CPA Affiliate Marketing - Commissions Without Selling
Perhaps we should start by answering the question: "What is CPA Affiliate Marketing?". Actually, it's a pretty simple - and appealing - idea. It refers to an advertising strategy in which an affiliate gets paid a commission not for selling something, in most cases, but instead by sending a prospect to a company's website where they then complete a specified action. This action might be as simple as providing their name and email address, or perhaps some additional data on a form. Other actions might be agreeing to take a free trial for a product or service. The important thing is that the action required to capture a commission is not nearly ad difficult as persuading someone to buy something.
The marketplace today is quite competitive, and a company needs lots of ad exposure to maintain a competitive posture. The key is to have exposure to the public that is widespread, and to maintain contact with as many possible customers as they can. By accomplishing this, a business establishes an audience for their marketing efforts, and then they can get down to the business at hand.
From the standpoint of a company, CPA advertising is a highly desirable way to market itself. It is very cost-effective, because they only pay for leads that occur when a prospective customer provides some contact information, or interacts with the company's website in a particular way, thus creating a contact point between the company and the new prospect. Each time a new prospect completes this action, the affiliate who directed them to the page earns a commission.
The company itself must specify what kind of action it wants its potential customers to take. The action might, in a few cases, be buying a product or service from the company. More commonly, it might be filling in a particular form to gain access to information about the product or service offered by the company, or just registering with the company's website. Depending on the action, the advertising costs (or commissions received by the affiliate) will vary.
When a CPA campaign is initiated, the business will pay out the agreed upon commission to the advertiser, or CPA affiliate, each time a prospect follows the link to the targeted website, and then goes on to complete the specified action or activity. By setting things up in this way, the business obtains a list of highly pre-qualified potential customers for its primary offerings. As many affiliate marketers already know - "it's all in the list", and these CPA programs are really all about helping a business to build a list of potential customers. Rather than being dependent on getting a prospect to actually buy something, all the affiliate has to do to earn a commission is to have them fulfill a much simpler (and less expensive) action.
By using CPA advertising, a company can enjoy unlimited amounts of traffic to its website, but it will only have to make payment when a desired action is completed by a potential customer. This is the new future of Internet marketing. It really amounts to paying for results, not just traffic - which may, or may not, bring actual business.
For the affiliate promoting this type of program, there is one huge advantage over conventional sales marketing: In sales marketing, the affiliate does not receive a commission unless someone spends money and buys something. For the affiliate who is running a CPA campaign, however, the obstacle to be overcome to earn his or her commission is much lower: all the prospect has to to is to agree to provide the requested information, or agree to accept a free trial offer, and the commission is earned.
To learn more about being a successful CPA affiliate affiliate, download the complete guide to CPA affiliate, which includes a ton of resource links that will help you launch your business quickly.