Actually, what you may really be asking at this point is: What is CPA Affiliate Marketing? It’s really not too complicated. CPA Advertising refers to a strategy called “Cost Per Action” marketing. What actually happens is that an affiliate is paid a commission each time a person follows the link they have provided to the company’s website and takes some specified action. Typically, this might involve providing some sort of personal date (perhaps Name, email address, and Zip Code) into a registration form. Another example might be one in which the prospect must download a toolbar to their browser, or accept a free trial of a product.

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, companies need a lot of advertising exposure to remain competitive. The primary idea is to have widespread exposure and to have contact with a large group of potential customers. When this is accomplished, the audience for the business is established, and the marketing efforts can begin in earnest.

From the standpoint of a company, CPA advertising is a highly desirable way to market itself. It is very cost-effective, because they only pay for leads that occur when a prospective customer provides some contact information, or interacts with the company’s website in a particular way, thus creating a contact point between the company and the new prospect. Each time a new prospect completes this action, the affiliate who directed them to the page earns a commission.

The company itself must specify what kind of action it wants its potential customers to take. The action might, in a few cases, be buying a product or service from the company. More commonly, it might be filling in a particular form to gain access to information about the product or service offered by the company, or just registering with the company’s website. Depending on the action, the advertising costs (or commissions received by the affiliate) will vary.

When a CPA campaign is initiated, the business will pay out the agreed upon commission to the advertiser, or CPA affiliate, each time a prospect follows the link to the targeted website, and then goes on to complete the specified action or activity. By setting things up in this way, the business obtains a list of highly pre-qualified potential customers for its primary offerings. As many affiliate marketers already know – “it’s all in the list”, and these CPA programs are really all about helping a business to build a list of potential customers. Rather than being dependent on getting a prospect to actually buy something, all the affiliate has to do to earn a commission is to have them fulfill a much simpler (and less expensive) action.

By using CPA advertising, a company can enjoy unlimited amounts of traffic to its website, but it will only have to make payment when a desired action is completed by a potential customer. This is the new future of Internet marketing. It really amounts to paying for results, not just traffic – which may, or may not, bring actual business.

For the affiliate promoting this type of program, there is one huge advantage over conventional sales marketing: In sales marketing, the affiliate does not receive a commission unless someone spends money and buys something. For the affiliate who is running a CPA campaign, however, the obstacle to be overcome to earn his or her commission is much lower: all the prospect has to to is to agree to provide the requested information, or agree to accept a free trial offer, and the commission is earned.

To learn more about being a successful CPA affiliate affiliate, download the complete guide to CPA affiliate, which includes a ton of affiliate resource links that will help you get going quickly. This article, CPA Affiliate Marketing – How Is It Different? is available for free reprint.

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