A Guide to Monetizing Your Website with CPA Marketing
For those of you who aren’t aware, CPA Marketing is a form of affiliate marketing, but is very
different from the more conventional affiliate networks you may be used to such as with Clickbank.
CPA stands for “Cost per Action”, which basically means that it isn’t absolutely necessary for
someone to purchase something in order for you to earn a commission. In other words, you have
the ability to generate a commission if someone completes a specific action, which is required by the
advertiser. The action required can typically be anything, but commonly consists of:
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Filling out a form, which could have anything from 1-10 fields
Getting a quote or estimate from a specific advertiser
Signing up for a free trial
Actually buying something
The basis of CPA marketing will require someone to visit your website, then clicking on an affiliate
link on your site. They will then be directed to a landing page, as provided by the advertiser, and
then, most commonly, they will fill out a form, which in turn earns you, the affiliate, a commission.
However, this of course is the simplified version, and this guide will provide you the various details
you should know about CPA marketing.
Why Choose CPA Marketing?
There are typically two main reasons why many people prefer CPA marketing over other forms of
advertising, such as Adsense, banner advertising, or the more traditional form of affiliate marketing.
1) Value
The amount of commission on offer through CPA marketing is typically far more than you can expect
from promoting other monetization techniques, including Adsense, banner ads, and cost per click or
cost per impression marketing. In fact, you can generally expect to earn far higher commission
through affiliate marketing, promoting your own products, and of course, CPA marketing. If you
compare CPA marketing to another form of marketing and monetization, let’s say the sale of
physical products through Amazon, it’s easy to see why there is such a huge difference in
commissions paid.
If you are selling a physical product, such as a laptop, through Amazon, there are many more people
who require some form of payment from this sale. You have the laptop suppliers and distributors to
take into consideration, as well as the warehouses and Amazon themselves. Therefore, you can
usually only expect to receive a small amount of the actual sale price as a commission, 4% to 8.5% in
this case. However, CPA marketing is most commonly used by companies and corporations, which
require leads that they can possibly sell to at a later stage. These leads could easily turn into
thousands of dollars in terms of sales price and commissions earned for everyone involved for the
company, so the advertiser is far more willing to pay a higher fee to an affiliate.
A prime example of this may be a mortgage company looking for potential leads. If they have 100
people directed to their offer and 20 of these people complete a form, they may pay a commission
of $25 for every form that is completed. That means these 20 people would cost them $500 in
commission. However, if simply one of these leads decided to take out a mortgage with the
company, let’s say for $100,000, the advertiser in question has more than made their money back,
as well as a handsome profit.
2) Integrated Advertising
Something that I love about CPA marketing is that there is no need to completely wreck the look of,
or disfigure, your website, as is often the case with other forms of advertising, such as banner ads or
Google Adsense. Don’t get me wrong, both these forms of advertising can work very well, but all too
often they take too much attention away from the content on your website, which in some cases I
agree is the whole point of this type of advertising, but it can also make a website or blog appear
very ugly and unorganized. You have the ability to seamlessly integrate CPA advertising into your
website, whilst the said site still remains clean and professional looking.
How to Get Started with CPA Marketing
The following section of the guide will show you exactly how to get started with CPA marketing and
provides a powerful insight into the things you should be looking out for and also the things that you
should be doing to ensure you are successful.
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Find an Offer
So, the first thing you should be doing is finding a CPA offer which fits in perfectly with the subject
matter of your website. In other words, something that the traffic and readers you receive at your
site, now and in the future, may be interested in. However, you have literally dozens and dozens of
CPA networks to go through, which also adds up to thousands upon thousands of offers to look at –
which in turn makes it extremely difficult to find the perfect offer to have on your site. Well in order
to make your search for that “perfect” offer a little easier I would suggest that you spend some time
working with OfferVault.com and oDigger. I think the best way in which I can describe these two
sites is as the Google and Yahoo of CPA. Basically, both these sites aggregate the various offers from
numerous reputable CPA networks, thus making your job of finding a great, relevant offer for your
website even easier.
