How to Start CPA Marketing for Free – Guide for 2024

How to Start CPA Marketing for Free – The Beginners Guide

Welcome to this CPA Marketing Guide for Beginners by Webqo Blog.

Before starting, I want to inform you that CPA affiliate marketing is the best and quickest way to monetize. You can make a lot of money in record time. It just takes a small investment, but I guarantee you will start for free.

This post is like a crash course where you will learn how to start CPA or EPL affiliate marketing for free in 2024.

How to Start CPA Marketing for Free

Let's start with the basics first, and then I'll jump into the 3-step how-to tutorial.

What is CPA Marketing?

CPA marketing is a type of affiliate marketing in which you earn a commission for a specific action that a person takes. It's also known as pay-per-action (PPA), cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and cost-per-conversion (CPC) marketing.

CPA stands for cost per action, the cost a business owner pays you to complete an action or task.

The action may be anything like this:

• Filling out a form.
• Enter an email address.
• Buying something.
• Getting a quote.
• Subscribing to a newsletter.
• Downloading an app or software.
• Signing up for a trial.

And the list goes on. The action or task is usually the basis for revenue for any business. For example, a company paying you to get people to enter their email addresses is interested in:

• Talking to them about their products or services.
• Convincing them to buy their products or services.
• And ultimately making more sales.

CPA marketing is the most efficient way to monetize your traffic as a blogger, advertiser, or publisher. Why?

Let me explain why!

Why CPA: Top 5 Benefits of CPA Marketing

How to Start CPA Marketing for Free – The Beginners Guide

CPA marketing has more benefits than any other type of online marketing. Here are the top five reasons to start CPA marketing today:

Get Paid for Every Action

The biggest advantage of CPA marketing is that you get paid for every action a person takes. You get paid if someone fills out a form or enters their email address.

If someone buys something, you get paid. There is no risk, and you don't have to worry about making a sale.

Don't Worry About Conversion

With CPA marketing, you don't need to spend time converting a visitor into a customer for someone else. You're simply getting paid for an action that someone takes. The action required may be a sale!

But you don't necessarily need to worry about it. You send a person to a business who completes a task. Then, the business convinces him or her to buy.

Enjoy a High Return on Investment (ROI)

Don't worry; I'll walk you through a CPA marketing tutorial that will help you start for free. But then you'll eventually need to invest some money.

The good news is that CPA marketing has a very high ROI. It's one of the highest ROIs in any form of marketing. That means you can quickly return your investment and start making profits in no time.

You make money with CPA marketing, even with less traffic.

Scale Quickly and Make More Money

CPA marketing is highly scalable. You can quickly make more money by increasing your organic or paid traffic. Once you know the cost per action, scaling up your CPA marketing campaigns is easy.

Get Paid Over and Over Again Passively

With CPA marketing, you usually just get paid one time.

But if you do it right, you can get paid repeatedly. For example, if someone fills out a form or enters their email address, you can get paid for email, trial, and sale.

Some businesses offer recurring payments for their products or services, so you can get paid every month for the same action. You can generate passive income if you have a blog or website that consistently sends people to a business's site.

Do these reasons make you interested in CPA marketing? If yes, let's head to the top CPA marketing networks.

CPA Marketing Vs. Affiliate Marketing

CPA (Cost Per Action) marketing and affiliate marketing are closely related but have some key differences:

Payment Structure

• • CPA Marketing: In CPA marketing, affiliates are paid a commission when the referred customer completes a specific action. This action could be a purchase, a form submission, a download, or a predefined action.
  • Affiliate Marketing: In affiliate marketing, affiliates are typically paid a commission to drive traffic to the merchant's website and generate sales. The commission can be based on a percentage of the sale amount or a fixed amount per sale.

