CPA Marketing for Beginners [Full 2020 Guide]
CPA Marketing for Beginners [Full 2020 Guide]

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, the difference between CPA marketing and affiliate marketing, 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 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 signing up, you can access an exclusive area to download all our premium resources.

When you become a highly skilled and experienced CPA marketer, you can earn five- to six-figure monthly incomes from CPA networks.

[novashare_tweet tweet=”A highly skilled and experienced #CPA marketer makes five and even six figures income from CPA networks every month. Find out how! @monetizeinfo” hide_hashtags=”true” theme=”simple-alt”]

Let me show you how.

What Is CPA Marketing?

CPA stands for Cost Per Action. It’s also called Pay Per Lead, or 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 out 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 to cash. Generally, you can make a $0.50 – $20 per CPA offer.

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

Doesn’t it sound amazing?

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

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 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 to the targeted online visitors as much as possible.

CPA Network Terminology

CPA network terminology isn’t complicated, but you should know critical terms before launching.

  • Advertiser and Publisher: Advertisers pay CPA networks to convert their offers. Publishers are people like you and me who promote the CPA network’s offers to make money.
  • Affiliate Manager: A person who manages a merchant’s affiliate program. They are responsible for recruiting, engaging with affiliates, and generating merchant revenue.
  • Category: The niche for which the CPA offer applies (sports, fashion, beauty, health, etc.).
  • Chargeback: When a sale “falls through” for an action an affiliate has already paid for. Since the sale was never finalized or the item was returned, the previously given commission is deducted back into the advertiser’s account.
  • Commission: An affiliate receives a flat rate or percentage payment once a successful conversion is tracked.
  • Contextual link: A text link placed within an affiliate website links to the advertiser’s website.
  • Conversion rate: The percentage rate at which a particular action is performed. In other words, the number of successful conversions is divided by the total traffic.
  • Cookies: In affiliate marketing, cookies assign a unique ID to a user who has clicked the affiliate link to an advertiser’s site for a specific duration. The affiliate will receive credit for the conversion in this predefined window, typically 30-90 days.
  • Cost per action (CPA) is an online advertising strategy that allows an advertiser to pay for a target customer’s specified action.
  • Conversion (in %): This is an essential indication of which offer to choose before starting your promotional activities. CPA offers with a high conversion rate are always preferable. Consider the previous example, where the offer got 500 clicks and 70 leads/actions. Here is the conversion rate of that offer (70/500)*100% = 14%.
  • County code: Almost 95% of CPA offers are county-targeted. Therefore, you must be careful when choosing an offer. For example, if you promote the US offers to the people of Australia, you will not get any payment. Some CPA networks categorized their recommendations based on county, and some mention the county code (US, UK, AU, BR, etc.) and the offers.
  • EPC: The full form of EPC is Earning Per Click. It does not mean that you will get money for bringing only clicks to your offers. Publishers earned the given EPC rate on average from every click. For example, a CPA offer of $2.50 got 500 clicks from 20 different publishers, and 70 clicks converted into leads. So, its EPC will be ($2.5*70)/500 = $0.35.
  • Incentive and non-Incentive: Here is another essential and probably less-known term of the CPA network. If you search the meaning of the “incentive” word, Google will reply with “a payment or concession to stimulate greater output or investment.”
  • Offer page: The webpage where the conversion occurs after a visitor takes the necessary action.
  • Offer type: CPA networks included offers of various types such as Pin submit, Email submit, Downloads, Survey, Installs, Mobile, Purchase, etc.
  • Payout/CPA rate: This is the money rate that the website will pay you to get every single lead/action for that particular CPA offer. So, look at the Payout/CPA rate before selecting your offer.
  • Return on investment (ROI) refers to the money made with a campaign. It is the revenue divided by the ad spend multiplied by 100.

In short, “incentive” refers to a digital bribe to get artificial actions/leads from people. In the case of incentive offers, you can allure people by giving them extra gifts, coupons, money, etc., to get action from them. On the other hand, these digital bribes are strictly prohibited in non-incentive offers.

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

CPA Marketing for Beginners PROs and CONs

Here are the CPA marketing PROs and CONs for publishers:

CPA Marketing PROs

  • Unlike affiliate marketing, you can get paid without generating sales.
  • Get high payments like $100 for a casino lead or a BTC exchange.
  • There are CPA offers in almost any niche you can think of.
  • You can start with a little to no investment upfront.

CPA Marketing CONs

  • As a beginner, getting accepted into top CPA networks isn’t easy.
  • Many of the best CPA offers are available only to 1st world countries like the US.
  • It’s a competitive arena, so you must be creative to make good money.

