What is CPA Marketing (your guide to understanding CPA in depth)

 CPA is a very gigantic field, and it represents an important part of the larger field called affiliate marketing, and although there are no official statistics for its value, it can reach hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

At first you may think that this number is too big or exaggerated, but after you get to know what a good CPA is you will realize that it is a very reasonable number for such a large and dynamic field.

Note: This article is an episode of a series of articles in the Course of Making money from CPA , which on its homepage we talked about the field in general and how to get started with it, and in this article (which represents the first lesson) we will take you on a tour to learn about what is CPA from its various angles.

After reading this article you will be able to understand what CPA is from the point of view of publishers, advertisers, even CPA companies, and account managers.

You will also learn about the history and features of this field, and the most popular trends now, and we will attach to this article the most important terms that you will need throughout your journey to learn about the CPA field.

 

History of CPA Marketing

Affiliate marketing and CPA or CPA Marketing are very old, people have been using them since ages, and this is definitely because of their effectiveness in attracting profits for business owners and companies.

This effectiveness prompted some people to think about applying the principle electronically after the start of the Internet revolution, as there are many websites and stores that applied these concepts even as early as the nineties of the last century.

One of the most famous beginnings of this model is an online store for flowers and gifts called PC Flowers and Gifts, which was launched in 1989, and the affiliate program was introduced with the action being the purchase in exchange for a specific commission for the marketer or partner.

In just four years; That is, in 1993 the site was making millions of profits annually with a large network of marketers on the Internet, which exceeded 2500 marketers in the year 1995 and 2700 in the year 1998.

This unique experience has captured the admiration of many who began to imitate it and then develop it, and one of the biggest names that did this was the giant Amazon.

Amazon launched its own affiliate program in 1996, made it publicly available on the Internet for profit, and then circulated it in products other than books.

Thus, these two experiences have opened the door to a very large field of marketing, CPA, and the larger world of it, which is affiliate marketing.

There are many companies and business owners today who rely on it to attract profits and achieve marketing goals of all kinds.

In this article, we will review the terrible development of CPA, which responds quickly to any event or change, no matter how small, and this is what we have seen in the areas of mobile phones, and even the fields of new digital currencies.

CPA under the microscope

CPA Marketing contains many aspects and angles that can be seen and understood by studying it in depth, and in order to be a skilled marketer and succeed in this field, you have to understand them all.

The first angle: From the advertisers' point of view (business owners)

Advertisers want to achieve and even exceed their marketing goals, so instead of starting a cumbersome and costly marketing and promotion process, they prefer to hire professional CPA marketers.

If the business owner wants to consolidate his products or services in the minds of a particular category or segment, the CPA marketer will be able to achieve this with ease.

And if he wants customers to do a specific action, such as: download a PDF brochure, download an app, or make a phone call, the CPA marketer will get him the numbers he wants.

Even if his marketing goal is to collect the data of his potential customers or leads, the CPA marketer because of his experience in this niche will be able to convince customers to do this action.

Advertisers are all interested in you, as a marketer, achieving the desired results from you, and they may not care about anything other than this, because your results are what bring them profit.

 

But of course you should not destroy the reputation of this business with cheap or misleading marketing tactics just to achieve some short-term marketing results.

Perhaps the customer you bring or the result you achieve may have lost ten customers and lost confidence in the Brand because of misleading or cheap marketing tactics.

The second angle: From the point of view of the publishers (marketers)

We as CPA marketers usually work with two goals, the first is to profit of course, and the second is to apply marketing skills and use our experience to achieve results, yes that in itself is a lot of fun.

As for the point of profitability, CPA is one of the most profitable areas of e-marketing and affiliate marketing, as some professionals make fabulous sums of money from this field.

After entering the field and reading about the experiences and development of other marketers, you will find that some make tens of thousands of dollars per day, and regardless of this, many make at least $1,000 per day.

Therefore, CPA marketing is very tempting, and motivating to work and diligently, especially since the experience and development in it are similar to the assets, because it contributes to increasing the profits of the marketer.

The second goal is to enjoy the field that is achieved after a period of professionalism, as there is a drive that grows inside you to try to solve difficult problems and choose profitable complex offers just for fun.

