Perhaps we should start by answering the question: “What is CPA Affiliate Marketing?”. Actually, it’s a pretty simple – and appealing – idea. It refers to an advertising strategy in which an affiliate gets paid a commission not for selling something, in most cases, but instead by sending a prospect to a company’s website where they then complete a specified action. This action might be as simple as providing their name and email address, or perhaps some additional data on a form. Other actions might be agreeing to take a free trial for a product or service. The important thing is that the action required to capture a commission is not nearly ad difficult as persuading someone to buy something.
The marketplace today is quite competitive, and a company needs lots of ad exposure to maintain a competitive posture. The key is to have exposure to the public that is widespread, and to maintain contact with as many possible customers as they can. By accomplishing this, a business establishes an audience for their marketing efforts, and then they can get down to the business at hand.
CPA advertising is rapidly becoming one of the most desirable ways to advertise online. CPA (sometimes also known as PPA, or pay per action) sets up a situation in which the marketer earns a commission each time a visitor completes a particular action specified by the client company.
The company itself must specify what kind of action it wants its potential customers to take. The action might, in a few cases, be buying a product or service from the company. More commonly, it might be filling in a particular form to gain access to information about the product or service offered by the company, or just registering with the company’s website. Depending on the action, the advertising costs (or commissions received by the affiliate) will vary.
When it initiates a CPA campaign, a company agrees to pay out a specific commission each time a new person visits the company’s website and takes a specified action while on that site. The exact details of that required action are specified in the details of the campaign. By setting the ground rules in this manner, the business is able to collect a list of highly qualified prospects for its business, while only paying for the visitors who actually seem, at least, to have some interest in what the company has to offer. This list of highly qualified prospects can then make all that much easier to complete the actual sales at a later time.
By employing a CPA advertising campaign, a company can create large amounts of traffic to its website, but it will only have to pay a commission when a potential customer takes the desired action while at the website. This is the bright future for Internet affiliate marketing. It gets down to to paying for results, not just traffic – which results are more likely to bring in actual business.
For an affiliate participating in this type of program, there is one major advantage over conventional sales affiliate marketing: In sales, the affiliate won’t receive the commission unless someone spends money and buys something – and then they have to worry about returns. For the affiliate who is running a CPA campaign, however, the barrier to be cleared to earn his or her commission is much easier: the prospect simply has to to agree to provide the requested information, or accept a free trial offer, or download some free software, and the commission is received.
To learn more about being a successful CPA marketing affiliate, download the complete guide to CPA marketing, which includes a ton of marketing resource links that will help you launch your business quickly.
