CPA is lucrative...but VERY HARD work

I'm in the same position as you...but starting to get a bit of traction in the CPA biz...

There are some seriously smart and generous people in this forum...they are successful and openly share some of their strategies with the "newbie tribe." Keep an eye out for them...

I recently purchased Kenster's WSO and it is a powerful education...look for it in the WSO forum...

Don't ever give up!

It doesn't matter if you're gaining or losing. I'm glad you lost money (yes I said that lol). It means you're actually doing something and now you can see/determine which routes are good for you. Keep up the good work!

I am not going to tell you that your wrong because you definitely are not. CPA and any form of IM is definitely hard work. However from what you said you were doing it sort of sounds to me like your ignoring the golden rule (my golden rule) "world smarter, not harder" work hard at the smart things that make a huge difference. I got exhausted just reading about what you are doing because everything you mentioned is all the stuff I hate doing haha.

Thanks guys! I actually have Kenster's WSO :-) It's an invaluable resource and his advices are definitely what keeps me motivated to keep going...

If you are using PPC I would say hard work is required because of all the testing involved etc..


smarter not harder is easily the best explanation for CPA. However, if you are new you can't push a button and make a full time income, you need to understand what works and what doesn't and that can take some WORK.

bujoi, you have just been in this a couple of weeks, so remember this - even though it's free traffic you STILL have to test and tweak your campaigns for maximum conversions. Perhaps your landing pages aren't converting, and maybe you're just selecting the wrong offers or the traffic isn't targeted enough for your offers? Don't just keep banging your head against the wall just because it's free traffic, you still need to test and track (just like with PPC) because if you don't, either your time (or money, if you use PPC) is going to go right out the window! Remember that time IS money, and you're trading time for money when you're using free traffic.

Hiya,

Bujoi- Do you mind if I ask how much traffic all that effort is generating?

Cheers,

Rhiannon

I agree, very hard work

CPA is just another monetizing model.

As with another other models (Adsense, products, affiliates marketing, etc), they all requires hard work.

I think of CPA like growing a forest from a field. Yes, sounds stupid but just go with it...

When you have a field, it seems like its impossible to turn that field into a forest. What you need to do is start planting seeds all over the place. At first, most of your seeds wont grow, there isnt enough shade, there arent enough nutrients, etc. You keep planting seeds. Most seeds are dead ends and dont turn into trees. Eventually you get a few seeds that happen to grow into small trees. You keep planting more seeds. Now the small trees that started growing provide shade and nutrients so now the new seeds you plant start growing better, as they have shade and nutrients from the small tree. You keep planting seeds. Now you these seeds grow even better than the last batch because there is plenty of shade and nutrients. You keep planting seeds, eventually it gets easier and easier to grow new trees and before you know it, your field turns into a forest. Things get exponentially easier.

What the heck is Kenster talking about?

Well this is like trying to make money online. At first, you try all kinds of things and nothing seems to bring in the dough. But if you forge through those hard times and keep taking action (planting new seeds), you will eventually start to see little things that work here and there (just like those first little seed sprouts). Now you keep building on those efforts and it gets easier to grow more and more income streams. Before you know it, your income streams and knowledge has built on each other and you are now making a ton of money. You put in the hard work in the beginning like those first seeds we planted. Things seemed impossible at first but you forged through and things started building off each other and now you have a forest of money!

Hopefully that analogy made at least some sense!


kenster

Kenster is right. CPA is the same with anything in IM...it takes hard work, knowledge, THINKING LIKE A CUSTOMER, and PERSISTENCE.

I'm trying PPV right now and spending around $75-$100 a day...and so far, I'm just losing it. But for now, that is ok. I don't expect to hit winners right away...but I know, I will. Sure, it may cost me initially, but I know once I hit on something, I can expand on it and the profit will follow.

Remember, it may feel like you are failing, failing, failing...

But you can't fail forever. ;-)

Good posts here. Just a word on articles and CPA. In my experience it is hit and miss. You can do all the keyword research in the world and some articles stick others don't. I have written 600 - 700 word articles with good keyword research and what I think, good content and haven't made a bean from them. Other articles I just "slapped" together are bringing me consistent income month after month and can be found splattered all over the Web on various blogs sometimes outranking the original article. Article marketing is probably the most industrious form of marketing but as Kenster says, they can be very lucrative if you just keep prodding away. Another thing I would like to add, is that from my experience almost without fail, I always manage to make a few bucks from Google trends.

Yes, the key is just persistence and not gettign discouraged. Yes, your first 99 articles may fail, but that 100th article may be a super hit. If you quit at 10, 30, or 50, youll never get to that 100 though.

Got to be in it to win it!

Thinking outside of the box is going to make a huge difference. If you're constantly doing what everybody else is doing, it might be hard. One of my biggest successes came after watching a video a few eyars back from one of the 'Gurus' and he was discussing one of his 'failed' campaigns and how sometimes no matter what you do, you can't get a positive ROI from a niche. I took that niche, did some odd things with it, and crushed it for over a year before tons of other people came in and killed the niche.

