Let us start with the very basics: what is CPA marketing? CPA stands for cost per action and it means that if you join a CPA network you will get paid every time someone clicks on a banner posted on your website and completes a certain action. This action is not a sale – and this is why CPA marketing is so popular, especially among newcomers in the field of making money online.
How Does CPA Marketing Work?
The typical actions that someone needs to complete for a CPA offer are:
- providing an email address or other contact details
- filling in a form
- downloading software (usually a browser toolbar, or a set of emoticons)
- signing up for the trial version of a software product
Certainly, it is easier to persuade someone to take any of the above actions than to buy a product, and this is why revenues from CPA marketing are consistent and require less effort from you than promoting products through articles and reviews.
This sounds very simple and easy, so why isn’t the market over-saturated with CPA marketers? There is a simple answer for this: CPA networks are quite selective and not everyone is automatically accepted after signing up.
Getting Approved by a CPA Network
This is the biggest challenge you will face before making money through CPA marketing. You will need to be prepared to answer various questions related to your experience in online marketing and your website.
In order to maximize your chances of entering CPA marketing, you should sign up with several networks at the same time. The most permissive ones with people with little-to-no experience in CPA marketing or online marketing in general are:
- MaxBounty
- NeverBlue
- Peerfly
All these CPA networks have a very detailed sign-up form, requesting you to detail your previous marketing experience, information related to your website (monthly traffic, your niche) and your full contact details (including address and phone number). It is critical to provide correct information, because you will be contacted by phone to confirm the information you gave in the sign-up form and provide additional details as the CPA network operators consider fit.
Please note that you may face rejections by certain affiliate networks – in this case, the best solution is to go ahead and contact them by phone and find out why they rejected you. By doing this, you will know what you need to do to for a successful future application.
Finding and Promoting Offers
Once you get accepted, you can start browsing for offers and displaying banners on your website or blog. Here are the two major things you need to remember as a beginner in CPA marketing:
- Find a niche and stick with it
- Do not give up quickly, even if you don’t start making money immediately
CPA marketing is an ongoing activity, not a “get rich overnight” scheme. You need to be patient and select offers which match the niche of your website. Once you have found your niche, contact your affiliate manager and ask for the offer with the highest conversion rate.
You can also check this on your own – go to the offer list and take a look at the EPV (earnings per click) metric. This will give you an idea (although it’s not always 100% accurate) of how much money you can expect to make by promoting that offer.
As you gain more experience in your niche and in CPA marketing, you will develop your own system of identifying offers with a high potential of earnings and become more successful as a CPA marketer.