Risk and Reward

• • CPA Marketing: CPA marketing tends to offer more predictable earnings for affiliates since they are paid for a specific action, regardless of the ultimate value of the transaction. However, finding high-converting offers can be challenging.
  • Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing involves more uncertainty since affiliates earn commissions based on sales. While successful affiliates can earn significant income, they risk not making any money if their referrals don't convert into sales.

Conversion Focus

• • CPA Marketing: CPA marketing focuses on driving specific actions from the audience, such as filling out a form or subscribing to a service. Affiliates often need to optimize their strategies to encourage these actions effectively.
  • Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing drives traffic and promotes products or services to generate sales. Affiliates may use various marketing channels and tactics to attract potential buyers and convince them to purchase.

Merchant Goals

• • CPA Marketing: Merchants in CPA marketing typically prioritize actions that align with their business objectives, such as lead generation, app installations, or trial sign-ups. They pay affiliates based on the desired actions.
  • Affiliate Marketing: Merchants in affiliate marketing are primarily interested in driving sales and increasing revenue. They reward affiliates for successful sales transactions generated through their referral links.

In summary, while both CPA marketing and affiliate marketing involve promoting products or services for commissions, CPA marketing focuses on specific actions, offering more predictability for affiliates. In contrast, affiliate marketing revolves around generating sales, with the potential for higher earnings and greater uncertainty.

Top CPA Marketing Networks & Programs

There are tons of CPA networks and platforms out there. Let me share most of them with high-paying offers, and then I'll write about my favorites. Alright?

• MaxBounty
• oDigger
• CrakRevenue
• ClickDealer
• CPALead
• AdmitAd
• CPAGrip
• CPAMatica
• Toro Advertising
• AdWork Media
• Peerlfy
• Madrivo
• GlobalWide Media
• Adscend
• Mobidea
• AdCombo
• RevenueAds
• Panthera Network
• Digital Media Solutions
• Convert2Media
• Affiliati Network
• Lemonads
• PerformCB
• Adsterra

Choosing the right networks and programs is the secret sauce in CPA marketing. Let me give you my top 5 CPA networks I've worked with. They're great for beginners and have high-paying offers.

MaxBounty

Best CPA Network – MaxBounty

MaxBounty is one of the most popular affiliate networks, with thousands of programs in almost every industry. It has been in business since 2004 and has a great reputation as a fair and honest company.

And the programs listed on the network are good at converting traffic into leads and sales. You can also find programs that pay you recurring income.

MaxBounty is my top pick for the best CPA network for beginners. It offers great support and training resources, is very friendly to new affiliates, and has many offers with high payouts.

CPAlead

CPAlead Pays Daily for Sharing Links!

CPAlead is the place to join. They have many mobile and desktop offers that pay you per install. So, you earn money each time a person you refer installs an app.

CrakRevenue

The Best and Most Trusted CPA Network!

CrakRevenue is a leading performance-based marketing platform that specializes in affiliate marketing. It offers affiliates various innovative tools and solutions to monetize their traffic effectively. Focusing on adult and mainstream offers, CrakRevenue provides a user-friendly interface and robust analytics to help affiliates optimize their campaigns and maximize revenue.

CPAGrip

Content Locking & Incentive Affiliate Network!

CPAGrip is a content-locking and incentive affiliate network perfect for sophisticated CPA marketers. Its great features include dedicated staff, tech tools, and fast payments.

It's one of the oldest CPA networks with a good reputation in the industry. It offers many high-paying offers, especially in the email marketing and zip submit niches.

AdmitAd

Global partnerships that just work!

If you're looking for opportunities to develop long-term brand partnerships, AdmitAd is the right CPA network. It has a lot of programs in different niches with exclusive offers from software and tool niches.

And they're very good at working with affiliates to help them grow their businesses.

With over 30,000 advertisers, AdmitAd is one of the largest affiliate networks in the world. They're also very good at providing instant payouts.

So, these were my favorite CPA networks. Let's discuss the terminology used in these CPA affiliate marketing platforms.

