What is CPA Marketing

In today’s dynamic digital marketing landscape, businesses strive to employ diverse strategies and innovative approaches to effectively engage their desired audience. Among these methods, CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) marketing has emerged as a potent tool.

This article aims to provide an in-depth exploration of what CPA affiliate marketing is, unraveling its fundamental principles, advantages, and its potential to propel triumphant paid marketing campaigns. But first, let’s start with the definition of the key points.

What is CPA marketing? 

CPA marketing, or Cost Per Action marketing, is a performance-based marketing where advertisers only pay when a user completes a specific action. This action can range from filling out a form to completing a purchase, making it a popular choice for businesses focused on efficiency and return on investment. It’s a favorite among advertisers because it minimizes risk and ensures that marketing budgets are spent on tangible results. This model also offers benefits to affiliates, who can optimize their content and promotional strategies to maximize their earnings through targeted actions.

CPA Marketing for Beginners: Key Terms

Understanding the terminology is crucial in CPA marketing. Here are some essential terms to familiarize yourself with:

• Affiliate: An individual who promotes offers (products or services) on behalf of advertisers. The affiliate acts as a middleman between the advertiser and the potential customers, driving traffic and generating conversions through their marketing efforts. They may have their own websites, blogs, social media platforms, email lists, or other online channels through which they promote the advertiser’s offers;
• Advertiser: An owner of the product or service being promoted. Advertisers are also referred to as merchants, vendors, or brands. They seek to increase sales, generate leads, or drive specific actions related to their product or service through the efforts of affiliate marketers;
• CPA Network: A platform that connects advertisers and affiliates. CPA affiliate networks work as intermediaries, facilitating the relationship between advertisers and affiliates by providing a centralized platform for tracking, reporting, and managing affiliate campaigns.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of users who complete the desired action out of the total audience reached;
• Lead: A potential customer who has shown interest in the product or service by completing a predefined action;
• CPA Offer: The specific deal or promotion that affiliates use to entice the audience to complete the desired action;
• Landing page: A webpage designed specifically to receive and convert traffic from a marketing campaign;
• Tracking link: A unique URL provided to affiliates, used to track the traffic sent to the advertiser’s site and to record the actions completed;
• Commission: The payment made to an affiliate for generating a successful action, like a sale or lead;
• Pixel: A piece of code placed on the conversion page which allows the tracking of customer’s actions back to the affiliate’s unique ID;
• EPC (Earnings Per Click): Average earnings generated as a result of 100 clicks on an affiliate marketing link;
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of people who click on a link compared to the total number of people who view the page, ad, or email containing the link.

These terms form the foundation of CPA marketing and are essential for both new and experienced marketers to understand as they navigate the field.

Whom CPA Marketing is Suitable for?

CPA model is used in online marketing. It is suitable for businesses that offer a mass product that is distributed to a wide audience. As a rule, these are online stores, online Gambling sites, betting companies, travel agencies, ticket and hotel reservation services, and online courses. That is why, such verticals as Software and mobile utilities, Gaming, Sweepstakes, eCommerce, Nutra/Health, Finance, iGaming, Dating and others are in demand.

CPA marketing traditionally works well with products aimed at a wide audience. However, it is possible to enter this market with niche products.

Benefits of CPA Marketing

Let’s explore the unique benefits that make CPA marketing an invaluable tool for advertisers and affiliates alike:

1. Diverse Range of Offers: CPA networks provide affiliates with access to a wide variety of offers from different advertisers across various verticals. This diversity allows affiliates to choose offers that align with their niche, expertise, and target audience as well as increases the chances of generating conversions and maximizing their earnings;
2. Measurable Analytics and Insights: CPA affiliate marketing provides robust tracking and analytics tools that furnish affiliates with real-time data and insights. By monitoring key performance indicators, affiliates can make data-driven decisions, identify successful tactics, and optimize their campaigns for improved results;
3. Low Barrier to Entry: CPA marketing typically has a low barrier to entry, allowing marketers with limited resources or technical knowledge to start their affiliate marketing journey. Many affiliate networks provide user-friendly platforms, training resources, and support to help affiliates get started and succeed;
4. Risk reduction for advertisers. CPA marketing is highly appealing to advertisers because they only pay for specific actions, such as sales, sign-ups, or another defined outcome. This model directly ties marketing spend to concrete results, reducing financial risk and ensuring that budgets are allocated towards measurable success;
5. High return on Investment (ROI). By focusing on actions that directly contribute to business goals, CPA marketing can yield a higher ROI compared to other marketing models. Advertisers can optimize their campaigns based on performance data, further enhancing their marketing effectiveness and ROI;
6. Strong alignment with performance. This model motivates affiliates to drive quality traffic and genuine conversions due to the performance-based reward system. Affiliates are incentivized to target more precisely and create more engaging, compelling content that leads to real results;
7. Flexibility in marketing approaches. Advertisers can choose from a variety of actions (like leads, sales, downloads) and adjust their campaigns according to what best fits their marketing goals and product nature. This flexibility helps in customizing campaigns that align closely with the target audience’s behaviors and expectations.

