CPA Marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Get Started

Table of Contents

After so many tests and experiments, I have finally gained enough knowledge to put forward a Guide on CPA Marketing. I am still not making a huge profit through CPA Marketing so don’t consider me a Pro or a Guru in this.

With many of my friends doing well in CPA, I jumped into it.

I promoted various CPA offers in almost every vertical (a big mistake). I promoted every type of offer, I tried almost every paid traffic source. So to be honest, I tried almost every type of offer that I felt would make me millions.

Also, for traffic, I used Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Pop ads, Native ads, redirect traffic and lot more.

And with so many experiments, I didn’t make touch 5 figures but yes, I learned a lot.In fact, I lost a lot of money on some specific offers and traffic sources.

With this article, I will be helping you to understand everything that I learned so that you don’t burn your money by committing the mistakes that I did. I will try to make this article as a one-stop destination to learn all the Basics of CPA Marketing.

That was a very long intro to the article. 😛

[toc]

Anyways, let’s start !!

What is CPA Marketing?

Basically, the short-form CPA stands for “Cost Per Action” (or Cost Per Acquisition).

In simple terms, when someone clicks on your link and performs a specified action, you as an affiliate get paid.

In CPA Marketing, there can be various actions!!

It can be a click, email submits, a sale, a call or anything else. (We will get into this in the next section)

Anyhow, when it comes to CPA Marketing, it is not always about the product or user experience/satisfaction. In regular affiliate marketing, we work towards promoting things that actually benefit the user. Illegal, spammy or fake products are not very much common in simply affiliate marketing that we do through our blogs or social ads.

But in case of CPA Marketing, a lot of illegal (or you can say, unethical) stuff takes place. So if you are a person of proper ethics, you will have to do proper research before promoting an offer or a network.

What I basically mean is, Most Advertisers (offer creators) in CPA are not always focused towards selling products(or building brands), rather they are more focused towards getting user data (emails, Credit Card info, Address, Phone numbers, etc). And for getting such info, various fake or spammy offers can be seen on almost every network.

You must have seen offers like “Win iPhone 8”, well if you do proper research on such offers you will find that such offers are run only to collect user data that is later sold or is used to promote something else.

Let me not get more into this.

For now, all I can say is, choose wisely !!

Let’s me now start the guide with some of the Basic terms associated with CPA.

Common Terms Associated with CPA Marketing

There are certain words and terms that you will find on every network, and it is important for you to know about it. So here’s a quick section where you can know about all CPA related terms.

  • Affiliate Manager – A dedicated person from an affiliate network who is assigned to help you increase your sales and conversions.
  • Daily Cap – It is the maximum number of conversions you can bring to an offer daily. Conversions above that number won’t be counted. You can always ask your Affiliate Manager to raise the daily cap. If an offer has a CAP, it is mentioned on the offer page.
  • EPC – Stands for Earning Per Click. It is a calculated amount that affiliates are earning per click (to offer page) by promoting a particular offer.
  • Incentive – You will find some offers called as incentive offers. It means, for such offers you can offer the user a form of benefit, cashback, or some sort of reward. So for incentive offers you can offer extra rewards to the user so that it attracts him and he converts on your promoted offer.
  • Vertical – Category. It can be health, gaming, finance, BizOpp etc.
  • Offer Page – The page where user converts after performing the specified action.

That’s about it fellas!! Time for you to learn about different types of offers.

Types of CPA Offers

So as mentioned in the previous section, there can be many types of ACTION that can lead to a conversion.

Some of the most common types of CPA Offers are:

  • Cost Per Sale (CPS)
  • Cost Per Lead (CPL)
  • Cost Per Install (CPI)
  • Cash On Delivery (COD)
  • RevShare
  • Cost Per View (CPV)
  • Pay Per Call
  • Trial Offers

There can be many other ways these offers can be categorized. For you, this much is sufficient.

Cost Per Sale Offer

CPS offers are those that get converted when a visitor buys from your Affiliate Link.

You can find CPS offers on almost every CPA Affiliate Network in the industry.

Cost Per Sale offers can be found in almost every vertical (btw, vertical means Category).

Cost Per Lead Offers

Cost Per Lead offers are those that convert on a valid lead submission. A lead can be an email submit, a form submits or even a free sign-up.

Affiliates are paid an amount for every verified lead.

CPL offers are also very common in CPA and can be found in every popular network.

Cost Per Install Offers

These offers converts whenever a visitor installs an App, software or an extension.

