Inside we will show you several methods that can be used to make a growing long term income from promoting CPA offers. Best of all, these techniques don’t require you to invest a ton of money to make it work. These are some of the best longterm promotion methods that can be used to promote any type of CPA offer without a huge upfront investment. All these techniques can be started and used from scratch, all they require is action to implement a few steps. Now some of these techniques may not be new to you, but they are proven to work for me and lot of professional CPA marketers out there.
While promoting offers through PPC can be profitable, it’s becoming harder as competition is getting stiffer. A lot of affiliate have jumped onto the CPA to PPC bandwagon and this has made the bid prices for PPC extremely high. A lot of offers require a bid of at least $1.50 to compete. This makes it very hard to get enough traffic but stay profitable at the same time.
Also, Google is becoming less friendly to affiliates as the days go on. They are implementing more difficult quality score rules. They want advertisers to send visitors to a full actual site rather than an affiliate. Google has also been banning certain offers outright such as Acai weight loss offers, or offers in general that promote a free trial.
And that is just PPC. With SEO, things are constantly changing. The ranking algorithms can change in one second, and it can cause sites to drop their top position in SEO in a second. It also takes more time and effort to get a site ranked, and even then, your SEO position is not guaranteed.
As you can see, some of the more traditional ways of promoting offers is getting harder and more complicated. We are not saying that they don’t work or they’re not profitable, but they are not the best ways to start if you don’t have a big initial budget. In our opinion, there are better ways for an average person to start promoting CPA offers without wasting time and money for a chance making a profit with CPA offers.
In this article, we will provide several techniques that work for CPA offers and are more straightforward than the traditional methods of promotion. These techniques can be used to build your income, which can be scaled to make sure you have the resources to compete with other affiliates when you do SEO or PPC. So with further ado, let’s begin discussing the nuts and bolts of these CPA techniques.
Becoming Familiar With The CPA Game
For anybody that’s not familiar with CPA offers, CPA stands for Cost-Per-Action. These offers usually pay for a visitor to sign up to an offer just by giving basic information. This means affiliates like you get paid when a visitor gives their name, phone number, e-mail, and address. Some offers even pay whenever a visitor supplied their e-mail address or zip code.
These type of offers usually pay per lead. This is much different from the affiliate systems of Clickbank, Comission Junction, or Paydotcom. Those offers require a sale to be made from visitors in order for affiliates to get a commission. Because CPA offers don’t require a sale, they’re usually much easier to promote and have higher conversion rates in my experience that traditional affiliate offers.
To start promoting CPA offers, you must first join a CPA network. A CPA network is a location where affiliates go to for finding different CPA offers to promote. They basically collect different CPA offers into one place.
Each network will have a different selection of offers to work with, so I suggest joining 2-4 networks to start with in order to have enough variety of offers.
Each network will also assign you an affiliate manager when you join. These affiliate managers help out affiliates by pointing them to good offers to promote. They also help you if you’re trying to find an offer in a specific niche or topic. They can even raise the payout of existing offers you if you have a good relationship with them. Not only that, but they can point you to exclusive offers only available to select affiliates in the network. So your affiliate managers is someone you should keep in touch with.
Getting Accepted Into Your CPA Networks
Now that we have a selection of networks to join, it’s time to start sending in the applications to get accepted. Unlike other affiliate programs, CPA networks are selective in who gets to to be an affiliate.
Contrary to popular belief, CPA networks are not difficult to get into. Most CPA networks just want to find out if you’re going to be a serious, active affiliate. As long as you take initiative and show them that you’re going to be serious, you will be guaranteed acceptance. They just want to know if you’re going to bring them real traffic to their offers.
Most CPA networks just want affiliates who are ethical and will not use blackhat techniques to promote offers. The blackhat techniques really cheats the network and advertisers out of money. So they have to implement an approval process to make sure affiliates are not going to implement such fraudulent methods. You don’t have anything to worry about that part, all these techniques are legitimate traffic sources as long as you promote the right offers, and confirm with your affiliate manager if it’s ok.
They’re also looking for an affiliate with some experience promoting CPA offers. It’s fine if you don’t actually have experience promoting CPA offers. If you claim to have worked with CPA offers before through PPC, most networks will usually believe you. Now you don’t have to claim to have worked with CPA offers before, and you are able to get accepted. but we highly suggest you just claim to work with CPA offers before to make things easier.
Here are a few extra tips to pretty much guarantee acceptance into a network. These tips aren’t necessary and are entirely optional, but can be used to get into harder networks:
Tip #1: Get a site template.
Several applications to get into a network asks for a website. What you can do is simply have a simple site that you can show on the application. The site can be a simple WordPress blog with a 3-5 PLR articles on it. On the application, just tell them it’s an example of a landing page you use to promote offers. Then tell them you usually drive around 2,000- 3,500 clicks to the page per month.
You can also buy a ready made site as long as it’s in a popular niche such as weight loss and dating, and show it on your application. You can buy relatively cheap ready-made site from Ebay and Digital Point for $10-$50.
