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CPA Marketing: Good Business For Beginners Or Not?

In this article, we’ll discuss whether CPA marketing is an ideal business to start for beginners or not.

We’ll cover the pros and cons of CPA marketing. And we’ll discuss alternative businesses that may be easier and less costly.

What is CPA Marketing?

CPA marketing is an acronym for Cost Per Action marketing.

It’s really similar to traditional affiliate marketing, but with one distinct difference. And that main difference is you can earn commissions from actions that don’t require a sale.

For example, with traditional affiliate marketing, you only earn commissions if someone you refer buys the product. But, with CPA affiliate marketing, you can earn commissions if someone simply enters their email address.

The actions you can get paid for will be determined by the advertiser or product owner.

Those actions can range from entering an email, entering a zip code, installing a mobile app, purchasing a COD (cash on delivery) product, signing up for a free account, etc.

The Pros of CPA Marketing

Potentially Easier To Make Conversions

It can sometimes be easier to make money with CPA affiliate marketing.

And that’s because you don’t have to make an actual sale. Instead, you can earn commissions with low-barrier actions like email or zip submits.

Again, it’ll depend on what action is required by the product owner or advertiser.

Wide Range of Offers

There are tons and tons of CPA offers that you can promote.

You can find an offer that solves the need of your target audience by simply searching on Offervault.

No Product Creation

You also don’t need any product creation skills.

You simply promote the existing offers of other businesses.

This can be beneficial especially if product creation isn’t your strong suit. Or you simply don’t have the time or energy to create a good product.

This also means less headaches. No dealing with customer service, tech issues, fulfillment, etc.

The Cons of CPA Marketing

Low Commissions

If you’re looking at this from just an earnings per commission stand point then commissions can be low.

Because you’re not providing paying customers, businesses will pay you lower commissions. For example, you can expect to earn around $1.00 per email submit. 

This means in order to make bigger money you’ll need to rely on scaling things up and getting a lot of conversions.

Offer Restrictions 

Because you’re not referring paying customers there are more rules to follow.

After all, every business wants to be sure you’re sending them high-quality leads. Each offer may only approve leads from specific countries, devices, traffic sources, etc.

Also, there may be an initial limit on how many leads you can refer to each day. This is referred to as a daily cap.

Also, your affiliate manager and the advertiser may check in time-to-time to determine the quality of your leads. They’ll likely go over whether your leads are hitting certain KPIs (key performance indicators).

For example, they may check to see if 70% of your leads played their mobile game on day 1. Then they may check if 40% of your leads played on day 4.

KPIs will vary, but that’s an example. So you’ll have to make sure you understand the KPIs beforehand, and have your campaign revolve around hitting them.

Now, if your leads are not hitting the KPIs and are low-quality, you may be banned from promoting the offer.

Approval Process 

Before you can promote CPA affiliate offers you’ll need to join a reputable CPA affiliate network.

Most networks have an approval process that’s more strict compared to traditional affiliate networks like Clickbank or Amazon Associates.

Again, they need to make sure that any affiliate that signs up has the skills to provide high-quality leads. And it’s also a measure to avoid fraud.

You can expect to do Skype interviews first to get approved. Also, some networks are invite-only and need a referral.

No Customer Base 

Most affiliates just arbitrage traffic to make money.

What this means simply is that affiliates simply find ways to pay for cheap clicks, which hopefully end up in higher earnings.

Now, it can be lucrative. But it will be short-term.

In other words, most affiliates don’t build up a customer list.

So, if an offer no longer converts profitably this campaign is over. If the advertiser doesn’t like the quality of his leads it’s over. 

Then the affiliate will have to start all over from scratch.

If you instead had a customer list you could’ve simply emailed them an offer and start again more easily from existing assets you’ve built up.

High Competition 

Affiliate marketing is getting big.

There are large conferences for it pretty much every quarter. And excited masses means bigger crowds and higher costs.

For example, mobile advertising was all the rage. Then native ads.

This increased the cost of advertising on those channels for everyone.

I’m not sure what the next trend will be. But I am sure that more and more people are looking into affiliate marketing.

And the costs will rise.

High Learning Curve 

For a beginner, CPA affiliate marketing has a high learning curve.

Sure, you don’t have to learn how to create a great product. But, you still must master salesmanship and direct response marketing.

And for the technical side you’ll need to know market research, offer research, code and landing page setup, tracking, campaign setup, scaling, split-testing.

There are a lot of moving parts. If you’re a beginner, it can get overwhelming.

And a lot of variables means a lot of things can go wrong.

Requires More Capital  

To actually scale things up and make a game-changing income you’ll need to do paid advertising.

If you don’t know what you’re doing you can lose thousands. Imagine spending $1,000 and not getting profitable. It happens. Even for the pros.

Again, there’s a big learning curve.

Is There A Better Business Than CPA Marketing For Beginners?

Affiliate marketing and CPA marketing is something I personally love a lot.

But it does takes a lifetime to master. It requires a big time commitment and bigger pockets.

For most beginners, I don’t think this is an ideal way to start. After all, the costs and all the moving variables involved can prove difficult for beginners.

That’s why I suggest beginners start off with something easier and with less risk. Something like Digital Flipping may be a better alternative.

What is Digital Flipping?

Digital Flipping works like this…

Imagine someone needs web design for $500. You’d then outsource that work cheaply to an expert for $100. Then you pocket the difference.

Small Learning Curve

With Digital Flipping, there’s no major learning curve.

After all you’re outsourcing all the work. So you don’t need to learn any new skills. Yet you can still make money in virtually any niche.

You just need to message buyers with the script I show you in the Digital Flipping free course.

Less Competition

With Digital Flipping, you’re not competing with thousands of other affiliates.

In fact, you can see the amount of competition you have with each deal.

Usually, it’s around 5 to 20 people. 50 people at most. This is far less than the hundreds of thousands of affiliates out there.

And I show you how to easily dominate competition with a winning proposal script.

Start With Low Capital 

With Digital Flipping, you can start with $21.00 or even less.

I show you how to outsource things for as low as $6.00. And you can message proven buyers for as little as $0.30.

Plus, you don’t even have to pay for outsourcers until the buyer has funded the project and it’s secured in escrow. So you’re virtually guaranteed to profit.

There’s also virtually no risk when compared to CPA marketing where you may spend hundreds without even getting a conversion.

Build Your Customer List

With Digital Flipping, you have access to all your customers.

You can message them and sell them more and more digital products or services. Which, of course, you’ll outsource as well.

Bigger Earnings Per Sale

With Digital Flipping, each deal can be worth hundreds of dollars or more.

In fact, my best month so far was $6,696.00 in May 2019. You can see this in the free Digital Flipping course.

This also means that flipping just one or two deals a month could lead to a decent $1,000 extra.

That’s much easier to accomplish than than getting 1,000 conversions at $1.00 each with CPA marketing.

In closing, affiliate marketing is a great way to earn money. In fact, I love and do CPA marketing. And I even offer a CPA marketing course.

But is it something I’d recommend to an absolute beginner? Probably not.

That’s why I recommend beginners build up experience and funds first with an easier business like Digital Flipping.

Then when you have some cash reserves, confidence, and experience… then consider more advanced businesses, like CPA marketing.