What is CPA Marketing All About?

CPA Marketing, which is short for Cost Per Action Marketing, is an online marketing method along the lines of Click Per View and Cost Per Click.

It works much like those online marketing methods, because CPA Marketing is based on triggering actions from website visitors to drive sales.

However, whereas CPV is geared towards getting website visitors to see an ad without having to click on it, and CPC is all about getting website visitors to click on an ad without further action, CPA requires its publishers to get their prospects to complete a specific action.

That is why it is called CPA or Cost Per Action, because the action that has to be completed by prospects can be anything from clicking on a landing page to be redirected to an offer, or to complete simple forms to opt for a product or survey.

The key here is the offer.

Cost per Click and Cost per View advertising commonly forward people directly to a product page on an ecommerce site, or to a rich media or content rich site that is being promoted by the advertiser.

An offer is a description of a product or service that is being extended to the prospect. The prospect then has the option to obtain what is being offered. The actions needed for the prospect to complete will greatly depend on what is being offered and the benefits they will receive from it.

For example, a survey offer will often require prospects to enter their email addresses to participate. Free online gaming offers will require them to simply click on a “play now” button to access a gaming page, where ads are shown between free gaming sessions.

Those are easy-access CPA offers that can be leveraged by publishers to make quick, steady money, as long as the offers they are promoting remain popular.

They are easy to promote, because they only require prospects to complete some simple steps that often lead them to get something for free, and they can be universally promoted.

On the other hand, there are offers that require a greater commitment from prospects, such as auto loan and credit offers. Those are the kinds of offers that will ask people for sensible information, such as zip codes, addresses and credit card information.

All those factors determine how much you’ll get as a commission for each acquisition.

Now, you might have noticed that we have mentioned “cost per action” and “cost per acquisition” without getting deeper into what they mean to you.

How does it work?

We’ve covered the most commonly used CPA jargon, so let’s recap and provide you with some of the CPA marketing process from start to finish, and your role in it based on your business activities, as well as the most used CPA terminology.

Thus far, you have learned that Cost-per-action, the name that we originally used to represent the CPA acronym, means that people reached by a CPA ad need to complete an action for it to be considered a success.

What this completed action leads to is payout. That means that the action determines its cost. Hence, the more complex an action is, the more it asks of the prospects and the longest it takes them to complete, and the more you get paid for it.

An alternative meaning for CPA is Cost-per-acquisition, because this time the CPA ad requires prospects not to only complete a specific action like a click, but to be “acquired” by the advertising company.

Once a prospect has entered their contact information, be it physical or electronic, it is considered an “acquisition”, and the publisher gets paid for it.

These completed actions and acquisitions are known as conversions. When you get a prospect seeing an ad, clicking on it and completing the action or data submit required, it is considered an acquisition.

If a prospect was to see an ad, click on it and not complete the required action, it is not considered a conversion. Conversions are why you are paid in CPA marketing, much like you get paid for clicks or views in CPC and CPV marketing.

How can you participate on it?
As you can see, depending on how committed you are to work on your CPA ads, and research the market for what you want to promote, you can definitely start raking in some good passive income quickly, but how can you take part in it?

To participate in CPA marketing and profit from it you first need to know the structure that makes up the CPA marketing ecosystem. It is shaped by three main elements: the network, the advertisers and the publishers.

The networks are the backbone. You won’t be able to find CPA offers to promote without the networks. CPA networks are the place where all CPA elements converge. There, advertisers and publishers can find each other to collaborate in online marketing business.

Advertisers are the providers of the offers. They are the ones that enter CPA networks to make their offers available to publishers interested in promoting them. They create offers around products they want to advertise, and they do so with the help of the publishers.

The publishers are the ones responsible of promoting CPA offers. They are the ones that get paid to spread the word of a product online. A publisher enters a CPA network and looks for the offers that he or she wants to work on and promote.

It applies to promote the offer, and, once he or she gets approval from the advertiser, they can start working on the means to be used in the promotion.

In your case, as an individual looking to make some good money online through passive means, you’ll be the publisher. Start checking around and working on what you need to start running your own online advertising venture!