CPA Marketing for Beginners [Ultimate Guide]

CPA marketing is one of the most lucrative ways to monetize a niche blog. In this CPA marketing for beginners guide, you will learn what CPA marketing is, how it works, what’s the difference between CPA marketing and affiliate marketing, what are the top CPA networks you should work with, how to get approved in these networks and how to promote CPA offers to bring home the bacon.

You are getting this guide for free, and I am sure it’s much better than those paid CPA products. However, I do not promise that you can make hundreds of thousands at the starting point. You need to learn a lot and apply those techniques in the beginning. Yah!

If you are in a hurry or want a copy of this guide, enter your name and email address below, and I can send it to you in PDF format. After signup, you will access an exclusive area to download all our premium resources.

When you become a highly skilled and experienced CPA marketer, you can earn 5 figures and even 6 figures from CPA networks every month.

A highly skilled and experienced #CPA marketer make 5 and even 6 figures income from CPA networks every month. Find out how! @monetizeinfoClick to tweet

Let me show you how.

1. What Is CPA Marketing?

The term CPA stands for Cost Per Action. It’s also called Pay Per Lead, in short PPL. CPA marketing is relatively easier than selling products.

The main idea behind CPA affiliate marketing is getting particular action from your traffic. This action can be submitting an Email, filling up a form, making a download, submitting a pin code, submitting a mobile number, and even getting a sale.

People are more likely to get free products than spend their earned money. Thus driving your traffic to a particular task can lead you to money. Generally, you can make $0.50 – $20 per CPA offer.

However, some high-end CPA offers pay $750 or even more for a particular action by your traffic.

Isn’t it sound amazing?

Yah! That’s why I came with this CPA marketing for beginners guide for you.

2. How does CPA Marketing work?

Some well-known CPA networks control the whole process. For example, the vendors or CPA offer creators submit their particular job or product to CPA networks, and those CPA networks promote those offers via CPA marketers like us.

They give us a fixed amount of money for every particular offer depending on how much the vendor or CPA offer creator has invested.

Your work is straightforward; firstly, you must apply to a CPA network, and after getting approved, browse the existing offers and select the one that suits your interest. After determining the offer, promote it as much as you can to the targeted online visitors.

3. CPA Network Terminology

CPA network terminology isn’t complicated, but you should know key terms as you launch.

Now that you know the CPA marketing terminology, let’s analyze the differences between CPA Marketing and Affiliate marketing.

4. CPA Marketing Vs. Affiliate Marketing

I have already mentioned that CPA marketing is much easier than affiliate marketing. In the case of affiliate marketing, you must make sales to profit. On the other hand, getting sales in CPA marketing is not mandatory to make a profit.

You can distribute free offers, trial products, apps, etc. Thus, people can grab for free, and you can profit from their particular actions.

Here are several examples of these actions: confirming an offer, ordering a free trial product, or downloading a specific app or software.

Thus making money with CPA became very easy compared to Affiliate marketing.  There are a ton of CPA-driven sites on the web. For example, on Monetize.info, we monetize content with CPA offers. Check the Best Paying Survey Websites To Make money to see examples.

5. CPA Marketing for Beginners PROs and CONs

Here are the CPA marketing PROs and CONs for publishers:

Now that we have an overview of CPA marketing PROs and CONs for publishers, let’s dive into the top CPA networks.

6. Top 21 CPA Networks

Here are some best CPA networks to start your CPA marketing and earn a handsome amount of money.

Read the details about each CPA affiliate network to get more insights. For each CPA site, you will get its introduction and information about payment methods, payment threshold, type of offers, etc., in an organized way.

#1. AdWorkMedia

This is the best CPA network I have ever tried due to its excellent user experience. AdWorkMedia is always full of various offers; thus, you will never feel a lack of your desired offers. Besides that, the dashboard is pretty much real-time and equipped with the necessary information to track everything quickly.

The best thing about the AdWorkMedia network is its tracker, via which you can know about the browser, device, location, etc., of your converted traffic. However, this tracker is not as powerful as the premium trackers but still has a built-in (and free) link tracker, which means a lot for CPA lovers. So far, I have made 5 figure profit from this single CPA network.

2. MaxBounty

MaxBounty is another favorite CPA network equipped with a fantastic dashboard and highly converting offers with amazing landing pages.

