CPA Explained

Virtually every internet marketer in the world is familiar with AdSense, how it works and how to make money from it. For most of us AdSense was our first step towards making a full time living online and the main reason was that it was incredibly simple, typically taking less than 5 minutes to set up. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because theres no barrier to entry, anyone can try AdSense at any time, they can even do it for free by starting a Blog. But too many people focus entirely on AdSense and don’t experiment with other, often better ways of making money online. And that’s a horrible mistake because often the streams of income that DO have a barrier to entry are the more profitable ones. CPA, while still at a relatively low barrier of entry, is one step up from AdSense.

So what is CPA? CPA stands for Cost Per Action and is exactly that: You install some piece of software or interface and prompt your users to take an action (i.e. send an email to their friends). For each user who completes the action, you get paid a small sum. CPA typically revolves around things like signing up, sending emails and completing surveys, but the CPA world is as vast as it is unique. CPA works exceedingly well when you have a product or service to offer but which isn’t quite good enough to sell.

An example of CPA in action is my PHP Profit eBook which is an eBook that tells people how to make money from the PHP programming language. On the initial page I highlight the contents and benefits of the eBook and state that they can download it for free. So when someone who knows PHP and/or wants to make money online comes to this page, they are naturally interested and click the download link to the product. On the next page they are prompted to fill out a survey. They have two options: A. They don’t fill in the survey, close my site, and assumedly never come back or B. They fill out the survey, after which they can immediately download my eBook. I receive a few cents, and they receive their free copy of my product, everybody gains.

If I used AdSense on this page and still offered the eBook for free, I would receive less than a dollar a day. Conversely if I offered the eBook for a set fee it would be unlikely to sell very well because it’s not that long, isn’t an incredibly popular subject and the information within isn’t incredibly difficult to learn by experience.

Now, CPA isn’t perfect. Occasionally the survey is impossible to complete, or more often they fill out false information which doesn’t allow them access. Generally they then get frustrated and leave. This is one of the major problems with CPA networks and it can put some people off your site for life. However, if you ensure that you chose a good CPA network and can establish that there is a low risk of this happening then there are very few disadvantages of using CPA.

By having a mix of different revenue streams from one website you stand in a much more secure financial position as well as experiencing the benefit that any action you take that increases traffic to your site generally increases the income from all those revenue streams. Selling products, AdSense and CPA networks are just 3 of the many ways to earn income online, but they fit together very nicely and are all extremely easy to implement.

For those of you who would like to try CPA for yourselves I recommend CPALead (http://www.cpalead.com) which is in use on the PHP Profit page. Typically you will receive around $0.50 each time someone completes a survey and if you set it up correctly you will have anywhere from a 5 to 50% completion ratio. Note that my referral ID is kept in the previous link, this means that I will receive a small bonus if you sign up from the link above while there is no disadvantage to yourself. If you are cold and heartless and would like to sign up without giving me my small bonus you can do so here – http://www.cpalead.com.

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