5 steps to successful CPA affiliate marketing - By: Laura Wolf

So you are looking for a way to make affiliate commissions without investing a dime? Loads of people are disappointed in MLM and pilot schemes on the internet, especially the ones that require huge investment and you have to wait for ages and work extra hard to get your investment back or generate any profit. Some of these people nowadays turn to CPA networks, websites that pick the best offers for them to promote and pay commissions per lead or sale (CPA = Cost Per Action or Cost Per acquisition). Starting up with CPA marketing isn't so easy though, I am trying to give you a step-by-step guide here how to get started easily without the pitfalls.

Affiliate Step 1: Get accepted
In order to become a Publisher of a CPA network you have to submit an application. This is not at all different than job applications, you have to convince the network that you will be a great asset for their organization, you know your job, and you have the knowledge and tools to generate leads and sales. If you make them money then you will make money too...
It helps if you have a website and don't send the application from a free email address. You have to look as professional as possible. Domain names start at $0.99 I think, and if you can afford, you can improve your chances with taking a pre-owned website. Alternatively if you have a niche blog on Wordpress or Blogger, that has good content and steady traffic, you can still get accepted.
After you send in your application you can expect them to call you. Although, you can contact them as well, and even if they decline your application in email, you can call them and ask them to revise their decision.
You have to be extra-professional on the phone, and extra confident. You have to have the answers for the most common questions like:
How long have you been doing internet marketing?
Are you with any other companies?
What are your main traffic sources?
Which niche are you planning to target?
How do you drive traffic to your website?
Don't apply for more than three networks at a time. Don't get disappointed, if they refuse your application at the first time, apply with other networks, and save the ones that declined you for later, you can always re-apply.

Affiliate Step 2: You're in: now what?
The first thing you would like to do is to introduce yourself to your dedicated affiliate manager. These people see the performance of all the campaigns, see the conversions, and usually have a great asset: experience. They oversee sometimes hundreds of affiliates' traffic generation and “offer selection” methods, so it is always a good thing to keep up a good relationship with them.
They usually contact you when you get accepted, but if not, you have to send them an email. You can always ask for recommendations and tips as well.
Next you have to familiarize yourself with the affiliate interface of the network. If there is a training video or FAQ page, it is worth to go through it before you start picking offers and promoting.
It is very important to read through the Publishers Policy, to see what traffic generation methods are prohibited, and for example how to know if the offer can be incentivized. You also have to know what is the minimum payment threshold and how and when will you get paid.

Affiliate Step 3: Picking offers
The most important decision is to pick the best converting offers of the network. Remember, this is somewhat depending on the affiliates too, but you will get a great idea of conversions if you check out the published statistics on the site. This will give you an idea how much other people are making on the particular offer.
There are two main categories you can choose from: lead campaigns and sale campaigns. Lead campaigns are easy to start with, conversion will depend on the offer, the landing page and the information required from the person who signs up. The easiest and most popular offers are ZIP or email submits, but you have to get loads of traffic on these offers if you want to earn more than peanuts. They very rarely pay more than $1.50. There are also good offers with 2 page submits, that pay over £15 but obviously they are harder to promote. It requires much more commitement from a potential customer to fill out two pages.
You can also try the trial offers, they are really popular among affiliates, the bottom line is: Customer pays shipping and handling fee, and you get much more than the customer's cost. It is important to read the related articles of the new FTC Regulation regarding to free trials, before you start promoting one of these offers.

Affiliate tip No 4: Driving traffic
You can choose between direct linking (driving traffic to your affiliate link directly) i-framing, or putting your offer on your site. I always use a link tracker, to see how many visits I got, and from which traffic source. Some CPA networks give you this information on-site when you run your statistics, but if you don't like logging in to all the networks daily, link tracking is the best solution.
You can also choose the right creative for your offer, there are usually different size banners, text links, Call to Actions, emails. Find the one that looks the most appealing to you, and suits your traffic sources.
You can test your campaign on free traffic first, and if you are happy with the conversion, you can go for media buying, PPC, PPV campaigns. There are loads of free traffic generation tactics, like article marketing, sending offers to your own list, search engine optimization, but be aware that some networks don't accept social media traffic.

Affiliate tip No 5: Tracking and cashing in
It is vital in affiliate marketing to track your campaign's performance. Run your campaigns for a week or so, and run your statistics on the affiliate interface. If you had about a hundred targeted visitors to an offer and it hasn't converted yet, try to change your campaign is you can. But if you are confident that your campaign set up and traffic was fine, immediately stop promoting the offer and pick another one for testing. Please note: you have to analyze your traffic sources first, especially when you see that other affiliates' EPC (Earnings Per Click) is sky-high and you got no conversion. Check your geo-targeting, your keywords, and the competition. If you think that you did everything right, there is a chance that the campaign has been picked up by experienced super-affiliates who are much better in PPC than you, and you cannot compete with them. But you can still find another campaign that is easier to promote and less competitive.
Once you removed the worst performing offers from your portfolio and replaced them, you have to duplicate the traffic on your best performing offers. Send them as many visitors as you can, keep on analyzing the performance, and you're on the right path. Not for long till you get your first commission check, is it?

About the Author

For more about CPA marketing get this 89-pages free e-book: http://trac-ads.com/ad99 For an unlimited tracking system visit: http://trac-ads.com/ad91 Automatic Traffic Blast Video: http://trac-ads.com/af11

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