The support you will get from the affiliate managers of MaxBounty is beyond expected as they care about their partners. So apart from promoting others’ offers, if you need inspiration for helpful landing pages, then offers of MaxBounty are the best to look at.

3. PerformCb

PerformCb is one of the oldest players in Cost Per Action marketing and is one of the most recognized and reputed networks where you can find almost all types of CPA offers in the market. This network pays around 100M every year to its affiliates.

4. lemonads

The lemonads CPA Network is a 100% performance marketing network based in Geneva, with partners worldwide.

lemonads has created a first-class platform, making it possible to increase its commercial performance significantly. lemonads offers affiliates one of the highest paying Smartlinks in the industry and a marketplace of 2000 campaigns with different remuneration models: CPA, CPL, CPI, and CPI from more than 2000 active advertisers.

5. CPALead

Small but Amazing – this is how I think about CPAlead. Maybe it’s no massive network like the one mentioned above. However, this is one of the most flexible and fast networks. Whenever any newbie asks me for a suggestion, I refer them to CPALead because it pays weekly with various payment methods. Moreover, one can also monetize mobile apps via this network.

6. CrackRevenue

CrakRevenue CPA Affiliate Network helps you mostly to monetize adult content. However, they also have different offers to monetize other types of content, and their offers have some of the highest rates in the market.

CrackRevenue is one of the best CPA networks globally as they provide premium offers in several verticals such as Dating, VOD, Webcams, etc.

You can expect some of the best payouts in the industry. They also provide publishers with advanced tools to check stats about your traffic and conversions.

They also offer geo-targeting to allow you to get the best-converting offers available from each region. In addition, its exclusive Geo-Matic ad tool automatically displays the best offers based on your visitors’ geo-location and market.

7. A4D

It’s a great CPA network with high-end monitoring and tracking tool for maximum output. Moreover, A4D is pretty flexible for the publishers as they change their various policies based on their opinions.

8. Convert2Media

Convert2Media, better known as C2M, is based in Florida and has been around since 2007. Very experienced, smart, and with a network of committed affiliates, C2M was one of our top-rated networks for several years.

Bottom line, Convert2Media is a top-rated network of advertisers and publishers. To get into the Convert2Media affiliate network, you need quality traffic that converts. You would get help from their affiliate managers in whichever way possible to convert your traffic.

9. ClickDealer

Click Dealer is another comparatively new but amazing network worth being called one of the world’s top CPA affiliate networks. This network is pretty active in the affiliate events happening worldwide. This Netherlands-based CPA network is spreading globally via setting up physical offices. This shows how serious this network is!

10. Mobidea

I must say Mobidea is a beast when it comes to mobile CPA offers. This network is full of high-end mobile-based offers, and amazingly, most of its CPA offers start from $30 and go higher and higher. So if your main traffic source is mobile, you MUST sign up for this awesome mobile CPA marketing network for highly converting offers.

11. CPATrend

Another newbie-friendly CPA network to start your first step of thriving in the world of CPA marketing. Its straightforward-to-use interface and flexibility will help you run its offers smoothly.

12. AdGateMedia

This mobile traffic-focused CPA affiliate network offers plenty of mobile-based CPA offers. Besides CPA marketers, app developers can also use this network to monetize their apps.

13. AdscendMedia

In the past, I used to use this CPA affiliate network, which was pretty good with the number of offers. This network is frequently updated with new offers. If you are working in the mobile app or game niche, try it out because it has plenty of mobile-based offers.

14. AdCombo

If you want to stay away from the extra hassle and focus only on promoting your offers, then AdCombo can be your first choice as it has simplified every for you. In addition, you will fall in love with its user-friendly affiliate dashboard, friendly affiliate managers, learning materials, lead tracking system, and so on.

15. AdsMain 

AdsMain is a rising CPA network with excellent experience and support. This new network quickly gained much reputation and became among the top CPA networks of many lists. So maybe you will find this network roaming around you while you are in the US and Europe’s affiliate events.

16. CPAGrip (Join For Free)

It may sound boring to you as you have read this term many times in this article, but this is another newbie-friendly Cost Per Action network with a straightforward process to access and get their offers. In addition, you can promote its offers in various ways, such as content lock, URL lock, virtual currency, and so more.