There are some specific networks where you will only find such offers.

Cash on Delivery Offers

They are similar to CPS offers, the only difference is, the user will have to pay for the product only when he receives it. So it adds a trust value and due to this reason, many companies are now coming up with COD offers.

RevShare Offers

RevShare offers are those where an affiliate is paid a percentage of what the user pays to buy the product.

In simple words, whenever a user buys something, you will get a small percentage of the amount he paid.

Such offers are not very common these days but if the product is good, RevShare offers are definitely worth trying.

Cost Per View Offers

CPV Offers pay you for each valid visitor to your offer link. 

So, for each valid visitor, you will be paid a specified amount.

There are not many CPV offers in the market these days, It is mainly because many affiliates use spammy techniques to send fake traffic, due to which product advertisers lost money.

Pay Per Call Offers

In Pay Per Call offers, you get paid for each valid Call generated through your offer link or page.

Such offers are very common in Home, Medicine, Drugs and Rehab Niche.

Moreover, Pay Per Call offers are hard to find on public networks. Most of the money making Pay Per Call offers can be found on some secret or underground networks.

Trial Offers

Trial offers are those where users have to pay only shipping cost (around $3-$10) and they get the product for free. As an affiliate, you are paid a good commission for each trial sale.

 

Trial offers are similar to CPS offers but since most of the CPA industry makes money from Trial offers, I thought of mentioning it separately.

Trial offers are mainly common in Health niche and can be found on almost every network.

That’s it folks !!! I’ve explained almost every type of CPA offer. 

After knowing the types of Offers, it is equally important for you to understand the different types of Traffic sources.

Types of Traffic for CPA Marketing

Traffic is everything!!!

No matter how much converting offer you pick, it won’t convert unless you send the right targeted traffic to your links.

So when it comes to CPA Marketing, you can opt for both Free or Paid Traffic. But to be honest, the game is much bigger when you go for Paid traffic as it allows you to scale faster.

Anyways, don’t worry. I will mention about both the Free and Paid traffic so that it becomes easy for you to understand the entire process.

Free Traffic Sources

Here’s a simple list of Free Traffic Sources that you go with.

  • Organic Traffic via SEO
  • Social Media Traffic
  • YouTube
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • Forums and Discussion Websites

There can be more sources but I have covered those that can actually convert on CPA offers.

Organic Traffic via SEO

Organic Traffic from search results is the most powerful source of free traffic. In CPA, you can pick some offers and try ranking your website for converting keywords.

For example,

Here’s an offer call Apex Enhance XL free trial offer. It means that to get the product the visitor will have to just pay $7.99 for Shipping & Handling (S&H). And the commission that an affiliate will get is $40.

Quite an attractive offer!!

If you search the product name on Google, you can clearly see that many sites have written a review of it. If you further open these reviews, you will find CPA offer links all over the article.

Hmm, so for SEO traffic you can either go with a single website covering many different offers or you can make simple 3-4 page websites for each CPA offer.

Organic traffic will convert for most of the offers provided you rank for the targeted keywords.

Social Media Traffic

Talking about Free Social Media Traffic, you have many options.

You can post your offer links on Targeted Facebook groups or pages.

You can also tweet your CPA offer links. Or You can use Pinterest to drive some traffic to your landing pages.

There are numerous ways by which you can bring social media traffic to your CPA offers. However, the conversion rates are much lower and also it will a take a huge amount of time to promote your links on various social platforms.

I recommend social media traffic only when there is some extraordinary offer to promote.

YouTube Traffic

Youtube has always been a good source of traffic for Affiliate or CPA Marketing. Many people only use YouTube to promote their CPA offers.

Since it’s Free to upload videos, you can make as many videos related to the offer and link your landing page in the description.

Talking Specifically about CPA offers, a lot of people are promoting Cost Per Install offers via Youtube.

For Example, if you search for clash of clans hack, or FIFA 17 Coin generator or anything related, you will find tons of videos that contain a content locker link in Description.

Those content lockers are nothing but CPA offers. Whenever someone opens those links a content locker opens up asking the user to perform 3-4 tasks to unlock the file. Those tasks are CPA offers and most of the time those are CPI offers where the user has to install some app on his phone.

This is a very old method and is still working for those who know the game of Youtube really well.

Reddit Traffic

Reddit and other submission sites can bring huge traffic to your landing pages. However, if you directly promote the offers on Reddit you may get suspended as such offers and promotions are not treated well on Reddit.

