• Thursday, October 28, 2010

    CPA Affiliate Marketing - Why Is It Better?

    By Carlton T. Driver

    Perhaps we should start by answering the question: "What is CPA Affiliate Marketing?". Actually, it's a pretty simple - and appealing - idea. It refers to an advertising strategy in which an affiliate gets paid a commission not for selling something, in most cases, but instead by sending a prospect to a company's website where they then complete a specified action. This action might be as simple as providing their name and email address, or perhaps some additional data on a form. Other actions might be agreeing to take a free trial for a product or service. The important thing is that the action required to capture a commission is not nearly ad difficult as persuading someone to buy something.

    The marketplace today is quite competitive, and a company needs lots of ad exposure to maintain a competitive posture. The key is to have exposure to the public that is widespread, and to maintain contact with as many possible customers as they can. By accomplishing this, a business establishes an audience for their marketing efforts, and then they can get down to the business at hand.

    CPA advertising is rapidly becoming one of the most desirable ways to advertise online. CPA (sometimes also known as PPA, or pay per action) sets up a situation in which the marketer earns a commission each time a visitor completes a particular action specified by the client company.

    The type of action that the prospective customer must take for the commission to be earned is specified by the company. In some cases, the action might be buying a trial product from the company, or accepting an introductory service for a limited time. Most often, it is something less complicated - filling out a form with their email address and name, or perhaps one with full address data. In other cases it might involve downloading some free software. In each case, the commission paid to the affiliate will be based on the action required.

    Once a CPA campaign is started, the company pays out the specified commission to the advertiser, or the CPA network with which it is working, each time a potential customer clicks on a particular link, and then takes the specific action defined by the specifications of the CPA campaign. In this way, advertising will be directed at attracting a specific kind of attention (and action) from its potential customers. It is not really about whether the customer made a purchase or not, but rather whether the potential customer has interacted with the website. It is really about how much attention the advertiser can garner for your company. Commissions are then paid based on those considerations.

    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.

    The affiliate participating in a CPA program, sees one major advantage over conventional sales affiliate marketing: In sales, the affiliate doesn't earn the commission until someone actually spends their money and buys something - (and then they have to worry about the possibility of returns). When an affiliate is running a CPA campaign, however, the barrier to be jumped to earn his or her commission is much lower: the prospect simply has to to be willing to provide the requested information, or download some free software, or accept the free trial offer, and the commission is earned and paid.

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