17. MGcash

It’s a pretty new CPA network with a good reputation but an average amount of offers. Honestly, its UI and UX have much room to improve and make this network more flexible for the newbies.

18. Adludum

Adludum is another good CPA network that mainly focuses on the Content locking revenue model. This network works better for writers, creative designers, video makers, artists, etc. than marketers. So, if you want to monetize your content with any traffic from all over the world, then give it a try to this network.

19. Admitad

Admitad is a very young, successful, and fast-growing CPA Affiliate Network based in Germany, but they also hold seven other offices worldwide.

This company offers an excellent support team; they assign a dedicated account manager for each publisher, which is fantastic.

Admitad has developed a vast affiliate network with more than 540,000 active publishers. Their campaigns include offers such as  E-commerce, online games, mobile, and services.

20. ToroAdvertising

TORO Advertising is a performance-based affiliate network with 1000+ exclusive offers. They offer rich media ads, which are the future of advertising. Publishers get on-time payments, and the support is fast. TORO Ad Network uses HasOffers, EPOM, Mobile App Tracking, and AppsFlyer to track the campaigns. With various payment options and less minimum payout, the TORO Advertising network should be a good choice for your traffic.

Other mentions: MyLead.pl [Review here], Advidi, RevenueAds, CoinZilla.

If you know enough about CPA marketing, check the best 21 affiliate marketing networks, as many have CPA offers.

7. What is the Best CPA Network for Beginners?

Are you done with all the best CPA networks I have listed above? You must choose the best one that suits your traffic source and taste.

I tried my best to list all the great CPA affiliate networks in this world—still missing some great networks? Then please suggest me the name in the comment section. You are also most welcome to share your experience with any CPA network you have worked with or previously with.

There is an important reason you should start with the CPA network that I have recommended for beginners. For example, MaxBounty has traffic and promotion method restrictions on its offers.

Such as some offers can’t be promoted on free giveaway sites, some offer promotion activities can’t contain “Free,” “Win,” “Claim,” etc., words, and so more. After breaking these restriction rules constantly, you may get banned with your all-earned money.

On the other, hand CPALead has no traffic or promotion method restriction for its offers. Therefore, you can use any kind of traffic and use any word while promoting its offers. This is the reason why I marked a Tag beside those CPA networks.

Here is the inside look of the CPA offer dashboard of some top CPA networks I work with.

Also, I want to share some trending communities of CPA marketers that can help you stay updated with the CPA world’s latest events and increase your skill. Some of those communities are Top Gold Forum, Warrior Forum, CPA Hero, CPA Elites.

8. How To Get Instant approval in Any CPA Network?

Most newbies face this first problem with getting approval in top CPA networks. So, here is my recommendation for this problem;

If you are a newbie in the CPA network world, then don’t apply for the world’s top leading CPA networks such as MaxBounty or Peerfly. These networks will approve your account after the interview that they will conduct via mobile call. Besides, these networks require your previous experience and have tough and fast rules about offer promotions.

So, what should you do?

It’s better to start with a newbie-friendly CPA network.

9. How much can you make with these CPA networks?

It depends on your skill and experience in offering a promotion. Some expert CPA marketers are making $3,000+ per day with these newbie-friendly CPA affiliate networks.

Here are some newbie-friendly and reliable CPA networks to get instant approval. I need to say that I don’t sit with just one CPA network. Get your account approved to at least 3 CPA networks so that you can compare the quality of offers, CPA rate, conversion rate, etc., which will help you in the long run.

Here goes the list for you:

Firstly apply in 2-3 CPA networks for publishers/affiliate accounts and gain experience working in the CPA industry. Then you may start with leading CPA affiliate networks for higher achievement.

Here goes the step-by-step process to apply in CPA networks (both newbie-friendly and top leading) and to get fast approval:

Let’s start with AdWorkMedia and CPALead, which are suitable. Below you can see the screenshot of the sign-up form. In almost all CPA networks, you need to provide nearly the same information while applying for a publisher/affiliate account.

Most CPA networks require your own established website or blog via which you will promote CPA offers. However, you can also promote other sites and media.

