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CPA beats MLM -Why?

By: Laura Wolf

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For most of us the only thing that comes into our mind about making money online is MLM programs and selling e-books.
Maybe buying some private label right products and try to market them to break even. We have to set up our own website and capture pages, build our own list and spend hundreds of dollars on PPC and advertising without any real results or without even breaking even.
You know this story, don't you?
We all hear about people making millions of dollars, believe or not, but the truth is: only 2-3 % of the people joining these programs will make any money at all or get their investment back.
I would like to introduce you to an alternative to referral and MLM programs: CPA marketing.

What is CPA marketing and why is it more profitable than other programs?
When you join an affiliate or membership site you are somehow not free as you will have to promote that particular system or program without knowing how to do it. Chances are:
If you are not an experienced marketer and don't have a list of at least 10.000 people you will find it extremely difficult to bring anyone into the business. (unless there are really good systems in place that convert well. I haven't seen many of these recently, but let me know if you come across some)
If you join a CPA network, you have hundreds of offers to choose from to promote. So you are not tied up.
You get the state of the art creatives and can start right away.
You will see from what other people are doing what converts well and what doesn't.
You really get great support from your affiliate manager, who gets their salary and bonus based on your performance.
Unless you start right away with an expensive PPC campaign (which I would advise you against) you are not likely to lose any money. So even if you make 20 bucks that will be 20 bucks in profit.

What is a CPA network?
A CPA network is a company connecting Seller (A) who wants to sell their product or service to a customer or build their prospect base with the Affiliate (B) who can also be you to promote A's product. The network agrees in a payment for action (that's why it's called CPA – Cost per Action or Cost per Acquisition) and takes the keeps a percentage of the amount the Advertiser pays, also pays Affiliate between 50 and 80 %, depending on the offer, advertiser, incentive type, but networks really keep quiet about these figures, we can only guess.
Simply said: You get paid for making other people take action.
Now, here's the funny bit: You also can get paid for people taking on free offers. That basically never happens if you are in an MLM company.

When to join a CPA network
You should join a CPA network if you have some kind of idea of how to market online, and preferably have a domain name registered. But if you don't you can still get accepted, see below in the next paragraph.
If you have good knowledge of one particular niche or market, and have a channel you can reach them through.
If you would like freedom and good at statistics, can handle your own time, budget and campaigns independently.
Nobody's going to remind you that you haven't had any visitors for 20 days now, as that means you won't get paid. So being responsible is the key.

Offers to promote
Now, we already mentioned that there can be hundreds if not thousands of offers within your members area. You can select by country, categories, can choose if you want to use banners, text ads, emails, contextual advertising or anything else.
To choose the right offer, you have to review the following:
Have you got any knowledge of the industry?
Have you heard of this company before?
Can you pull quality visitors to the landing page?
Does the offer fit your site / online profile?
(It would look really silly to put on a baby stuff advert on your blog if you're blogging about the problems of the over 60s, wouldn't it? At least it wouldn't be relevant and wouldn't convert at all...)

What is the Network EPC?
To see how the offer converts for other affiliates, networks track EPC (earnings per click). So for example if you decide to set up a PPC campaign and the minimum bid for your keywords is $0.98, the network EPC is however $0.7, you are more than likely to lose money.
A thought about EPC: You have to consider that a certain percentage of affiliates will use cold traffic, that converts much worse than an e-zine ad. So you just have to see the network EPC as an average. If you are looking to send out the offer to your highly responsive list, your personal EPC will be much higher, while if you will use free ads, it will be lower. But you are not limited on how much money you make whatsoever.

Only briefly: How to get accepted?
To work for a CPA network you have to apply on their site. You fill out the form, and answer all the questions they will ask about your traffic generation tactics, website, knowledge of the industry and marketing methods.

Serious CPA networks won't accept you right away, so hold on to your phone, they will call you back. You have to sound competent, relevant to their company and professional. If you have a website I advise you to update it to be fully 2.0 compliant. More on how to get accepted: visit the warrior forum's CPA section, some really useful stuff there I cannot fully cover in here.

P. S. Don't get upset if they don't accept you the first time, correct what you did wrong and apply again.

Which affiliate networks to join?
I have been doing CPA advertising for a long time now, but when I started, the first company I got into was MaxBounty. They have really responsive affiliate managers and normally higher payouts than other networks. I got accepted the first time.

Later on I joined Neverblue, Directagents and Offerati, Affiliate Future and a couple of more. You will always find some offers on one network that are unique and convert better than others.

If you are interested in starting your own CPA business, follow the resource box for a unique Free Ebook on CPA marketing.

See you with the updates.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

trac-ads.com/ad99 -Your Free ebook trac-ads.com/ae00 - Apply at Neverblue trac-ads.com/ae01 - Apply for a Maxbounty account

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