Affiliate marketing is increasingly attracting people who want to earn a stable income and work from anywhere in the world. Not only professional marketers often come to this area, but also specialists who want to change their occupation and learn something new. However, it can be difficult for beginners to navigate and choose the right direction for development. In this case, CPA affiliate programs come to the rescue.
An affiliate program is a type of cooperation where affiliates act as intermediaries between the owner of the company and the buyer, promoting the advertiser’s product on the network. This is a great way to get both active and passive income, because sometimes for additional income it is enough to place a link to the advertiser’s product through an effective communication channel.
Affiliate programs are often chosen by both beginners and experienced marketers. This is due to several important advantages of this model:
- Great opportunities. In affiliate programs, the affiliate gets access to thousands of offers from different advertisers at once.
- Reliability. CPA-networks work with trusted advertisers and provide affiliates with guarantees of fair wages.
- Permanent support. Working with an affiliate program, an affiliate can always count on the help of experienced managers and quality advice.
- Freedom of choice. You can choose a niche that interests you and a convenient format for cooperation, promotion and payment.
In order to make the right choice of an affiliate program, you need to understand the basic principles of this cooperation model.
How affiliate programs work
Affiliate programs provide obvious benefits to both the advertiser and the affiliate. The former significantly increases the audience of its product or service while the latter works for the result to make a good profit.
Usually, cooperation with an affiliate program begins with a deal between the owner of the business and affiliates. The advertiser initially compiles a list of available offers, and defines allowed and prohibited traffic sources. They also set the amount of remuneration they are willing to pay for a confirmed lead. Most often, in affiliate programs, the affiliate receives a percentage of the sale of a product or service, but sometimes partners also use fixed rates.
The affiliate looks through the conditions and selects offers they want to work with. For the traffic brought to the advertiser’s website, the affiliate receives a reward. In commodity CPA programs, they usually use multi-level statistics that help to accurately and transparently track the results of work. You can promote a product both through active sales and through regular recommendations. If the affiliate fulfills all the conditions of the advertiser, they regularly receive payments and improve their skills.
What affiliate programs are out there
Before choosing an affiliate program for cooperation, you need to pay attention to several key criteria:
- the demand for the chosen niche,
- personal interests and experience,
- the size of rates and the frequency of payments,
- payment format,
- reputation of the affiliate program.
The choice of the niche the affiliate is going to work in is especially important. CPA affiliate programs often focus on a specific niche, although there are also universal ones among them that allow you to work with several types of offers at once within one affiliate program. There are several popular niches in affiliate marketing today:
- Nutra – goods related to beauty and health are most often promoted by commodity CPA networks;
- Dating – various services for dating, including for adults;
- Finance – a niche that includes investment projects, banking, lending and other financial services;
- Gambling and betting – online casinos and services that accept bets mainly on sports;
- E-commerce – online stores and popular services with a different range of products and services.
The payment format also plays a key role when choosing a CPA network. It depends on what kind of result the advertiser wants to achieve with the help of affiliate marketing. The programs most often use the following payment schemes:
- Cost per click (CPC) is more commonly used when an advertiser needs to draw attention to a product or service, increase brand awareness, or improve a company’s image.
- Cost Per Sale (CPS) is a payment scheme where an affiliate receives a percentage or a fixed amount for a confirmed sale of an advertiser’s product or service.
- Cost Per Action (CPA) is the most popular payment model in affiliate marketing where an affiliate is rewarded for a targeted action performed by the user, such as purchasing a product, registering on a site, installing an application, or filling out a form.
How much can you earn with affiliate programs
Many specialists planning to start working in an affiliate program are interested in the amount of potential earnings of an affiliate. To calculate possible income, you need to take into account a lot of factors. The profit depends on the chosen niche, the advertiser’s rates, the conditions of a particular affiliate program and, of course, the experience and skills of the affiliate.
Most often, the affiliate receives a reward of about 5-15% of the amount of the sale of a product or service. But there are differences in different areas of activity. For example, in the information business or the IT sector, the rates can be much higher. On the other hand, products such as nutra sell more easily, and you can increase profits by increasing the number of sales.
It is important to understand that the amount of payments also directly depends on the competent and appropriate use of traffic sources.
Traffic sources for affiliate programs
Attracting traffic is the main task of an affiliate marketer, so before getting started, you need to learn as much as possible about their varieties and specifics. Traffic is the number of users who visit a website in a given period of time. To attract the target audience to the advertiser’s page, you can use the following traffic sources:
- contextual advertising in search engines,
- targeted advertising in social networks,
- banners, push notifications, pop-ups and teasers,
- promotional landing pages,
- email newsletters,
- native advertising.
Each of these traffic sources has its own characteristics, and the effectiveness of their use depends on the advertised product, target audience, and advertising budget. The advantage of working with commodity CPA networks is assistance in the selection and use of effective tools. It is recommended for beginners in affiliate marketing to use no more than 2-3 traffic sources, but over time, experienced affiliates can successfully combine many sources.
If you choose an affiliate program for cooperation, you can further develop your skills using the powerful support of the CPA network. To achieve success, you need to gain valuable experience, learn more about the specifics of working with different products and traffic sources, and carefully choose a reliable partner with a good reputation.