What Is CPA Marketing?

Cost Per Action marketing is one of the simplest methods for beginner Internet marketers to begin making money online. For years, this type of affiliate marketing has been an industry secret of the insider “big players. It was never really a secret, but while most people in Internet marketing had their hands busy promoting Clickbank products, the big kahunas were playing on a whole different level.

Cost Per Action, sometimes referred to as “CPA,” is a type of Internet marketing that requires consumers to complete specific actions ” this usually entails filling out a form and requesting a free product sample, signing up for a free trial. In some cases, it involves asking the consumer to try a new product or service by making a small purchase.

What it means is that you, as offer promoter, get paid for the “actions” taken by the traffic you steer to advertisers. As a basic example, let’s say a company wants to test the consumer feedback on a new product line that they are introducing. They create an offer where they agree to pay $1.50 for each person who submits their e-mail address and zip code ” your job is simply to direct traffic to that site and then collect $1.50 for each person who opts in.

This is a fairly standard promotion type. Others might pay as much as $37 for an optin (though if the payout is higher, the offer might require much more information from the customer or ask for a small upfront payment.

In essence you, as a CPA marketer, are really a traffic broker: You buy traffic on one end, send it to an offer page and get paid based on how well it converts. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It can be easy, but it generally isn’t.

Because it is so profitable, CPA marketing is extremely competitive, and for a beginner, it can be intimidating to start trying to compete with super-affiliates making $100k a day and even more, or even with the more common affiliates who are making $500 to $1,000 a day running CPA campaigns. When you try to get started, you’re going to be up against all of that competition, and it can be very challenging. The truth is, a lot of beginners simply get frustrated and give up when they figure out that CPA marketing can be difficult and expensive. Like any new thing, it’s best if you check out the most effective way of doing it, before you dive in head first.