Maybe some of you are stuck at this point only because you don’t have an established website. Don’t worry, my friend, CPALead doesn’t require any website 😀 . So get started with it. If you have a good website, you are highly recommended to apply for AdworkMedia.

Step 1:

Go to the signup page of AdWorkMedia and CPALead and fill up your name and other personal information. If possible, I recommend you provide a professional email hosted on your domain (for example, stephan@monetize.info) because it will increase the chance of getting approved. If you don’t have any, proceed with your regular Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Email.

Step 2:

Filling up the promotional method part of the signup form is very important to get approved.

Here are some quick tips to fill up this part:

• Choose either website or PPC as the promotional method. If you can, choose both of them (if the option is available).
• Don’t try to lie by providing others’ websites as your promotion source; you may be caught.
• Always choose “Incentive” as the type of traffic.
• You can add these promotional methods in the description: PPC campaigns, Facebook ads, Promotion via content, Promotion via SEO, and Promotion via Display networks.

Step 3: (Only For Top CPA Networks)

After pressing the “Submit Application” button, you are done for the newbie-friendly CPA networks but not for the top networks that approve accounts after a mobile phone interview. Instead, just after applying for an account, they will email you telling you that they will send you a confirmation mail after reviewing your application.

In the case of the top CPA network, don’t just sit idly on your chair. You need to contact your affiliate manager as soon as possible (you will get information about your affiliate manager in the first Email after applying).

Here are the best ways to contact your affiliate manager:

• Firstly, try to make a phone call on your mobile.
• If that’s not possible, then buy some Skype credit and call your affiliate manager’s mobile number.
• If you can’t do that, send an Email or a Skype message saying that you just applied for a publisher account and are ready for the phone interview.

This simple approach will give a positive impression about you in front of your affiliate manager. Besides, it shows that you are highly interested and very serious about this publisher account, which is a positive sign to get fast approval.

10. How To Promote CPA Offers?

There are 100+ ways to promote CPA offers to make a profit.

#1. Promote CPA offers via Facebook

Facebook is known as the ocean of traffic as it gets more than 1 billion unique visitors daily. So here go the effective formulas to promote CPA offers on Facebook.

Remember, in the case of Facebook, you need to cover up your CPA offer link in the second method or write a post on your blog.

Firstly, research and select some pages related to your chosen CPA offer. Then, make a real, trustworthy comment with a strong CTA (Call to Action) so that people will click on your provided link. To leverage the whole process, you can ask your friend to give likes on your comment, making you more authentic.

Watch the below image as an example:

You can get laser-targeted traffic by doing a little more in-depth work, such as sending private messages. However, you need to keep in mind that you need to be more conscious and strategic in this case.

Visit pages related to your CPA offer, read comments on each post, find someone who has a problem, and ask for help (your CPA offer must be able to solve the problem).

Remember to mention their name and say how you found them while sending a private message. You can also start a conversation with Hi, Hello, What’s up, etc. Then come to your main point. Finally, ensure you get a replay from the other side, decreasing your chances of being a spammer on Facebook.

Check the image below as an example:

In both cases, you need to be careful and stay safe. Don’t make too many comments quickly; neither send too many private messages. Keep a gap of at least 30 minutes between your comments and privates messages. It’s better not to do more than five daily comments and private messages.

#2. Twitter CPA offer Promotion

Twitter is not as hard as Facebook in the case of links. So, you can just cover/shorten your CPA affiliate link using bit.ly and promote it on Twitter. Surprisingly, shorten links get more clicks on Twitter, according to several pieces of research.

It’s better to start your Twitter marketing from hashtag research for the best result. For that, visit hashtag analyzing tools such as hashtags.org and type any keyword related to your CPA offer.

For example, I typed “amazon” as several CPA offers are related to amazon gift cards and deals. After pressing the search button, you will get recent tweets that include #amazon and other related tags. So select some tags and get ready for your main work.

Your job is to make tweets, including hashtags that you have selected.

Besides tweeting, you can also move to a personal approach, just like Facebook. For this, search on Twitter by your keyword and see if anyone is asking for help that can end up with your CPA offer/product as the solution.

If you think you can provide a solution and make some bucks only, send a direct message to them by describing the solution.

#3. Promote CPA offers on Pinterest

Pinterest marketing is easy, engaging, and fun. But, most amazingly, researchers found that the average sales from Pinterest traffic are higher than Facebook traffic, which is a clear sign of getting a higher conversion rate from your CPA offers.