Common Terms in CPA Marketing Networks

How to Start CPA Marketing for Free – Guide for 2024

You must know the following terms before working with any CPA marketing network. Makes sense? Let's start.

CPA Offer

An offer is a product or service you promote to earn a commission. For example, if you're promoting a weight loss product, the offer would be the product itself.

CPA Affiliate Agreement

The affiliate agreement is a contract between you and the advertiser. It outlines the terms and conditions of your relationship. For example, it will say how much commission you will earn for each sale, how you should bring in the traffic, and where.

CPA Network

A CPA network is an intermediary between advertisers and CPA affiliates. It provides offers for affiliates to promote and may handle the payments.

CPA Commission or Rev Share

The commission is the money you earn for each action you take, and the revenue share is cut from every sale you make.

Chargeback

A chargeback occurs when customers ask for a refund for a purchase. It is when your commission is deducted if the transaction is paid or processed.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files placed on your audience's computer by websites you visit. They're used to track their online activity.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is the percentage of people who take the desired action.

For example, if you're promoting a weight loss product and 100 people visit your landing page, but only 2 people buy the product, your conversion rate would be 2%.

Cost Per Action (CPA)

CPA is the advertising cost of the desired action.

Offer Page

The offer page is where people are taken after clicking on your affiliate link. And for that, you may create a sales funnel.

Sales Funnel or Landing Page

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A sales funnel is a process that takes people from awareness to purchase.

A landing page is a page on your website where people are taken after clicking an ad or affiliate link.

Traffic Source

The traffic source is where your traffic comes from. For example, it could be Facebook ads, Google Ads, and more.

Note: These are 6 websites that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors daily, which you can use to drive traffic to your website.

Traffic Location

Traffic location is the geographical location of your traffic. Many CPA offers are valid for countries like the US, UK, or Canada.

Publisher

A publisher is someone who promotes CPA offers. That is you.

How to Start With No Audience or Budget

This guide is for those ready to take action and learn CPA marketing from scratch. I will show you how to start your CPA marketing journey for free with no budget, website, or existing audience.

And with this method, you can make up to $500 within 30 days.

Remember that we'll focus on action, not selling the product or service. You will still pick a product, promote it, and start making money. Easy? No!

You need to put a lot of effort into making this work. This isn't for you if you're looking for a get-rich-quick scheme.

With that said, let's get rolling.

Step 1: Find the Best CPA Offers

The first step is to find an offer that you can promote. To do so, you need to join a CPA network. A CPA network is an intermediary between advertisers and affiliates like you. I have listed some of the popular CPA networks you can join.

Let me share an example where Brevo offers 5 euros for each free account only!

Once you're in, take some time to look around.

A perfect CPA offer:

• Pays well.
• Has low competition.
• It is legit and niche-relevant.
• And maximum cookie duration (Aim for 30 days).

The best way to find such an offer is to use the search function and filter the results.

For example, if you're in the weight loss niche, you can use keywords like “weight loss” or “diet.”

After that, you must go to the offer page to confirm that it's not shady or spammy. And you can also check the reviews. Otherwise, your reputation will be at stake.

But don't get turned off if the landing page asks for more than one step.

You can still make good money with multi-step offers.

Check The Competition

The next thing that you need to do is to check the competition. The best way to do that is to use Google Keyword Planner and check the CPC of the relevant keyword.

Ensure to go for the maximum difference between the CPC you'll spend and the CPA you'll get. That's the profit you'll make. It can get tough when you have a general audience or a weird niche.

For example, Brian Dean wanted to monetize his dating site. He ran ads through AdSense but made no money. Then, he ran CPA offers that asked for email or zip submission. Note that the offer is not related to the niche but the demographics. The result was exciting! He made significantly more money with CPA offers than AdSense.

Step 2: Create a Sales Funnel or Process

After you've found the right offer, it's time to create a sales funnel for it.

A sales funnel is a process of making people aware of an offer. Let me share a few ideas you can work on.