To capitalize Reddit traffic, you will have to play smart by first directing the people to a valuable page and then offering them your CPA offer link.

I will not recommend you to waste a lot of time on Reddit as it is not very scalable and you are never guaranteed results. The conversion rates are poor as well. So, experiment a few times and see if it works or not.

Email Traffic

Email traffic is not essentially free every time. It may cost you money to build a proper targeted list, but once you have a list you can start sending them a series of emails promoting various CPA offers.

Many affiliates simply use bulk email services to send fake and spammy emails promoting various offers. An example is below;

Forums And Q&A Sites

Forums can bring some highly targeted traffic to your landing pages. But you cannot play big with Forums as its hard to scale.

Also sites like Quora, Yahoo Answers are a good source of targeted traffic.

Well, this was about Free traffic. Let me talk about the paid traffic types !!!

Types of Paid Traffic for CPA Marketing

  1. Search Ads via PPC
  2. Display Ads
  3. Social Media
  4. Native
  5. Solo Ads
  6. Pop Traffic
  7. Redirect
  8. PPV
  9. Adult Ads

So, how many sources have you ever tried?

Anyways, let me quickly explain all of these.

PPC – Pay Per Click

Have you seen ads on top of Google Search Results??

Well, those are Search Ads!!

Search ads are the most popular source of traffic for CPA Marketing as these ads are highly targeted and convert the best.

It’s not only Google that provides search ads or PPC ads. Bing and other search engines also have their PPC advertising system.

Some PPC Sources for CPA Marketing are:

I will recommend you to stick with only Adwords and Bing. The other sources are not scalable and are not as good as Google.

PS: Your number 1 choice should be always Google Search Ads

Display Ads

The banner ads that you see on various websites are called Display ads. They can be as much converting as search ads due to the fact that you can select the websites and pages where you want to display your banner ad.

A lot of CPA networks provide readymade banner images that you can directly promote using various display ad networks.

The best sources for Display Ads are:

  • Google Adwords (Google Display Network) – Also includes Youtube Advertising.
  • BuySellAds
  • Infolinks
  • AdClerks

There are 100s of networks where you can buy banner ads or display ads but most of them offer very low-quality traffic and therefore I won’t recommend you to even try those.

Just try to stick with Adwords and BuySellAds.

Paid Social Media Traffic

Social media is one of the best sources for traffic these days. With almost everyone spending at least 1 hour on Facebook (or other social media network), it has become a hot source to target people of every possible category.

Once again there are many Social Media Networks where you can advertise your CPA Offers but only a few of them are good enough to help you make a good profit.

Here’s the Best Social Media Traffic Source for CPA offers,

  • Facebook Ads
  • Instagram Ads
  • Twitter Ads
  • Linkedin Ads
  • Pinterest Ads
  • Reddit Ads

All these social networks get a huge chunk of daily traffic. You can try them all, but if you want me to pick one for you, I will definitely go with Facebook Advertising (with Instagram)

Running CPA offers on Facebook Ads is not easy anymore as it’s not easy to get CPA ads approved by Facebook, however, if you play smart and clean with a proper website or landing page, you can make huge profits.

Native Ads

Native ads can be seen on almost every big news or brand site these days. Almost every ad you see on Native is a CPA offer (try clicking those to see the page you end up on).

So Native has gained a lot of interest among advertisers as they are really cheap compared to other types.

But !!

They are cheap only after you spend around $500-1000 to optimize the ad you run.

In Native advertising, the whole game is of optimization. You cannot simply select all your targeting and think of getting sales. It doesn’t work that way, its a little more complicated.

I myself lost over $1000 on native advertising !!

Anyways, some of the Best Native Ad networks for CPA are;

  • Outbrain
  • Taboola
  • RevContent
  • Mgid
  • NativeAds

Once again, a huge number of Native Ad networks have emerged in the past but I will recommend you to stick with only the top ones.

Maximum number of Bot clicks comes through native ads and therefore you have to pick your network after a good research.

Solo Ads

I talked about Email Marketing previously in the section of Free Traffic Sources, well, Solo ads are very much similar.

In Solo Ads, you buy traffic from the Email list of other internet marketers.

A lot of people keep on building their email list on various niches just to sell their email traffic via Solo Ad networks or other marketplaces.

The process is really simple, you contact a Solo Ads provider, you send him your email copy along with your landing page link. The Provider will send your email to his list of email subscribers.

However, it will take time for you to find the best SOLO ad providers. Upon a simple google search you will get dozens of sellers who claim to have the best lists in the market.

