CPA Marketing For Beginners – How To Start – Networks & Tools

cpa marketing beginners

Searching for a way to make money online? Well, thank your stars. You have landed right at the perfect site to show you how. Don’t get me wrong. This is not a promise that this article will help you make 6-figures right away from nowhere. But what I promise is if you use the insights in this article, you can make your first few dollars online easily, as you start your journey of becoming an online success over the next few months or years.

With that said, let’s dive into what you are here for CPA Marketing.

Does the term affiliate marketing ring a bell? Probably yes. But if not, it is a form of online marketing that allows aspiring marketers who don’t have any products to sell to market other people’s products and earn a commission from every sale they make.

Affiliate marketing has been in existence since the beginning of the internet and continues to grow as more products continue being sold online. A quick example; think of the major online retailers Amazon and eBay. How many people have listed their products on Amazon that they want to purchase but don’t know how to get the right customers? This is where affiliate marketers jump in.

Thanks to the introduction of digital products and increased competition, affiliate marketing has drastically diversified from CPS (cost per sale; where an affiliate is paid after a completed sale), to include CPA (cost per action), and CPL (cost per lead).

What is CPA

Also called PPA (pay per action), CPA is a method where an affiliate marketer is tasked with advertising a specific action on a product to prospective customers and is paid a commission once a customer completes that action. We are talking of actions such as customers filling in a form, submitting an email, or even making a purchase.

What makes CPA so attractive is its ability to earn more money for you as an affiliate, as compared to cost per sale.

To be honest, every human being is more willing to submit an email or fill in a form to get something they want in return, as compared to giving their hard-earned cash.

Pros of CPA

  • The first advantage is the ability to make more money effortlessly. There are lower bounce rates as compared to CPS campaigns.
  • Secondly, you don’t need to be a digital marketing guru to make money through CPA campaigns. All you need to do is redirect potential customers to the sales page and convince them to fill in a form or submit their emails. Even a beginner can pull this off.
  • It is also cheap to advertise on whatever platform you want, be it Google, Facebook, or Bing. All you need to do is set your cost preference from cost per click (CPC) to CPA on the advertiser’s platform. Instead of paying the advertiser when someone clicks on the ad, you only pay after they have performed the action you are getting paid for; hence increasing your conversion percentage.
  • You don’t need a physical product or a website to get started.
  • Recurrent commissions- If you are lucky, you can come across some affiliate campaigns- mainly paid subscriptions- that pay recurring commissions whenever the customer you won pays the subscriptions. It is an incredible form of earning passive income.

Cons

The only con is you don’t earn as much income as compared to cost per sale. However, this disadvantage is unravelled by the ability to make many sales over CPS campaigns. In the end, you can end up earning more than CPS affiliates.

Let’s do some math. On average, you can make $0.50- $20 per CPA offer. Let’s say you have a campaign paying you $12 per successful engagement. If you use Facebook to advertise and pay $0.30 per action, you are guaranteed to make a profit even if only 10% of your traffic converts. And that is not to mention that the $0.30 cost per action on Facebook is quite high.

Now that you have a clear idea of what you are getting into, here is how you can get started and earn real money.

Getting started with CPA Affiliate marketing

Getting started with CPA marketing is quite easy. You don’t need a website or anything complicated.

All you need to do is create an account with one of the affiliate marketing networks, choose a campaign you want to advertise, advertise and collect your paycheck. The two major affiliate marketing networks are Peerfly and MaxBounty; however, there are still others such as the good old Clickbank, JVZoo, CPAlead, Adgate Media, Adwork Media, and BlueTrack Media. The list is endless.

Let’s take a look at Peerfly and Maxbounty.

Peerfly

Peerfly

Peerfly is an incredible affiliate network that was started in 2009 by Chad French. Over the years, it has grown to become one of the best if not the best affiliate networks, thanks to its incredible features and offers.

What makes it so attractive to affiliates is its ability to offer the biggest database of high-paying offers that get updated every day. Despite it having many affiliates, I guarantee you; that you can easily get an offer that has low competition, yet high margins that you can comfortably advertise and earn high commissions.

In other words, Peerfly balances its big affiliate subscription by offering hundreds of attractive offers; thus, preventing internal competition from the affiliates.

Additionally, you get the chance to join their affiliates forum which gives you access to helpful information on how to advertise from different affiliates, and the admin itself. Payment is also pretty easy and fast, and you can even win rewards by participating in contests.

On the downside, getting your account approved is quite a task. The secret is providing genuine information about yourself to increase your chances of getting approved. Nonetheless, they accept applicants from all over the world.

Once approved, you need to be careful when selecting the campaigns to advertise as you can come across spammy campaigns that don’t pay a dime. This is a challenge that cuts across all networks though. Just be careful no matter which network you choose.

Visit Peerfly.

Maxbounty

Maxbounty

Maxbounty is another incredible affiliate network that you can also sign up with and make crazy amounts of money. I have to say this first, after getting your account approved, Maxbounty gives you a chance to win an extra $1,000 as a reward if you manage to earn $400 in your first three months. Additionally, they reward the top-earning affiliates by offering them a free trip to Canada and other countries.

Just like Peerfly, Maxbounty has a big selection of high-paying offers, most of which are digital products. They also offer incredible features and support to their affiliates which comes in handy for new affiliates. For example, after creating an account, you get allocated to an account manager who walks you through how to pick offers and approves your payments.

On the downside, they are very strict about fraudulent activities and can close your account in a blink.

Visit Maxbounty.

Conclusion

There are many affiliate networks to choose from; however, I would advise you to choose either Maxbounty or Peerfly. They are tested and proven.

A quick piece of advice. Avoid redirecting your traffic directly to the advertiser’s sales page when marketing your campaigns. I would recommend you create a landing page with an email submission option where you redirect your traffic.

The objective is to collect emails from your traffic before they visit the sales page and also to try to make your potential buyers more interested in the product by using interesting images and messages before you can redirect them to the sales page.

To learn why you need to collect emails from your customers, check out this article on email marketing