Many of the CPA marketers I've read have this same hidden drive for tough offers and problems, and are constantly trying new techniques and approaches because the field has turned into a passion for them.

The third angle: From the point of view of CPA companies

The third and final party in this matter is the CPA companies themselves, as you know these companies act as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers in return for a portion of the commission that publishers receive.

And the CPA itself or the AM account manager really cares that the marketers or publishers achieve the results they want from them, because they depend on them for their profits, they take a part of your commission.

This is why an AM Account Manager is in place to help marketers achieve the best possible results by offering direct support and advice.

The most important terms you should know in CPA

There are many words and abbreviations in the field of CPA, which may confuse some, especially if they are at the beginning of their knowledge of the field, so we decided to collect the most important and most famous of these terms in what looks like a dictionary.

Understanding these terms will make it easier to read in-depth articles or talk to a professional, plus it will make you feel like you're making progress whenever you come across a term you know.

CPA: It expresses the field we are talking about, and it is an abbreviation of the term Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition.

The abbreviation CPA means the process of marketing offers, the completion of which requires the performance of a certain action from the user, whatever this act and whatever the marketing objective behind it.

The action can be as simple as entering your username or email, or as complex as performing multiple steps or paying the money.

CPS: This term is short for Cost Per Sale, also known as CPO or Cost Per Order, a form used in CPA, where the agreement is for the advertiser to give a specified commission to the publisher for each sale or order.

CPC: Cost Per Click is another model used in CPA, in which a publisher takes a commission for persuading visitors or customers to click on links or ads.

EPC: Earnings per Click, the amount a publisher earns per click on their affiliate link.

 

CPL: This is an acronym for Cost Per Lead, which is a model based on attracting potential customers whether by signing up for a site, forum, newsletter, etc., getting their data or filling out a survey.

CPI: This is an acronym for Cost Per Install, which is a very popular model in mobile offerings, where the publisher takes a commission for every app download to a potential customer's phone.

Creative: It is the affiliate link of each publisher, which is provided to you by the CPA company, and it can be a link, banner or email, depending on the offer you are marketing.

For example, if the offer you are marketing is related to car insurance, and the marketing is through a banner, then this banner will have a unique code for you, which is called Creative.

CPA Network: A CPA company that acts as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers, and the source of its profits is its percentage of the publishers' commission.

Offer Payout: The commission for each offer individually, which is credited to your account when the user performs the required action as per the offer.

Offer page: The offer page of the advertiser, to which the marketer is requested to send visitors to the page through his affiliate link.

Publisher ID: The number for each publisher within the CPA company.

Conversion: It is the conversion process that takes place, so that the marketer gets his commission, and it can be calculated in two ways; Counts conversions as single numbers, or as a percentage of total clicks.

Example: If you ran a marketing campaign and achieved 100 successful offers to implement the offer, then we say that you achieved 100 conversions. For the same example, if there are a thousand clicks made on your offer link, here the conversion rate is 10% (100/1000).

Chargeback: It means the process of deduction from the marketer's commission in the event that the conversions were unsuccessful or the sales were not made.

ROI: Return On Investment, an advertiser's term, expressing the ratio between the money an advertiser paid in a CPA marketing process to his or her net profit from the process.

It is also a term that belongs to you as a publisher in case you depend on paid ads, for example, if you make a sponsored ad on Facebook to promote a CPA offer, and this ad cost you $1,000, and you achieved conversions estimated at $1,500, here the ROI of this offer campaign is 50%.

That is, you get 50 percent return on every dollar you spent on the ad campaign promoting this offer.

Payment Threshold: In many CPA offers there is a certain value of commissions that the marketer or publisher must achieve in order to be able to withdraw his profits, and this value is called Payment Threshold or the minimum withdrawal of profits.

4 CPA Marketing Traits You Should Know

Each field has properties or characteristics that distinguish it from others, in the case of CPA there are four characteristics that describe it well, and they are:

1. CPA is a constantly evolving field

The field is closely related to business and business, so with any new market or new field we see that CPA has adopted it, and the offers for this field began to increase and spread.

Several years ago, with the beginning of the spread of mobile phones as an alternative to computers, we found a great boom in offers related to mobile phones and their applications, so that today this field has become a large, vital and attractive part of CPA.