Tip #2: Get a company website.
If you have a Internet Marketing related site, then most networks will usually accept you. So first, think of a name for a marketing company.
Now you don’t have to actually go and register a company. All you really have to do is show a company website and say you’re from that company.
You can get a company/corporate site template for $10-$70 from Template monster or Forest Theme.
Upload the template to a domain that’s a variation of your company name. For example premium-marketing.com. Be sure to edit the text to present information on what your marketing company does. Mainly emphasize that your company does PPC marketing and media buys to promote offers.
Tip #3: Call them right after submitting an application.
A great way to guarantee acceptance is to call them right after you submit your application. Then tell the network you want to follow up with their approval process. This way, you’re showing the network that you’re taking initiative to get accepted. This will also show that you want to be a serious affiliate. You can also e-mail them if you prefer not to call.
Tip# 4: Call them if you get rejected.
The best way to handle rejection is to simply call the network again and ask them to reconsider your application. Simply tell them that you really want to start promoting offers for them and just explain them that you’re serious about being one of their affiliates. 9 out of 10 times, they’ll just accept you since you were serious enough to contact them and ask them to reconsider.
Selecting Your Money Makers
By now, you should be accepted into 3-5 CPA networks and have a variety of offers to work with. Now before we begin on how to select the right offer, let’s get familiar with all the different types of offers available out there:
E-mail/zip submit offers – These are offers that payout $1-$2 for a visitor to submit either their e-mail address or zip code. Usually in exchange, the visitor gets a gift such as a gift card or a chance to win a prize such as an Xbox 360, IPad, PSP. Since these offers have a low payout, it’s best to promote them in bulk at the same time.
Short form offers – These are offers that pay $10-$25 per lead, and they usually include a from for a visitor to fill out. The form can have as little as 5-7 fields that only asks basic contact information from visitors. There’s also other offers with longer forms such as 2-4 pages full of fields to fill out. The advantage to those type of offers is that they’re usually very targeted and specific.
We suggest looking for offers with the shortest amount of fields for visitors to fill out. These offers are my most suggested type of offers to promote. They convert easily, which makes them easy to work with.
Free trial offers – These offers usually pay $30-$45 for a visitor to sign up for a free trial for a product. These products include weight loss offers like Acai Berry Pro or biz opp offers like Home Business Online. The way these offers work is that a visitor signs up to receive a free trial of a product and only pay shipping and handling. They will have to supply their credit card information, and most of these offers need a landing page to pre-sell the offer to see decent conversions.
Now that we’re familiar with all the different types of offers that are available, let’s discuss the elements of what makes an offer a good offer to promote.
One of the most important elements of a good offer is that it’s in a niche where there is demand. We suggest the following offers that are in niches that are proven to have good conversion and be profitable in our content network:
- Weight Loss
- Ring Tones
- Dating
- Automotive
- Insurance
- Beauty Supplies
- Health
- Debt Relief
- Mortgage
- Video games
How To Dominate With PPV
One of the most lucrative ways to promote CPA offers is through PPV. PPV stands for Pay-Per-View, and it works in a much similar way to PPC. The way it works is that you bid on keywords much like in PPC. Your ad shows up if a user with the right adware (or software where the user agrees to have ads shown or pop-up on their computer) searches for a keyword you bidded on.
Now unlike PPC, the costs for PPV are much lower. The cost is based on per view, which means you are only charged when your ad pops up on a user’s computer. The cost is usually $0.01 per view. This is much cheaper than the $1.50-$3.00 per click you usually get for PPC.
Not only that, but you don’t have to deal with Google’s complicated quality score rules.
You don’t even need a site if you don’t want to. You ca just promote offers by directly linking to them, and you don’t have to worry about the Google Slap. This means no more worrying if bid prices are going to rise sky high out of nowhere.
The other unique aspect of PPV is that you can target specific domains. You can bid on domains or specific pages of a domain, so that if a user goes to a site or a certain page of a site, you ad pops-up. This is very powerful if used correctly, and can bring you tons of targeted traffic.
Now before you go promote an offer through PPV, you should first confirm if PPV traffic is ok with the offer you want to promote. Most offers will accept PPV traffic, but you want to ask just in case because there are some exceptions.
For the rest of this section, we’ll discuss various ways of using PPV correctly to bring targeted traffic for only pennies.
1st Step: Register For PPV network – Hooqy Media
The first step is to register for Hooqy Media. Hooqy Media are similar to PPC engines such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft Adcenter. We organize the ad space, and allow advertisers like you to advertise to our publishers who have their own websites.
2nd Step: Building Your Keyword List
To build your keyword list, you simply use keyword research tools I’ve mentioned in “Selecting The Right Offer” section of this report. Wordtracker is a good free keyword tool to use. You can also use Keywordspy to get keywords that are proven to work for other affiliates in PPC.
This way, you’re bidding on keywords that are giving other affiliates quality traffic for $0.004 rather than $1.50 or more in most cases. You can see how powerful PPV can be if used right.