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

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 worldwide. Are we still missing some great networks? Then please suggest a 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.

Top 10 CPA networks in the world:

  1. MaxBounty (recommended for Experts)
  2. Peerfly (recommended for Experts)
  3. Adworkmedia (recommended for All)
  4. CPALead (recommended for beginners)
  5. Adscendmedia
  1. MGCash.com (recommended for beginners)
  2. Clickbooth
  3. ClickDealer
  4. CPAGrip (recommended for beginners)
  5. CPATrend

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.

For example, some offers can’t be promoted on free giveaway sites, and some offer promotion activities can’t contain the words “Free,” “Win,” “Claim,” etc. 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 promote its offers using any traffic and word. This is why I marked a Tag beside those CPA networks.

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

Above screen shot includes Maxbounty, CPALead and AdWorkMedia
The above screenshot includes Maxbounty, CPALead, and AdWorkMedia.

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 skills. Some of those communities are Top Gold Forum, Warrior Forum, CPA Hero, and Cand PA Elites.

How To Get Instant Approval in Any CPA Network?

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

If you are a newbie in the CPA network world, don’t apply for the world’s TOP leading CPA networks such as MaxBounty or Peerfly. After the interview, these networks will approve your account, which they will conduct via mobile call. Besides, these networks require your previous experience and have strict and fast rules about offering promotions.

So, what should you do?

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

How much can you make with these CPA networks?

It depends on your skill and experience in offering promotions. 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 to compare the quality of offers, CPA rate, conversion rate, etc., which will help you in the long run.

Here is 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 signup form. In almost all CPA networks, you need to provide nearly the same information while applying for a publisher/affiliate account.

CPALead Signup Form
CPALead Signup Form

Most CPA networks require an established website or blog through which you 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 an excellent website, applying for AdworkMedia is highly recommended.

Step 1:

Go to AdWorkMedia and CPALead’s signup page and fill in your name and other personal information. If possible, I recommend you provide a professional email hosted on your domain (for example, [email protected]) because it will increase your chance of getting approved. If you don’t have one, proceed with your regular Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Email.

Step 2:

Filling out the promotional method part of the signup form is very important to get approval.

Here are some quick tips to fill up this part:

  • You can choose either a website or PPC as the promotional method. Select 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 to the description: PPC campaigns, Facebook ads, promotion via content, SEO, and 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, after applying for an account, you will receive an email telling them 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. (After applying, you will get information about your affiliate manager in the first Email.)

Here are the best ways to contact your affiliate manager:

  • Firstly, try to make a phone call on your mobile.
  • If that’s impossible, buy 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 your affiliate manager a positive impression of you. It also shows that you are highly interested in and very serious about this publisher account, which is a positive sign for getting fast approval.

How To Promote CPA Offers?

I’ve written a detailed guide on promoting CPA offers, as there are 100+ ways to promote CPA offers to make a profit.

CPA offers promoting strategies:

  • Sharing on relevant groups and communities in various social networks like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. (I got my first ever CPA lead via sharing a CPA link in Google+, which enhanced my confidence to start a new project on it)
  • You can convert videos and get leads via video marketing on various platforms such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc.
  • You can write high-quality content and promote the content via other blogs, Web 2.0 sites, and article directories.
  • If you have a blog that matches any CPA network offers, you can use your blog to get conversion/action and make money.
  • You can also build an email list to get high-quality leads. In this case, I recommend GetResponse because of its high-quality service and affordability.
  • You can create a new site based on any CPA offer and rank it to get unlimited CPA leads. I am doing this for myself.
  • You can buy banner ads and spread your CPA offers without having your site.
  • Running Facebook ad campaigns and PPC campaigns will also result in significant profits from CPA offers.

How To Get Payment From CPA Networks?

Many CPA networks support several payment methods. However, PayPal and Bank transfers are widespread among all the networks I have tried. You can also get paid 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 withdraw cash from ATMs worldwide.

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 about any of the above topics, please do not hesitate to ask a question in the comment section. I will try my best to answer every question.

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

The Best CPA Marketing Courses
-> Read Our Top 10 Best CPA Marketing Courses

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

About Stephan Monetize.info

Stephan J is the founder of Monetize.info and is making a living exclusively online since 2004. He tried and managed to make good profits on everything from Forex trading, options, website flipping, adsense, affiliate websites.His passions are cycling, fitness and he is spending a small fortune on watches and fine cigars

39 comments

  1. how to promote adult cpa offers from crakrevenue?
    i tried to promote sweepstakes on facebook but after some days my account got disabled…

  2. Nice article, I like to add the question, answer method too.
    I suggest to join networks as maxbounty.com // mostcpa.com // peerfly.com
    and tried the all previous methods, I think this article is good guide for freemium methods.

