There is a good chance that you have tried to make money online using several different methods. The internet is filled with $5 a day journey threads and follow along.. they are cringe worthy. Not because it is a $5 per day goal.. but because of all the threads that get abandoned and the number of people that give up.
There are a lot of great ways to make money online. There is Google AdSense.. but they can ban you in a heartbeat and we all know how Google gives zero fucks. You can try to contact them but they just ban accounts and you never get a reason. That is bullshit but it is the way it is.
Then there are a lot of journey threads that start as Clickbank journeys. Want the truth? 99% of Clickbank products are pure shit and the return rates are high. They are SO SCARED of their merchant processor that they tell the customer a dozen times that they can request a full refund at any time within 60 days. What do you think happens? A lot of people take them up on it! Not all of them aren’t happy with the actual product.. they are just scumbags and know they can get their money and keep the product. Some noobs will get discouraged from Clickbank returns and give up.
Then we always hear “build a list” and “the money is in the list” but what the hell does that even mean? People spend time and money building a list then it goes to waste because they don’t use it right and then they give up (Check out the post I wrote on list building for tips). I would say it is safe to say 9 out of 10 people that start a journey with the goal of making money online fail and then go back to the grind of a regular job.
If you are a noob and serious about making money online and actually creating a real income that can support you and your family then this post about CPA marketing is for you. This isn’t for those that want to make $5 a day to buy a pack of smokes. That mentality is shit.. if you can’t see yourself making real money then you are also at a huge disadvantage and you will fail.
What is CPA Marketing?
COST PER ACTION: This means that you are paid every time someone clicks on your affiliate link and completes whatever action the advertiser designates as a payable action. The most common CPA offers include:
- Email submit offers
- Quote request offers
- Purchases
- Free trial sign ups
- Click to calls
- Lead generation forms
What is so Good About CPA Marketing?
There is one main reason why I prefer CPA marketing over any other method and why I dive heavy into CPA offers for my own personal marketing. Most people know me for selling SEO services.. which I do.. I have several companies with more in the works.. but that doesn’t mean it is my only income source.
I create niche sites that are created to look like information websites and sprinkle CPA offers throughout them. Then I use SEO to push them to the top of the SERPS for keywords related to the offers I am promoting and general niche related keywords. With so many different CPA offers in so many niches you can really create a large monthly income by being smart about the niches you go for, the offers you promote and how you present them within your site content.
You always have the occasional keyboard warrior that asks why people sell SEO services when they can rank their own sites.. well I have news for you.. most SEO professionals I know do this.. and do it well! I do well with my SEO services but I do better with my own sites. Makes sense, right?
As long as you are organized you can continue to scale and make more money. You have to be able to manage several offers and keep up to date on them while also keeping your eye out for new offers to promote. You also need to be good at split testing offers to determine what ones give you the most return. Constant updates with new content can be outsourced when you have the money to do so.
6-Step CPA Success Blueprint
1) Pick a Niche
You should have a niche in mind before you start looking for offers. Many people will look for high paying offers first and then try to make it work.. but this isn’t smart because you really need to have knowledge of the niche and want to work with it every day. Imagine if you found a CPA offer for a medical ointment that helped cure crabs and it paid $100 per sale. Do you want to become an expert on crabs and write about it and work on a site about it every day? I sure as fuck wouldn’t!
Picking a niche that you like and will be able to stomach writing about and dealing with daily is important. If you are interested in the niche it is going to be easier to dedicate your time to building out your website and creating content. You will also have an edge if you are familiar with the niche because you can think like the average visitor and be able to determine what CPA offers they will be likely to bite on.
If you are just getting started pick a niche you love. This will allow you to learn how to do CPA marketing the right way. Then you can take everything you learned and expand to include additional niches. Practice in a niche you enjoy.
2) Search Out Offers
Once you have a niche or two identified as possible winners you need to find offers. I like offervault.com.. it is the easiest to search and it includes every CPA offer available under the sun. Just use the search box on the site and enter your niche and it will pull up all of the offers that are related. Try a few different terms to make sure you see everything that is available. You can even search for very specific offers. For example, if you are going to create a financial niche blog you could search for “financial” offers and even get more specific with searches like “credit card” and “mortgage” to really uncover a lot of potential offers.
You are going to notice there are five major offer types listed on offervalut.com. Here is a simple explanation of them:
Pay Per Call: These offers will trigger when your unique number is called. Every affiliate is given a unique number that registers a call. These offers usually have a time minimum for them to be a qualifying call. Some are 30 seconds and some might be up to a couple minutes. Make sure you really look into the details before promoting these so you understand what qualifies as a paid call.
Email Submit: These are the easiest CPA offers to push because in order to get paid the person needs to just submit their email address. The pixel will fire on the confirmation page and it will credit your account with the commission. These will usually have low payouts and advertisers will often complain about the lead quality.. and that can lead to shaving.. which is when the CPA company only gives you credit for some of your submits to compensate for the bad or low quality submits.
