charangaddam

Nowadays social media has become an essential part of every consumer’s daily life. It has gained popularity among the people. Statistics shows its popularity and it has a great potential of driving fresh and new visitors to your websites. Nowadays with the advent of the Smartphone and tablets, the use of social media has become easier and simple.

In this context the usage of Social media as a marketing tool is always a good idea. Many of the business houses are using this medium as a tool in their marketing strategy and winning the hearts of thousands of consumers. Today people have so many social networking sites to extend their relationships and some of them are really influencing. Integrating social media sites into your companies marketing strategy have certain excellent benefits and some of them are:

Benefits of social media commerce:

• It helps to maintain the better interpersonal relationships with the customers which will help in enhancing the business.


• Avoidance of just “selling” the products because it does not take into account customer likings


• Get creative with your endorsements and advertisements in a positive manner


• Get the scope of improvement of your product range or services


• The deals will bring a win-win situation between the companies and the customers

v  Different social media as tool for ecommerce platform

In the following points the advantages of some of the prominent social media sites will be discussed:

1. Facebook e commerce – Facebook being one of the most popular social media sites has some specific benefits as a dedicated ecommerce tool:

ü  People can conveniently track your presence

ü  Get updates daily: Customers will be able to stay tuned with your companies’ updates easily. They will be able to stay updated with all the updates of your company. They will be able to like your page and share the same with their friends as well

ü  The analytical tool on Face book will let you get the platform to analyze your marketing strategies and revisit them

1. Instagram e commerce – In the following ways Instagram will be useful for your company’s marketing strategy:

• The profiles on Instagram enable you to reach huge numbers of customers and those customers will follow you.

• Instagram lets you to create contests to keep your customers engaged and involved with your company’s page

• You will be able to reward your customers with promo offers with codes

• Instagram also lets you to feature your customers’ picture in writing the reviews on your company. This is really encouraging and increases your brand value

1. Pinterest e commerce – Another popular social media which can be successfully employed as an ecommerce tool for your company is Pinterest and the benefits you can enjoy are:

ü  This social media platform will help you to highlight your strengths in from of the world

ü  Pinterest will let you use lots of images and pictures to market your products or services in an interesting manner. One who is fond of art and landscaping, Pinterest is the suitable platform for him.

ü  The Pins are really very helpful for you to highlight the distinctive features of your company and attract easily thousands of followers

1. YouTube e commerce – YouTube being one of the most popular online video viewing social media site has great customer base. The advantages of YouTube as a successful ecommerce tool are:

• The videos on YouTube let you highlight the niche based benefits of your company in a successful manner

• Proper quality of the video punched with suitable keyword will let you win the battle convincingly. You will be able to win millions of hearts effectively if you exhibit consistency in the presentation wisely

1. Tumblr ecommerce – Tumblr can also be an effective mean of social media online marketing. Some its benefits are:

ü  Fullest advantage of micro blogging, re-blogging etc

ü  Usage of interesting and humorous images, pictures, animations etc

ü  Presence of all types of audiences and segregated on the basis of demographic

 

 

1. Amazon: I Think You all know Amazon is one of the biggest Affiliate networks in the world. This Network is now making an Remarkable name in india too. So i Suggest You to Make use of this Affliate Network to Earn Money.

2. Flipkart: Its the Best Indian e-commerce Company Started in 2007. It Provides You a Commission Range of 1-5% On Every Sale Through Your Referral.Payment is made either by check or Gift Voucher.

3. Yatra: It is a Website Based on Travel,So if You have Any Travel Website Then You can go with it. It Pays You for Every Registration Through Your Referral.

4. Shaadi: It pays You 10 For Each Profile Made By Your Referral.Rs.1050 Will be Paid to you If the Visitor Through Your Referral Register for the Paid Membership.

5. Bharat Matrimony Affilitae: Its the India's Top Most Matrimony Website. It pays you the 25% of the commission for the paid Members Through Your Referral.

Tips To Earn More From These Affiliates:

• Choose the Product According to Your Niche.


• Place the Ads At the Best Places Such as Near Your Webpage Logo or inbetween Posts or on Sidebar etc.

 

I Think You All Know About Fiverr. Those Who Don't Know About Fiverr I Will Tell You what is Fiverr. Fiverr is a Freelance Market Place Website. People can Buy or Sell Anything for $5 on Fiverr. As Same as Fiverr There Are Many Websites in the Internet But Not All the one is a best. So im Going to Shortlist You the Best Fiverr Alternatives for you.

1. Gigbucks: Gigbucks Tops Our List of  Best Alternative for the Fiverr. You Buysell Anything Within a Range of $5 to $50.

