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Today we will figure out what CPA marketing is, what skills a beginner will need to master this area of human activity and make a profit in it.
CPA marketing – basic concepts
CPA marketing (the second name is “affiliate marketing”) is a type of business where an advertiser (product owner) promotes his product or service with the help of partners (webmasters), paying them a reward according to the CPA model – cost per action – “payment for action”.
The model is beneficial for the advertiser in that he saves marketing budgets, since the advertising costs are mainly borne by his partners.
The partner is also interested in working on the CPA model. Especially if he knows where to buy traffic cheaply and sell it more expensively, justifying his own investments in advertising and making a profit.
Affiliate marketing involves another third party – an affiliate network or SaaS platform, on which, in fact, the advertiser and partner meet.
In USA, Europe, EU countries and far abroad, you can find many affiliate networks with offers from various verticals.
By the way, the Alanbase online service is a living example of such an affiliate network designed for the convenience of advertisers and partners.
Offer is an advertiser’s offer, attractive to webmasters, which he places in the affiliate network.
The vertical is the theme of the offers. For example, e-commerce is the sale of physical goods through online stores, dating is dating services, travel is everything for traveling, etc.
Conversion is a targeted action performed by a user, for which the advertiser is ready to pay the partner the reward indicated in the offer.
How CPA Marketing Works
CPA marketing has a very simple scheme: an advertiser comes, for example, to the Alanbase online service and posts his offer there.
A partner who is satisfied with the conditions of the offer takes his personal link, which will be used to record all his sales and organizes an advertising campaign at his own expense.
There are sales – the partner receives a part of the advertiser’s income. The affiliate network acts as a kind of arbiter: it makes sure that the partner provides the advertiser with high-quality traffic, and the advertiser pays for the partner’s conversions on time.
How to start affiliate marketing for a beginner
The sequence of actions for a beginner in CPA marketing is as follows:
- choose the right offer;
- register in the affiliate network;
- determine the source of traffic;
- launch your first ad campaign.
Despite the simplicity of this algorithm, many newcomers to CPA marketing make common mistakes.
- do not pay due attention to the choice of offer;
- ignore the feedback of other webmasters on working with this offer and a specific advertiser;
- spread their attention between several traffic sources, having no experience with at least one;
- most importantly, they do not analyze their actions and do not draw any conclusions from what is happening.
What else should a beginner in CPA marketing prepare for
The normal state of an affiliate marketer is to be in complete uncertainty.
There is no stable “tomorrow”, and even more so “the day after tomorrow”. Even if you had great conversions and ROI today, things can change drastically in two hours. For example, an advertiser will close a profitable offer without explaining the reasons.
Conclusion: you will need a fairly strong nervous system, as well as a willingness to constantly search for new offers, new profitable connections, form new hypotheses and test them.
Each launched advertising campaign will also require optimization and improvement. Unfortunately, CPA marketing is not a business that can be put on “full automatic”, turning it into a source of passive income. You should not count on making a profit if you do not take active steps for this.
It’s important to remember that successful CPA marketing is all about collecting and analyzing all the data you can get, and then using it to optimize your advertising campaigns.
And you will also have to learn at least the basics of financial management. At least part of the money that CPA marketing brings in should be invested in other projects that have nothing to do with it (remember the state of complete uncertainty?).
And you will also constantly have to learn, learn new methods of promotion, master other sources of traffic in order to scale your activities and make really good money.
As in any new business, it is important to believe that everything will work out and not give up in the event of inevitable failures that will appear anyway. A black bar is always followed by a white one – this is the main thing you need to know when mastering CPA marketing.
