The whole key in successful CPA marketing, after you’ve selected a reliable network, lies in finding the promotion or advertising method or methods that work the best for you. This is usually (but not always) something that feels natural.
Common ways of driving traffic to CPA offers include: Article Marketing – If you like writing, this is a good method for you.
However, the real key will be two-fold: Which directory you decide to submit your articles to (how well-targeted it is to your ideal reader and topic)… and how well you’ve worded your Resource Box.
Encouraging people to click through your Resource Box link to read more is done through a call to action and stirring up reader curiosity.
It’s part skill – and part knack. Do it well, and it’s highly effective!
Email Marketing – If you’re already used to writing emails and sending them to your list, this may be your preferred strategy. It’s absolutely vital, however, not to send CPA offers indiscriminately to your list, if you have one. Instead, pass on only those particular CPA offers that will add a high perceived value to your subscriber’s experience. You will also need to ensure that the offer really does deliver what it promises – some offers don’t, and you end up with something you never want: A really disgruntled subscriber.
Authority Site Maximization – if you have a long-established site that is well-optimized, and which already draws in solid traffic, you are the proud owner of a CPA marketer’s dream! In your case, it really is a case of “autopilot income”: All you have to do is select your CPA ads, forms and offers carefully, and test them (equally carefully) on your site. Keep the ones that do especially well – and get into the habit of tracking them at least once a week.
Blogging – If you are already wading up to your knees in the vast
pond of niche blogging, it’s easy to replace non-converting AdSense with good CPA offers. If you’re brand new to both CPA and niche blogging, however, be aware up front that you will most likely need multiple niche blogs, to make any significant amount of money. That can mean a lot of time invested for a relatively small return. (If you like writing anyway, article marketing and a simple website may be a safer, less work-intensive strategy for you.)
PPC Advertising - This can be a highly effective method, but again, it needs solid, thorough, careful research and an actual budget to work with, before you will see any returns. It is also a risky method to brand new marketers, because unless you know what you’re doing, it’s fatally easy to run up huge charges on the PPC ads you’ve placed, which will more than swallow up any profits. However, there are simple strategies to safeguard yourself against the likelihood of this happening:
Watch your daily click-through stats
Decide beforehand on a budget – and stick to it
Set the ad for a limited time, initially
Set a limit on the maximum height you will allow your bid to go
Choose AdWords under .40 cents per click, with definite competition – but not a huge amount
Done carefully, this can be a great learning experience that will give you more confidence in other areas of internet marketing – and tracking.
Tracking: The Real Secret
It all boils down to tracking: If you’re not prepared to do some basic tracking on your CPA or PPC campaigns, you probably shouldn’t jump in at the deep end. Hopefully, however, this overview has given you some information – and ideas.
If you’d like to give CPA marketing a try, sign up for a reputable network, and give it your best shot.
After all, the very real and realistic possibility of creating a second passive source of income is not to be easily dismissed – and I’ll tell you the biggest secret of all…
…if you get into your “Zen zone”, CPA is actually fun!
It’s happened this way, more than people like to admit – but it doesn’t have to be this way. The most common causes of CPA disappointment are:
Insufficient market research
Failure to track daily expenses
Lack of basic business knowledge
If you’re shuddering because you’re afraid this would be you, well, that’s what this report is here to do – help you avoid heartbreaking CPA mistakes, and experience genuine, solid CPA success!
“Will I Be Rich?”
Let’s get something out the way, straight away: Unless you’re a marketing genius with incredible intuition, you are not likely to become a millionaire within weeks or perhaps even months off CPA marketing alone. It’s rather like niche blogging: You will need to run multiple CPA pages in order to let the small amount of positive income each incurs add up to a nice little sum at the end of the month.
Question: “If it’s so Mickey-Mouse peanuts, why should I bother with it?”
Answer: “Because, properly done, it actually can bring in a nice supplemental income! And there are offers you can find that really will bring in more money than the average CPA marketer receives. And properly done, you can tap into high offers that easily bring you as much as $50, instead of 2 or 3.”
Let’s focus on the best way to reach this goal, as quickly as possible…
Most people know that CPA means “cost per action”.
With regular affiliate marketing, your site visitor actually has to buy the product in order for you to get paid: The beauty of CPA marketing is that, while sales conversions do apply in some cases, your site visitor usually has to take a lesser action. He has to perform one of the following:
Simply click through
Provide a zip code
Provide an email address
Provide a name and email address
…Or any other combination of contact details.
In an age where online security is at the forefront of peoples’ thinking, and most internet users are both jaded with advertising and savvy to spurious offers, how do you get your site visitor to part with his jealously guarded information?
Answer: You make him want to click on that link, or give up his contact detail. You make it harder to refuse than it is to comply. You show him how easy it is just to enter a zip code. And there’s only one way to do that..
You must provide him with an enticing reason – one he can’t resist. You must let him see clearly that the benefit of giving up that email address or zip code is five times greater than ignoring it. (And part of this involves getting him to trust you.) And it should feel totally natural, as in it’s the next logical step. (The only logical next step!)
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Usually, you only have to inspire your reader to perform an action – he doesn’t have to buy.
The key to doing this every single time? Research, of course. But there’s a specific way the best and most successful marketers go about performing this – and it isn’t the way most newer marketers think.
Mistake # 1 – Keyword Research.
This is where most newer marketers eagerly start, armed with the latest edition of Market Samurai or Micro Niche Finder, or whatever hot keyword research program they’ve discovered.
Keyword research is very important – but not at this stage!
Market research only starts with identifying your demographic. Next, you have to put a face to him, and single him out. You have to pluck up the courage, and say hello to him, one on one, in the school parking lot.
