CPA Marketing Beginners Guide

CPA marketing is one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a niche blog. In this CPA marketing for beginners guide, you will learn what CPA marketing is, how it works, what the difference between CPA marketing and affiliate marketing, what the top CPA networks you should work with, how to get approved in these networks and how to promote CPA offers to bring home the bacon.

You are getting this guide for free, and I am sure it's much better than those paid CPA products. However, I do not promise you can make hundreds of thousands at the starting point. You need to learn a lot and apply those techniques in the beginning. Yah!

If you are in a hurry or want a copy of this guide, enter your name and email address below, and I can send it to you in PDF format. After signing up, you can access an exclusive area to download all our premium resources.

When you become a highly skilled and experienced CPA marketer, you can earn five or six figures monthly from CPA networks.

Let me show you how.

1. What Is CPA Marketing?

CPA stands for Cost Per Action. It's also called Pay Per Lead, or PPL. CPA marketing is relatively easier than selling products.

The main idea behind CPA affiliate marketing is getting a particular action from your traffic. This action can be submitting an Email, filling out a form, making a download, submitting a PIN code, submitting a mobile number, or even getting a sale.

People are more likely to get free products than spend their earned money. Thus, driving your traffic to a particular task can lead to cash. Generally, you can make a $0.50 – $20 per CPA offer.

However, some high-end CPAs pay $750 or even more for a particular action by your traffic.

Doesn't it sound amazing?

Yah! That's why I created this CPA marketing for beginners guide for you.

2. How does CPA Marketing work?

Some well-known CPA networks control the whole process. For example, the vendors or CPA offer creators submit their particular job or product to CPA networks, and those CPA networks promote those offers via CPA marketers like us.

They give us a fixed amount for every particular offer depending on how much the vendor or CPA offer creator has invested.

[highlight color= "yellow"]Your work is straightforward; firstly, you must apply to a CPA network, and after getting approved, browse the existing offers and select the one that suits your interest. After determining the offer, promote it to the targeted online visitors as much as possible.[/highlight]

3. CPA Network Terminology

CPA network terminology isn't complicated, but you should know critical terms before launching.

Advertiser and Publisher: Advertisers are the people who pay CPA networks to get conversion of their offers. On the other hand, Publishers are people like you and me who promote the CPA network's offers to make money.
EPC: The complete form of EPC is Earning Per Click. It does not mean that you will get money for bringing only clicks to your offers. It means that, on average, publishers earned the given EPC rate from every click. For example, a CPA offer of $2.50 got 500 clicks from 20 different publishers, and 70 clicks converted into leads. So, its EPC will be ($2.5*70)/500 = $0.35.
Payout/CPA rate: This is the money rate that the website will pay you to get every single lead/action for that particular CPA offer. So, look at the Payout/CPA rate before selecting your offer.
Conversion (in %): This is an essential indication of which offer to choose before starting your promotional activities. CPA offers with a high conversion rate are always preferable. For example, Consider the previous example, where the offer got 500 clicks and 70 leads/actions. Here is the conversion rate of that offer (70/500)*100% = 14%.
County code: Almost 95% of CPA offers are county-targeted. Therefore, you must be careful about choosing the offer. For example, if you promote US offers to the people of Australia, you will not get any payment. Some CPA networks categorize their recommendations based on county, and some mention the county code (US, UK, AU, BR, etc.) and the offers.
Incentive and non-Incentive: Here is another essential and probably less-known term of the CPA network. If you search the meaning of the "incentive" word, Google will reply with "a payment or concession to stimulate greater output or investment." In short, "incentive" refers to a digital bribe to get artificial actions/leads from people. In the case of incentive offers, you can allure people by giving them extra gifts, coupons, money, etc., to get action from them. On the other hand, these digital bribes are strictly prohibited in non-incentive offers.
Offer type: CPA networks included offers of various types such as Pin submit, Email submit, Downloads, Survey, Installs, Mobile, Purchase, etc.

