CPA Affiliate Marketing – What’s The Big Deal?
Actually, what you may really be asking at this point is: What is CPA Affiliate Marketing? It’s really not too complicated. CPA Advertising refers to a strategy called “Cost Per Action” marketing. What actually happens is that an affiliate is paid a commission each time a person follows the link they have provided to the company’s website and takes some specified action. Typically, this might involve providing some sort of personal date (perhaps Name, email address, and zipcode) into a registration form. Another example might be one in which the prospect must download a toolbar to their browser, or accept a free trial of a product.
The marketplace today is quite competitive, and a company needs lots of ad exposure to maintain a competitive posture. The key is to have exposure to the public that is widespread, and to maintain contact with as many possible customers as they can. By accomplishing this, a business establishes an audience for their marketing efforts, and then they can get down to the business at hand.
From the standpoint of a company, CPA advertising is a highly desirable way to market itself. It is very cost-effective, because they only pay for leads that occur when a prospective customer provides some contact information, or interacts with the company’s website in a particular way, thus creating a contact point between the company and the new prospect. Each time a new prospect completes this action, the affiliate who directed them to the page earns a commission.
The business itself must decide what type of action it wants its potential customers to take. The action could, in some instances, be purchasing a trial product or introductory service from the company. More often, it could involve filling in a short form to obtain information about the product or services provided by the company, or just signing up with the company’s website. Based on the action, the advertising costs (or commissions paid to the affiliate) will vary.
When it initiates a CPA campaign, a company agrees to pay out a specific commission each time a new person visits the company’s website and takes a specified action while on that site. The exact details of that required action are specified in the details of the campaign. By setting the ground rules in this manner, the business is able to collect a list of highly qualified prospects for its business, while only paying for the visitors who actually seem, at least, to have some interest in what the company has to offer. This list of highly qualified prospects can then make all that much easier to complete the actual sales at a later time.
By using CPA advertising, a company can enjoy unlimited amounts of traffic to its website, but it will only have to make payment when a desired action is completed by a potential customer. This is the new future of Internet marketing. It really amounts to paying for results, not just traffic – which may, or may not, bring actual business.
The affiliate participating in a CPA program, sees one major advantage over conventional sales affiliate marketing: In sales, the affiliate doesn’t earn the commission until someone actually spends their money and buys something – (and then they have to worry about the possibility of returns). When an affiliate is running a CPA campaign, however, the barrier to be jumped to earn his or her commission is much lower: the prospect simply has to to be willing to provide the requested information, or download some free software, or accept the free trial offer, and the commission is earned and paid.
To learn more about being a profitable CPA affiliate affiliate, get your copy of the complete guide to CPA affiliate, which includes a ton of resource links that will help you launch your business quickly.
CPA Offers for Simple Affiliate Marketing Success
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online, and it works for many people. However, one of the biggest drawbacks to the system is that you have to actually make a sale in order to get paid. And many people just aren’t natural salespersons.
Of course, salesmanship and copywriting are skills that you can learn. But for many people starting off, it’s simply just one more thing to learn, and when you’re already working out the basics of setting up a website and getting traffic, that can be one thing too many. If that sounds like you, then you can still take advantage of the affiliate marketing system by focusing on CPA offers instead of sticking to selling products.
CPA stands for Cost Per Action. This is when you get paid for actions that a visitor makes as opposed to sales. These actions can vary depending on the offer, but most often it will involve the visitor submitting their email, zip code, or filling out a form or survey. There are also CPA offers that are based on signing up for free trials.
CPA offers convert at a much higher rate than products do because there is usually no money involved. The offers are also very often set up in a fun, interesting way. Think about it, if you were just dealing with your own circle of friends, wouldn’t it be easier to get them to take a cute, two minute IQ test than to buy a box of chocolate from you? Obviously, the first one will take a lot less effort.
One drawback to CPA offers is that they pay a lot less than product sales do. While you might make anywhere from $5 to $100 for a sale, depending what the product is, a CPA offer will probably pay in the range of $0.12 to $3. However, those numbers add up quickly due to the ease with which you can get people to complete these offers.
CPA offers present a simple way for people to get started with affiliate marketing and making money online in general. When you have the basics under control, you can then move on to promoting products that have a higher payout.
About the author:
Rachel Moore is making money on the internet through affiliate marketing. At her site, Rachel’s Wealthy Affiliate Review, she discusses the pros and cons of the program that got her started and answers the question “is Wealthy Affiliate a scam?”