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CPA Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Since the start of my internet marketing career, I’ve tried every monetization strategy under the sun:

I started with Adsense…but was let down by the horribly low CPCs.

Then I promoted Clickbank products…but I couldn’t get the traffic to convert.

Finally, I built a list…but I didn’t know how to pitch products without losing subscribers.

Then I tried CPA marketing…and quickly realized that it was one of the best ways for affiliates to monetize their sites.

Today I’m going to show you everything there is to know about CPA marketing.

CPA Marketing 101

CPA stands for “Cost Per Action“.

CPA is very simple: you get paid when someone clicks on your affiliate link and completes an action.

The “action” can be just about anything, but usually consists of:

• Filling out a form
• Getting an estimate or quote
• Signing up for a free trial
• Buying something

Why CPA?

There are two reasons that I prefer CPA over banner advertising, Adsense, and most other affiliate marketing strategies.

1. Higher on the Value Chain

To make the most money from your site, you want to get as high up on the value chain as you can.

Here is what the value chain looks like for digital products (using a $40 ebook as an example):

As you can see, Adsense, banner ads, and CPC/CPM models put you at the bottom of the value chain.

On the other hand, selling your own product, promoting targeted affiliate products (ie. web hosting), and CPA offers tend to put you higher up on the chain.

(FYI: the values in the diagram don’t add up to $40 because there are clicks and leads that don’t convert).

Keep in mind that physical products have 2-10x more hands in the pot (distributors, warehouses, suppliers etc.). That’s why Amazon Associates only make $100 when someone buys a $2500 laptop.

2. Integrated Advertising

The other nice thing about CPA is that you don’t need to disfigure your site with ugly Adsense blocks or banner ads.

As you’ll see later, you can seamlessly integrate CPA offers into your site. This means you run a clean, professional, branded site…while benefiting from out-of-this-world CTR, CPCs, and RPMs.

Step #1: Find an Offer

Your first step is to find an offer that aligns with your site’s existing traffic.

But with dozens of CPA networks — each with hundreds of offers  — how can find the perfect offer for your site?

That’s easy: use oDigger and OfferVault.com.

They’re like the Google of CPA: they aggregate offers from reputable CPA networks.

And you can search based on keyword, price, category or network.

Let’s say that you run a site in the education space.

Head over to Offer Vault and type in “Education” or “Degrees” into the search field:

And you’ll get a list of results, like this:

Here are the common terms you’ll come across during your search:

___ Only: You can only use a certain traffic source, like email or organic search.

Display: This includes text links and banner ads.

Lead: The most common “action” in the CPA marketing world. Usually submitting their name, email, phone, address etc.

Email/Zip Submit: The most simple CPA offer. Good for untargeted traffic. User gives their email and zip code only.

Incent: Short for “incentivized”. Incent means that you can bribe users with a free product or download.

Pay Per Call: You’re paid when someone makes a call after clicking on your affiliate link.

Download/Install: You get paid when someone downloads and/or installs a piece of software.

Publisher: The person that promotes the offer (you).

“Pixel Fires”: This is  when your lead actually counts as a lead.

US/FR/CA: Offer only valid in that country.

AM: Stands for “Affiliate Manager”. Your AM is your go-to person in the network

Sale or Rev Share: You get a cut of every sale.

When you see one that looks good, click on the offer’s listing:

Then read the details of the offer. The listing will usually give you basic information on the offer, like what the user needs to do and what type of traffic is allowed:

If it looks good, hit the “landing page preview” button. This will show you the page that users will see when they click on your link:

What should you look for in a landing page?

First, you want a landing page that looks clean and professional.

If it looks shady to you, it’ll look shady to your traffic too…and it won’t convert.

Also, the more fields a page has, the lower your conversion rate is going to be.

Fortunately, more fields also mean higher commissions…

…so don’t be automatically turned off by a page like this with a million fields :

If the traffic is motivated enough (for example, they just searched Google for “best online degrees”), I’ve found that they’ll fill out just about anything.

“What If I Can’t Find an Offer?”

Depending on your niche, you may not be able to find an offer that fits your site’s topic.

If that’s the case, you want to look for CPA offers that appeal to your traffic’s demographic.

For example, I used to run a site in the “dating” niche that was getting 2,000 visitors per day.

I put “dating” in quotes because it was comprised mostly of 7th and 8th graders wondering how to talk to Sally that sits in the back. Not the PUA type of stuff that’s easy to monetize.

Despite the fact that I tested about 20 different themes and ad placements, I wasn’t making jack with Adsense.

When I looked at the ads Adsense was generating, I realized that they weren’t dating related at all…they were targeted based on demographics.

That’s when I decided to switch out Adsense for an email/zip submit offer for a free Xbox.

And just like that I was making significantly more than I was with Adsense.

Step #2: Join a Network

If the offer looks good, it’s time to join the network that runs the offer. You can apply by clicking on a link on the offer page:

When you do, you’ll see an application like this:

You’ll be asked to give them a phone number…which they will call.

This is a huge stumbling block for most people. As affiliate marketers we’re accustomed to making money without having to talk to another human being.

The fact is, you’ll have to talk to someone on the phone to join a CPA network. You may have to even fill out some actual paperwork. It’s no big deal.

How to Get Accepted By Any Network

Remember that CPA networks aren’t trying to make things difficult. They just want to make sure that you’re a legit business that will send them real leads (which you are).

So it’s just a matter of being transparent with them.

Here are some tips that will help you get in:

• Call Them Before They Call You: Shady affiliates try to fly under the radar screen. Give the network a call right after you apply. This shows you’re the real deal. I’ve been accepted into networks literally 10-minutes after applying just by picking up the phone.
• Check Your Whois: Some networks check to see if your site’s whois address matches your mailing address.
• Be Honest: Most CPA applications have a section that asks about your internet marketing experience:

Remember: you don’t need to be an affiliate marketing rockstar to get accepted.

I joined my first network when I was making about $20/day from Adsense. They just want people that put honest answers into these fields.

So if you’re new to affiliate marketing, it’s OK to tell them that.

Step #3: Design your site around CPA

Once you’ve joined a network and have a CPA offer offer ready to go, it’s time to integrate it into your site.

One of the things I love about CPA is that you can make your site look Fortune 500…even as you promote $1.25 email/zip submits.

In other words, don’t waste the opportunity to make your site look legit by slapping up a nasty banner.

Believe it or not, but you don’t need in-your-face-advertising to make money from your site.

In fact, I’ve found that the more you integrate your advertising, the more people will click and convert. 

For example, I own a site that’s 100% monetized with CPA.  Most of the affiliate links are either contextual links or integrated into the site’s design.

It has very little banner advertising.

Despite the lack of obvious advertising, the site has a 26.4% CTR.

If I had that kind of CTR with Adsense I’d probably get my account banned!

Here are two examples of big brand sites that have done such an amazing job with ad integration that you can hardly tell they’re promoting CPA offers:

Big Brand CPA #1: MoneySupermarket.com

This is a big brand financial site that focuses on a UK audience.

They get a fat commission for every credit card lead they send to Visa and the other big credit card companies.

Big Brand CPA #2: NerdWallet.com

NerdWallet.com is a growing personal finance site. Like MoneySupermarket.com, they integrate their CPA offers into useful tools. This seamless ad integration blows away the CTR and conversion rate that they’d get from a banner ad.

Just to be clear: you can do well with traditional banner ads and contextual links.

But I HIGHLY recommend shelling out the cash to get a custom design that makes your site look legit.