You have the ability to use these sites as a search engine for CPA offers, and you can search using
either keywords, network, category, or price. So, let’s say that you’re looking for offers on mortgages
or those made by mortgage companies, you simply need to type the word “mortgage” into the
search bar, and you will then be presented with a list of offers. I just wanted to give you an idea of
some of the common terms you may come across on these sites, thus making your job of finding
something suitable a little easier. I will use the terms mainly used in Offer Vault for my example,
although oDigger follows a very similar system:
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________ Only – The word only will typically have another word in front of it, let’s say email
for example. This would mean that you can only direct readers to this offer via email
marketing. You may also come across terms such as “organic search”, “pay per click”, etc.
Display – This provides you with the details of what’s available in terms of displaying your
CPA ads, e.g. text links, banner ads, etc.
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Lead – This happens to be the most popular type of “action” in the world of CPA marketing.
This will typically involve a visitor providing their name, address, email and telephone
number, etc.
Email/Zip Submit – This is probably the simplest type of CPA offer you will ever come across
and is great at trying to monetize untargeted traffic. This user is simply required to provide
either an email address or Zip code, and this can earn you a commission.
Incent – This is basically short for the word “incentivized”, and as you may expect this means
that there is some type of incentive offered to users in order to get them to sign up. This
may come in the form of a free download or product.
Pay per Call – As the name suggests, you will receive a commission after the user makes a
call after they have clicked on your affiliate link.
Download/Install – This is where you are paid a commission whenever someone downloads
or installs some type of software.
Publisher – This is you, the person who promotes the product.
“Pixel Fires” – This is when your lead has actually been finalized and counts as a lead for you.
US/UK/FR – This information will tell you that an offer is only valid in a certain country or
countries.
AM – This stands for Affiliate Manager and is the person you should be regularly liaising with
within your CPA network.
Sale or Rev Share – This information is telling you that you receive a cut of every sale.
Once you come across an offer that looks like something you can work with, simply click on the
offer’s listing. You will then be provided with details of the offer, which is typically quite basic, such
as what type of traffic is allowed and what the user will need to do in order for you to earn a
commission. If it’s something that you like then simply press “landing page preview” and you will
then be greeted with the exact page that your users will typically be greeted with.
So, what exactly should you be looking for from a landing page? Firstly, you will want to work with a
landing page that looks both clean and professional. If for any reason it doesn’t look quite right to
you or seems a little bit on the shady side, then you can almost guarantee that your traffic will feel
the same, so move on and find something more suitable. Basically, this type of landing page will not
convert for you. I will also add that the more forms and menus that a landing page has, the lower the
conversion rate you can expect from it.
With that being said, the more forms a page has, the higher Cost per Action you can typically expect,
so don’t immediately be put off by a page that has many forms and menus. Spend a little time
looking through the page and the offer and make an informed decision about whether this is
something you would like to promote. I would say that if your traffic and users and motivated
enough they will fill out just about any form, irrespective of how complicated it looks.
What If You Can’t Find a Suitable Offer?
You may find that you are unable to find a suitable offer, although this will very much depend on
which niche you are working in. If this happens to be the case, I would urge you to concentrate on a
CPA offer that provides more appeal to your actual traffic’s demographic. A prime example of this
may be if you own a dating site, which historically is a niche that receives a lot of traffic. However,
the dating niche is quite often inundated with youngsters, possibly 7th and 8th graders. If you are
using a monetization method such as Google Adsense you may find that the ads you are receiving
aren’t particularly well targeted. However, by using CPA you may be able to post ads, which aren’t
related to dating, per se, but you may find offers that are related to the demographic you are
working with, e.g. Xbox, PS3, etc. I would say that even if you can’t find anything closely related to
your target traffic, at least try CPA before you choose to go with another method of monetization.
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Join a Network
If you do find an offer that looks good and that you can definitely work with then it is time to join the
network which is supplying that offer. You should find that you can join the specific network by
simply clicking on a link that is usually on the offer page. The application typically requires you to
provide a few personal details, such as your name, address, and you will also be asked for a
telephone number, which the network will call. This, more often than not, can cause problems for
many affiliate marketers, as they are so used to signing up to networks and then making money
without the need to ever speak to another human being. Don’t worry about the fact that you’ll have
to speak to someone, or that it is highly likely that you need to complete some paperwork, as this is
simply how business works in the “real world”.