And you have to FINISH what you start. I see too many people who buy a course, only get through 1/2 of it, and then they buy another course. We almost get addicted to buying the next hot thing without implementing the stuff we previously learned.

Thanks Bujoi23 for bringing this issue of cpa. I tried it but I quit due to loosing money on ppc. Also to everyone that encourage newbies like us, thank you.

It helps to think of marketing this way - it's like learning to ride a bicycle, you'll probably fall a few times, get banged up and have some scrapes and injuries, but the majority of people persist and overcome the initial challenges that crop up, and suddenly after a while you can ride a bicycle easily without falling off! This is what I tell my coaching clients when they run into difficulties. After all, if it takes 4 years to get an university degree, do you really think that becoming an expert marketer is just a matter of flipping a light switch and instantly becoming an expert? It definitely won't take that long if you persist and don't give up, but the key is to be focused and keep trying until you get it, and don't get distracted by the latest "shiny object" (aka new method or tool that comes out) that you'll inevitably encounter! Once you "get" it, it'll become second nature and you won't even have to worry about what to do or how to do it anymore, again just like riding a bicycle!

One thing I've learned about starting any business: money does not come easy. I worked 18 hours a day when I was making 10$, and now I still work 18 hours a day to maintain what I've achieved.

I agree, this is the best part about internet marketing though...when you put in the work and learn how the system works, you can set up income streams that are completely auto pilot. This annuity is the greatest part about making money online.

So put in the work...this business is a lot easier in my opnion than starting a brick and mortar!

Hey Bujoi23, well much is covered here by many of the gurus in CPA-
But if you are a newbie to Internet Marketing you will first of all start by spending time on learning to earn money online. Don't do the same errors as I have done in the past.
I have spent a huge amount of money on PPC before I got the proper "education" and started to threat Internet Marketing as a business. You need to be willing to invest time and money to learn to earn. Hard Work, indeed, and if a program sounds like a Golden opportunity its probably to good to be true. Learn by mistakes done in the past from other members of this forum and don't do the same mistakes yourself. Stop signing up for programs, and stick to a niche and a marketing form until you learn the ways of doing that.

Don't give up.

Don't do PPC if you are not trained to do PPC.
Start with free marketing methods and find the best ways to work does methods by doing research on that given method.

Do your keyword research and be trained to do that research as good as possible.
Stay away from keywords which are over 5000 hits pr. month in Google Keyword tool as you will struggle to rank for keywords higher than that if you don't know what you are doing.
Article writing alone is not enough if it's not done in the right way. You need to keep in mind Search Engine Optimization while you do write you articles or your writing efforts will be equal to 0 visits or ZERO ROI.
Find a program where you have people in your upline willing to invest time in you, a program where your success is equal to their success.

CPA is hard to succeed with if that's the Internet Marketing method you start up with, as it's all about traffic and targeting marketing.

If you do PPC, you need to know find the way to spend as little as possible with the most in return, and when you drive traffic with PPC have you considered building a list of subscribers so you can do more marketing of other offers to them later on?

You can building a list with prepop campaigns with MaxBounty, as you know the money is in the list.

Hope some of this makes sense to you.

Too many newbioes try and learn the basics of internet and CPA marketing sing paid methods. This is such a costly error. Learn the basics using free methods and then once you have the basics down, then go on to play with the big boys in the paid advertising space.

Dont be fooled that free ad cheap methods cant make you a significant income though. They ABSOLUTELY can! Be smart and approach this as a business...mitigate risk and try and create sustainable income.

my 2 cents for what its worth

It is work, but compared to several jobs and careers out there, it isn't really that hard, I'd rather be doing it than construction or working in a steel mill

IMHO, I don't think doing PPC -> CPA is a good idea to start with. In fact, it's not that ideal to start with a paid method to promote CPA product, if we are new to the CPA business.

But if you must and if you still wanted to test things out, I would say that try to do that with PPV/CPV.

I am very new to the CPA business, and I am also very new to the cpv promotional method. If used correctly, this is a super cheap traffic source, and the ROI is much more higher.

But the thing is, we would need 'proper education' on cpv/ppv beforehand. Not every offers are suitable to be promoted in the cpv network.

You don't have to deal with landing page qualities in those cpv methods, you don't have to get quality scores problem.

So if you really wanted to test things out, I would suggest using the cpv method.

Remember I said that I am very new to the CPV/PPV -> CPA business? Yet, I was able to make a huge ROI within these 2 days.

I have literally used only around $2-3 to earn a net profit of $100+ !!!

That's how powerful the cpv method is, if using and testing and tracking it correctly ..

Hope this helps

Great posts on the work involved in online marketing or just marketing in general. If it was easy everyone would be doing it.
Just because you can start a form of online marketing everyday of the week does not stop the learning curve and preparation that is required to become successful.
Experience comes with time and effort and the rewards come later.
Learn something positive even from your financial losses.

