CPA vs Affiliate Marketing

14 years ago

CPA is affiliate marketing. You're the affiliate. You send traffic to the offer. They turn into a lead or whatever and you get a commision of fixed payout per conversion.

CPA just stands for Cost-Per-Action (or Acquisition) and although this term is thrown around a lot by those who get paid per lead instead of sale it really is the same no matter what. either the action is a sale or a lead and you are the affilaite who gets paid.

Does that make sense?

So i think the question you mean to ask is do you want to be an affiliate and push other people products/offers or do you want to create your own and have affiliates promote your products/offers.

Those are the two main business models online.

John

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Coach Borche

14 years ago

It depends how you are going to set up your system. I have seen people trying both and they fail big time. My advice is if you can find a subject/niche that you have some sort of experience, knowledge but most important if you like the niche, then i think you can make it. Dont promote products which you dont know nothing about just for the sake of money, because in few days you'll lose interest thus fail selling anything.

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DrewClement

14 years ago

In my experience, CPA is most beneficial for beginners that are looking to make quick cash using the methods that they are able to apply to their sites and/or business. Often times this is due to the fact that there is far less pre-selling to involve yourself with and less convincing the user to purchase anything as most CPA offers are free trials. or information submit options and so on.

However, for someone that is looking to benefit in the long term within a targeted niche or with a targeted website, affiliate marketing often proves to be far more beneficial. This is due to the fact that the products and offers are more stable, the offers will remain around for much longer, and there isnt as much need to change/convert/adapt to new offers or worry about losing an offer that you are marketing.

CPA will bring more action overall, affiliate marketing brings far more $ per action taken by your users. So in many ways it is a give and take, but I firmly believe marketing products and getting paid per sale is far more stable.

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Vikram73

14 years ago

This is the wrong way of looking at it. Let's say you have a wordpress site up around managing money. Then you use that site to promote CPA offers, you promote eBooks on eJunkie around managing your money smarter, you offer free content on your site to bring people back over and over again.

You do all of the above (Clickbank, eJunkie, CPA, freebies) & then some.

Don't box yourself in.

Trust me - I'm an Internet billionaire. Ok, I just made that up ;-)

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numba8

14 years ago

CPA marketing is affiliate marketing.

The idea is to get traffic. Get it through search, through a website, through email or anything. Just get traffic! CPA means you are paid-per-action like johnaxe explained. So, find a niche that you can have your traffic complete an action and vuala, you are making the online monies :-)

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Kenster

14 years ago

Yes, CPA Marketing IS a type of affiliate marketing.

For beginners, I personally think CPA is much more rewarding than traditional CPS affiliate marketing because generally speaking it is much easier to get somebody to perform an action than make a sale, so results are quicker.

With that said, the toughest part for beginners is getting traffic. Once traffic is established, then CPL trumps CPS in my opinion.

I just introduced a friend to CPA about 1 month ago and hes already making more with CPA than his day job. It takes much longer for some people but the potential to make a lot is there right from the get-go with CPA.

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williamrs

14 years ago

If you are just starting go with CPA and forget CPS by now. It's very easy for beginners to lose their motivation after a few campaigns without conversions, and it happens a lot with CPS. However, if you are working with offers that pay per lead it's much harder to get several clicks and no conversions.

Get started with simple offers, try email and short form submits, maybe mobile and downloads, too, but stay away from things that require a credit card. You will see conversions soon and then will be able to analyze your results and improve your campaigns

.

William

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Kenster

14 years ago

Originally Posted by williamrs

If you are just starting go with CPA and forget CPS by now. It's very easy for beginners to lose their motivation after a few campaigns without conversions, and it happens a lot with CPS. However, if you are working with offers that pay per lead it's much harder to get several clicks and no conversions.

Get started with simple offers, try email and short form submits, maybe mobile and downloads, too, but stay away from things that require a credit card. You will see conversions soon and then will be able to analyze your results and improve your campaigns

.

William

Agreed. Results are a lot quicker with CPA. Traditional affiliate marketing and CPS has its place in the industry of course, but CPA is where its at :p

Even if the results of your CPA marketing are small in the beginning (say $10 per day) at least its something...and that little something goes a long way in terms of motivation and drive to keep going forward and grow our businesses.

Ken

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cpabrainstormer 14 years ago

Uh-oh here we go again with this debate haha....