Incentivized: These are offers that you can place a bribe in front of in order to get the person to complete the offer. A free eBook is usually the most common incent used to get people to complete the offer.
Install/Download Offers: You are paid when the user either installs something on their computer or downloads something.. usually a free trial piece of software. Common install CPA offers are toolbars.
Leads: These are usually a bit more detailed then just a email submit. A common example of a lead CPA offer would be a mortgage quote offer that requires a full name, email, phone number and some drop down menu selections. These will typically pay much higher then a email submit offer.
Sales: These are the biggest payouts but also the hardest to convert. Think of diet pills and eBook purchases. The average person is more likely to submit a form that doesn’t require a purchase then get out their credit card and buy a $70 bottle of pills. The highest paying offer isn’t always the best choice.
Spend some time searching for offers and make sure you views the offer details anytime something looks promising. You want to know what qualifies as the action and what it pays and what kind of traffic is or isn’t allowed.
When you do find something that will work look at the landing page the person will be taken to if they click on your offer. You want to put yourself in the shoes of your average visitor and ask yourself if the offer looks legit. If it looks like a scam your visitors will think the same. Is the layout nice? Is the average person going to know exactly what to do when they land on the page? Can you picture a lot of conversions coming from the offer?
Make sure you write down what affiliate network the offers that pass your review belong to.
3) Join Multiple Networks (and avoid shitty networks)
I’m not going to badmouth any network in particular. There are plenty of reviews about them on the forums. Many times people are complaining that they didn’t get paid…when in fact they sent fraudulent traffic or tried to cheat the network. These networks invest a shit ton of money into fraud detection. Be smart and do it the right way. If you try to get away with something shady they will catch you.. that is all I am going to say.
It is a good idea to join several networks because you don’t want all of your eggs in one basket. Over the years so many networks have gone bankrupt and just disappeared. Imagine if all of your offers were from one network and they disappeared over night? Spread your offers across several to be safe. This is also a good way to test the same offer on multiple networks to see if someone is shaving your leads.
Most networks will ask for a referral or at least conduct a phone interview. Just be honest with them. You don’t have to tell them you make $5K a day to get accepted. They welcome noobs, just be honest. Talk to people around forums and find out what networks are good to work with.. this can also help you to get your foot in the door faster from a referral.
4) Build Your Sites
Once you have some offers picked out you need to build a site with one goal.. to get your visitors to complete your offers. I see a lot of people throw up a free WordPress theme, add some content and just slap CPA banners on the site. They expect people to just click on them and convert. People have seen that crap for 10 years. They automatically think its an ad and don’t click. They might visit your website to read your content but they will never complete your offers.
You need to include your CPA offers within your content, making them natural. If you have some very high paying offers you can work them into the design/layout of your website. If you are serious about making money online then put aside $500 to have a website designed by a pro. It blows my mind that some people want to make $10K – $20K a month through CPA marketing but they won’t spend $500 on a website design. Stop being cheap and hire a designer that can incorporate some offers into the design, worked into the sidebars, footer or after posts.. to make it look like it is from you and not an ad.
5) Drive Traffic
The best site and great offers doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have traffic. A lot of people will start with social media traffic because they can push it for free.. just takes a lot of work. Then when they have the funds they will get a proper SEO service. My companies do the SEO for CPA sites in almost every niche under the sun.. and I can safely say the industry is huge, it has not become overcrowded or showing any signs of drying up anytime soon.. there is plenty of room for more people to make money.
Twitter sponsored posts and Instagram shout outs are also great ways to kick off a CPA site. If you can start out with some advertising dollars you will reach your goals much faster.. but it IS possible to start with little to no money.. just be prepared to work your ass off – Search out some of the articles I have written recently a lot of them teach methods of driving traffic with a lot of it being free.. the only cost again is hard work!
6) Profit
I would advise anyone who is getting into CPA to start small and while you have another source of income. This allows you to pay your bills and eat while you learn. CPA isn’t something you jump into with no money. We see the “I have to make $3K by next Monday” posts on forums all the time and that is setting yourself up for failure.
Set aside a specific amount of money every month that you can invest into this. You need to build a nice site, fill it with content and drive traffic. None of this is cheap. Start small, learn the game and when you figure stuff out in your niche you can increase your exposure and put more into it month after month.
There are a lot of guides online but to be honest you really need to test yourself. Just because someone did good with Facebook ads 3 months ago it doesn’t mean you will see the same results. Every niche is different and every offer is different. Spend your time testing and gathering as much data as possible.
Ready to make real money? Go get it! Let me know if you have any questions.. CPA or SEO related.. and I will do my best to help you! As always I hope you guys enjoyed the read. Until next time..
