SEM 101: Beginners Guide to Cost Per Action Marketing

CPA stands for cost per action or cost per acquisition. This is a model where affiliates get paid for every single action that is taken as a direct result of their marketing strategies.

This is different from the traditional affiliate market as you don’t necessarily need to make a sale so as to get paid.

The payments from cost per action marketing are usually based on lead generation which includes submitting an email address or a phone number so as to get some free information or product.

This makes cost per action quite attractive to online workers and has thus necessitated cost per action networks to be a little stricter compared to the normal affiliate marketing network.

If you are a legit and honest person then don’t be scared to join these strict cost per action networks as they only want to get rid of all those scammers and spammers who would attempt to use these platforms.

Methods of Cost Per Action Promotion

There are numerous ways which you can use to promote your cost per action campaigns where some involve having your own website and others do not.

Cost per action marketing is very similar to all other forms of marketing and basically, all you need to do is to consider the product you want to market and where you can actually get a market that will be interested in either learning more about the product or purchasing it.

The following are some of the most popular cost per action promotional methods in the market at the moment:

1. Review Websites

These types of websites usually contain three or more products that are within a certain niche.

They will give the visitors a brief introduction about each product, a review of how each product is performing and then rate each product a star rating out of 5.

The products will be ranked in order from the best to the lowest and they will each contain a link to either a more personalized landing page or directly to the merchant.

2. Sales / Landing Page

This is usually a direct sales page and will contain a lot more information about the product it is promoting.

It will probably contain a very hard sales pitch that will work on getting the user to click through to the merchant instantly or at least sign up for the affiliate marketer’s email list.

Some sales pages attempt to do both but it has been proven to be more beneficial to just stick with one direct path through your landing page as having too many options can lead to you ultimately losing clicks.

3. Splash Page

This page usually has very little content and contains flashy graphics with some amazing punch headlines and copy that entice the user to give out their contact information or click through to the merchant.

The product information provided on these pages is usually very minimal and thus suitable for those products that need very little information or are currently trending and people already know about them.

If the product is still relatively new in the market please chose another avenue for marketing it that will allow you to give as much information about the product as possible.

4.      Quiz / Fun Landing Page

This is quite similar to the splash landing page but a lot simpler. They usually contain a question which will have two or more answers that can be clicked on through some huge buttons.

There are some pages that will use some sort of game to get the visitors to click through.

Visitors are not likely to revisit these types of pages but its main purpose is to get the visitor to click through when they are on that page.

Even though we have listed websites that are used in cost per action marketing, it isn’t a must for you to have your own website in order to do this kind of marketing.

You can use other methods such as emailing a list of contacts, posting on message boards, adding links to YouTube videos and even possibly regional/national TV or text-in ads in magazines once you have enough capital.

How to Get Accepted Into Cost Per Action Networks

When people hear that they have to apply to get into any cost per action network, the first question they ask is how do they get accepted?

The simple answer is that there is no clear way to guarantee acceptance but there are ways in which you can increase our chances of acceptance. The following steps will help you in this process:

1. Get Yourself a Website

Though there are some cost per action networks that will accept you without your own website, it is good to get yourself the best chance of success.

If you are an experienced marketer or a major publisher and you would wish to run the cost per action ads on your site then it can apply to your current domain.

The probability that you have will be having a number of smaller sites or even none is high and in this case, you will need to create a website that brands you as an online marketer and describes the areas that you work in.

Some good skills to include your experience working with SEO, PPC, email marketing or any other forms of marketing you may use.

2. Use an Email on Your Domain

Most cost per action networks will reject any applicant who uses a free email address such as Gmail because they are quite easy to set up and they cannot verify that you are the person who actually owns the website.

It is important to cave an email address with the following format ‘yourname@yourdomain.com’ and then use a redirect to rake the user to your actual email address which can be Gmail, Yahoo etc.

3. Be Open and Honest In All of Your Communications

This might probably get you rejected by some more selective cost per action networks, it is still really important that you remain honest.

When you lie about any aspect of your professionalism and it is discovered then it raises very many questions about your other details.

Cost per action networks will usually give you your own manager/rep who will give you extra support in the areas that you are lacking because they depend on your success to make money.

4. Be Proactive When Applying

Most cost per action networks will require having an interview with you either via instant message or on the phone before they can approve your application.

It may take the network a couple of days to contact you so it’s important that you take up the initiative to contact them if they have an IM contact or phone number available on their site.

This shows the cost per action network that you are serious about joining and they are more likely to recognize your name when they call you back if they could talk to you when you called them.

Being proactive has an added advantage in the sense that your details will be fresh in your mind and so if you get to have the interview immediately you call or IM the network then you can give relevant and correct information.

I hope that the information provided in this article was helpful to you. Thank you for taking the time to read this article.