that it takes time for building up a great following on different social platforms. But a strong Facebook page or Instagram profile is an advantage to the company, which can repay returns for years.
- SEO
One thing you may expect is that SEO is the perfect strategy to fetch online traffic.
It takes a lot of time to kick-in, but when you are able to rank for the target keywords you can gain traffic without requiring any assistance or additional support.
SEO is vast and hence it is better to know about it in detail before you make a final decision.
Bonus CPA Tips:
Check some tricks and tips that you can use in order to run an efficient and rewarding CPA affiliate.
1. Make Sure You Work in Coordination with the Affiliate Manager:
The affiliate manager is your rich source within the network. Now and then, they will email or call you to allow you to operate a few of their novel offers. It is best to always be professional and nice when they come to you.
Most of the affiliate managers work cool and prefer performing their job silently. Make sure you foster your relationship in order to gain success.
2. Learn All Ways to Gain Commission Bumps:
A major benefit of developing a sound bond with the affiliate manager is that it lets you earn a good amount of commission.
But in addition to this, you must play like a single network against each other. It is essential to check to know if the scheme you promote is available at the competing network or not.
When you see that there is another network that runs one of your proposals at a greater rate, you can match with it and make attempts that it is more inspiring to your audiences.
3. Stay Away from Shady Networks:
One challenging aspect of CPA is that there are numerous shady operations, which rip people off. For this reason, you must carefully select a network and stay away from the shady network.
Before joining a network it is best to check its reviews online. Completely stay away from a network that holds bad reviews.
On a Concluding Note:
A bad network can sometimes be a major reason to withhold payment. Hence, if you see complainers in the list of online reviews, it is better you stay away from it. Join promising CPA networks. Moreover, there is a difference between affiliate marketing and CPA marketing, but I would suggest not limiting to only one network and use both of them to bring success and profits to you.