For all those of you who read the little debate that William and I had on the other thread, you guys know where we both stand on this. But what Ken and William said is 10000% true.

If you want to see results right away, go with CPA marketing. Like Ken said, there are people out there who are literally making money the day they start with CPA. And good money too! That doesn't mean that it is easy, but some people just catch on really quick and the potential to make really BIG money, very fast is always there with CPA marketing.

It is without question, much easier, in my opion anyways, for a newbie to get started with CPA marketing than with something like Clickbank where you are trying to promote info products. I, personally, have never had any success with traditional affiliate marketing. I tried promoting CB products for almost 6 months with little, to no, results.

I got into CPA marketing 6-12 months ago and I am now making a full-time income. It took me a lot of failures to get to this point, but I am definitely glad that I got into it!

So it really depends on a lot of things. If you know how to find those buyers out there, write really good copy, and drive ultra-targeted traffic, then you can have AMAZING success with generating sales.

But if you want something that (again, in my opinion) takes a lot less finesse, go with CPA. It can take a long time to really get going, but I truly believe this is where the big money is. But the only way to figure out what works for you is to get out there and try them both! Hope that helps though!

Best of Luck,

CPABrainstormer
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Carlsbadd

14 years ago

I like cpa because you can set up a campaign very quickly and test it. Direct linking or masked domain forwarding and then work on traffic to see if it converts.
Once you find a offer that converts you can put in the grunt work (creating a landing page, backlink, write articles, or a ppc campaign) to ramp it up.

I also like cpa because there is a lot of competition, that is a good thing because you can siphon off traffic that's already out there,

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junkdna

14 years ago

I have no experience with CPA or PPC or PPV, but I can tell you for sure that SEO requires much more work and time. And results with SEO are not that great at all.

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naruq 14 years ago

In my opinion you should do a combination of both CPA and Affiliate Marketing.
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- Kenster 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by naruq
  
  In my opinion you should do a combination of both CPA and Affiliate Marketing.
  
  You make a good point. Although I thnk CPA is better, particularly for news, there are ways to combine the two. For example, if you have a listbuilding CPA campaign, in addition to selling your list CPA offers, it may make sense depending on the demographic of the list.
  
  Or perhaps you are getting cheap clicks for a CPA offer but for some reason its not converting (maybe there isn't a good matching CPA offer for the traffic) so maybe you can find a good affiliate product to market to the traffic!
  
  There are ways the two can go hand in hand!
  
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xstrobex

14 years ago

I think CPA marketing is way better than your traditional clickbank affiliate marketing. Just because I find promoting CPA is easier. There's really no need to build a list, landing page etc. You can just direct link which is why I LOVE CPA

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Kenster

14 years ago

Originally Posted by xstrobex

I think CPA marketing is way better than your traditional clickbank affiliate marketing. Just because I find promoting CPA is easier. There's really no need to build a list, landing page etc. You can just direct link which is why I LOVE CPA

I love CPA too!

But listbuilding and landing page development is still a very critical part for many CPA strategies!!

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Jag82 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Kenster

But listbuilding and landing page development is still a very critical part for many CPA strategies!!

Absolutely.

If one wants to treat CPA as a real long term business
...then list building is absolutely critical.

You want to profit for life. Not just 1 time.

Always always build the list.

- Jag
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CharlesRivera

14 years ago

Originally Posted by xstrobex

I think CPA marketing is way better than your traditional clickbank affiliate marketing. Just because I find promoting CPA is easier. There's really no need to build a list, landing page etc. You can just direct link which is why I LOVE CPA

True, CPA does feel like there is more freedom to do with the direct links as you want. It doesn't consume a lot of time spent on list building and this can make it very ideal for newbies. Not to mention you don't have to sell anything you just give stuff away, and that makes it a whole lot easier to attract leads.

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InternetMarketer711

14 years ago

I think that both are great ways to generate income... and very solid income too..

However there is a barrier to entry for CPA offers... It was hard to get in when I started and it is harder still at the moment

So what I suggest for beginners is to start out at Clickbank, get use to promoting those simpler offers, then step up to combine both CPA offers together with Clickbank offers as some of them work well in tandem...

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psychobabble

14 years ago

I agree list building transforms CPA from a temporary investment into a longterm investment

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CPA vs Affiliate Marketing

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