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CPA marketing is one of the best ways to make money online.
Many beginner marketers fail to earn a single dollar online because they try so many different ways that are very advanced for a beginner, like building an e-commerce store, trying affiliate marketing, Amazon FBA, and whatnot.
All those above-mentioned businesses are really good but choosing the right product to sell or promote, driving targeted traffic, creating a high-converting sales page, and doing a bunch of ad testing is very important to get sales.
For all those reasons, not only beginners but sometimes expert marketers too lose a lot of money and time trying to make it work.
And even getting it to work, they struggle to get the desired results.
In this article, you will learn everything about CPA marketing and why it is one of the best ways to make money whether you’re a beginner or an expert marketer.
Let’s dive right in!
What is CPA marketing?
CPA stands for “Cost Per Action“ or sometimes also referred to as “Cost Per Acquisition“.
Unlike affiliate marketing, e-commerce, Amazon FBA, etc., where you have to drive sales to get paid, in CPA marketing you get paid when a customer performs a certain action.
The action could be anything from entering their email, zip code to downloading a tool, etc.
This is the main reason why CPA marketing is way easier to trail as compared to other forms of similar businesses.
Is CPA marketing worth it?
Having read all the good things about CPA marketing, you would assume it is absolutely worth it doing CPA marketing. But it actually depends on you.
If you do it the right way, it is more than worth it, if you don’t, you might fail miserably.
Now let’s find out what I mean by “doing it the right way” so that you don’t fail in CPA marketing. If done the right way, it could potentially make you a lot of money.
How to start making money with CPA marketing
Here are four simple steps you can follow to make money with CPA marketing:
Step 1: Find a good offer
Finding the best offer is the first and very crucial step in getting success with CPA marketing.
An offer is considered to be good if it grabs people’s attention or solves a problem or both. The product or service itself should be good and provide value to the customer.
Well, you could argue that the quality of product or service doesn’t matter here because we don’t need customers to make a sale, instead, we just have to make them complete an action.
But you can’t be a successful marketer if you don’t value your customers. Keeping your customers happy and satisfied should be the goal.
Okay, so how do we find the best offer?
It’s actually not that complicated. There are so many tools out there that can help you find the best CPA offers over the Internet.
Let’s talk about the one that is the most popular and used by the majority.
OfferVault: https://www.offervault.com/
It is a tool you can use to find great offers and then sign up for the ones you like and start promoting them.
You can start by typing “CPA”, “email submit”, “zip submit”, etc. and scout the ones that pay a good commission and doesn’t look fishy.
You can also filter out the results by Networks, Categories, and Countries.
Below is a screenshot of an example offer:
- Type: Zip submit
- Payout: $5.10
- Country: US
Make sure to read all the necessary information like—
- At what point the conversion occurs (in this example, it happens when the user submits their zip code on the first page)
- What type of traffic is allowed, etc.
Step 2: Design a landing page
Now that you’ve found the best offer to promote. It is time to create a landing page for that offer.
The purpose of a landing page is to persuade your audience into signing up for your offer by entering their name, email, zip, etc.
For that, you will have to create an enticing landing page.
You don’t always need to create a landing page, but I recommend it because ad networks may disapprove your ads if you try to directly link to the offer page.
Sometimes it happens with free traffic sources too.
Many platforms do not allow direct links and can ban your account if you’re not careful.
To create a landing page you’ll need a tool. If you are on a budget, you can start with sites.google.com to create a simple landing page for free.
But if you want more control over your CPA campaigns & want to take your business to the next level with features like–Smart AI-driven page builder, a massive library of 100+ ready-to-use, high converting templates, integration with over 60+ apps, and more.
Make sure to check out Unbounce.
Start your 14-day free trial of Unbounce and see if it fits your needs.
Moreover, get 20% OFF on your first three months or 20% OFF a full year! with our unique link (affiliate link).
How to create a landing page
Here’s a basic overview of how you can create a landing page for your offer.
Step 1: Heading
The first element of your landing page should be a strong heading. The heading should be short, catchy, and easy to read. This will set the mood of your audience and let them understand what they are expecting from you.
Step 2: Subheading
The second element of your landing page should be your subheading. It should explain a little more about what you are offering in a sentence or two. Make sure to be on point and don’t try to add fillers.
The goal is to write about what your product is all about in as few words as possible.
Step 3: Benefits
The third element in your landing page should be a list of benefits that your product is offering. The recommended number of points to mention is three to six.
List out the main benefits of the product you are promoting in an easy-to-understand language.
Step 4: Call to action
This is the most important element of your landing page as it directs users to the final offer page where they can get what they came for. And you can get paid when they perform the action.
You can use a simple button with a direct call-to-action phrase.
For example: “Get Yours Now!”, “Try For FREE!”, “Yes, Show Me How!”, “Sign up now”, etc.
The goal of a call-to-action button is to redirect users to the stuff you’ve promised. So don’t try to cheat or lie about what you are offering.
Step 5: Images & Videos (optional)
I mentioned these two as “optional” because, as a beginner, you might get into legal trouble if you are not cautious about the images and videos you’ll be using for your landing pages.
Having said that, using eye-catching & relevant images & videos in your landing pages will give you a BIG boost in your click-through rates.
So, try to use them in your landing pages, but again be cautious about copyright stuff. You can use non-copyright images from Pexels, Unsplash, etc. or you can also shoot & create your own images or videos.
Step 3: Drive traffic
Now that you have created your landing page, it is time to drive targeted traffic to it. After all, that is what will get you conversions and get you paid for all of your previous hard work.
There are two ways to drive traffic to your landing page–
- Organic
- Paid
Organic Traffic Methods
In the organic traffic method, you don’t have to invest any money to drive traffic to your landing page. However, it will take time to get leads or conversions using the organic method.