You can trust them and experiment some offers using their service or you can also buy solo ads from the following sources

  • Udimi (Join now and get 5$ Discount)
  • Solo Ad Marketplace

Pop Traffic

Pop-ups are annoying, aren’t they??

But what if I say, a lot of people are making huge profits by running their CPA offers on Pop traffic. Yes, it’s true!!

Pop traffic is one of the cheapest types of traffic where you can promote various types of CPA offers. However, to really make money you have to spend a good amount of budget in order to find the winning campaigns.

Pop traffic can be, Pop ups, pop under, tab under, etc.

You can buy pop traffic from the following sources;

  • PopAds
  • PropellerAds
  • PopCash
  • Adcash

There are tons of networks that offer pop traffic, don’t  get misguided and stick with only the top networks. (Do more research on top Pop traffic sources as I myself don’t have enough experience to rate the best sources)

Domain Redirect

Domain Redirect traffic is that which comes from Parked or expired domains.

There are thousands of parked domains that a user may open, either by typing directly or by searching for some other site. Also, there are many expired domains that still receive a good amount of traffic. Being an advertiser, you can buy that traffic to promote your CPA offers.

It doesn’t bring good conversions but it is still worth trying.

Moreover, it is one of the cheapest types of traffic. You can literally get tons of clicks at a very low cost.

The 2 sources that you can consider for buying redirect traffic are:

  • ZeroPark
  • Tonic

PPV

Pay Per View traffic !! It is also called at Spyware or Adware traffic.

PPV traffic sources are those that will charge you for each view your site receives.

Yes, it does sound similar to Pop traffic but it ain’t. In fact, PPV traffic is relatively better compared to Pop traffic.

The user will be shown Popups but only when the user types a targeted keyword or visits a keyword specific page. That is, it is more targeted as compared to regular pop traffic.

The ads are shown to those users who have earlier installed some sort of free computer software.

For Example,

I can purchase PPV traffic for keywords such as iftiSEO, Bluehost Hosting Discount etc, So whenever a user (having an adware/software installed) types this and searches, he/she will be shown a pop-up ad. That ad will be my landing page or offer page or anything that I set.

Some of the best PPV traffi sources are:

  • RTXPlatform
  • Revenuehits (Self Advertiser)
  • Propel Media

And many more.

To be Honest, I haven’t tried PPV offer yet, so I cannot talk much about it.

Adult Traffic

Well, as the name suggests, you can buy Adult traffic from Adult ad networks.

I am mentioning it separately as most of the above-mentioned ad networks don’t allow advertisers to promote adult CPA offers.

There’s a very big CPA market is in Adult industry and you can run Adult offers on various adult websites with the help of Adult ad networks.

Some of Best Adult Ad networks for CPA are;

  • ExoClick
  • TrafficJunky
  • JuicyAds
  • Ero-Advertising.

I personally used Juicy ads and made a good money by promoting some adult health products from Adcombo CPA network.

That’s all about Free and Paid Traffic Sources!!!

Next is how to get approved on various networks.

How to get Approved by CPA networks?

A lot of newbies struggle to get approved by CPA Networks. Well, it is also because the networks want to maintain quality by having only those people who know the game or have some past experience with CPA.

Most of the newbies don’t know the meaning of vertical (and other terms) and don’t have an idea about the types of offers and that’s the reason their requests get declined.

However, by following some simple tactics you can easily get into any CPA network.

  • Fill the form with all correct details.
  • Mention only 2-3 verticals that you feel you can promote.
  • In Geos, mention only a few locations rather than putting a huge list.
  • Whenever the manager asks for the type of offers you will promote, answer him/her in a convincing manner by naming only a few. I already have mentioned the type of offers.
  • When asked about traffic source, be very clear and mention a source that you know you can use. Paid ads (Adwords or Facebook Ads) will help you the most.
  • About past experience, show your previous affiliate sales (from a blog or social media) stats.

Overall, if you know the terms associated along with the types of offers and traffic you can easily get approved.

Let me now take you to the different CPA Affiliate Networks along with the process of making money from CPA.

Top 10 CPA Networks you must Join

This image credits: https://makemoneywithmohsin.com/

Some networks that you must start with are;

  1. MaxBounty – Has the Best Range of Offers.
  2. CPAProsperity – Good for Health  Trial offers
  3. ClickDealer – Many offers from almost every GEO
  4. PeerFly – A good collection of Offers
  5. AdCombo – Find many COD offers specially in Adult and health niche.
  6. CrakRevenue – A lot of mobile offers. Also famous for Adult offers.
  7. CPALead – You can get a lot of Mobile offers (CPI mostly)
  8. TerraLeads – COD offers from a wide range of GEOs
  9. AdmitAd – A wide range of offers including E-Commerce offers.
  10. AcNutrsyt – Nutra Offers – They accept only quality affiliates.