• Create a content locker (free lead magnets like an e-book or more).
• Build a website around your offers (NerdWallet, MoneySuperMarket).
• Create viral quizzes or personality tests.
• Start reviewing products or services on your review site.
• Make direct sales pages (If that's allowed by the advertiser)

The idea is to get creative and develop something that works for you. However, you can skip creating a page or blog post if you advertise a landing page directly with a referral ID. In either case, you need to promote your offer.

Step 3: Select Your Traffic Source

Now, it's time to generate traffic for your offer. The best part about CPA marketing is that there are multiple ways to do it without spending a fortune.

You can use free or paid methods.

Let's first talk about the paid ways to bring relevant traffic to your sales funnel or offer page.

• Paid ads (like Google Search Ads)
• Native ads (Ads that look like the content of your site or media)
• Push ads (With push notifications)
• Social media ads (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok)
• Video ads (YouTube Ads or other platforms)
• Community Ads (on Quora Ads or Reddit)

You must be careful about your ad spending because it can get out of hand if you're not monitoring it. But if you do it carefully, paid traffic is the best way.

Let me share free methods to get traffic because they convert CPA marketing into passive income.

• Podcasting
• Forum marketing
• Influencer marketing
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Posting on Medium or Systeme IO blogs
• Social media (Organic reach on the platforms)
• Content marketing (Blogging)
• YouTube videos and more

The idea here is to get creative and develop something that works for you. However, these methods can be time-consuming and expensive.

But I promised that you would get started for free, right?

Let me share a wonderful way to blog for free!

And that is creating a blog with the Systeme IO platform.

Systeme IO – The World's Easiest All-In-One Marketing Platform

Here's how to do it:

Create a free Systeme IO account.

Go to the “Blog” tab and create a blog.

• Modify the pages into blog posts.
• Click on the “Create a Blog Post” button to start writing.

You can use the blog posts as a content locker for your CPA offers. Just link to the offer from within the blog post and ask people to complete an action to unlock it.

It's that simple. You don't have to spend money on WordPress hosting or domain names because Systeme IO handles everything!

FAQs about CPA Marketing

How to Start CPA Marketing for Free – Guide for 2024

Let me answer some frequently asked questions about CPA marketing.

Is CPA marketing legal?

Yes, as long as you're not breaking any laws. For example, don't use someone's personal information to promote a CPA offer without consent.

How much money can I make with CPA marketing?

It depends on multiple factors, such as your promotional offer, traffic source, and target country. You can make anywhere from $1 to $100 per lead or even more. There is no limit to how much you can make with CPA marketing.

Is CPA marketing worth it?

Yes, CPA marketing is worth it, and it's still profitable in 2024. If you can find the right offer and generate enough targeted traffic, you can make much money with CPA marketing.

What is the best CPA network?

There is no one best CPA network. Different networks have different offers, so you'll need to find the one with the right offer. But I recommend using oDigger and OfferVault. They're like Google for CPA marketing offers.

What does CPA stand for in marketing?

CPA stands for Cost Per Action. So you're essentially getting paid for every action that your visitors take. A good CPA depends on many factors, such as the offer payouts, the traffic source, and your target country.

Quick Links

How to Start CPA Marketing for Free – Guide for 2024

We hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, you might want to check out these other resources:

• Affiliate Programs Database (Updated)
• Affiliate Marketing for Beginners – Ultimate Guide
• Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Tools for 2024
• Brevo Review for 2024: Everything You Need to Know
• GetResponse Review & Free Trial for 2024
• Systeme IO Review: All-in-One Business Solution
• FuseBase Review 2024: Boost Your Team’s Productivity

Conclusion

Honesty and good strategies will help you reach the right position. Be patient and learn something every day about online marketing, which I do myself. Don't be afraid; I'm beside you. Just comment on the post or send me a private message on Twitter. If you learn anything from this post, Please share it.