Archive – CPA Marketing for Entrepreneurs in 2021

Written as a ghostwriter for a private client. The original publication is no longer available. Shared for portfolio purposes only.

10 February 2021

CPA Marketing for Entrepreneurs in 2021: The Ultimate Guide

If you’re even remotely involved in the world of online marketing and eCommerce, chances are you will have come across affiliate marketing. 

With this marketing style, affiliates can earn a commission by promoting the products or services of other businesses. 

It’s generally seen as a straightforward way to make money online, as an affiliate doesn’t need to create a product or provide a service to the clients… They promote and advertise on behalf of their ad network in return for a share in the profits should buyers purchase through the affiliate network link. 

But while affiliate networking is seen as a growing industry, there is a way to make money even when a visitor doesn’t buy a product… This is known as CPA marketing. 

What is CPA marketing all about? 

C.P.A. stands for Cost Per Action (sometimes known as Cost Per Acquisition). It can also be known as Pay Per Lead (PPL) or Pay Per Click (PLC). 

CPA marketing is similar to affiliate marketing strategies you might have come across before, where the “action” is buying a product. However, with CPA offers, the “action” that the company is trying to encourage can be much broader. 

This means that a customer doesn’t necessarily have to spend money for the CPA network to profit. Companies may provide payment for advertising that leads to customers doing one of the following: 

• Providing information such as an email address or ZIP code
• Downloading a toolbar or other piece of software
• Subscribing to a newsletter or free trial
• Creating an account for an online dating service, online game, or casino
• Participating in a survey or competition

These activities are ‘lead generating,’ and offer potential returns to the client as the affiliate drives increasing traffic to their site and products, even if no money changes hands when the “action” takes place.

Can you make money with CPA marketing? 

Usually, CPA offers include things like free trials, special offers, or other customer-benefiting promotions that attract traffic but don’t necessarily make money for the business in the first instance.

But if nobody is buying anything, how do cost per action websites make their money? 

What is CPA paid marketing?

Cost per action websites and CPA affiliate networks make their money by creating marketing campaigns that act as a traffic source, driving users to a product or service provider. This is known as ‘lead generation.’ 

Even if the user doesn’t buy anything on their first visit, more traffic means increased sales opportunities later. 

Affiliate marketers can use a whole host of paid and native advertising strategies including Facebook ads, YouTube videos, social media campaigns, or even product reviews.

A valuable CPA model utilizes a whole range of networks and strategies to boost traffic and encourage people to click on their campaigns. 

CPA marketing payment model

CPA affiliates are paid every time a user completes the desired “action” or clicks the links in the CPA payment model. 

The actual amount of money offered will vary. However, you can generally expect $1 to $6 for every lead you generate for the business. For email captures, you can usually expect between $4 to $25. In highly competitive markets (for example, insurance companies), you might be able to generate around $22 per lead. 

The best way to get the big bucks from CPA affiliate marketing is with multi-part offers, which can pay up to $150 for every user who completes all the required steps! The more complicated the “action,” the higher the CPA payment.

What is a CPA network? 

A CPA network definition is a link between the publisher and advertiser. The CPA affiliate network is responsible for connecting companies who wish to participate in CPA definition marketing and those who will take a CPA offer and promote it. 

In other words, if you want to get started with CPA marketing, you need to first get accepted by one or more CPA affiliate networks that will provide you with the offers you’ll need to promote to get paid.

While almost all affiliate networks will provide some per click CPA offers, CPA networks work exclusively in the CPA affiliate marketing industry. This means that you’ll find more cost per action CPA offers to promote when you get accepted by these more specific networks. 

Keep in mind it can be complex to get accepted by the top CPA networks, as they will want to see that you have experience and a proven conversion rate when it comes to online marketing. 

However, there are plenty of high-quality CPA networks that you can join even as a newcomer to the world of affiliate marketing CPA.

How does CPA marketing work? 

To understand how CPA marketing works, you must first understand what is CPA marketing and how generating traffic can equal getting paid. 