There are many more networks like AboveAllOffers, Leadbit, Mobidea etc but I am not mentioning all of them here.

The list I added is enough for you to start with.

Join and get approved by all the networks mentioned above. Later you can start promoting offers from one or the other.

How to Find CPA Offers to Promote

Before I explain you the different ways to find offers, you should be knowing about the things you should look out while searching an offer.

[sociallocker]

  • Check the Offer GEO (Countries where it will convert)
  • Check Allowed Traffic Types (See what type of traffic is allowed and what is restricted)
  • See if the offer has a daily cap or not.
  • Check the Landing Page to have an idea about the offer.
  • See if the network provided Banners for the offer.
  • Check the Network EPC just to have an idea. (You can ignore it and ask the manager for more accurate data)
  • Check the payout for offer conversion
  • Read the complete offer description properly. Understand the flow of offer conversion.

[/sociallocker]

Now its time for you to learn how to find CPA offers !!

There can be numerous approaches to pick the best offers to promote. I will try to list them all in an easy manner so that you can get a good idea on how to start.

The most common approaches are;

  • Browse Offers from the CPA Networks
  • Find Offers from OfferVault
  • Ask Affiliate Manager for Best Converting Offers
  • Find Offers by Spying Competitors

This will be a very long guide. :p

Browse Offers inside your CPA Network Panel

One of the easiest ways to find a good offer is by browsing through the network itself. You can filter and easily find the offers you like to promote. Moreover, many networks provide a list of top campaigns (offers) which can help you pick the right offer.

So jump into your affiliate networks and browse for the offers !!

Find Offers From OfferVault

Offervault is no doubt the best site to find CPA offers.

It is basically a directory where you can find CPA offers from every network possible. Moreover, it also provides a good set of data like Offer Payout, landing page, Allowed traffic types etc.

So if you have a vertical/niche in mind you can hop into Offervault and compare the best offers before picking the perfect one.

The site is so easy to understand that I don’t need to explain more about it. Simply open Offervault and spend some time browsing it.

I also recommend you to join the mailing list of Offervault, they regularly send some of the best Best New offers and Network details that you otherwise will miss.

Ask Affiliate Manager for Offers

Remember one thing that in CPA your affiliate manager is your best friend.

Make sure to have a healthy relationship with him or her. You can get the best data only from the manager. The managers easily share data about the best converting offers in their network. You can also ask for suggestions on how to increase sales and they will be ready to help.

My affiliate manager from Mobidea even helped me set tracking for my ad source. My Manager from Adcombo always helps me by giving the best landing pages that convert the most.

So make sure to be in touch with your managers. 😉

Find Offers By Spying Competitors

If you want to play cheeky, you can spy others and find their offers.

There can be many ways by which you can spy others and I cannot explain them all in this article.

For now, these points will help you out.

  • Search Product name or related keywords on Google to find CPA offers run by others. You can get landing page ideas along with the offer name. Try this out for health, adult or trial offers to find the best results.
  • Spy the Popup ads that open when you visit certain sites.
  • Keep a good look on all the Ads that come in your Facebook newsfeed.
  • Spy Native ads by clicking on them.
  • Use Spying Tools to get access to more data.

I will not recommend you to purchase spying tools unless you start making money with CPA.

Once you have the right offer in hand, its time for you to start promoting it !!

How to Promote CPA Offers

You know about offers, traffic, and networks !! It’s now time for you to promote CPA offers by bringing traffic to your offer page links.

There can be many ways that you can go with. Different types of offers require different ways of promotion.

For some offers, AdWords will be the number 1 choice while for some low paying offers you have to go with cheap traffic sources like Native, Pop or redirect.

So the 3 common ways are through;

  • Promoting Direct Offer Link
  • Creating a Landing Page and driving traffic to it
  • Cloaking – A badass way to make money

Promoting Offer Link Directly

There are many offers where you can send traffic directly to your affiliate link. In such cases, you can drive free or paid traffic directly to your offer link.

However Ad networks like AdWords, Fb ads don’t allow direct affiliate links. It is because most of the offer pages given by networks do not follow ad network policies.