2. Dollar3: Don't Get Confused By Seeing the Domain Name. You Can Earn More Than $3 Don't Worry.

3. Zeerk: It is 3rd in our List, You can Buy or Sell Anything Within the Range of $2 to $100.

4. Twentyville: You can Buy And Sell Your Services for The Price $10 and $20 on Twentyville.

5. Gigme5: Though its is 5th In our List It is a Best One.!

6. Seoclers: If You Well Known in Search Engine Optimization then You can Earn Upto 999 USD Per gig Sold.

7. Tenbux: The Name is Well Enough to Say "You can Buy and Sell Anything Upto $10".

8. Fourerr: You can Buy and Sell Anything on the Price of $4 As the Name Tells it.

9. Tenrr: Buy and Sell Your Services for the Price Ranging from $1 to $10.

10. Findeavor: Sell Your Services for the Price Starting from $5 And you can earn Upto 300 USD.

11. Fiverrup: Buy and Sell Any of your Services for the price upto $100.

Tips To Earn More From These Alternatives:

 

• Don't Sell Your Services for More Price Than it Deserves.


• Satisfy Your Customer By Delivering Your Services at Right Time.


• Add Attractive Titles to Sell and Earn More.

 

Making Money With Internet is so easy Untill You Get Some Knowledge on How to Make Money from Internet. You can Make Money By Different Methods. One of the Most Easy and Best Method is Shortening URL And Earning Money. Though There are Many Websites that Gives You Money for Shortening URL And Getting Traffic To those URL, I Will List You 3 Most Popular and Best Shorteners To Earn Money.

1. First On Our List Is Adf.Ly:

This post covers affiliate marketing, including an introduction to this monetization technique, a review of the most popular implementations of affiliate marketing, and highlights of the top affiliate ad networks.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing has become a massive online industry over the past several years, emerging as both an effective way for marketers to sell their products and services and for publishers to monetize their audiences. Despite the popularity of affiliate marketing, many publishers still aren’t aware of exactly what affiliate marketing is or how it works. In some cases, these publishers are gatekeepers to an audience that could be very effectively monetized through affiliate marketing, meaning that they’re passing up an attractive revenue stream.

What It Is (And What It Isn’t)

At its heart, affiliate marketing is an online version of a sales structure that has been happening offline for decades. In its simplest form, it involves three primary components:

• A merchant, or someone with a product or service to sell


• An affiliate, or individual with the willingness and ability to sell that product to a particular audience


• A product or service

For each product the affiliate sells, they receive a portion of the proceeds from the merchant. It’s effectively an outsourced sales team. At its core, affiliate marketing is just that simple.

Offline Example

When I was a child, my school would have fundraisers that involved us going door-to-door to sell magazine subscriptions (magazines were glossy, soft-cover publications that would be mailed to a subscriber’s house on a weekly or monthly basis). I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was right in the middle of an affiliate marketing scheme. The magazine companies had products they wanted to sell. Schools had the ability to sell these products. And for every subscription sold, the magazine companies gave a slice of the proceeds to the school. (In this example, there’s actually a secondary later of affiliate marketing; the schools effectively outsource the actual selling to the students, in exchange for prizes that come with meeting certain sales figures.)

Online, affiliate marketing works generally the same way–except that the door-to-door sales approach is replaced by strategies more suited to a digital marketplace. In most instances, the affiliate marketing process works as follows:

1. Visitor to a publisher’s website clicks an “affiliate link” that takes them to a third party landing page


2. Visitor makes a purchase


3. Affiliate (publisher) gets a commission based on the value of the products and services purchased at the partner’s site

In other words, affiliate marketing is a kind of cost-per-action (CPA) advertising. The publisher makes nothing for highlighting a partner’s product on their site, and they make nothing for getting a visitor to click through to that site. The commission is only earned when a sale is completed.

Affiliate marketing is facilitated by “affiliate links” that allow merchants to track where their customers originate. In other words, it’s possible (and actually very simple) to know which revenue came from a specific affiliate and to compensate that affiliate accordingly.

Affiliate Marketing Economics

For publishers, the affiliate marketing revenue equation looks something like this (we’ve bolded the factors that are most within your control in optimization efforts):

Visitors x Click Rate (on Affiliate Links) = Referred Visitors

Referred Visitors x Conversion Rate x Average Purchase Price = Referral Revenue

Referral Revenue x Commission % = Affiliate Marketing Revenue

The success of an affiliate marketing strategy depends on how many referrals you’re able to send to merchant sites and how well these referrals convert (hence the bolding of these factors above). The more relevant and appealing the offers you highlight on your site, the higher both your click and conversion rates will likely be. If you’re running a travel blog, you probably don’t want to be featuring affiliate offers for baby products; replacing them with affiliate links to cruise packages would probably result in a higher referral rate.

For more, see the next section on Three Factors That Determine Affiliate Marketing Success.