We’ve already established what does CPA stand for in marketing (Cost Per Action/Acquisition). But to properly promote CPA, you need to make sure you have a quality conversion rate, professional-looking landing pages, and a decent tracking system to help you monitor what you’re sending to the affiliate business. 

To understand how CPA marketing works, let’s take a look at who’s involved: 

1. The Affiliate or Publisher: This could be an influencer, blogger, brand, or even a CPA-based company that promotes another business or their products. Their goal is to direct traffic to the eCommerce website and get customers to complete a specific action. For every person who completes the specified action, the affiliate get paid.
2. The Business or Advertiser: This is the brand that pays the CPA affiliate to promote their products by asking users to complete an action. This could be as simple as providing an email address or phone number, or something more complicated like completing a form or participating in a trial. As the affiliates drive traffic to the business’ site, they get a higher chance of making a sale, creating leads, or boosting conversions. 
3. The CPA Network: The CPA network is like the glue that holds the whole digital marketing scheme together. It is the platform that connects CPA affiliate marketers with the brands and businesses that wish to advertise their offers. Affiliate managers work for the network, and are the point of contact for CPA affiliates.

The below infographic is an excellent visual illustration of how a general affiliate program works. But with CPA offers, the user doesn’t necessarily have to make a payment. It’s the quality traffic and completion of offers that the CPA affiliate managers are interested in.

What are the benefits of CPA marketing? 

Like any form of advertising, CPA marketing campaigns have pros and cons for both the affiliate and the business paying them to promote their website. 

As a CPA affiliate, cost per action marketing can be incredibly profitable when you find the right offers for your audience. As a business, you could see huge increases in traffic to your website and far better conversions when connecting with the right influencer.

Of course, there are many ways to get more traffic to an eCommerce store, but CPA marketing offers a selection of unique benefits, including: 

1. It’s easy 

All you need is a website and passion to be accepted by a CPA network. From here, you’ll be able to integrate landing pages and native ads to start building traffic almost immediately, with very little capital investment required. 

2. Low risk

Because businesses don’t pay out unless a specific action is completed, CPA affiliates are relatively low-risk. Aaffiliates don’t need to worry about customers actually buying products as they get paid as long as actions are completed, so all they need to do is bring traffic to the site. 

3. High ROI

According to Conversant’s Affiliate Customer Insights, customers generally spend more money when making a purchase following an affiliate link. What’s more, affiliate marketing is estimated to be responsible for 16% of all online marketing. 

Not only this, but CPA marketing campaigns are renowned for creating higher-quality traffic, making it a better investment with a higher ROI when compared to less subtle forms of advertising. 

This means that the more quality traffic you bring to a CPA affiliate business, the higher commission you can ask for. The BigCommerce affiliate program starts with a bounty payment of 200%, increasing with sales volume! 

4. Expand market reach

In addition to being a low-risk venture with a high ROI, CPA marketing enables businesses to scale their ad network by working with influencers and marketers from a broader range of niches. 

For example, Brian Dean (from backlinko) stated that he used to run a “dating” site for teenagers that received approximately 2,000 visitors daily. Although he’d dabbled in online marketing using Adsense on this website, he was struggling to get a decent conversion rate.

However, when he swapped Adsense campaigns for affiliate marketing that required users to enter their email address and ZIP code to be in with a chance to win a free Xbox 360, his conversion dramatically increased… Benefiting not just Brian, but the CPA networks and businesses he was promoting too! 

This broader pool of potential customers waiting to be converted is one of the most significant benefits of CPA marketing, as it allows businesses to reach customers that might not otherwise be taken in by advertising.

CPA marketing tips and tricks and best practices

Once you understand how CPA affiliate marketing works in theory, there are some brilliant CPA marketing tips and tricks you can execute. By implementing these into your online advertising, you’re sure to find better CPA marketing traffic sources and convert more leads. 

1. Work with your affiliate manager (AM)

Your manager is your connection to CPA networks. It’s their job to: 

• Review affiliate offers.
• Provide insights into different types of affiliate links and ads that optimize conversion.
• Offer content tips to help affiliates promote the business they’re working with.
• Send product updates and new assignments to CPA affiliates.
• Provide commission, bonuses, and incentives.
• Aid affiliates in optimizing for mobile traffic.

