Front End Offer Creation - an alternative way to market CPA

Hey guys... I sent a longer version of this out to my list tonight (yes, it was actually longer), I figured it might help some here. Might be common sense to many, but hopefully some get something out of it:


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I was thinking about what I could write tonight, and figured I would talk about what I'm getting into more and more these days, and that's becoming a CPA offer owner. There is a lot of reading here so I hope you get something out of it.

This is something I have been doing on the side to a private deal and it's had some decent success on a small scale thus far.

I want you to sit back and really look at a lot of the CPA offers out there. In particular, look at the ones that don't require a credit card. I'm talking lead gen offers, educational offers, financial offers, and e-mail/zip submits specifically.

What are all those offers really, at the end of the day? Well, they are pretty much all lead capture and list building systems. If you don't agree with me, I dare you to go fill out a few e-mail or zip submits and follow the back end process. Also, check your inbox, or if you're lucky, you're junk mail folder. See how many MORE e-mails you start getting every single day

Yes, list building is and always will be lucrative, and the more information you give when you fill out an offer like that, the more tailored the follow up offers to your inbox will be.


Take a look at well designed re-bill offers as well. The front page of most re-bills does NOT ask for a credit card. Typically, it says something like "see if you qualify by entering your information below". You then enter your info, click submit, it says "checking qualification status!".... don't worry, you'll qualify.... and then you are taken to a page that says something to the effect of:

"Congratulations, you qualify for Super Duper ****", at which time you are able to enter your credit card and get ripped in 30 days.

Do you see what these smart advertisers/offer owners have done which most people selling their own products don't do? What was the reason of putting the form on the first page without the credit card number field? Well, most people will enter their info to see if they "qualify" for the offer. Problem is, when some people get to the second page, if they read the terms and conditions they may not follow through with the purchase.

BUT, the advertiser/offer owner still has ALL the information the person submitted on the previous screen! You don't think that's valuable? If you don't, go fill out one of those offers on the front end, and use your real phone number. Many times you will get a call back at a later date to find out why you didn't get the free trial of ****. It's data mining and list building at it's best, and they do it for a reason. On top of that, they could sell the data as well. Fresh weight loss leads with that much info can be worth quite a bit.


Now what does this mean to you? How can you leverage this if you're just an affiliate starting out or with limited experience?


Well, you don't necessarily need to go to your CPA network and get an offer going to take advantage of this methodology. (In fact if you're starting out you can get burned doing that.)

You can use it to test streams of traffic. I always like to say to find the traffic first, then find a way to monetize it. So, for example....

You make an offer page that looks like an e-mail submit or survey for Justin Bieber. Most celebrity traffic is cheap so you can get clicks at a very low cost. You could say that a name and e-mail are required to join the Justin Bieber internet fan club.

After the person submits the info, they can be taken down a path of affiliate offers. If you are controlling the offers on the back end, you could make them all related to Justin Bieber. But, on each page of offers you keep mentioning something like "you're one step away from being part of the exclusive Justin Bieber fan club!"

Page #1 in your path could say... "Justin Bieber scored 121 on this IQ quiz, think you could beat him?" - send the person to an IQ Quiz offer.

Page #2 in your path could say... "How would your baby look if you and Justin Bieber hooked up?" - send them off to the Make My Baby offer.

At the end of the path, you could send them off to a Justin Bieber fan club site so they still get to go there if you wanted. Best of all you still have their e-mail for mailing later. I saw a great example today where they didn't take the e-mail, but they made the person do a survey. Anyway this was just an example, don't get caught up on the celebrity thing.


The possibilities are endless with this and the path can become very elaborate. This technique can work well with Hot Trends and Current Events as well. Again, find the traffic or traffic source, then match an offer to it. Ever think "I wish there was an offer to match with this current event"? Well, why can't there be? Might just take an extra step to connect the dots in their head.

Obviously I'm not covering the tracking aspects of this sort of system, but I just wanted to show you another side of the coin.

The good thing about this is that if you find a topic or a niche that is working well, and you can figure out your conversion rate and the most you can pay for the front end lead, then it's easy to take the offer to a CPA network since you have a lot of data backing you up. This makes it easier for your to continue to profit, and easier for the CPA network affiliates to market your offer when you give them traffic sources and creatives that are working. Now you can actually say you're an offer owner. =)

Much of the success of this method is in your ability to establish trust and create strong copy to lead the user through your path. Remember the more times you can get someone to take an action (submit email, click, say yes, fill out survey), the more likely they are to continue down your path.

Remember, think of the front end of an offer as just a lead capture system. I recently heard from someone that the very best way to build a list is to have a winning offer. Really read into that as it makes a lot of sense when it "clicks".

Thanks very much, and good luck!

Chad

ps: this can work really really well with job offers.