And now we see dozens and hundreds of offers in the areas of digital currencies and various crypto-assets.

2. CPA is a very competitive field

With all these potential profits and multiple areas, there are hundreds and thousands of marketers competing with each other to achieve the best results, so working in CPA requires you to develop your information periodically.

 

And not only that, but you should also keep an eye on other marketers, especially the successful ones, to know their new techniques and strategies.

3. CPA is a lot of cheating

Like any field of make money from the Internet; CPA involves a lot of tricks and deception, which all three parties (advertisers, publishers and companies) do to deceive each other.

Therefore, in this article, we will later review some of the methods of this fraud so that you know them and do not fall into them in the future when you start working in this field.

4. The CPA success factor is how well you can think outside the box

We can sum up the most influential factor in your success as a CPA marketer in thinking outside the box, and promoting your offering in new ways that your visitors and target customers are not accustomed to before.

Although traditional methods are successful and may provide you reasonable profits, huge profits can only come from new and innovative ideas.

Most Popular CPA Trends

CPA Marketing is a constantly changing field. Every period you see that there are areas and rising trends, and that there are others that disappear from the offers, so every marketer must be aware of all these changes with their differences.

Usually, it is preferable for the marketer to start with one niche of offers in order to get to know the world of CPA, how exactly things work and then finally master it.

But after a period of work in the field, the marketer begins to work on several offers with each other, and the niche of each of them may be different from the others.

Among the most famous trends or niches in CPA at these times, are:

Health care products (especially weight loss and muscle development products and natural products).

Skin and hair care products.

makeup.

Courses and books for self-development and skills education.

Employment opportunities.

Insurances.

Offers of making money of all kinds and diversity. (Books, courses, investment opportunities, ……)

makeup.

Lottery offers.

Dating.

Download apps or games.

Video Games and Streaming.

Digital currencies and digital assets.

Of course, this is not the whole list of trends, but this is the most prominent of them in the recent period, which will certainly change in a matter of months.

Choosing the niche itself is a confusing process at first, because you must be very familiar with this niche in order to be able to convince the customer to perform the action you want.

Also considering that this niche is in great demand to provide you satisfactory profits, working in a niche that no one cares about will be very frustrating financially.

In the next lesson, we will talk in detail about how to choose a niche, about CPA offers and the difference between them, and we will answer all the questions that are on your mind right now.

How to Succeed in CPA: Traits of a Professional CPA Marketer

In CPA there are many variables that always arise, and with the increase in the number of marketers and the increase in competition, success and excellence in this field becomes more difficult and challenging.

So by looking at successful CPA marketers - both Arab and foreign - we find that they have common characteristics that we believe are the reason for their great success.

These features are:

1. They have a competitive advantage that other marketers do not have

Professional marketers always have an added advantage that sets them apart from all other marketers. This additional or unique advantage may be in their way of working, their understanding of business, or even their knowledge of what other marketers are doing.

And the easiest and most obvious way is usually that they can outperform other marketers at work by getting better results, and consistently getting the most commissions possible.

This comes from the marketer's ability to be creative and innovative in the advertising campaigns they launch in order to convince customers to actually take action.

Other ways are to have information about new innovative ways of advertising campaigns for other marketers and to develop and improve them to get better results, or to fully understand the market and business, which we will talk about in the next point.

2. Their understanding of the world of CPA Marketing and their ability to understand the business and marketing objectives behind the offers

A lot of novice or amateur marketers do just what is required of them without thinking about the purpose behind what they are doing, or effectively understanding the business they are working on.

Of course, these are the least successful and those with modest results and reasonable profits, but you will always find those with amazing results and profits who understand the field of CPA in depth.

As a marketer, you should follow their example in this matter, and try to link things together, in order to improve your campaigns as much as possible, and effectively achieve the marketing goals of the business.

It is easy to do this when you deal with the client's business and offers with the mentality that you are both the advertiser and the publisher, so that your campaigns will have practical and effective results.

3. Great ability to expand campaigns both horizontally and vertically

After the effective campaigns are found and implemented correctly... What is required now is the process of expanding these campaigns to attract the largest possible number of customers and actions, and thus increase profits.