Also, I want to share some trending communities of CPA marketers that can help you stay updated with the CPA world's latest events and increase your skills. Some of those communities are Top Gold Forum, Warrior Forum, CPA Hero, and CPA Elites.

Now that you know the CPA marketing terminology, let's analyze the differences between CPA and Affiliate marketing.

4. CPA Marketing Vs. Affiliate Marketing

I have already mentioned that CPA marketing is much easier than affiliate marketing. In the case of affiliate marketing, you must make sales to profit. On the other hand, getting sales in CPA marketing is optional to make a profit.

You can distribute free offers, trial products, apps, etc. Thus, people can grab for free, and you can profit from their particular actions.

Here are several examples of these actions: confirming an offer, ordering a free trial product, or downloading a specific app or software.

Thus, making money with CPA became easier than with affiliate marketing. There are a ton of CPA-driven sites on the web. For example, we monetize content with CPA offers. Check the Best Paying Survey Websites To Make money to see examples.

5. CPA Marketing for Beginners PROs and CONs

Here are the CPA marketing PROs and CONs for publishers:

CPA Marketing PROs

Unlike affiliate marketing, you can get paid without generating sales.
Get high payments like $100 for a casino lead or a BTC exchange.
There are CPA offers in almost any niche you can think of.
You can start with a little to no investment upfront.

CPA Marketing CONs

As a beginner, getting accepted into top CPA networks isn't easy.
Many of the best CPA offers are available only to 1st world countries like the US.
It's a competitive arena, so you must be creative to make good money.

Now that we have an overview of CPA marketing PROs and CONs for publishers let's dive into the top CPA networks.

6. What is the Best CPA Network for Beginners?

Are you done with all the best CPA networks I have listed above? You must choose the best one that suits your traffic source and taste.

I tried my best to list all the great CPA affiliate networks worldwide. Are there still some great networks missing? Then please suggest them in the comment section. You are also most welcome to share your experience with any CPA network you have worked with or previously with.

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Top 10 CPA networks in the world:

MaxBounty (recommended for Experts)
Peerfly (recommended for Experts)
Adworkmedia (recommended for All)
CPALead (recommended for beginners)
Adscendmedia
MGCash.com (recommended for beginners)
Clickbooth
ClickDealer
CPAGrip (recommended for beginners)
CPATrend

There is an important reason you should start with the CPA network that I have recommended for beginners. For example, MaxBounty has traffic and promotion method restrictions on its offers.

Some offers can't be promoted on free giveaway sites, and some offer promotion activities can't contain the words "Free," "Win," "Claim," etc. You may get banned with your hard-earned money if you constantly break these restriction rules.

Conversely, CPALead offers no traffic or promotion method restriction. Therefore, you can promote its offers using any traffic and any word. This is why I marked a Tag beside those CPA networks.

7. How To Get Instant Approval in Any CPA Network?

Most newbies face the first problem of getting approval in top CPA networks. So, here is my recommendation for this problem;

If you are a newbie in the CPA network world, don't apply for the world's leading CPA networks, such as MaxBounty or Peerfly. After the interview, these networks will approve your account, which they will conduct via mobile call. Besides, these networks require previous experience and have strict and fast rules about offering promotions.[/highlight]

So, what should you do?

It's better to start with a newbie-friendly CPA network.

8. How much can you make with these CPA networks?

It depends on your skill and experience when offering a promotion. Some expert CPA marketers are making $3,000+ per day with these newbie-friendly CPA affiliate networks.

Here are some newbie-friendly and reliable CPA networks to get instant approval. I need to say that I don't sit with just one CPA network. Get your account approved to at least 3 CPA networks to compare the quality of offers, CPA rate, conversion rate, etc., which will help you in the long run.

Here is the list for you:

Firstly, apply in 2-3 CPA networks for publishers/affiliate accounts and gain experience working in the CPA industry. Then, you may start with leading CPA affiliate networks for higher achievement.