  3. Very complete tutorial, thank you. I would suggest adding CPABuild and OGads network, especially for those who work with content locking. You can also add https://cpazip.com with various resources to learn CPA Marketing.
    Thank you

  4. Hi
    firstly, your site is just awesome
    and Its very helpful content about cpa marketing I really appreciate.
    After reading your all post, I got a good idea about cpa marketing. Thank you for your post and I will take 100% responsibility of my website http://www.cpazer.com

  5. Hey, thank you so much for your brilliant guide on CPA marketing. Before I was a but confused, but now I think I should definitely try CPA marketing.
    I have a question- Are Maxbounty and Click Bank providing approval in the Lock down period.

  6. Md. Suja Uddin Mia

    Hi, I have several questions on CPA marketing. Those are: (1) Can I use blog as a Landing Page? (2) Can I create more than one account in CPA networks? (3) Can I choose more than one CPA offer at a time in my account in a CPA network?

    • @Md. Suja sorry for taking quite long enough to answer your questions. Here there are:
      1. Sure you can use your blog as a landing page for CPA offers
      2. Most of the networks forbid that. You should keep your account in good shape to prevent get it banned by the networks
      3. Sure you can. It’s recommended to test more offers and see which one converts better for you.

      • how to make website based on CPA and how to promote
        for example i got paypal gift CPA now what to do with it . how to promote it to to get leads on google

  7. Muhammed Abdulsalam

    Since I was born till now that I am an adult, I have never read any article that is as detailed as this✊✊👏👏👉👉i am from Nigeria, I want you to help me in choosing best site that accept Nigerians. More so I am a newbie to this CPA

  8. Kenechukwu Nwisienyi

    Hi!
    Your write up on CPA is very detailed and self-explanatory. Please I would like to know the best CPA network that would be suitable for Nigerians. Thanks

  9. Great guide! Thank you for taking out the time to outline this properly.

    My question is this; I am a Nigerian and honestly want to promote CPA offers. Are Nigerians accepted in these CPA networks?

    Thank you for your prompt response.

  10. Hi,
    I most commend the energy you putted in writing this article, it really worth it. Very simple and safe explanatory, honestly, you made my day.
    Kudos.

    My question is this, does CPA Network organization allowed using of mobile phone or is it only computer system that’s allowed?

  11. such amazing post on CPA marketing. this article worth more than any courses.

  12. THANK YOU FOR THE DETAILED INFORMATION AND FOR THE EFFORTS

  13. hi, am real pleased with your detailed write up, can one succeed without a web site or blog?

  14. This is awesome information . Thank you very much. Please i need a paid advertising site that start with a minimum of $20 apart from Facebook . Thanks

  15. Thank you stephan am new to CPA and you realllllllly helped me with details and I don’t mind yourtutorship.. Thanks again for the energy and work put in this

  16. Nice Content!
    I have read your blog and I gathered some needful information from your blog. Keep updating your blog. Waiting for your next update.

  17. I registered in cpalead but my affiliate link for offers is always redirecting to other sites when I’m promoting them

    • Hello Louis,

      This means that you or your visitors do not qualify for that particular offer, so the website searches in the database for alternative offers you or your users will qualify. Doing this will ensure that the traffic you bring to the offer will not be lost if users do not qualify.

  18. I think cpalead is a scam I sent traffic to an offer but I wasn’t credited

  19. Which one is the best cpa network

  20. I have read your blog and I gathered some needful information from your blog.

  21. bro how to make website based on CPA.

  22. Hi can i ask you something about maxbounty

  23. I admire your piece of work, thanks for all the great content. Real Damascus Knive

  24. Thanks Stephen. Wonderful piece.

    My question is on cpa promotions via paid ads.

    With people using VPN everywhere how best can one guide against this and get real value on money spent on ads. Any particular and maybe cheap cpa promotion site to recommend?

  25. Thanks for the update

  26. Obrazy Galeria Online

    Your article was a pleasure to read. The information was well-presented and extremely useful.

  27. Excellent article! Your guide on CPA marketing for beginners is incredibly thorough and easy to follow. The step-by-step breakdown of how to start and succeed in CPA marketing is very helpful. I appreciate the practical tips and strategies you’ve shared, especially the emphasis on choosing the right offers and driving targeted traffic. Looking forward to implementing these insights and seeing positive results. Thanks for sharing!

  28. Thanks for this valuable info.

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