How To Learn CPA Marketing

Writer and entrepreneur Beau Bennett (not like a hockey player) once said that "affiliate marketing is what enabled millions of ordinary people to become millionaires." Thousands of bloggers and unknown entrepreneurs on the Internet boast of making $10,000, $15,000, or even $100,000 a month through affiliate programs. But is it possible?to earn such amounts and, most importantly, how?

Here's a small digression for those who are just delving into the topic. CPA marketing is a business strategy, one of several forms of affiliate promotion. An advertiser pays partners and advertising platforms for a specific activity rather than for showing ads (CPA stands for Cost Per Action). An action can be: a purchase, in this case, cost per sale (CPS), or app install (CPI), registration, filling out a feedback form, or adding an item to the cart. Payment can be fixed for a specific action (ranging from a few cents for registration to a couple of hundred bucks for a deposit in an online casino) or as a percentage of the order amount (on average, from 1 to 30% of the order).

Anyone can make money on CPA marketing. Simply sign up for an affiliate program or a CPA network and start promoting an affiliate brand or a specific product. Leads are confirmed when a client clicks on a link with an affiliate ID and enters an affiliate promo code. Or after transferring and validating the contact information of the collected target audience. At the same time, you do not need your own website or blog to promote products; you can do so through forums, social networks, or paid advertising (the latter method is also called traffic arbitrage).

However, you can put in the effort, write a great article, or run paid ads, and? still not make a dime. Customers ignore sponsored links or or click on them, but do not take the targeted action. The situation is even worse when an affiliate program rejects leads. According to reviews, most of those who want to make money on affiliate marketing face this.

Answering the question from the first paragraph: even for a newbie, it is possible to earn $1000 in the third or fourth month after starting. For bloggers with a multimillion audience, $100,000 is not the upper limit. Mistakes cannot be avoided, but they can be minimized by understanding the topic and learning CPA marketing before wasting time and money.

Step one - where to start?

When I started working with affiliate programs, there wasn't a lot of information on the net. More precisely, there was no complete picture, so it was necessary to collect advice and recommendations bit by bit. Other partners and affiliates were reluctant to share their secrets, and normal CPA networks with intelligible technical support capable of explaining everything in a popular way were as rare as hen's teeth. Fifteen years ago, there were no widespread and known things, such as social networks or YouTube, where you could promote a product while also finding information. I had to learn everything from the ground up. How to blog? How to launch and set up advertising? Where to buy traffic? How to make money on affiliate programs?

In 2021, information is literally in plain sight. You just need to take and study it. And you don't have to pay for the information. There are free channels like:

• video bloggers' tips. Life hacks for experienced marketers and full courses on affiliate marketing can be found on YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram;
• blogs dedicated to internet and affiliate marketing. There are both sites run by self-taught marketers and portals of Internet academies and even universities;
• CPA networks websites, or rather blogs, where relevant information, tips, instructions for newbies are published. For example, the LeadBit blog has a whole Affiliate Marketing School with step-by-step guides;
• books, okay, not entirely free, although some editions can be bought for a couple of bucks and even downloaded online for free. This is a specific source of knowledge, more often useful to those who are already familiar with the subject.

Where to begin?? I'd recommend you start with the basics and work your way up. Blogs make it easy to gain general knowledge about CPA marketing: terminology, work models, and promotion algorithms.? Firstly, bloggers generally provide the basics that are simple enough for anybody to comprehend, even for those who have only a passing knowledge of the subject. Secondly, when something is unclear, it is convenient to study the information thoughtfully.

Here are a few useful blogs for you: monetize, blog payoneer, partnerkin.com, easyaffiliate.com, blogmarketingacademy.com, neilpatel.com. Note that the last blog is built in a course format, which makes learning easier for beginners.

It is not necessary to read everything in one sitting or to go over every detail. Take your time and gradually learn new information.

Start with the basics. Go through a couple of introductory articles that will give you a general understanding of affiliate marketing. Then, to help you remember what you've learned, watch a video about the same subject. Yes, the information will be duplicated, but this is good since it allows you to visualize the acquired skills and understand? how CPA marketing works.

You can find a lot of useful videos, or rather a whole course on digital marketing on a YouTube channel iNinja, for beginners an introductory CPA marketing video. And you can find more educational content via YouTube search.

When you have a general idea, delve? more into affiliate marketing. Examine case studies, and the nuances of working with different verticals. Affiliate marketing school of LeadBit CPA network has detailed guides and niche instructions.

LeadBit Blog has hundreds of articles with guides and tips for CPA marketers

Useful CPA Marketing Books:

• The Complete Guide to Affiliate Marketing on the Web - Bruce Brown
• Affiliate Marketing for Beginners - Brian Conners;
• CPA Marketing: How CPA Marketing is Making Average People Millionaires - Jerry Shoemaker;
• Cost Per Action Marketing Formula: How To Do CPA Marketing - O. Eddy;
• Digital Marketing - Michael Branding;
• Affiliate Marketing: Proven Step By Step Guide To Make Passive Income With Affiliate Marketing - Mark Smith.

