In a world of acronyms, CPA has come to mean both Cost Per Action and Cost Per Acquisition. Many will have never heard of it before, and there is a good reason for that – those who have tapped into its potential, don’t want you to know about it.
So for the purposes of this article, I am going to assume you know nothing or little about it — let’s treat it as a very basic “what is and how to” lesson. If you do know about it, stay tuned though, because there are some recent developments that you almost certainly have not yet heard about.
Firstly, you have probably all seen those online advertisements where they ask you to enter some detail about yourself or where you live? Sometimes all you need to do is enter your zip code in order to be eligible for a great prize – whitegoods or electrical items. The cynics would have seen them and thought – too easy to be true, I won’t bother. The opportunists would have though “what the heck, gotta be in it to win it” – and entered the data requested. Which one are you?
Now understand though, I am not talking here about ‘opt in boxes’ where owners of websites are gathering your details in return for delivering a free report or newsletter. They are adding your contact details to their ‘list’ and they WILL be in touch!
The Advertisers
With CPA offers are genuine – the advertisements are designed for companies (the advertisers) who want to know about you as part of their demographic profiling. Sometimes they are just measuring the number of people who live at a certain zip code who is using the internet, or interesting in, say whitegoods. So that’s the ad that is offering you a tangible prize.
The Affiliate
But how did you get to that CPA advertisement? Well, you would have found it as a website advertisement, or followed a link from a search-engine PPC advertisement, like Google Adwords, which has been placed there by a marketer (the affiliate). The relatively simple act of having a member of the public click on their ad and fill in the form (the ‘action’), the marketer receives a payment.
The CPA Network
The middleman in all this is the CPA Network. These manage the logistics and payments part of the process. They liaise with the advertisers, design the ads, manage the prizes etc. They also approve marketers as their affiliates. There are several CPA Networks already, and with growing interest in this revenue source for marketers, they are growing in numbers.
There is an excellent, free, 24 page report available about CPA by the Arbitrage Conspiracy, and it sheds a lot more light on the whole process, including giving links to the various CPA Networks. The Arbitrage Conspiracy is a free resource as a prelude to them launching their own CPA Network. I recommend you grab it while its still available.