You can promote low payout offers like Email Submit offers directly without making any landing page. Such offers can be promoted on Pop traffic, PPV traffic or even redirect traffic.

It all depends on the offers, I cannot explain or list all the offers that you can promote directly. You can rather consult your affiliate manager or check your network panel to see if it’s allowed or not.

Let’s move into the next method of promoting offers !!

Create a Landing Page And Drive Traffic to It

If you want to play the game of CPA for a long-term, then you must start creating landing pages for various CPA offers.

This method involves a process of creating a landing page and linking the CPA offer to it. The traffic (either paid or free) is brought to the landing page and the user is made to click the offer URL or banner that we put on the landing page.

You may question that why do we need Landing pages when the offer pages are so attractive?

Well, there are plenty of reasons and benefits of having a self-created landing page that links to the offer, some of the best benefits or reasons are;

  • You have full control over your landing page.
  • You can convince the visitor in your own way.
  • Landing pages help you collect emails as you can show opt-in forms to the visitor before sending him/her to the offer page.
  • The emails collected from Landing pages can be later used to promote other offers using email marketing.
  • You can run AdWord or Facebook Ads on your landing pages as you can edit the page as per the policies of these ad networks.
  • Conversion rates can increase if you manage to create a convincing landing page.

So these were some benefits that you shall know.

You may feel that its hard to create landing pages but to be honest, it is not. It’s rather very easy.

Once you start running offers using your own landing pages you will start enjoying the process and everything will become simple for you.

Let me quickly list the steps involved in the process of Creating landing pages;

First of all, you will need 2 things.

  1. Domain – Either Get a Free Domain or Buy for $1.
  2. Hosting – You can either use shared hosting or you can opt for a VPS hosting.

I recommend you to use Namecheap shared hosting plan. It will cost you only $19 to host 10 domains for a year. Or you can spend $29 and host unlimited domains for an entire year.

The Landing pages and websites that we create for CPA offers are not heavy in size, moreover, they won’t be receiving huge traffic. Due to this very reason, you can opt for a shared hosting plan that supports unlimited domains.

Most of the CPA offers are not long-lived and hence you won’t have to renew your hosting. You can directly buy a new one instead of renewing the old one.

Anyways once you have both the domain and hosting, all you have to do is set-up the website.

This can be done in 2 ways;

  • Copy & Download Competitor website using HTTrack and upload it to your File manager.

Once you download your competitor site, you will have to edit it and add your own affiliate links.

  • Setup a WordPress site yourself.

I recommend you to set up your own WordPress site.

You can also use Thrive Architect, Divi Builder or any other page builder to create landing pages. However, I like to keep it simple and easy.

Here is a step by step process;

  1. Install WordPress on your Domain
  2. Set a Theme on your website. (Use any good looking free theme)
  3. Create a WordPress Page with your Landing Page Content. You can get content ideas from other competitor domains.
  4. Add offer links in the page content as well as in your Sidebar (if you are using)
  5. Set your created Page as the static homepage of your WordPress Site.
  6. Create other important pages (Privacy policy, Disclaimer, Contact us)
  7. Link important pages in the footer of your site.

That’s it!!

You can check competitor website for more idea.

Here’s a design idea that works perfect for landing pages;

You don’t have to do anything extra. Your landing page is ready and you can start sending traffic to it.

And now coming to the third way of promoting offers.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a cheeky badass technique that is pretty famous in CPA Marketing.

Cloaking means showing one page to the ad network bots and another to the regular visitor.

Now you may wonder why do people do Cloaking!!

Well, affiliates prefer cloaking to avoid making landing pages and to drive traffic directly to the offer page. In many cases, direct traffic to offer page increases the conversion rates as well.

Since Adwords and Facebook ads don’t like the traditional offer pages, cloaking is done to show the bots a proper landing page (also called a safe page). Bots check those pages and see that they are well within the policies, and thus the ad gets approved.

On clicking the ad link, the user will rather see the offer page directly.

That’s how this thing works. I myself never used this technique and that’s the reason I cannot explain much about it. Do read the article about cloaking by Charles.

If you wonder how it is done, then let me tell you that there are many available cloaking scripts and tools available in the market. You can search for them yourself. I am not recommending any script or tool as I don’t know which tools are working currently.

Anyways, this was all about different ways to promote your CPA offer links.

One last thing that you must know about is Tracking !!

Tracking in CPA Marketing

If you want to play with some big numbers in CPA, you cannot simply skip tracking.

