CPA Advertising for Novices [Ultimate Guide] – MonetizeBetter
CPA marketing is one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a niche blog. In this CPA marketing for beginners guide, you will learn what CPA marketing is, how it works, the difference between CPA marketing and affiliate marketing, the top CPA networks you should work with, how to get approved in these networks, and how to promote CPA offers to bring home the bacon.
You are getting this guide for free, and I am sure it’s much better than those paid CPA products. However, I do not promise you can make hundreds of thousands at the starting point. You need to learn a lot and apply those techniques right away. Yah!
If you are in a hurry or want a copy of this guide, enter your name and email address below, and I can send it to you in PDF format. After signing up, you can access an exclusive area to download all our premium resources.
[optin-monster slug=”gnyad11giddxx98xa5fp”]
When you become a highly skilled and experienced CPA marketer, you can earn five- to six-figure monthly incomes from CPA networks.
A highly skilled and experienced #CPA marketer makes five and even six figures income from CPA networks every month. Find out how! @monetizeinfoClick to tweet
Let me show you how.
What Is CPA Marketing?
CPA stands for Cost Per Action. It’s also called Pay Per Lead, or PPL. CPA marketing is relatively easier than selling products.
The main idea behind CPA affiliate marketing is to get a specific action from your traffic. This action can be submitting an email, filling out a form, downloading a file, submitting a PIN code, submitting a mobile number, or even getting a sale.
People are more likely to get free products than spend their earned money. Thus, driving your traffic to a particular task can lead to cash. Generally, you can make offers of $0.50–$20 per CPA.
However, some high-end CPAs pay $750 or even more for a particular action by your traffic.
Doesn’t it sound amazing?
Yah! That’s why I created this CPA marketing for beginners guide for you.
How does CPA Marketing work?
Some well-known CPA networks control the whole process. For example, vendors or CPA offer creators submit their offers or products to CPA networks, which then promote them via CPA marketers like us.
They give us a fixed amount for each offer, based on how much the vendor or CPA offer creator has invested.
Your work is straightforward; firstly, you must apply to a CPA network, and after getting approved, browse the existing offers and select the one that suits your interests. After determining the offer, promote it to the targeted online visitors as much as possible.
CPA Network Terminology
CPA network terminology isn’t complicated, but you should know critical terms before launching.
Advertiser and Publisher: Advertisers pay CPA networks to drive conversions for their offers. Publishers are people like you and me who promote the CPA network’s offers to make money.
Affiliate Manager: A person who manages a merchant’s affiliate program. They are responsible for recruiting and engaging affiliates, and generating merchant revenue.
Category: The niche for which the CPA offer applies (sports, fashion, beauty, health, etc.).
Chargeback: When a sale “falls through” for an action an affiliate has already paid for. Since the sale was never finalized or the item was returned, the previously given commission is deducted from the advertiser’s account.
Commission: An affiliate receives a flat rate or percentage payment once a successful conversion is tracked.
Contextual link: A text link placed within an affiliate website links to the advertiser’s website.
Conversion rate: The percentage rate at which a particular action is performed. In other words, the number of successful conversions is divided by the total traffic.
Cookies: In affiliate marketing, cookies assign a unique ID to a user who has clicked the affiliate link to an advertiser’s site for a specific duration. The affiliate will receive credit for the conversion in this predefined window, typically 30-90 days.
Cost per action (CPA) is an online advertising strategy in which an advertiser pays for a target customer’s specified action.
Conversion (in %): This is an essential indication of which offer to choose before starting your promotional activities. CPA offers with a high conversion rate are always preferable. Consider the previous example, where the offer got 500 clicks and 70 leads/actions. Here is the conversion rate of that offer (70/500)*100% = 14%.
County code: Almost 95% of CPA offers are county-targeted. Therefore, you must be careful when choosing an offer. For example, if you promote US offers to people in Australia, you will not receive any payment. Some CPA networks categorize their recommendations by county, while others list the county code (US, UK, AU, BR, etc.) and the offers.
EPC: The full form of EPC is Earnings Per Click. It does not mean that you will get money for bringing only clicks to your offers. Publishers earned the given EPC rate per click on average. For example, a CPA offer of $2.50 generated 500 clicks from 20 publishers, and 70 of those clicks converted into leads. So, its EPC will be ($2.5*70)/500 = $0.35.