From the business’ and CPA networks’ point of view, the affiliate manager can also: 

• Connect businesses with the top-performing influencers and affiliates in the same niche.
• Aid with brainstorming new promotional ideas and different offers
• Maintain consistency in brand messages and product updates. 
• Negotiate affiliate contracts, monitor conversion rates, and ROI, and compare programs against others to maintain competitiveness.
• Deal with tax and accounting.

Because affiliate managers are responsible for so much of the network process, it’s vital to maintain a good relationship. 

2. Check CPA network reviews carefully

When picking a CPA network, whether as an affiliate or as a business, it’s essential to do thorough research before signing up. 

As you find in any industry that involves making so much money so quickly, CPA marketing can be subject to scams and ‘shady’ practices. 

Independent sites such as oDigger can help newcomers to the CPA scene sort through the masses, as this website allows you to view network reviews. These reviews will detail other people’s experiences with the CPA network along with an overall rating out of 5, so you can see whether a network is worth your time. 

Keep in mind that even the best networks are likely to have one or two negative reviews, so don’t let this scare you off! There also might be very legitimate reasons why someone’s payment hasn’t gone through, so check the network’s policies as well as the reviews before signing up.

That said, look out for the following common negative comments when checking CPA network reviews: 

• Problems with payments
• Unhelpful or uncontactable affiliate managers
• Difficulty when signing up for the network or problems using the platform

3. Use native ads

The days of horrific advertising banners all over your website are (thankfully) behind us. Today, it’s much more effective to use native advertising to convert leads and increase traffic to a business’ landing page. 

In fact, statistics show native ads that match the color, layout, and theme of your website can attract twice as much visual focus as banner ads. This is especially prevalent when it comes to mobile CPA campaigns.

Some of the most successful CPA websites, such as MoneySupermarket.com, have done such an excellent job of integrating their marketing CPA into the web design that it’s almost impossible to tell which links will make them a commission. By integrating their affiliate links, they actually enjoy a much greater follow-through than websites that use ugly banners to attract customers. 

Personal finance website, NerdWallet is another excellent example of seamlessly integrating cost per action links on the website. 

4. Work on your website and landing pages

Of course, you can only implement native advertisements that match your web design if you have a quality website to start with. Spend a little time learning how to build a website and effective landing page (if this isn’t something you’re already confident in) that can attract and retain customers.

A high-quality website won’t just help get the best leads, but it also helps ensure the CPA adverts don’t look shady. If you think a website looks like a sham, then your customers will too.

You should also pay some attention to social media, as this is quickly becoming one of the top places to promote your product or service. 

In fact, 8% of Instagram users claim they already use Instagram to discover new products, and 54% of people surveyed said they have made a purchase through the platform, so social media marketing is a quality way to attract users with CPA offers and links. 

How to get started in CPA marketing

If you’re ready to become a CPA affiliate or start your CPA marketing journey, this guide will help you get the best start.

Step #1: Find an Offer

The first step in CPA affiliate marketing is to find an offer to promote. There are thousands of websites to help you find the right offer for you, but as a starting point, we recommend oDigger or OfficeVault.

These websites allow you to search thousands of offers from reputable CPA networks by keyword, price, category, or even network. Think of them as the Google of CPA.

How it works

Say you want to take part in an affiliate program in the fitness niche… Simply type “fitness” into the search bar to see a list of available offers. You can filter these by price, network, or even “date added” to find the best offer for you.

Once you’ve found an offer you like the look of, click on it to view more details (we picked Spot Diets – Fitness – Trial – [US] for this example). 

If you like the look of the offer you selected, click the “preview landing page” button to see how the page will look when users click your link. You might want to check it on your smartphone, too, to make sure the page is optimized for mobile. 

You’re looking for a landing page that appears professional, clean, and tidy. Remember, if an offer looks shady or too good to be true, it probably is, and your customers won’t follow through! 

Another thing to consider is that the more fields the offer requires users to fill out, the weaker your conversion rates are likely to be. That said, a more complicated offer generally involves a higher price per completion. If marketing to the right niche, you can make some serious money from multi-step campaigns.