There’s also another good keyword tool that I suggest using. It is the external Google keyword tool. This tool is free and can be used even if you don’t have an Adwords account.
This tool works in a very similar way to other tools such as Wordtracker and Keywordspy. Just type in a keyword, and it will show a long list of related keywords. This should be used as your main keyword research tool since it shows so many related keywords.
For example, I typed in “iphone” into Google external keyword tool:
You can see stats for related keywords such as competition volume and search volume. You can also sort the keywords from least to greatest or greatest to least based on those stats. As you can see, it’s a very powerful keyword research tool and it’s totally free.
In terms of the keywords you should target, you should look for the following:
Buying keywords – Bid on keyword phrases that contain keywords that shows the visitor wants to buy something. This means any keyword phrases containing these prefixes:
- buy
- get
- want
- shop, shopping for
- need
- order
- price
Brand/specific product keywords – Bid on keywords of specific product or brand names. For example, instead of bidding on “mobile phone”, bid on keywords like “Blackberry Smartphones ”, “Apple Iphone 4” and “HTC EVO 4G”.
Long tailed Keywords- Long-tailed keywords are very targeted and more specific. This means they bring higher quality traffic, with higher conversion rates. Instead of bidding on a keyword that’s very general like “dating”, big on keyword phrases like “need help on dating” or “dating for desperate guy”.
We would personally build a list of about 50-80 keywords when launching a new PPV campaign.
3rd Step: Build your URL List
Not only can you build a list of keywords to bid on, but you can even bid on URLs too and get traffic.
When you bid on URL, your ad pops up whenever a user types the URL or a variation of the URL into a search engine, or if the user goes to the URL itself by typing it into an address bar.
To build a URL list, we would get 15 keywords from your research tools. Use keywords that have the highest monthly search volume. Then type the keyword into Alexa. For example, here’s a list of sites I got for typing in mobile phone:
You can also get a list of URLs by typing the keyword into Google and taking the URLs of sites in the top 20 positions:
Get a list of about 30-40 URLs and you’re ready to go.
4th Step: Launching your Campaign
Launching a PPV campaign on a Hooqy Media is very simple.
Step 1: Name your campaign, select CPV and set an appropriate maximum bid price. In our opinion, $0.005 is a good start. If you bid too low, less traffic will drive to your campaign.
Step 2: Put your affiliate link into “Website URL”. You should ask your affiliate manager which version of the link you should use, it varies from offer to offer.
Step 3: Select the country or city that your campaign is targeted. You make sure that your offer targets to correct region. If you are not clear, please ask your affiliate manager.
Step 4: Upload your keyword and URL list and click “Add Keyword” button.
Step 5: Edit the keyword bid price. Make sure to set the bid price to $0.005 first. If the keywords do not drive more traffic, you can increase the bid price later.
Step 6: If you want to drive more traffic to your campaign, we recommend you to pick an appropriate category related to your offer.
Step 7: Set the total budget you want to spend on this campaign. You can also set the auto-refill if the campaign is lower than particular price.
Step 8: Select the IP frequency cap. Set an appropriate daily budget.
If your campaign create successful, you will see the following page:
PPV Scaling
Once you have a profitable campaign up and running, there are many ways to make it more profitable. You want to track your keywords and record which ones are earning a profit or loss. A good tool for this is Prosper202:
This tool is totally free and you just need to upload it to a domain. There’s very good tutorials for installing and using the program on their site.
To determine if an offer is profitable or not, I would say try to get roughly 300 clicks to the offer. If the campaign is earning a loss, move onto another offer. If the campaign is earning a profit, then expand it:
1. Increase Number of Related Keywords
Track which keywords are bringing in profit, and dig deeper into related keywords by getting a keyword list in a research tool. For example, if “weight loss training center” is bringing in profit, I would type the keyword into Google external keyword list to get a list of keywords related to that keyword.
You can also bid on variations of profitable keywords such as:
- abbreviations
- mispelllings
- plural
- adjective prefixes such as good, quality, useful, beneficial, etc
- Synonyms (Thesaurus.com)
2. Promote A Related Offer
Make another campaign promoting a different related offer using the same keyword/URL list. For example, if iphone campaign works, use the same keyword/URL list in a campaign promoting the offer blackberry smartphone.
3. Promote An Offer In A Different Niche
You can also move onto testing offers in different niches. Just use the same niche research methods to find another profitable niche to get into, and build a new campaign promoting an offer related to that niche.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are a variety of ways to promote CPA offers. After you have read this article, we realize that you are now a smarter affiliate. You can take advantage to build a rapidly growing income promoting CPA offers and setup effective PPV campaign in Hooqy Media.
With that said, all there’s left to do is take action. Once these methods are implemented, you CPA marketing results will increase dramatically, and you can scale to reach $1,000 to $2,000 per day within a short period of time. You can even go beyond as long as you keep growing the amount of traffic you receive.
If you have any comment about this article, please feel free to discuss in here.