I am new to CPA and I get all down sometimes too then I get another sale and while I am not rich from 1 sale I get happy haha.

Bujoi23, Aiden has brought up a very important point. With PPV and PPC, it is really important to track your campaigns down to the keyword level. Without doing this, you're almost guaranteed to lose your advertising money. There'll always be losing and winning keywords in your campaign, and the key to ultimate profitability is to drop all your losing keywords over time to maximize your profitability.

A few months ago when i first joined the forum, i was a complete noob with CPA.

My first method to conversions was 7SEARCH, it was alright, it allowed me to learn the ins and outs of PPC. I was able to get a good ROI but the volume was low so i decided to look around and found out MEDIA BUYS are a great way to get conversions.

Boy, i was missing out. Media buys are a perfects way to get fat commissions from free trial CPA offers. It didn't work out for me the first campaign i lost a few hundred from tweaking and testing but eventually, i got there.

I don't want to release my whole CPA method but let me tell you, media buys is where the money is for CPA.

I agree too. I started with Video Marketing a week ago and all i made so far was a couple of dollar, although I worked around 6-10 hours per day.
It's discouraging, but I'm also noticing that I'm learning a lot and that I get better at it, so I'm trying to motivate myself to keep working hard and hope it will pay back soon

Well, nothing is easy. If you could build muscle in a week, every man would be jacked and entering mr olympia!

If you could graduate a medicine degree in a week - you will have 1 gigantic bill in a week!

If Rome was built in a day...... Well, I don't have an answer to that one. But the point is it wasn't!

Glad you have taken action. It will be the only way to succeed. The first time I did cpa I did a bit of free traffic methods. Spent a couple of weeks marketing, promoting my websites and offers. I ended up gettin poor results, which lead me tomove on to different ventures and leave the campaigns I was doing.

I ended up checkin my cpa account a few months later and couldnt believe my eyes, I was pulling in $20-35 a day for over a month! That was autopilot from about 2days work, and vary little different traffic sources, for just one offer.

Eventually the traffic died out, but it proved to me that its possible and made me want to scale the offers and try and hit $50/day. I didnt follow up on it, however I started paid traffic and have had some good success and improving from my past mistakes/failures with every ppc campaign I launch. Pus many case studies on here have been educational and motivating.

Never give up! People online get caught up on this concept that the internet can make them thousand fold their initial investment. Show me a f500 company that has that kind of annual growth or market share growth. 20% roi to a big business is apretty good year. People online have unrealistic expectations! (apolovies if you fall into that category.

Anyway, I better wrap this up, I been typing off my mobile device, lol.

Here's a great article by ian fernando in regards to learning, losing money, gaining money:

Losing Money to Make Money is the Fun Part - Ian Fernando

hope this helps anyone, that might be stuck. Nothings easy, but never give up!

To your success

-Sretan.

I must disagree with this.
There is no any "secret method". You mentioned article marketing, video marketing and flyers...the same way i am doing most of my promotion...yet, i make money of it. Not a tens of thousands, but a very decent money so far. I am also doing SEO for my websites, which means quality content (all written by me) and guest posts, all together with encouring my visitors to share my content on a social networks and making an email lists.

What I can agree with you - there is a LOT of work to make money...but there is no any secret technique.

Stay on your path and don't give up. Learn on your own mistakes. Find a way for your articles and videos how to stand out from the crowd. It is hard, but it isn't impossible.

You need to learn how to optimize your campaigns. And once you have done so then you can start scaling upward.

Most things You do are failures but you need to go through the process of failing in order to find one thing that will help you earn much money per day.

What are your options for making money with Internet marketing? Essentially there is SEO, Offline and Paid Ads.

Over the past few years if you knew what you were doing, you could "game" the search engines with the purchase of backlinks, spun articles, etc. Now that Google has shut down all of this easy money, you have to work very hard to rank a site and keep it ranked. The idea that SEO is easier or cheaper should be banished from your mind.

The problem is that many people who cut their teeth on SEO do not appreciate the fact that paid advertising is a separate and completely different business.

Sure, you can carry over your site building skills and your knowledge of using keyword tools, but there are many more skills to learn.

The other thing is that paid ads cover a lot of territory, Some of you create landing pages for cpa networks. Others are doing banners, media buys, Facebook ads, etc. You could be doing article marketing or videos. I know some people who use offline advertising.

There are some serious analytics to learn and the proper use of tools to accomplish this.

Of course, you need to have a budget, the ability to test and lose money for awhile and a lot of patience. So many people will dip their toe in this business and leave a short time later. They will get easily discouraged.

Google has always complained that anyone who has business that is dependent on an organic placement in their search engine, really has no business at all. Well folks, this is a "real" business. It costs some money to get into a real business. In this case, a lot less than most others. Making a living wage is not unrealistic. I am not taking about becoming rich. I simply mean enough to live on with no limits on where it can go. Try starting or buying a business for a few thousand dollars that will let you do that.

You need to go through the process of failing in order to find that one thing to help you to be successfully.