Mistake # 2 - Thinking a demographic is your target customer.
A demographic is simply a generic group, based on statistics – not a person. Yet this is where most people stop, when initially researching their market.
But what happens in real life? Could you even present a suggestion to that particular man in the parking lot at this point, let alone sell him something? What do you think the reaction would be?
“Sir, would you like to fill in this form with your full name, address and phone number?”
He’s likely to stare at you suspiciously and snap: “Sorry. Don’t have time right now.” And dash off, not making further eye contact. (He’ll avoid you, in future.) Yet that’s the equivalent of what happens when the average person “researches” a target market, and says, “Right. 30-something. Caucasian. Looks like he dresses okay. He’s in a school parking lot, so he’s probably dropped off a kid. That’s my unique customer…” And dashes off a minisite
based on that information alone.
The end result? It feels as natural as one of those screaming commercials on TV. The ones that appear between 3 a.m. and 6 in the morning.
But let’s take a deep breath, and rewind… We’re going back to that school parking lot…
Once you’ve got up close and simply said a friendly “hello”, he’s no longer just a generic
“parent” or “guy between 30 and 50”. He’s someone you can identify a little more deeply and individually. He’s “that guy in the black overcoat who looks about 32, and always wears the checkered scarf in red and black.” If I asked you, you could probably tell me what color his hair was, and if he was Caucasian or Asian; and whether or not he looked like he was barely scraping by, or whether the distinctive overcoat and scarf looked like it came from a trendy designer, giving you the impression he makes well over $100,000 a year.
But you don’t stop there. The next day, you get into a conversation with him – you “engage”
him. You discover what you both have in common – and where you diverge. You find out that he has 3 daughters under the age of 10; that his big passion in life is golf; and that he absolutely hates the color lilac. You discover you both went to the same university (just different years). He admits he’s about to buy a brand new car, and he’s been thinking about a hybrid, because even though he’s not a rabid environmentalist, he just can’t ignore the problem of pollution any longer. And gas costs too much.
At this point, you could probably tell me the color of his eyes (after all, you stared into them for an hour at Starbuck’s, where you both discovered you like Lattés with chocolate sprinkles). And you could probably unhesitatingly tell me, “Oh no. There’s no way Don would buy a Ford F150
pick-up truck, with all the bells and whistles – he’s probably going to go for a hybrid, this time around. He’s just not a honkin’ big pick-up truck kind of guy; and besides, he has 3 young daughters and he and his wife have decided not to run two vehicles, because he isn’t quite as wealthy as he looks. He works as an intermediate draftsman at an architectural firm, and they’ve just started sending him out to interview potential clients. He’s going to want a vehicle that looks
professional and upscale – even though price is definitely a factor he has to focus on.”
That’s the major portion of the “research” you need to be doing, in a nutshell: Getting to know who your visitor is. You can speed it up, you can know good shortcuts to take – but you can’t force it. You can take action quickly… but you do have to get to the chatting stage first before you “pitch” your offer. (Not literally, of course... but you do have to know your reader as well as you got to know Don.)
Based on that information, would you have confidence creating a minisite or blog to attract Don that contains hybrid car reviews?
At this stage of your relationship, of course you would!
You already know it’s probably going to attract him, if you populate it with reviews of the top 10
vehicles being currently sold - especially if you focus on the 3 hybrids among them. You’d easily be able to find a spot on the page to insert a sign-up box (in an attractively-designed sidebar –
that isn’t lilac). You know that if it’s an offer that says: “To obtain a coupon for $100 off the purchase of any hybrid automobile from a Ford dealer in the state of Michigan, fill in your zip code now”, Don is likely going to be interested to the point of giving up his zip code (since you both live in Michigan).
That’s exactly how “market research” is done. And what it really means.
Getting to know:
What your visitors problems are
What’s on his mind right now
What’s likely to be on his horizon soon
What he’s thinking about a lot
What he’s secretly drawn to
What he likes
How much he has to spend
What his financial concerns are
What he would find appealing to the point of being irresistible But How Do You Get Him To Find Your Site?
That’s when you finally get to “keyword research” – the place most people start! After you’ve put a name to the face, and gotten to know your ideal potential customer.
Hopefully, you do know how to perform keyword research, at this point, so we aren’t going to linger over that. No matter what amazing keyword research software you have, however, I would recommend starting like this:
Keep yourself in your unique site visitor’s shoes: Ask yourself “What is Don going to search for? What words would he use?”
Go to Wordtracker’s Free Keywords tool, and enter that search term.
As you go through your usual following keyword research steps, you’ll be more likely to come up with targeted results if you’ve started from a position of strong market research and knowing your unique visitor really well.
Keep it simple – after all, people like Don don’t jump through convoluted thought processes when they start looking on the net for information they really need. They just type in “best hybrid cars” or “hybrid car pros and cons” or “hybrid car reviews”.
But What Does All This Have to Do with CPA?
The blunt answer is: “Everything”. Thorough market research, finished by simple but targeted keyword research, is the key element, the “missing link”, that separates people who are successful at CPA marketing from those who spend $500 on a PPC ad in order to make $2.37 on
It’s the root at the bottom of the CPA tree. If those roots are too shallow, or spindly and inadequate, you aren’t going to get a strong, healthy tree that bears a ton of fruit, right? But now that we’ve got that established, it’s time for an overview of what you’ve been waiting for… CPA Marketing.
Which CPA Offer Appeals to You?
You can get involved in CPA marketing through several different types of offers. As you try CPA marketing out, you may find that you feel really uncomfortable with some types, and perfectly happy with others.