In this case, writing a post about your selected CPA offer will be better and then driving traffic from Pinterest. On the other hand, you can also use shortened links.

#4. Youtube CPA Marketing

Some CPA marketers are on fire just because of massive traffic from Youtube. If you are good at video making and editing, forget about all other methods and focus on making high-quality videos.

I know some CPA marketers making $10,000+ every month only via Youtube video marketing.

Don’t worry if you are a newbie and don’t know how to make videos. You can make a slide presentation in MS Powerpoint and record the presentation as video using any screen recorder like CamStudio, Ice-cream Screen recorder, Camtasia, etc. Don’t make videos for the sake of making videos. Make videos to get action from people.

We wrote a complete guide on promoting CPA offers and affiliate marketing programs using Youtube and videos.

In a rush? Check the short version below.

#5. Promote via Reddit

If you are new to Reddit, it’s better to avoid this section. The good news is you can get thousands of traffic from Reddit within a couple of hours if your post hits the top position.

The bad news is the Reddit community hates marketers. So if you are willing to promote your CPA affiliate links or offers on Reddit, you must be very careful and strategic.

#6. Forum Marketing

Many people misunderstood forum marketing and ended up getting banned. Posting the link in any forum post or reply is not forum marketing. First, you need to know the ultimate aim of forums. Remember that admins create discussion forums to build a community and help each other, not promote products and services. Signature-enabled forums are best to get started.

I will not provide any list of forums because it depends on your CPA offer niche. So instead, find out some forums related to your selected CPA offer.

Here are a real-life example and explanation of forum marketing:

This is a thread in Warriorforum where a member asked a question that had attracted many replies. Suppose you notice carefully that the member expressed his expertise in CPA marketing in this thread. Then, right down in the signature part, he invited me to check out my CPA marketing-related guidelines. According to his saying, this single link only gave him lots of targeted traffic from this particular forum.

#7. Blog and Article marketing

Article marketing is pretty much the same as blog post promotion. Here I’m showing you how to create an affiliate marketing blog. It will help if you use an affiliate marketing theme optimized for conversions.

If you don’t have your blog, you can signup for free blogging services like Medium.com, Wordpress.com, or Blogger.com.

Write articles that are somehow relevant to your chosen CPA offer. For example, you can write an article on the Clash of Clans mobile game and promote CPA offers related to the Clash of Clans game. Make sure your article title is attractive enough to grab people’s attention. Besides, add a strong call-to-action sentence or button to get the best out of it.

In the case of the above example, you can use “Grab Free COC Gems,” “Participate in COC Gems Giveaway,” etc., as CTA so that people will take action and you can make a handsome amount of bucks every month.

#8 Promote CPA offers via native advertising

Native advertising is an online marketing method using paid ads that match the website’s look and fit seamlessly into the surrounding content. This way, you can leverage the content and the credibility of publishers and increase your ads’ conversions.

Using native advertising networks like AdStyle, MGID, Outbrain, and Taboola, you can place CPA offers on websites like MSN, CNN, and other big publishers.

I’ve written a complete guide on native advertising that explains what native advertising is, the PROs and CONs, and how to leverage and are the best native advertising networks. Also, we show you some best practices you should follow to maximize your ROI.

11. How To Get Payment From CPA Networks?

Several payment methods are supported by tons of CPA networks. However, I found Paypal and Bank transfers very common among all the networks I have tried. Besides you can also get your payment via Skrill, Payoneer, Check, Western Union, etc.

I highly recommend you sign up for a Payoneer account with a virtual back account under Bank of America. You can use this bank account to get all your affiliate money.

I prefer Payoneer over Paypal because, with a Payoneer master card, I can get cash from ATMs in any corner of the world.

Conclusion

So here you have it: A complete guide on CPA marketing for beginners. Now it’s time to set your goal and start working. If you are still confused with any above topics, please do not hesitate to ask a question via the comment section. I will try my best to answer every question.

Still, have questions or things that you want to learn more about? I recommend you check the top 10 best CPA marketing courses and take one.

I’ve also written a detailed guide on CPA marketing for e-commerce business owners. You should give it a read if you are on the other part of the fence.