Incentive and non-Incentive: Here is another essential, and probably less-known, term in the CPA network. If you search the meaning of the “incentive” word, Google will reply with “a payment or concession to stimulate greater output or investment.”
Offer page: The webpage where the conversion occurs after a visitor takes the necessary action.
Offer type: CPA networks included offers of various types, such as Pin submit, Email submit, Downloads, Survey, Installs, Mobile, Purchase, etc.
Payout/CPA rate: This is the money rate that the website will pay you to get every single lead/action for that particular CPA offer. So, look at the Payout/CPA rate before selecting your offer.
Return on investment (ROI) is the money generated by a campaign. It is the revenue divided by ad spend, then multiplied by 100.
In short, “incentive” refers to a digital bribe to get artificial actions/leads from people. For incentive offers, you can attract people by offering extra gifts, coupons, or cash to encourage them to take action. On the other hand, these digital bribes are strictly prohibited in non-incentive offers.
Now that you know the CPA marketing terminology, let’s analyze the differences between CPA and Affiliate marketing.
CPA Marketing for Beginners PROs and CONs
Here are the CPA marketing PROs and CONs for publishers:
CPA Marketing PROs
Unlike affiliate marketing, you can get paid without generating sales.
Get high payments like $100 for a casino lead or a BTC exchange.
There are CPA offers in almost any niche you can think of.
You can start with a little to no investment upfront.
CPA Marketing CONs
As a beginner, getting accepted into top CPA networks isn’t easy.
Many of the best CPA offers are available only to 1st-world countries like the US.
It’s a competitive arena, so you must be creative to make good money.
Now that we have an overview of CPA marketing PROs and CONs for publishers, let’s dive into the top CPA networks.
What is the Best CPA Network for Beginners?
Are you done with all the best CPA networks I have listed above? You must choose the best one that suits your traffic source and taste.
I tried my best to list all the great CPA affiliate networks worldwide. Are we still missing some great networks? Then, please suggest a name in the comment section. You are also most welcome to share your experience with any CPA network you have worked with or previously worked with.
Top 10 CPA networks in the world:
There is an important reason you should start with the CPA network that I have recommended for beginners. For example, MaxBounty has traffic and promotion method restrictions on its offers.
For example, some offers can’t be promoted on free giveaway sites, and some offer promotion activities can’t contain the words “Free,” “Win,” “Claim,” etc. After repeatedly breaking these rules, you may get banned and lose all your earned money.
On the other hand, CPALead imposes no traffic or promotion restrictions on its offers. Therefore, you can promote its offers using any traffic and word. This is why I marked a Tag beside those CPA networks.
Here is an inside look at the CPA offer dashboard for some of the top CPA networks I work with.
The above screenshot includes Maxbounty, CPALead, and AdWorkMedia.
Also, I want to share some trending CPA-marketing communities that can help you stay updated on the latest CPA events and improve your skills. Some of those communities are Top Gold Forum, Warrior Forum, CPA Hero, and Cand PA Elites.
How To Get Instant Approval in Any CPA Network?
Most newbies face the first problem of getting approval in the top CPA networks. So, here is my recommendation for this problem;
If you are a newbie in the CPA network world, don’t apply for the world’s TOP leading CPA networks such as MaxBounty or Peerfly. After the interview, these networks will approve your account via a mobile call. Besides, these networks require prior experience and have strict, fast rules for offering promotions.
So, what should you do?
It’s better to start with a CPA network that’s newbie-friendly.
How much can you make with these CPA networks?
It depends on your skill and experience in offering promotions. Some expert CPA marketers are making $3,000+ per day with these newbie-friendly CPA affiliate networks.
Here are some newbie-friendly, reliable CPA networks for instant approval. I need to say that I don’t sit with just one CPA network. Get your account approved at least 3 CPA networks to compare the quality of offers, CPA rate, conversion rate, etc., which will help you in the long run.
Here is the list for you:
First, apply to 2-3 CPA networks for publisher/affiliate accounts and gain experience in the CPA industry. Then, you may start by leading CPA affiliate networks for greater success.