Overall, the popularity of CPA affiliate marketing stems from its performance-based nature, diverse offer selection, and the opportunities it provides for both advertisers and affiliates to achieve their marketing and revenue goals.

How Does CPA Marketing Work?

One of the main peculiarities of the CPA marketing world is the involvement of three elements. They are:

• Advertisers — search for affiliate partners to promote its products or services;
• Affiliates — promote an advertiser’s product or service among their audience with the help of affiliate links and receives commissions for it;
• CPA Networks — connect affiliates with advertisers, collect offers as well as serve as CPA search engines for marketers.

CPA Marketing Processes

CPA marketing, or Cost Per Action marketing, involves several key steps, each crucial for setting up successful campaigns that benefit both advertisers and affiliates.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of each stage:

1. Offer owners create CPA offers and specify the desired action or conversion they want to track. These experts also determine the payout or commission they are willing to offer for each successful action;
2. Interested affiliates sign up for the reputable CPA network. They provide their details and are approved by the offer owners or affiliate managers;
3. Affiliates browse through the available CPA offers within the network. They select offers that match their capabilities, promotion methods, payouts, verticals, payment models and other factors;
4. Affiliates promote the offers through various marketing channels such as websites, blogs, social media, email marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), display advertising, push notifications. They use their marketing skills and resources to drive traffic to the advertiser’s landing page or website;
5. Visitors or users who come across the affiliate’s promotional efforts are enticed to take the desired action. This could involve making a purchase, filling out a form, subscribing to a service, or downloading an app;
6. When a user completes the desired action, the conversion is tracked and recorded. This is typically done through a tracking link or pixel placed on the advertiser’s website. The affiliate network or tracking system captures the necessary information about the conversion;
7. The advertiser or affiliate network manager reviews the conversions to ensure they meet the predefined criteria and are valid. They verify that the actions were completed legitimately and in compliance with the campaign’s terms and conditions;
8. Once the conversions are validated, the offer owner calculates the commissions owed to the affiliates based on the agreed payout structure. Payments are typically made on a regular schedule, such as weekly or monthly, depending on the affiliate network terms;
9. Both affiliates analyze the performance of the CPA campaigns. Offer owners evaluate the ROI (Return on Investment) and make adjustments to optimize their offers, targeting, or landing pages. Affiliates track their conversion rates and earnings, optimizing their marketing strategies to maximize profits.

CPA marketing provides a win-win situation for advertisers and affiliates. Offer owners only pay for actual results, while affiliates have the opportunity to earn commissions by driving valuable actions for the advertisers.

CPA Marketing Categories

Explaining what is CPA marketing for beginners, we would like to focus your attention on such things as categories. They are pay-per-sale, pay-per-action, and recurring payments. Let’s take a closer look at each type.

1. Pay Per Sale

This category means that the advertiser pays the affiliate a percentage of each sale made by the users. If the user went through the sales funnel, but the sale itself did not take place, the affiliate does not receive a percentage for it.

2. Pay Per Action

In this case, the affiliate receives a commission for the actions that the users perform. This can be visiting a website, subscribing to a newsletter, filling out a form, and more. In this case, which actions users should perform is specified in the description of each offer.

3. Recurring Payments

A one-time commission is typically offered by advertisers for each sale an affiliate brings in. Nevertheless, in the event that the consumer they suggested makes more purchases, this model pays the affiliate a recurring commission for each purchase.

What Are CPA Networks?

Before you start promoting CPA offers, you need to join an affiliate network. In general, CPA networks act as intermediaries that facilitate the collaboration between advertisers and affiliates in the CPA affiliate marketing ecosystem. CPA networks are platforms for offer owners to showcase their offers and for affiliates to access a wide range of approved offers.

Through tracking, commission calculation, payment processing, and performance monitoring, CPA networks enable a seamless and efficient partnership between advertisers and affiliates, driving successful CPA marketing campaigns.