How to Ensure You Get Accepted by Any Network
Firstly, no matter what anyone tells you, no CPA network is actually trying to make it difficult for you
to join. In fact, all a CPA network is trying to do is ascertain whether you are a legitimate business
and whether you will actually be sending them real leads. So, you just need to be as honest,
transparent and upfront with them as possible. The following tips should help you to be accepted
with just about any CPA network:
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Call the network before they call you – If an affiliate is trying to do something untoward or
has shady business practices they will do everything possible to not be noticed, or even
speak to, a CPA network. However, if you call the network straight after you apply this shows
that you have nothing to hide and that you are the real type of business person they are
looking to work with. In fact, I have used this practice of calling up a CPA network straight
after completing my application, and in many cases I have been accepted to the network
within a matter of minutes of picking up the phone and making that call.
Check Whois on yourself – Many networks will actually check the Whois data on a site to see
if the address provided matches the mailing address you have given to the CPA network. If
for any reason you have given fake details on Whois I suggest you change them to the real
details straight away.
Be Honest – You will typically find that a CPA network wants to know about your Internet
marketing experience, and more often than not there is a section on their application form
that requires certain information about this from you. Remember, you don’t need to be
earning lots of money from Internet marketing, or be an affiliate marketing genius in order
to get accepted. In fact, one of the first CPA networks I ever joined was when I was making
no more than about $50 a month from Google Adsense and possibly one sale a month from
Clickbank. The vast majority of CPA networks simply want people to be honest when filling
out their application forms, nothing more. I would even suggest that if you are completely
new to affiliate marketing there is absolutely no harm in telling a network that.
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Your website should be designed around the CPA offer
The next step after you’ve found an offer and joined a CPA network is to integrate that offer into
your website. One of the best things about CPA marketing is that you can make your website look
like a premium website even if you are promoting nothing more than a $1 email submit offer.
Basically, what I mean by this is you should take this opportunity to make your website look as
legitimate as possible without scaring off potential customers with a huge number of ads and ugly
looking banners.
Realistically, you can make money from CPA without your website’s advertising being “in your face”
and over the top. In fact, I would even go as far to say that the more you can integrate your
advertising into your website, the better chance you have of people clicking on your offers and
hopefully converting. You should actually find that your overall performance is much better if you
can integrate your offers into your website, and there are people who can boast of 25% plus click
through rates when they have taken this approach.
A prime example of a premium website which has done a fantastic job with integrating ads into their
website is moneysupermarket.com. Just in case you weren’t aware, this is a huge financial website
for UK users. A great example of the “integration” I am talking about is their credit card comparison
tool. This is something of interest to most financial consumers, as most people would love to save
money or receive a better deal. Every time they send a lead to a credit card company they receive a
very worthwhile commission.
I am not saying that you can’t also perform well with CPA marketing if you have other contextual
links and banners on your website, but once again this is a case of trying and testing things for
yourself. I would also suggest that you may wish to invest in a custom designed website, which will
make your website look as professional and legitimate as possible. Custom designed should make
you far more money in the long run and building links to your website should also be a lot easier.
Tips and Tricks that I Have Picked Up Over the Years
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Have a Close Working Relationship with Your Affiliate Manager – I can’t stress this point
enough. Your Affiliate Manager or AM is your heart and soul to the CPA network. They will
typically call or email you every once in a while to let you know of new offers, or simply to
see how things are going for you. I would suggest that you are open, friendly and
professional whenever you speak to your AM, as they are simply doing their job. You may
also find that having a good relationship with your AM can open many doors for you and you
may even be able to leverage this relationship for some very exclusive deals.
Commission Bumps – A huge perk of having a great relationship with your affiliate manager
is the potential to get commission bumps. Possibly the best way to achieve commission
bumps is to ensure you have a good relationship with your AM and try to play networks off
against each other. Basically, check what offers other networks have from time-to-time. If
you happen to find that another network has the same offer, but at a higher rate, there is
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nothing wrong with asking your AM if they are willing to match it. An affiliate manager won’t
want you to leave for another network, so will typically do everything they can to bump up
your commission rate. This could be as simple as sending a polite email, evidencing the offer
from the other network and then waiting for a reply. Even for something as little as a few
cents could easily work out to thousands of dollars more commission on an annual basis, so
don’t take anything for granted.