Here goes the step-by-step process to apply in CPA networks (both newbie-friendly and top-leading) and to get fast approval:

Let's start with AdWorkMedia and CPALead, which are suitable. Below, you can see the screenshot of the signup form. In almost all CPA networks, you need to provide nearly the same information while applying for a publisher/affiliate account.

CPALead Signup Form

Most CPA networks require you to have an established website or blog on which you promote CPA offers. However, you can also promote other sites and media.

Maybe some of you are stuck at this point only because you don't have an established website. Don't worry, my friend, CPALead doesn't require any website 😀 . So get started with it. If you have an excellent website, applying for AdworkMedia is highly recommended.

Step 1:

Go to AdWorkMedia and CPALead's signup page and fill out your name and other personal information. If possible, I recommend you provide a professional email hosted on your domain (for example, [email protected]) because it will increase your chance of getting approved. If you don't have one, proceed with your regular Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Email.

Step 2:

Filling out the promotional method part of the signup form is very important to get approval.

Here are some quick tips to fill up this part:

Choose either a website or PPC as the promotional method. If you can, choose both of them (if the option is available).
Don't try to lie by providing others' websites as your promotion source; you may be caught.
Always choose "Incentive" as the type of traffic.
You can add these promotional methods to the description: PPC campaigns, Facebook ads, promotion via content, SEO, and display networks.

Step 3: (Only For Top CPA Networks)

After pressing the "Submit Application" button, you are done for the newbie-friendly CPA networks but not for the top networks that approve accounts after a mobile phone interview. Instead, just after applying for an account, they will email you, telling you they will send you a confirmation mail after reviewing your application.

In the case of the top CPA network, don't just sit idly on your chair. You need to contact your affiliate manager as soon as possible. (You will get information about your affiliate manager in the first Email after applying.)

Here are the best ways to contact your affiliate manager:

Firstly, try to make a phone call on your mobile.
If that's impossible, buy Skype credit and call your affiliate manager's mobile number.
If you can't do that, send an Email or a Skype message saying that you just applied for a publisher account and are ready for the phone interview.

This simple approach will give a positive impression of you in front of your affiliate manager. Besides, it shows that you are highly interested and very serious about this publisher account, which is a positive sign of getting fast approval.

How To Promote CPA Offers?

I've written a detailed guide on promoting CPA offers, as there are 100+ ways to promote CPA offers to make a profit.

Please read our guide: Sure Methods to Promote CPA Offers.

CPA offers promoting strategies:

Sharing on relevant groups and communities in various social networks like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. (I got my first ever CPA lead via sharing a CPA link in Google+, which enhanced my confidence to start a new project on it)
You can convert videos and get leads via video marketing on various platforms such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc.
You can write high-quality content and promote the content via other blogs, Web 2.0 sites, and article directories.
If you have a blog that matches any CPA network offers, you can use your blog to get conversion/action and make money.
You can also build an email list to get high-quality leads. In this case, I recommend GetResponse because of its high-quality service and affordability.
You can create a new site based on any CPA offer and rank it to get unlimited CPA leads. I am doing this for myself.
You can buy banner ads and spread your CPA offers without having your site.
Running Facebook ad campaigns and PPC campaigns will also result in significant profits from CPA offers.

10. How To Get Payment From CPA Networks?

Many CPA networks support several payment methods. However, PayPal and Bank transfers are shared among all the networks I have tried. You can also pay via Skrill, Payoneer, Check, Western Union, etc.

I highly recommend you sign up for a Payoneer account with a virtual back account under Bank of America. You can use this bank account to get all your affiliate money.

I prefer Payoneer over PayPal because, with a Payoneer master card, I can get cash from ATMs in any corner of the world.

Conclusion

So here you have it: A complete guide on CPA marketing for beginners. Now, it's time to set your goal and start working. If you are still confused about any of the above topics, please do not hesitate to ask a question via the comment section. I will try my best to answer every question.

Still have questions or things that you want to learn more about? I recommend you check the top 10 best CPA marketing courses and take one.