Platforms take a commission from the advertiser for its work – from 10% to 30% of payments to affiliates. The commission includes technical integration of offers, search and acquisition of affiliates, as well as mutual settlements with them. Also, the task of the CPA network is to ensure fighting violations, tracking quality traffic, timely payments and much more.

Functions of CPA networks:

• Search and attraction of partners: advertisers and affiliates;
• Offers aggregation;
• Counting target actions, analyzing the effectiveness of advertising, fraud prevention;
• Analyzing the work of affiliates, searching for more effective and responsible affiliates, weeding out unscrupulous partners;
• Creation of advertising materials;
• Determining the most profitable target actions for advertisers;
• Calculation of optimal payment for the action performed by users;
• Support and guidance for both advertisers and affiliates.

The market is full of different CPA networks. You can find top CPA sites to join in our list of the Best CPA Networks. Here you can find both platforms for experts that require your ID or interview with a manager during registration and networks for beginners that allow you to register without providing additional info about yourself.

Note: Some CPA networks provide certain types of offers, for example, CPA mobile ones. To learn more about this type of affiliate networks and choose one of them, check out our comprehensive article on the topic Top 15 Mobile CPA Networks. Here you can find CPA networks with both mobile and desktop offers to promote in diverse verticals.

CPA Marketing Tips

There is an ultimate guide to CPA affiliate marketing with useful tips that can help you to achieve high results.

1. Join CPA Networks

Joining a CPA network is an opportunity to get access to a large number of offers from verified advertisers in a variety of verticals. In addition, you get a reliable platform to manage and track important metrics and financial information. Some networks offer creatives to facilitate campaign launches.

When choosing a CPA network, pay attention to reviews of affiliates who have already worked with the platform. Also, it’s necessary to take into account the existence of an advertiser verification process and fraud prevention tools. Some affiliate platforms require an interview, ID, screenshots of statistics from other CPA networks to prove that you are a reliable affiliate marketer.

How to join a CPA network? Read our guide “How to Join an Affiliate Network Successfully”. Or you can even build your own affiliate network.

2. Track Campaigns Performance

You can’t start promoting an offer and just end it at one point. You need to constantly monitor the progress of the campaign to make sure it is delivering the expected results and make changes if necessary. This information is important not only for affiliates, but also for advertisers and CPA networks.

3. How to Choose Offers?

Pay attention to offers that you are going to promote. Promoting substandard goods and services, such as enrichment schemes, illegal gambling and trading, illegal drugs and others, can not only ruin your reputation, but can also lead to unpleasant legal consequences.

Don’t take the risk of click-baiting. It is important for advertisers to get pure CPA traffic, so they check conversions through CPA network instruments. Such fraud can lead to loss of trust in you as an affiliate.

What factors to consider when choosing an offer:

• Language and Country: Affiliates often start by targeting familiar countries and languages. If promoting in a new region, customize ads and landing pages to resonate with the audience in their native language and cultural preferences;
• Conversion Flow: For beginners it’s recommended to prioritize the conversion flow of an offer. Focus on SOI and DOI offers, which are easier to convert. Choose lower payout offers that require basic personal information, as they appeal to a wider audience. High payout offers like carrier billing or FTD can be challenging due to financial commitments. Strike a balance between potential payout and complexity when starting as an affiliate marketer;
• Seasonality: Take into account the time of year as some products/services like finance, lotteries, dating, gambling, and apps can be profitable year-round. However, others like food, health, and travel are more relevant in spring and summer. Assess the nature of what you’re promoting and determine if it’s suitable for the current moment;
• Withdrawal minimum: Choosing an offer with a lower withdrawal amount is recommended when faced with similar options in affiliate networks. Opting for a lower withdrawal threshold prevents the need to accumulate a large sum in the CPA network before receiving earnings. High withdrawal minimums can be risky, limiting flexibility and posing challenges for additional campaign funds. Consider the possibility of not generating enough earnings to meet the minimum requirement. Selecting an offer with a lower threshold reduces the risk of being unable to access earnings;
• Offer limits: Consider offer conditions such as traffic type, geographic restrictions, promotional guidelines, age/gender targeting, and native language requirements. Adhere to these terms to ensure compliance and avoid earnings loss or account suspension. Choose offers with fewer restrictions for more flexible advertising within established parameters.

You can learn more about offers and the rules for choosing them in our article What is a CPA Offer in Affiliate Marketing.

How to Promote CPA Offers?