CPA Does Have A Dark Side You Should Avoid – There are many CPA networks out there
which are extremely shady and are probably using less than legitimate tactics to entice
people over to them. This is why it is extremely important that you are very careful when
thinking about joining a new network. This is exactly why I suggest using a site such as
oDigger prior to joining a network, and make sure you check out any relevant reviews. You
will find a “Network Reviews” tab within oDigger, so simply click on this and then find the
network you are thinking of joining. If you find any information pertaining to the fact that
people had difficulties in getting paid or didn’t get paid at all then avoid these networks at all
costs. With that being said, you should also be a little wary of negative reviews. If you come
across a network that has mainly positive reviews, and the odd one or two negative ones,
then this may simply be a case of sour grapes, as in users trying to send phony leads, etc.
However, if all you find is a sea of negative reviews, it’s probably best to avoid the network
and move on.
Recommended Networks – I won’t personally recommend any networks to you, but there
are a number of excellent networks to choose from in the marketplace. However, I will be
providing reviews of the some of the more popular, better known and legitimate CPA
networks. Admittedly, I have not personally used all of the networks that I have reviewed,
but I have seen and read positive information about all of them to know that they are
reputable companies.
Final Two Tips That Should be Obvious
I would like to provide you with a final couple of tips before you get out into the world of CPA
marketing. In reality, these tips should be fairly obvious, but there is no harm in mentioning them
again here.
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Always check out the Terms and Conditions of any CPA offer
You must always check out the specific terms and conditions of any CPA offer, as you don’t want to
be putting in a lot of hard work initially, only to later discover that you have been doing something
incorrectly, thus perhaps jeopardizing your chances of earning money or even staying with a
particular network. A prime example of this is that certain networks, or indeed the CPA offer, may
only allow for certain types of traffic. So, let’s say that you are promoting a dating CPA offer on your
website, but within the terms and conditions it specifically states that you can only promote this
offer via social networking and banner advertising. It also specifically states that you cannot promote
the offer via Pay per Click advertising or email marketing.
You must ensure that you abide by these terms and conditions very closely, as failure to do so may
result in that particular advertiser stopping you from promoting not only this offer, but all of the
many different CPA offers they have for affiliate marketers. This could even mean that over a period
of time you have provided a number of leads or sales, thus meaning you have been earning
commissions. However, if it is found that you been using sources of traffic that weren’t permitted
within the Terms and Conditions, it is likely these commissions will be reversed and all that hard
work was for nothing.
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Only ever use White Hat Techniques to promote an offer
White Hat marketing is basically using techniques which are known to be legal, correct and the
proper way to do things. You should only ever use White Hat techniques to promote CPA offers, or
any other offer, product or service for that matter. Once again, if an advertiser discovers that you
have been using unauthorized or unethical techniques to promote their specific offers, this could see
you stopped from promoting this and any future offers, potentially banned from the network, and all
commissions earned being reversed.
If you have come across a strategy to generate traffic, but are unsure whether this would be
considered legitimate when promoting a certain offer, simply ask your affiliate manager for help and
advice in this area. This shows that you are trying to do everything in the correct manner, which
basically means that you should be able to continuing promoting the offer for as long as you wish,
and of course ensuring that you receive your commissions on time and in full.
So, there you have it, a guide to monetizing your website with CPA marketing. As with all the other
guides I have provided, this is nothing more than a starting point, and there is still plenty for you to
learn. However, I have provided links to certain learning tools within this guide, and your knowledge
will increase once you start using these on a more regular basis. CPA marketing has certainly become
one of the most popular ways in which to monetize your website, especially in more recent times. In
fact, many people can boast that they make a very decent living from CPA marketing alone and
require nothing more. The commissions on offer are definitely some of the higher payments
available when it comes to monetizing your website, but just as with anything else it will take time
and patience to learn the ins and outs that should see you eventually become a success.