Tracking is basically using certain tools and techniques to track your CPA campaigns. It is usually done to find important data about your running campaigns.

Using tracking tools you can track;

  1. Best converting Landing Pages
  2. Best Converting Cities
  3. Best Converting Devices
  4. Best Converting Ad copies
  5. Converting Keywords (ie; what keywords are converting people typing into Google before buying from your offer link)
  6. Best Ad sizes
  7. Track Sites on which your links convert the most
  8. Best Ads units/widgets (specially in case of Native Ads)

You can track almost everything and by using this data you can further filter, refine and optimize your ad copies to increase the ROI.

In many traffic sources like Native ads or Pop traffic, you cannot simply make traffic without tracking the best ads.

I myself lost over a $1000 in native ads without tracking my ad campaigns.

So, if you are thinking to play big do get yourself a good tracking solution.

Talking about tracking solutions, there are many providers out there that you can use. Some of the most famous tracking software providers are;

  • Voluum
  • AdsBridge
  • Prosper202
  • CPVLab

They also provide free trial for you to test it out.

However, if you are a complete newbie and are willing to invest a small amount in Ads, I will recommend you to start directly without tracking. I am saying this because setting up trackers is a complicated task and I wouldn’t recommend you to get busy doing that. First, start generating some sales by understanding the whole game of CPA.

Once you know how things are done, you can step into tracking and increase your ROI.

Well, I can easily end this guide here and call it as “The ultimate guide to Make money from CPA Marketing”, But, I won’t be doing so.

CPA is not a child’s game anymore. You can fail completely even after knowing all of this and that’s the reason I would like to add more to this article.

Why are you Not Guaranteed Results in CPA Marketing?

To be honest, with all this knowledge shared, you may still end up not making any money from CPA.

Earlier CPA use to be very easy where you could literally find an offer, run ads and enjoy the sales coming in. But today, with so much competition among affiliates, it has become a very tough task.

Thanks to various AdWords and Facebook ad policies, it has become even more difficult for CPA marketers to make money.

Every converting offer is being promoted by 100s of Affiliates making it difficult for everyone to make a good margin. Moreover, most of the CPA offers are not according to AdWords or Facebook Ad Policies, leading to Banning of Ad Accounts.

So how is this game still running??

How are many people still making huge money??

Well, yes there are still many offers and top affiliate who are playing the game properly by running offers properly and optimizing them to increase their profit margin.

But Many people are making huge profits through blackhat!!!

Yes, you read it right…

There are many techniques and methods that affiliates try in-order to keep their game on track.

Before I give you hint of all that, let me list down the issues and common reasons why most people fail in CPA.

  • Wrong Selection of Offer
  • Wrong Selection of Traffic Source
  • Banning of Ad Accounts specially AdWords and Facebook. (This is the number 1 reason)
  • Leaving CPA too early
  • Copying Others – (Spying and copying will lead to failure as most of the time – People generally share case studies or offer details after they get saturated. So start doing your own research instead of relying on data from others)

These were some of the most common reasons that lead to failure or loss in CPA.

And if you ask me, the only reason that keeps me away from CPA is banning of AdWords or Facebook accounts. (I am specially mentioning AdWords and Facebook ad accounts as they are the Best sources of targeted traffic).

It’s not that only my accounts get banned, once you get into the game you will start facing similar issues.

And this is where blackhat comes into action!!

Affiliates make multiple accounts or even buy accounts to keep their CPA ads running!!

  • People rent agency accounts from others.
  • People make accounts in the name of companies
  • People make AdWords account using Fake Credit card details
  • People make fake accounts using virtual credit cards
  • People make different country accounts to get Free Ad Coupons
  • People make invoice accounts on which they don’t pay to Google,
  • People make fake grant or NGO accounts and so on.

All this comes under blackhat and is very risky as well. I cannot disclose the illegal ways as I do not want to encourage you to do the same.

I just listed out so that you know about what goes behind the scenes.

Almost every pro or so-called master is a part of such activity as that’s how they make most of their CPA income.

However, that should not disappoint you.

The market is still wide open and you can use your own skills to make money from CPA. As I said earlier, there are many people who are still making huge money by doing proper CPA marketing without the use of any blackhat techniques. Even I made good money without using blackhat techniques. I will surely share my own case studies to my email subscribers very soon.

For now, I want you to study the guide properly and start with a few offers.

One thing that you should understand is that you cannot read and learn everything about CPA or paid ads. You Have to try yourself.

So, go ahead, start your own CPA journey and learn as you progress forward.