Here goes the step-by-step process to apply in CPA networks (both newbie-friendly and top-leading) and to get fast approval:
Let’s start with AdWorkMedia and CPALead, which are suitable. Below is a screenshot of the signup form. In almost all CPA networks, you need to provide nearly the same information while applying for a publisher/affiliate account.
CPALead Signup Form
Most CPA networks require an established website or blog through which you promote CPA offers. However, you can also promote other sites and media.
Maybe some of you are stuck at this point only because you don’t have an established website. Don’t worry, my friend, CPALead doesn’t require a website 😀. So get started with it. If you have an excellent website, applying for AdworkMedia is highly recommended.
Step 1:
Go to the AdWorkMedia and CPALead signup pages and fill in your name and other personal information. If possible, I recommend using a professional email address hosted on your domain (e.g., stephan@monetizebetter.com) to increase your chances of approval. If you don’t have one, proceed with your regular Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Email.
Step 2:
Completing the promotional method section of the signup form is very important for approval.
Here are some quick tips to fill up this part:
You can choose either a website or PPC as the promotional method. Select both of them (if the option is available).
Don’t try to lie by using others’ websites as your promotional source; you may be caught.
Always choose “Incentive” as the type of traffic.
You can add these promotional methods to the description: PPC campaigns, Facebook ads, content promotion, SEO, and display networks.
Step 3: (Only For Top CPA Networks)
After pressing the “Submit Application” button, you are done for the newbie-friendly CPA networks, but not for the top networks that approve accounts after a mobile phone interview. Instead, after applying for an account, you will receive an email telling you that they will send you a confirmation email after reviewing your application.
In the case of the top CPA network, don’t just sit idly in your chair. You need to contact your affiliate manager as soon as possible. (After applying, you will get information about your affiliate manager in the first Email.)
Here are the best ways to contact your affiliate manager:
First, try making a phone call on your mobile.
If that’s impossible, buy Skype credit and call your affiliate manager’s mobile number.
If you can’t do that, send an Email or a Skype message saying that you just applied for a publisher account and are ready for the phone interview.
This simple approach will give your affiliate manager a positive impression of you. It also shows that you are highly interested in and very serious about this publisher account, which is a positive sign for getting fast approval.
How To Promote CPA Offers?
I’ve written a detailed guide on promoting CPA offers, covering 100+ ways to make a profit.
CPA offers promoting strategies:
Sharing on relevant groups and communities in various social networks like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. (I got my first ever CPA lead via sharing a CPA link in Google+, which enhanced my confidence to start a new project on it)
You can convert videos into leads through video marketing on platforms like YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, and more.
You can write high-quality content and promote the content via other blogs, Web 2.0 sites, and article directories.
If you have a blog that matches any CPA network offers, you can use your blog to get conversion/action and make money.
You can also build an email list to get high-quality leads. In this case, I recommend GetResponse because of its high-quality service and affordability.
You can create a new site based on any CPA offer and rank it to get unlimited CPA leads. I am doing this for myself.
You can buy banner ads and spread your CPA offers without having your own site.
Running Facebook and PPC ad campaigns will also yield significant profits from CPA offers.
How To Get Payment From CPA Networks?
Many CPA networks support several payment methods. However, PayPal and Bank transfers are widespread among all the networks I have tried. You can also get paid via Skrill, Payoneer, Check, Western Union, etc.
I highly recommend you sign up for a Payoneer account with a virtual bank account under the Bank of America name. You can use this bank account to get all your affiliate money.
I prefer Payoneer over PayPal because I can withdraw cash from ATMs worldwide with a Payoneer Mastercard.
Conclusion
Here you have it: a complete guide to CPA marketing for beginners. Now, it’s time to set your goal and start working. If you are still confused about any of the above topics, please do not hesitate to ask a question in the comment section. I will try my best to answer every question.
Still, do you have any questions or want to learn more about anything? I recommend checking out the top 10 CPA marketing courses and taking one.
-> Read Our Top 10 Best CPA Marketing Courses
I’ve also written a detailed guide on CPA marketing for e-commerce business owners. You should read it if you are on the other side of the fence.