When affiliates promote their offers using a variety of channels, incorporating more depth and strategic insights can greatly enhance the effectiveness of their campaigns. Here’s how affiliates can utilize these channels to maximize engagement and conversions:

1) Push notifications:

• Urgency and exclusivity. Use language that creates a sense of urgency or offers exclusive deals to push notification subscribers to act quickly;
• Frequency and timing. Monitor and optimize the frequency and timing of notifications to maximize open rates without overwhelming the subscribers;
• Personalization. Customize messages based on user behavior or purchase history to increase the relevance and effectiveness of the notifications;
• Cost-effectiveness. One of the major benefits of push notifications is the relatively low cost of push traffic. Compared to other marketing channels, push notifications can be a more budget-friendly option, offering a high ROI by reaching many users at a lower cost;
• High open rates. Push notifications generally achieve higher open rates than other forms of digital communication like emails. Their immediate and compelling nature grabs attention effectively;
• Broad reach. With the widespread use of mobile devices, push notifications allow marketers to reach a large audience across different platforms and devices;
• Enhanced user engagement: By delivering timely and relevant content directly to a user’s device, push notifications can enhance engagement and keep your audience interested in what you have to offer.

Leveraging push technology, ad networks provide a platform that enhances these efforts. They offer sophisticated features that include advanced targeting, optimization tools for A/B testing and performance analytics; and overall cost-effectiveness, which offers a lower entry barrier compared to other advertising methods. These networks help in personalizing the message, increasing the relevance for the user, and, in turn, boosting the conversion rates for affiliates.

2) Social media:

• Targeted advertising. Utilize the advanced targeting capabilities of platforms like Facebook and Instagram to reach specific demographics who are most likely to be interested in the offer.
• Interactive content. Create polls, live videos, and Q&A sessions to engage users more deeply and make the promotion more interactive and personal.
• Influencer partnerships. Collaborate with influencers who can lend credibility and extend the reach of your campaigns to their followers.

3) Content marketing:

• SEO optimization. Ensure that blog posts are optimized for search engines to increase visibility and organic reach. Use relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and optimize images;
• Value-added content. Provide additional value through downloadable resources, infographics, or tutorials that complement the blog post and encourage users to engage with the offer;
• Case studies and success stories. Share real-life examples of how the product or service has benefited other users, which can help to convince readers of its value.

4) Email marketing:

• Segmentation and personalization. Tailor email campaigns to the interests and past behavior of subscribers to increase relevance and engagement;
• A/B testing. Experiment with different subject lines, email content, and call-to-actions to see which variations drive the best results;
• Follow-up sequences. Implement automated follow-up sequences to nurture leads who have shown interest but have not yet completed the desired action.

FAQ

1) How can I start CPA marketing?

If you want to get started in CPA marketing, we recommend to take into account the following steps:

• Understand the CPA model and its differences from other affiliate marketing models;
• Research and apply to reputable CPA networks like Mobidea, CrakRevenue, CPAlead and others. The full list of CPA networks you will find on our main page;
• Get approved by the CPA networks, providing accurate information about your experience and traffic sources;
• Select CPA offers that match your niche and target audience;
• Promote the chosen CPA offers using your existing marketing channels;
• Track and optimize your campaigns using tracking links provided by a CPA network;
• Ensure compliance with guidelines and regulations;
• Stay informed and adapt your strategies based on performance.

But first you need to understand what CPA marketing is, how it works and what are its features. We recommend a detailed study of the specifics of the field in which you plan to work.

2) How much can I make from CPA marketing?

The income of affiliates depends only on themselves. The more offers you are able to promote, the larger your audience, the more commissions you receive. However, remember that the earnings of beginners differ from affiliates with experience in this field. The first amount can be $50–100, but the more experience you gain, the more your earnings will be.

3) Is CPA marketing still profitable in 2024?

Yes, CPA marketing is still profitable in 2024. Factors like offer quality, targeted traffic, competition, and industry trends influence its profitability. Stay informed, adapt strategies, and experiment to increase your chances of success.

4) What factors are involved in the CPA Marketing Model?

The CPA marketing model involves several key factors:

• Advertisers: An advertiser searches for partners to promote its products or services. For this purpose, the expert uses the opportunities of CPA network, where he places his offers for affiliates. This type of marketing helps to attract high-quality organic CPA traffic to the advertiser’s resources;
• Affiliates: An affiliate is a specialist with a large audience who promotes an advertiser’s product or service among his audience and receives commissions for it. As a rule, they find affiliate marketers offers in CPA networks;
• CPA Network: A CPA network is a platform that connects affiliates with advertisers. There are many CPA networks, each of them has its own features, its own functionality. But the principle of operation is the same: advertisers place offers, and affiliates choose them based on a detailed description, promotion method as well as advertising materials.