Free CPA Training Session

I have a gift for some of my most loyal readers….

Or should I say, here is a CPA offer from iftiSEO.com

Promote this offer and win a training. (You can apply techniques mentioned in the article, haha)

I have some of my own CPA Case studies and other techniques that I will personally share with 10 people through skype or hangout call. If you are interested in that, just click on the button below. I am using an automated tool that will set-up a referral system for you. 

The top 10 People when the contest closes will be declared as winners!! (The contest is running till 10th November)

You will get 1 point whenever someone from your link joins this CPA training competition.

About The Author
Iftekhar Ahmed
Iftekhar Ahmed is the owner of iftiSEO.com and writes on various topics like Online Earning, SEO, Blogging etc. He has worked on many blogs and also works as an SEO Analyst.

40 Responses

  1. Nice blog post about CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) Marketing. Very well written and nicely summarized on all the points. I like how you differentiated between different type of CPA offers. Nice blog post keep the good work going.

  2. For bloggers who have not made been successful in affiliate marketing, this definitely is what they need to read. This tips on CPA marketing are well explained even for beginners to understand. Very useful and helpful marketing tips.

  3. You’ve come up with an awesome bucket list of CPA (Cost Per Action) marketing for newbies as it can be frustrating for beginners to know what to focus on. What an encouragement this list is for someone starting out to be able to follow step-by-step. Excellent information, so thanks for putting out top-notch content all the time.

  4. Iftekhar Ahmed, your blog is among the top 10 marketing blogs I have seen online, Thanks for taking your time to give us valuable and thorough articles. Keep up the good work. I am a web designer, and I know I will learn lot form you.

  5. Great guide. Since you mentioned solo ads in the list, who are among your favorite solo ad providers if I may know. Thanks!

  6. Great guide 🙂
    Let me execute these things
    But i was thinking to try taboola native ads to promote offers :3
    Whats your thought on it?

  7. When I think as the marketer Cost per Action is the best for advertisers. Cost per action make sure that marketing efforts convert for good. Thanks for sharing about the popular types of CPA such as Cost Per Sale, Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Install, Cash On Delivery , RevShare, Cost Per View, Pay Per Call and Trial Offers.

  8. i had read 3 courses about CPA having worth around $2k but thing you explained in this one article are more then that 3 courses. i just want to know . what is the safe way to keep my adwords account safe from blocking. make a landing page and from there send traffic to offer page or what .

  9. Iftekhar this is a superb guide for everyone who wants to start their cpa marketing journey. Many bloggers who may be feeling demotivated and looking for new sources of making money online can definitely go for cpa marketing. There is lot of scope in cpa marketing and your guide can make beginners achieve their potential. CPA marketing may allow a person to have regular income as there are companies trying to promote their products, tools services etc by offering good amount for every lead generated.

  10. That’s an awesome article bro! Don’t know how well you had did research on these stuff…. amazing… Thank you!

  11. Hi Iftekhar Ahmed, Super teaching. Very useful guide to learn CPA completely. I started doing research about CPA for 15 days but this guide gave the complete picture in one go. Thanks for sharing.

  12. Hi Ifte,
    Was waiting for the result to come after the notification via FB.
    Well done my dear friend.
    Indeed this is a classic guide on the subject.
    I just joined in and shared. and now bookmarked it for my further read and application.
    Keep up the good work.
    Best Regards
    ~ Philip

  13. Well done Iftikhar, it’s pretty detailed guide. I bookmarked it for reference. ????

    I have few general questions:
    1. How much time we should spend on an offer to test to see it’s good offer to scale bigger.

    2. Should we run multiple campaigns on multiple ad networks for testing? Or focus on one network at a time?

    3. How much budget to allocate for an offer to test?

    4. What’s your experience about which type of offers convert well on Adwords? Which one on Facebook? Which one via email marketing? etc.

    5. Most of the CPA networks don’t accept newbies, so please share network list for newbies to get started first.

    6. For landing pages, how many links we should put in the page to convert well and look not spammy? Is there any limitation by Adwords or Facebook?

    7. Does dedicated domain to a specific offer converts better? Or we can one domain to run multiple offers related to a offer?

    Looking forward to you. Thanks in advance.

    BTW, 7search is no more since July, 2017 so please remove it from paid traffic network.

  14. Very well written and nicely summarized. I like how you differentiated between different type of CPA offers, its an easy A to Z guide for anyone who want to start his career in CPA marketing.

Comments are closed.