Fresh sales leads are the lifeblood of almost every business both on-line and in the real world. Only by generating new business can any company hope to expand and ultimately grow richer. In fact, new leads are so important to some companies that they will pay sales people and affiliates a handsome commission to generate them.

As an affiliate marketer, and website owner, you can earn a good steady passive income by generating leads for companies. The process of generating a new lead is referred to as CPA or “Cost Per Action” – the action here being to fill out a form and submit it.

Using CPA networks is a great is a great way to generate income from your website, and it couldn’t be simpler to set up. First of all, you need to join one of the 50 or so CPA networks that are currently doing the rounds. Just search Google and you’ll find them simply enough. Next, you have to get a suitable domain, use one of their custom landing pages and then, you guessed it drive some traffic to the site. And then… well that’s it basically, just wait for the money to roll in!

The biggest difference, however, between traditional affiliate marketing and using CPA networks is that you are not relying on the customer to buy anything. Because of this, most CPA schemes have significantly higher conversion rates than their affiliate counterparts. All that the visitor has to supply is their name and e-mail address and guess what..you get paid! I told you it was sweet! Remember, you are getting paid for the LEAD not the sale.

Commissions can actually be very good depending on the type of leads being generated. As you might imagine, a lead for a mortgage, or a credit card would pay very well because of the potential for future business, but you would be surprised to find out just how much you can actually earn from something relatively cheap like a ringtone.

Using CPA networks is very big business, and can be very lucrative for the right webmaster. To really make it successful, you need to drive high quality targeted traffic to your site, but that is no different from any other type of on-line venture. The main difference is that the conversion rates can be much higher than for other forms of internet marketing.