When starting up an affiliate marketing program, finding a product or products to market is the biggest problem facing a new business. There are basically two different types of programs, mainstream and niche programs.

The Mainstream types require a mass marketing program, a background in marketing, financial investment to get a large program off the ground and the time to run it successfully. Mainstream programs usually need a large site, with 50-100 different types of products. Unless you can build your own site and know how to maintain it, you will be spending a lot of overhead for someone else to setup and run your site. Read More

I make money with affiliate programs for two years now. I earn with cost per sale affiliate programs. It means that I make a commissions whenever someone buy the product I’m promoting. I do not send my traffic directly to the merchant’s home page like many others do. I prefer to build my list because I earn more money this way.

Recently, I’ve been exposed to affiliate CPA networks, and I am going to start a full campaign with them to see how it goes. Actually, I already made some money via shareasale.com just by sending new associates to their sites.

It’s simple and it works.

What does CPA mean?

C = Cost
P = Per
A = Action

As you probably guessed, it means Cost Per Action. This model is awesome because you don’t need that your visitors buy anything. All they need to do is to fill the form on your landing page, and you get paid.

What is a CPA network?

A CPA network is a place where advertisers and affiliates can make business together.

So how can you make money with CPA affiliate networks?

Here is how I will do it, and I advise you to follow my steps to earn.

1. Register with two or three CPA networks.

This is easy and take just a few minutes.

2. Drive traffic to your CPA offer

The fastest way to drive traffic to your CPA offer is to use pay per click advertising. The only drawback to this is that you can lose a lot of money if you don’t know what you are doing.

If you are brand new to affiliate marketing, I would recommend that you start with less expensive methods like article marketing and search engine optimization. Once you make some commissions, reinvest in AdWords and Yahoo search marketing to explode your profits.

CPA networks are networks that bring together advertisers and publishers. The advertisers consist of many companies that sign up to advertise their products and services. The publisher can use various creatives to attract various prospects to complete advertisers’ offers. The offer can be anything from a zip code submit to signing up for a service. When the offer is completed, the publisher gets paid. Essentially, the CPA network connects the advertiser to the publisher. These CPA networks are free to join and once approved can be very profitable.

CPA networks have many offers, including some true exclusives. The advertising representatives work closely with their advertisers to optimize campaigns on a daily basis, creating the best converting offers available.

CPA affiliates get very high payouts depending on the CPA network. Their payouts range from a few dollars for an email submit to hundreds of dollars for a sale offer.

Since a lot of CPA networks offer some of the highest payouts in the industry, they focus on eCPM’s to ensure that CPA affiliates are always running the campaigns that will make them the most money.

With thousands of active affiliates on their networks, they have a wide range in earning potential. Affiliates earnings range from $100 per month all the way up to millions per month.

Some networks have a rewards program. They offer their affiliates giftcards and such based on their monthly earnings. Some even allow affiliates to rollover their rewards from month to month. They also offer double rewards points for their exclusive publishers.

Most networks have an affiliate referral program. Some offer their affiliates a flat fee for every new affiliate they refer along with a percentage of the new affiliates commission for life. Why do some ‘only’ offer small percentages for referring other publishers? The answer is simple. They offer the guaranteed highest payouts, and, unlike a lot of other networks, they actually stand by this guarantee. In order to maintain the highest payouts, they cannot offer more than a small percentage because they take extremely slim margins on these campaigns. In fact, they are only breaking even on many campaigns. Plus you’re actually doing your friend a favor by referring them to their program, a program they will actually use and isn’t that what it’s all about looking out for friends.

Their standard payment terms are net 15, though they do offer faster terms for their top affiliates. For their top earners they offer biweekly payments, as well as the option to be wired payments or receive ACH/direct deposit (depending on the company).

Some networks also offer biweekly payments for affiliates earning a minimum of $5,000 per week and weekly payments for affiliates earning a minimum of $10,000 per week.

Reasons why some CPA networks are top in the industry:

• Expert Affiliate Managers- Affiliate managers each specialize in a specific traffic type so they are industry experts
• Exclusive and AOR advertisers- Direct campaigns you can’t get anywhere else
• Top Quality = Top Payouts- Ability to leverage their publisher’s superior quality for the highest advertiser payouts
• In-House Design Team- In house designers allow them to offer unique creatives in any size
• Highest eCPMs- Make their affiliates the most money, and gives them the upperhand to outbid other publishers trying to compete in the same niche etc
• No caps- no worries
• Objective system- Affiliate specialists that only push proven offers that will make you money

Thanks to their relationships with their advertisers, CPA networks have the hottest offers available across every vertical. This offers all of the CPA affiliates the opportunity to be running the hottest offers in the industry, no matter what vertical they are interested in.

Many of the newest CPA networks are founded with the best interests of both their advertisers and affiliates in mind. They value their relationships with their advertisers and affiliates and built their network to serve their partners better than anyone else in the industry can. They truly value the relationships they have built up over the years with so many great people and companies across the globe.