This article is just going to show you some simple tips of how to make the most of the advertising and affiliate options available to you. This includes some of the sites and resources that we are going to be using to a) drive traffic and b) monetize that traffic.
This is not extensive, but just a few tips to help you and ensure that you don’t hinder your progress once you get going. You should have some level of momentum after reading this article and it is important to keep this going to help kick start you to success.
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A group of affiliate programs that I like to use are known as CPA networks. CPA can be confusing to anyone who is new to the business, but it is a reasonably simple concept. The term stands for Cost Per Action and I first became interested in the concept when I came across it and realized just how much sense this made from an affiliate point of view.
This is why it became my real strategy of preference. Since a huge proportion of people online either know nothing of CPA networks, or have no idea as to how to get the most from them, I will give brief outline of what exactly they are and how to make the most possible profit from them. This is a traffic focused article, but this is important to discuss so you know how to best turn traffic into cash.
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This could be anything from simply filling in a capture form to taking a trial of a product.
The thing that made so much sense to me is that the conversion rates are so high but you are not trying to get anyone to actually buy anything. That is the job of the guys you are providing with leads. The great thing is that the payouts are often as good or better than anything you get when promoting an e-book from Clickbank, but the conversion rates can be way, way higher.
I have seen tons of lead generation campaigns where people have to just go through a few pages and agree to be contacted and take a trial with payouts well over $100 CPA. This is why I prefer to promote them.
As for which companies are the best there are a few CPA networks which stand out above the rest. Personally, I like ModernClick and Azoogle the best, but there are tons to pick from and I recommend signing up for as many as possible to get a broad range of products and offers to promote.
Some CPA networks can be a little difficult to get accepted to. This is because they don’t like to accept people who will join and either scam them, or will sit there and do nothing. Due to the massive increase in CPA fraud recently these measures are getting more difficult but that does not mean that you can’t get accepted. In fact, it’s pretty easy if you know how.
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First things first. They will ask you for a website URL that they can check out. If you don’t have one, then don’t worry too much. You can simply set up a blog in one particular niche and populate it with content from EzineArticles.
Or if you want to just leave it blank or put n/a. I have been accepted to every network I have ever applied to without giving a single website as an example. We can get around this requirement with a little bit of knowledge of how other affiliates are promoting their offers and what to say on the application form.
The main methods that affiliates use to make money from CPA offers are plugging offers into already high traffic sites, driving traffic through PPC and banner buys, or using SEO and a combination of other methods to get leads.
If you have a high quality website or have set up a simple blog, just use something like the example text below in the comments section.
“This is one of my blogs that I gave as an example. In reality, I can show you no really relevant website until I have seen your offers that I want to promote. I will then have a website built around those offers.”
That should be enough to let you through on the website front. But you will also need to describe how you plan to promote offers and two sentences can be enough to get you accepted to most CPA networks.
“I plan to build out landing pages based on your best converting offers and drive traffic to it using PPC and some banner buys. If the offers convert well I also have some contacts and may decide to run some large scale media buys.”
Large scale media buys will have the network excited just at the prospect of having you as a member. We will get on to what exactly they are later, but just know this should get you accepted.
So now that you have filled out the application you need to know that most networks will call you within 3-4 days. Some take longer depending on the volume of new applications at that time.
TIP – The best thing you can do to make a good impression on the CPA networks is call them 24 hours after you have applied.
This shows a number of things. First, it shows you are a real person who is enthusiastic about getting started with the network. It shows that all your details are accurate and it shows that you are professional enough to call them.
Most of these networks have a decent sized staff available and, as such, most will go through your application on the spot. If everything checks out they will approve you there and then.
This cuts down your waiting time for approval and means we can make money quicker! Now I know this is a traffic article, but there is one more thing I want to cover regarding CPA that can literally make or break your success with it.
One of the key steps to getting off on the right track with your CPA business – it is a business so remember to treat it like one – is that you must forge a good relationship with your affiliate manager.
When you sign up with your chosen CPA networks you will be assigned an AM (affiliate manager), these people are experts at helping you to get through the first teething problems you might have and are there to give advice and guidance on offers and tactics for new affiliates.
Obviously after reading this you are not going to need their help too much, but there are some things they can help you greatly with.
For one, if you start doing well with a particular offer or niche then there is something you can do if you have a good relationship with your AM. The offer payouts are flexible on CPA networks, which is something most people do not know. For example, can you imagine going to Clickbank and asking to be paid more for an affiliate sale?
Well that is exactly what you can do on the CPA networks, and it becomes far easier if you have an AM who likes you and is a good friend.
I consider my AM to be a friend, and now every time I tell her I am going to start to run an offer she automatically goes and negotiates with the offer manager to see if I can get a better payout.
If you don’t ask then you don’t get.
The other thing that a great AM will be able to do for you is tell you of any upcoming changes that may be looming for a particular offer. The worst thing in the world that can happen, and it has happened to me before, is to do all your preparation and research, start running an offer and then have it taken down for maintenance.
Remember, I don’t just run a little PPC, this has happened with large media buys. But we will get to how you protect yourself with those later.
But think about it, if you have made no impact on your AM and you have shown no desire to get going, then they are not going to be overly concerned with telling you something is going on. They will be concentrating on their affiliates who keep in touch and who they know and like.
So what to do? Well, once you get accepted the best thing you can do is to immediately send an email out to your AM introducing yourself. Tell your AM who you are and that you are excited to start working hard with CPA campaigns.
Ask them for any advice about anything you have problems with. These people are there to help and they are more than happy to make suggestions. You just have to ask.
The other benefit of having a friendly AM is related to good offer selection. Every fortnight I have an excel file land in my email inbox that has been sent to me by my AM. This contains the best converting offers across all the different traffic types and niches. So when it comes time to think about running a new offer the first thing I can do is check what is converting best.
Then I take into account other factors that I need to consider when choosing a good offer. I much prefer offers that have one page payouts. This means offers that will pay the CPA on the completion of the first page. But there are not a huge amount of these about, and so the best bet is to simply try as many different offers as you can until you get one that converts. Even trying the same offer on different networks can result in huge differences in conversion rates.
Obviously you also have to take a look at the payout and evaluate whether you think this is going to be worthwhile. If you plan on using PPC traffic then take the time to research the offer and see if you think you could make the campaign profitable with the cost of traffic in that niche.
Then once I have evaluated the profit potential and the cost of driving traffic to an offer I do what I mentioned before and send an email to my AM asking if there are any plans to adjust the offer on the horizon.
She will then ask around the office and if it comes back that all is well then it usually means you are pretty safe for at least a month, which is plenty of time to make good money. With any luck though, your particular offer will run for a few months if not years without any changes being needed.
Once all of this has been confirmed I can begin my campaign and start running traffic to it.
Read more news about CPA affiliate news:
1. How Search Retargeting Kick Started The Programmatic Marketing Revolution
2. Get high-quality, affluent referrals from CPAs.
3. Chinese-American Business Seminar Aims to Help Entrepreneurs
4. Rakuten LinkShare Study on Global Affiliate Marketing Uncovers Key Findings for Online Advertisers Expanding Overseas
5. Right Networks Releases New Onboarding Tool
