CPA Find an Offer

CPA stands for “Cost Per Action“.

CPA is very simple: you get paid when someone clicks on your affiliate link and completes an action.

The “action” can be just about anything, but usually consists of:

Filling out a form
Getting an estimate or quote
Signing up for a free trial
Buying something

Why CPA?

There are two reasons that I prefer CPA over banner advertising, Adsense, and most other affiliate marketing strategies.

1. Higher on the Value Chain

To make the most money from your site, you want to get as high up on the value chain as you can.

Here is what the value chain looks like for digital products

As you can see, Adsense, banner ads, and CPC/CPM models put you at the bottom of the value chain.

On the other hand, selling your own product, promoting targeted affiliate products (ie. web hosting), and CPA offers tend to put you higher up on the chain.

(FYI: the values in the diagram don’t add up to $40 because there are clicks and leads that don’t convert).

Keep in mind that physical products have 2-10x more hands in the pot (distributors, warehouses, suppliers etc.). That’s why Amazon Associates only make $100 when someone buys a $2500 laptop.

2. Integrated Advertising

The other nice thing about CPA is that you don’t need to disfigure your site with ugly Adsense blocks or banner ads.

As you’ll see later, you can seamlessly integrate CPA offers into your site. This means you run a clean, professional, branded site…while benefiting from out-of-this-world CTR, CPCs, and RPMs.

Step #1: Find an Offer

Your first step is to find an offer that aligns with your site’s existing traffic.

But with dozens of CPA networks — each with hundreds of offers  — how can find the perfect offer for your site?

That’s easy: use oDigger and OfferVault.com.

They’re like the Google of CPA: they aggregate offers from reputable CPA networks.

And you can search based on keyword, price, category or network.

Let’s say that you run a site in the education space.

Here are the common terms you’ll come across during your search:

___ Only: You can only use a certain traffic source, like email or organic search.

Display: This includes text links and banner ads.

Lead: The most common “action” in the CPA marketing world. Usually submitting their name, email, phone, address etc.

Email/Zip Submit: The most simple CPA offer. Good for untargeted traffic. User gives their email and zip code only.

Incent: Short for “incentivized”. Incent means that you can bribe users with a free product or download.

Pay Per Call: You’re paid when someone makes a call after clicking on your affiliate link.

Download/Install: You get paid when someone downloads and/or installs a piece of software.

Publisher: The person that promotes the offer (you).

“Pixel Fires”: This is  when your lead actually counts as a lead.

US/FR/CA: Offer only valid in that country.

AM: Stands for “Affiliate Manager”. Your AM is your go-to person in the network

Sale or Rev Share: You get a cut of every sale.

“What If I Can’t Find an Offer?”

Depending on your niche, you may not be able to find an offer that fits your site’s topic.

If that’s the case, you want to look for CPA offers that appeal to your traffic’s demographic.

For example, I used to run a site in the “dating” niche that was getting 2,000 visitors per day.

I put “dating” in quotes because it was comprised mostly of 7th and 8th graders wondering how to talk to Sally that sits in the back. Not the PUA type of stuff that’s easy to monetize.

Despite the fact that I tested about 20 different themes and ad placements, I wasn’t making jack with Adsense.

When I looked at the ads Adsense was generating, I realized that they weren’t dating related at all…they were targeted based on demographics.

That’s when I decided to switch out Adsense for an email/zip submit offer for a free Xbox.

And just like that I was making significantly more than I was with Adsense.