How Affiliate Network CPA Offers Work
CPA stands for cost-per-action, which means that when an affiliate, or publisher, can get someone to click on an advertiser’s offer and take some kind of action, then the affiliate makes a commission.
The affiliate network CPA business model is very popular, especially among online marketers these days.
You may have heard the buzz around the Internet marketing industry about the unholy amounts of cash some people are generating from CPA offers – all from their own home and probably sitting in their underwear doing it as well!
Like with most things, CPA is not a new method for generating cash, infact, until recently it was known by another name; Pay Per Lead.
Many of the large affiliate networks have had Pay Per Lead offers since they began 5-10 years ago.
However, one major difference is that affiliate networks tend to pay much less (around $1) for every lead you generate compared to a CPA network.
However, the buzz word is now CPA, which stands for Cost Per Action, or just to confuse you even more, Cost Per Acquisition.
Essentially all of these three terms refer to the same thing with some subtle differences between them all.
Hopefully the names are quite self explanatory but we’ll just run through them quickly here.
Pay Per Lead, as you might expect involves generating leads for companies on the Internet.
Usually it involves getting the user to fill out a form such as for a mortgage quote, or in some way requesting more information from a company about a product or service.
In the past, these companies paid very little for the leads, often because they were promoting free offers and were simply trying to capture as many email addresses as possible on the hope they could make money from their list.
Cost Per Action offers are very similar, you are attempting to get the visitor to submit some information and in return you earn some money.
The type of information the companies ask for can vary from a simple ZIP code to full name, address, contact number and email.
Obviously the more information companies are asking for, the less people are going to fill out their forms, so they reward you with higher payments.
Such offers can range from ringtones to credit card applications and can pay between $0.20 and $10 per offer.
Pay Per Acquisition differs slightly in that the user is offered a free sample, in most cases of a physical product, they simply have to pay for the postage and packaging.
These offers pay out large amounts as it requires your visitor to have a credit card and be convinced enough to place the order – even though the offer is ‘free’.
You may notice that the shipping and handling fees are slightly (or in some cases, blatantly) inflated from what you would expect to pay, and just like eBay, the companies here are making the money on the S+H fee.
Pay Per Acquisition pays out very high amounts, ranging from $5 to $50 per completed offer.
This is mainly because by ordering a free sample, the visitor becomes a very hot lead to the company in question; they have demonstrated a high level of interest and they have shown that they have the means to buy more of their product if required.
Related Affiliate Marketing Posts :-
DandyID
Facebook
Friendfeed
Twitter
Digg
Stumbleupon
Meme