Other books on Marketing, Neuromarketing and Sales will be useful in the future. For example, Hooked (Nir Eyal), Purple Cow (Seth Godin).

Points to pay attention to while studying:

• analyze the algorithm that will enable you to profit. To put it simply, there are several important steps. First, you attract traffic (visitors) through paid advertising, or the posting of content on blogs or social networks. The traffic must then be sent to the advertiser's website (by making direct or indirect advertising of an affiliate product). When visitors (traffic) visit the advertiser's website and complete a required action, you get rewarded;
• channels to attract traffic. This can be a blog, a directory site, a YouTube channel, a profile or a group on social networks (primarily Instagram, Tik-Tok, Facebook).Pay attention? to the features of different channels in order to attract and build an audience's interest;
• features of setting up paid advertising with pay per clicks and impressions. Even if you use your personal blog to drive traffic, advertising allows you to attract additional audience and expand your reach in less than a week, while SEO promotion can take months. Also, you may make money with CPA marketing without having a website if you buy traffic and send customers who click on the banner to the advertiser's website directly or through a landing page;
• choice of niche or vertical. This is the segment in which you will be working. It can be finance (loans, bank cards, forex), gambling (online casinos, lotteries, poker), betting (sports betting), eCommerce (online stores), nutra (health and weight loss products), dating (adult and mainstream ), coupons, online courses. The marketing approach depends on the vertical and the methods of attraction. Of course, your blog or social media groups should correspond to the topic;
• marketing or sales proposal (marketing approaches). How to attract and interest the audience, how to prepare advertising materials (creatives), which advertising flows to use (for example, banner + landing page), advertising algorithms (AIDA, 5H, etc.). You can check cases and analyze specific niches.

CPA Marketing Courses

Nowadays, practically everything can be learned on your own, and CPA marketing is possibly one of the greatest examples. However, enrolling in classes might save you a lot of time. Of course, if your budget allows.

Courses can range in price from $7-10 and up to $100 per lesson. They can be specialized affiliate marketing programs or general digital and internet marketing courses.

Keep in mind, expensive does not always mean better. For example, digital marketing courses from Harvard, Stanford, or UCLA are available for free. However, you will have to study on your own using the provided materials.

You can find marketing courses on platforms such as Coursera and edX.

If you want to practice with a mentor, you have to pay. But choosing the most expensive courses is unnecessary, as most of them cover some Internet marketing topics. You won't need them, especially at the beginning. Therefore, choosing a narrow specialty in CPA marketing makes more sense.

You can complete the training online. Here are some of the best programs:

• the online university Udemy;?
• CPA marketing courses Bit Degree;
• a site collecting courses from universities and online academies coursera.org;
• affiliate marketing programs Skill Share;?
• Digital Marketing Course in BeetRoot Academy;
• free digital marketing course at school Google;
• free course on Digital Marketing Strategy in Kellogg School of Management;
• Marketing Analytics course in University of Berkeley;
• Free Digital Marketing Program University of Illinois.

You can find more courses by searching on Google, exploring the websites of universities and online schools, and through dedicated online education sites such as coursera.org, edx.org, digitaldefynd.com.

Tips for newbie partners

If you study on your own, make sure you practice what you've learned. Otherwise, all efforts will be in vain. If you're unsure, you don't have to start with traffic arbitrage. First, you can try advertising on your own blog, YouTube channel or through social networks and forums.

At first, it is better to choose offers with a simple action: registration or subscription to the newsletter. It’s easier to get results with this payment model.

Don't be afraid of failure, all successful marketers have gone through this. Many have wasted huge budgets with no profit. But you can prevent significant losses. Ad test runs at a low cost can help you determine if you are doing everything right or if something needs to be changed. You will learn to make more money as you gain expertise.

In any unclear situation, contact the affiliate program support service. Working with a CPA network (an intermediary between a brand and partners) interested in the success of both parties has more advantages for a newbie than working with a single company's internal affiliate program.

Let me tell you a secret, a CPA network receives a commission from every lead and willingly answers questions from registered members. For example, in LeadBit, you can get detailed advice on launching advertising campaigns through Google Ads, Facebook, as well as other popular traffic exchanges. And also you can get help in preparing creatives for different sites.

Companies' internal affiliate programs are intended to broaden their reach. They already benefit when you advertise a brand and it is seen by ordinary users. Most companies do not care about the success of a particular partner. One member of the affiliate program will not succeed, another will bring leads. The main thing is that the brand is heard. Therefore, intelligible help can be obtained in exceptional cases.

And one final admonition: CPA marketing cannot be learned once and for all. Trends are changing, as is the perception of the audience. Effective approaches stop working, new flows and creatives appear. Therefore, you will have to constantly learn, follow trends, and consult with colleagues. The best way to keep yourself in good shape is LeadBit blog. There we regularly publish case studies, analyze new tools and methods of working with verticals.