Of course, the marketer can increase the budget of his campaigns in order to target more customers, but the results of this expansion are very limited compared to horizontal expansion.

Horizontal expansion is done by copying the campaign and launching it on a different traffic source, or by launching the campaigns in another country or a different geographic area than the one in which the campaign was recently launched.

4. Create mailing lists and collect customer data to retarget them later

In some offers, the marketing objective will be to collect the email of some people who are interested in the topic or niche of the offers, so instead of not using this valuable data you can keep it as a future investment.

For example, if you are marketing for programming courses, and the marketing goal is to collect email for people who are likely to participate in these courses.

By keeping them and creating mailing lists, you can target them with other course offers, and thus get profits easier.

These mailing lists may become a source of continuous income for you, especially if you work periodically In a niche, I collected a lot of email addresses for those interested in this niche.

5. Use the right tools

This is a very important point and that is why I deliberately closed this important part of our article on the most important characteristics of a professional CPA marketer.

In the digital world, tools mean a lot, and when we talk about marketing and profiting from CPA offers, tools are a vital and crucial component of your success as a marketer. It will save your time and effort, and above all it will make many vague matters clear to you.

Here is a list of the three basic tools you will need as a CPA Marketer:

 Good web hosting to run landing pages.

A good tool for designing professional landing pages.

A tool for analysis and tracking of advertising campaigns.

These three tools are indispensable, but they probably won't be the only ones you'll need. The need for other tools depends on the method of marketing and the source of visitors that you will rely on in marketing your CPA offers.

Note: As mentioned before; CPA marketing is a branch of affiliate marketing, so the same tools are used for both.

CPA Problems and Challenges (The Hidden Side of CPA)

I would be lying if I told you that the entire field of CPA is rosy, and that it does not have any problems at all, when like any other field or business it has some obstacles and challenges.

The most prominent problem and challenge that you probably know is the intense competition between marketers, the competitive environment for CPA is very harsh, and it puts great pressure on its employees.

That is why all CPA marketers should develop themselves periodically, and stay informed of the latest changes and innovations constantly.

The other notable problem is scams and scams, yes there is a lot of them in the field, which can come from all sides: advertisers, publishers, CPA companies or even account managers.

Let's start with publishers or marketers, it is possible for them to deceive CPA companies or advertisers by fetching fake actions or commissions.

Of course, this is totally unacceptable and unethical, as if you get caught you will be banned from the company and your name on the CPA blacklist.

It may also affect the publishers as a whole in the network, because the network will try to compensate for this amount by reducing the commissions of the rest of the moderators.

Because in this way the advertisers will pay money for nothing, these fake actions will not achieve any of their marketing goals, and therefore they waste their time and money.

Companies, too, may be scamming, by manipulating their tracking software, which calculates the verbs and leads each publisher generates.

Some fraudulent companies deliberately do not count some actions or leads in order to take their entire commission from the advertisers, thus inflating their profit.

Of course, publishers who are completely dependent on corporate tracking software will not notice this misappropriation of their commissions, which may even occur automatically.

Some companies use programs and codes to embezzle, for example, 10% of publishers' commissions, by not counting one out of every 10 actions or leads that are generated as profits in the marketer's account.

That's why we previously talked about CPA tracking and analysis, so you can compare your results with those of the company's tracking software, so you can be confident that you are not being deceived.

As for advertisers, they can deceive publishers and companies if the companies have a problem with the action detection pixel or the leads, so they get results that they don't pay for.

Cheating account managers is another matter, as although they can be of great help to you as a marketer, they can also do some fraud.

Few of them steal publishers' ideas and apply or even publish them, and share them to other people, which may harm you, of course, because the innovative method in which you got tired has become widely used on the Internet, and thus no longer gives the same results.

The reason for this is that some marketers may earn more than $100,000 per month through a network, while their account manager's salary is much lower, which may be tempting to copy your strategies.

So always keep your secrets and shared strategies and never share them with anyone.

Here are the links to all the CPA Profit Guide lessons:

What is CPA Marketing

CPA offers, types and how to choose the best ones

Best CPA Companies and How to Register and Accept them

Profitable Traffic Sources for Marketing CPA Offers

What is Content Locker and how to earn from it.