Now, there are many methods to promote your offer without paying for ads.
Let’s take a look at some of the best ones—
Facebook is still the biggest social media platform since the beginning. It has roughly 2.91 billion monthly active users worldwide [source].
Utilizing it to drive relevant traffic to your CPA offer page could be very profitable.
Let’s take a look at how you can leverage Facebook to promote your CPA landing page.
- Facebook groups: This is a really effective method to drive targeted traffic on your landing page. The process is simple—
- Go to facebook.com and find the search bar
- Enter the name of your topic in the search bar. The topic or niche that you chose when choosing the offer in Step 1.
- Now start looking for groups that show up and start joining them one by one.
- Don’t spam the join button, keep it slow. Join 8-12 groups at a time and then come back the next day and do the same.
- After you’ve joined a few relevant groups, it is time to do some work.
- Introduce yourself in all these groups and talk a little bit about yourself. This step is important in order to create a connection with the group members.
- Now, later on that day, or the next day, create a simple post about your offer. Write about the offer and how it can help the members. The idea is to give value. Pitch your offer in such a way that it looks genuine and valueable. It should not look spammy.
- And that’s it. Keep posting 1-2 posts everyday in all the groups that you’ve joined. You’ll start seeing conversions in no time.
Below is an example of a post that shows what I explained above—
Pinterest is great for visual-based promotion as it is one of the biggest image search engines in the world.
To promote your CPA offer on Pinterest, you can create & post 10-15 pins every day using any image editor like Canva.
It is a slow and tedious task but eventually, you’ll start seeing some traffic on your landing page. And hopefully, they’ll turn into conversions.
Reddit is a place for all kinds of communities around the world. If you can think of any topic, there’s probably a subreddit for it on Reddit.
Reddit is similar to Facebook groups. You have to find subreddits within your niche and join them.
Introduce yourself first and then gradually try posting helpful stuff in the subreddits you’ve joined.
And then you can start sharing your landing page links with helpful content in the form of posts.
Keep in mind, the moderators and bots of the subreddits are strict. They can ban you from posting in the subreddit for violating their policies. So before everything, make sure to read all the rules & regulations carefully.
Quora
Quora is a question-answer-based forum. Here, people ask questions and other people who are experts, answer them.
In Quora, you’ll have to create two separate accounts for this to work.
One account will be used to ask the questions related to your CPA product or service and the other account will be used to give answers.
Forums
Just like Quora, there are countless other forums online where you can promote your offers. Try to Google them according to your niche and join them.
You can create a simple helpful post about a problem in your chosen niche and then integrate your offer into the post. If people like what you have offered, they will click on your link and perform the desired action, and you’ll get paid!
To find a forum in your niche, simply go to Google and type, “you niche [space] forum” and you’ll find a lot of forums where you can get started.
YouTube
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world, after Google. So it is undoubtedly worth working on.
Now, to make your offer work on YouTube, you’ll of course have to create a video.
But don’t worry if you don’t want to be on camera or record your voice. I’ll show you a way through which you can easily create amazing videos for your CPA offers, or anything for that matter.
Here’s how you can create a professional video in minutes:—
Step 1: Search the web and find some valuable content within your niche.
Step 2: Note down a few points in a text editor to use later.
Step 3: Go to InVideo and sign up for a free account.
Step 4: Watch this simple tutorial to learn how to turn an article into a video.
Step 5: Upload the video on YouTube with a relevant title, your landing page link in the description, and an eye-catching thumbnail.
Step 6: Rinse and repeat the process and see sales come into your account.
Blogging
Blogging is one of the most profitable ways to earn through CPA marketing when it comes to ROI (Return on Investment).
You can practically set up your blog for free and earn commissions for life.
To start a blog, you just need a domain and a hosting platform.
You can use free domain names and free hosting if you are on a budget, but I recommend getting your own domain name and decent hosting to help you get long-term success in your business.
I recommend Hostinger for all your website needs.
Paid Traffic Methods
In paid traffic methods, you’ll need to have a budget to run ads on different ad platforms to help get conversions in your CPA campaigns.
Here’s a list of some paid traffic methods that you can try for your CPA offers.
Native ads
One of the best ways to make money with CPA offers is by using native ads.
You might have seen ads like the following while reading something online.
The above example shows a set of native ads.
Here are some ad networks that you can use to run native ads for your CPA offer:
Google/YouTube ads
You can use Google ads to promote your CPA campaigns and get conversions. To learn Google ads, simply watch YouTube tutorials. There are so many great creators who have taught Google Ads on their channels.
Here are some—
Bing ads
Bing ads is similar to Google ads. It is also a search ad platform.
Bing users are primarily middle-aged males & females. So you can pick CPA offers that match this demographic.
Again, you can watch great YouTube tutorials to learn Bing ads.
Here are some to get you started:
Facebook ads
Facebook ads are great primarily for e-commerce & dropshipping businesses. But you can try it for CPA marketing as well.
Running ads on Facebook has become costlier. So be careful with your budget and ROI.
You just have to keep in mind your ad spend and your return on investment.
If you feel like you’re losing more money than you’re making, you should try to optimize the ad or simply stop it and move on to other ad networks.
Step 4: Re-invest to scale
After earning some money with CPA marketing, you can re-invest the profits back into your paid ad campaigns or hire people to produce content for your blog and social media.
With that, you can scale your CPA business to wherever you want.
5 CPA marketing networks to join
Here are my top 5 CPA marketing networks that you can join to get started with CPA marketing.
Final thoughts
As we finish the article, we learned everything about CPA marketing and I hope I managed to answer the question, “Is CPA marketing worth it?”
Please share the article with your friends and family and make sure to comment your thoughts in the comment section below.
Thanks for reading, see you in the next one! 👋
