What is CPA Marketing

 

CPA (Cost Per Action / Cost Per Acquisition): This is an advertising model where publishers are paid for an action that is taken as a direct result of their marketing. This differs from typical affiliate marketing in that you may not necessarily need to make a sale to get paid within a CPA network. Payments are usually based on lead generation such as submitting a phone number or email address to get some free product or information.

As you can imagine the fact that you can get paid without even having to make a single sale can make CPA networks very attractive to the “make money online” crowd and can potentially leave a lot of room to be exploited. This means that CPA networks will usually be a little stricter than your typical affiliate network when allowing people into their network.

When people hear that CPA networks are stricter they often get scared off. You shouldn't let this happen to you because the truth is, if you are an honest upstanding affiliate or plan on becoming one, they really do want you involved. It's really the scammers and spammers of the world that they will try and weed out.

Methods of CPA Promotion

There are many differing ways to promote CPA campaigns, some of which involve having your own website, some that don't. The truth is that CPA marketing is really not all that different than other types of marketing. At it's most basic you just have to take some time to consider the product that you are promoting and where you will actually find a market that is interested in either learning more or purchasing a product.

Having said all of that I will list a few examples of the more popular CPA promotional methods that you may come across:

1. Review Website – Generally these types of websites will contain three of more products within a certain niche i.e. Weight Loss Pills or Lawn Fertilizer. They will then give you a brief introduction to each product, a review of the products performance and then usually a star rating out of five. Each of these products will usually be ranked in order and all will contain links to either a personalized landing page (introduced below) or direct to the merchant.
2. Sales/Landing Page – This site is usually more of a direct sales page and will likely introduce a lot more information on the product that it discusses. It will typically be a very hard sale and work to get it's reader either clicking through to the merchant there and then or at the very least signed up to the site owners mailing list. Some sales pages will actually try to do both of these things, though it can often be beneficial to have one direct path through a landing page. Too many options can ultimately mean losing clicks.
3. Splash Page – This is usally content light and will have flashy graphics with some punchy headlines and copy  to encourage readers to input their details or click through to the merchant. Product information is usually minimal and these types of pages are often reserved for products that need little explanation or are already famous i.e. competition for an iPhone or Macbook.
4. Quiz / Fun Landing Page – Similar to the spash page but even simpler. There will usually be a question with two or more answers that can then be clicked on through huge domineering buttons. Sometimes some sort of game may be used in page of this style and it is definitely not the kind of page that someone will be revisiting. It's only purpose is to get that click-through and get it now.