Step #2: Join a Network

Once you’ve found a campaign you’d like to take part in, click the link to the CPA network site and sign up or log in (as the above example was with GuruMedia, we’ll stick with them for the rest of our examples). 

When it comes to getting accepted by a CPA network, there are a few things you’ll need to  be aware of: 

• Always be honest and provide your correct details (including your correct phone number, name, date of birth, and address)
• Provide a link to your own website or blog
• Tell them about your niche and how you generate interest
• Be frank if you don’t have a lot of experience

The telephone number is a big one, as an AM will call you to undertake a telephone interview before you’re accepted onto their network. 

Get ahead of the game and call them first. 

Call them approximately 10 minutes after you submitted your application to let them know you’ve applied. Not only does this show you’re eager, but it also demonstrates that you’re not trying to fly under the radar. 

Step #3: Design Your Site Around CPA

We’ve already touched on this in our CPA marketing tips and tricks section, but always make sure you design your website around the promotion to provide a clean, professional, consistent look that will promote CPA without looking cluttered. It’s also worth ensuring your website and the CPA offers are optimized for mobile.

Step #4: Drive Traffic To Your Site

The final step to becoming a successful CPA affiliate marketer is to drive more people to your site. There are thousands of ways to do this, whether you’re selling clothing, skincare, jewelry, or anything else. What’s best for you, your niche, and your customers might vary significantly from anyone else. 

That said, there are three of the best traffic sources for CPA offers to get people onto your site.

1. SEO

Search Engine Optimization might not be the most straightforward topic to learn, nor is it the fastest way to gain traction. However, it is the best way to boost your Google rankings. 

If SEO really isn’t your thing, there are plenty of great SEO apps for Shopify and eCommerce businesses to take advantage of. 

• Paid Ads

PPC ads on sites such as Facebook or Instagram, or even directly via Google, are a great way to quickly get your content in front of a large audience. However, they do require a cash investment. What’s more, once you stop paying for a PPC ad, it disappears.

• Social Media

Building an organic following on social media can provide an excellent source of potential customers ready to click on your links. You do need to put in the groundwork to pull this off, however. Spend time establishing yourself as an expert influencer in your chosen niche, and you’ll be able to sit back and relax as people flock to your links. 

Bonus: CPA Pro Tips

#1: Befriend your manager

Your AM is the key to your success as a CPA marketer. Build a relationship with this person, and you’ll be first in line for the best offers. You may even be able to receive ‘bumps’ in commission. 

#2: Traffic Talks

Naturally, CPA, meaning marketing, is all about traffic. If your website or social media accounts already have lots of engagement, use this to your advantage: Request commission bumps, backlinks, shoutouts, and shares on social media… Whatever you need! 

If you have the traffic to leverage, don’t be afraid to ask for more.

#3: Watch your conversions

If you’re not monitoring your conversion rates yourself, then you could be missing out! 

Although we all like to think our affiliate networks and managers are 100% honest, it’s not unheard of for a little to be skimmed off the top when calculating commission, so keep an eye on your conversions to ensure you’re being paid what you deserve. 

When monitoring your conversions, it’s also a good idea to keep an open dialogue with your affiliate manager to determine what conversion rates other affiliates are getting and any tips they might have to help you grow.  

Is CPA Affiliate Marketing worth it? An overview of the CPA model.

CPA affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative, both for the affiliate and the business providing the offer! 

Because CPA involves payment for customers completing a specific action (for example, providing an email address, downloading a mobile game, completing a survey, or participating in a free trial), CPA affiliate marketers are less reliant on people making spur-of-the-moment purchases. They can make decent money once they locate the best traffic sources for CPA offers.

For a business, CPA enables them to advertise products or services without needing to get involved in too much of the marketing, and it can bring some hugely valuable leads to their sites. 

Aaffiliate marketing isn’t going anywhere soon. Spending a little time learning the rules and jargon for this lucrative business model may well be an excellent solution to help drive more traffic to your store… Or make you a little (or a lot) of extra cash as an affiliate!