Appeal of Affiliate Marketing (to Advertisers)

Advertisers love affiliate marketing because it involves minimal risk. If a sufficient margin is built in as compensation for the affiliate, it becomes impossible to lose money. That’s because affiliates are generally only paid when a sale is completed (i.e., a lead is converted). Advertisers (or “merchants”) pay nothing for leads that don’t convert.

Compare this to a CPM-based advertising campaign, where an advertiser pays a fixed amount to get a fixed number of ad impressions. (E.g., they may pay $10,000 to have 1 million ads shown on a publisher site, or a $10 CPM.) That campaign may be unsuccessful however if the ad impressions don’t convert into clicks and/or eventual sales.

Under most affiliate marketing arrangements, advertisers only pay for converted leads. There is basically no way they can lose money or get a negative ROI with this marketing method. Each new sale generated may have a thin margin after the affiliate payment is made, but it’s possible to structure in such a way that eliminates the possibility of a loss.

Some merchants will pay for actions that do not involve the transfer of money (i.e., something besides a sale of a product or service). For example, many merchants pay affiliates for referred visitors that ultimately sign up for a newsletter or other free product.

Appeal of Affiliate Marketing (to Publishers)

Affiliate marketing is very appealing to some publishers as well, because it can allow them to make considerably more money than they would under an alternative monetization strategy. Though the specifics of payout arrangements can vary a bit, in general affiliate payments will be significantly larger than the revenue generated from a click under a CPC pricing arrangement (or the effective CPC under a CPM arrangement). For high margin products such as e-books, for which there are no material costs, affiliate margins can be as 50% of the total purchase price. So it’s not unheard of for affiliates to generate $100 or much more from each referral.

To explain this a bit further, let’s consider a real life example. Below is a screenshot from AffiliateTip.com, a popular blog run by affiliate marketing guru Shawn Collins. In his right sidebar, he has a number of affiliate links for products such as HootSuite, Dropbox, and Bluehost:



Alternatively, there could be a traditional 160×600 display ad unit here. From a network, that ad unit might earn the published an effective CPM of $3 or $4. If the optimal affiliate marketing links are used instead, the payout can be much higher.

Let’s assume that the aggregate click rate on this affiliate link section is 1%, that 20% of referred visitors convert, and that the average commission is $10. For every 1,000 visitors:

• 10 click through to an affiliate link


• 2 end up purchasing something from a merchant


• $20 in revenue for the publisher is generated

The end result in this hypothetical is $20 in revenue–significantly more than the $3 or $4 that could be earned from traditional display advertising.

Of course, the revenue per visitor is highly dependent on the click and conversion rates. But the hypothetical above should illustrate that if you’re able to find quality, relevant affiliate offers, affiliate marketing can be a very attractive monetization opportunity.

Affiliate Marketing In Action

Affiliate marketers can use a number of strategies to sell to their audience, with different approaches making the most sense for different niches and product lineups. These strategies include:

• Coupons


• Product Reviews


• Product Rankings


• Product Aggregation / Price Comparison

For more on each of these approaches, as well as examples of them in action, check out our feature on Five Proven Affiliate Marketing Strategies.

Below are some real life examples of affiliate marketing strategies in action:

• Review: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Note the affiliate links to the landing page where this e-book can be purchased. For every referred purchased, this publisher makes 40% of the total purchase price.


• TV Review Site. This site compiles prices for products at various Web retailers, including an affiliate link to all of them. If a visitor to this site ultimately clicks through and makes a purchase, a commission is earned.


• Only Cookware. This is one of several sites run by Amazon “super affiliates” Paula and Wanda. Their reviews feature affiliate links for visitors to purchase the products on Amazon, which nets them a commission in the neighborhood of 8.5%.

Many publishers would be surprised at the depth of the affiliate marketing industry; it’s a lot more than e-books and amazon affiliates. Commission Junction, one of the largest affiliate networks, has an impressive list of advertiser verticals:

Bottom Line

Affiliate marketing is a fairly simple concept that can be implemented in a countless number of ways online. Though it’s not as familiar or easy to set up as display advertising strategies that dominate many publisher monetization strategies, there is the potential for a big payoff if a bit of work is done upfront.

• • • 

There are several advertising and monetization options, and your website niche, target audience, traffic volume, and visitor behavior will determine which options are the most reasonable for your particular website.

We are going to show you 10 monetization options that have broad applications, allowing you to start generating revenue, whether you are trying to turn your website into a profitable business or just cover some of your operating expenses. Don’t try and do all of these at once and make sure you give it some time to see results. No one is an overnight success and you need to see what will work for you and your audience.

1. Google AdSense

Google’s advertising platform for publishers, AdSense, shows ads that are highly relevant to your website content and pays you a percentage of the revenue each time they are clicked on. If you had a website about travel, it might display ads from an airline or travel agent. The process couldn’t be any easier:

1. You place HTML code on your website where you want the advertisements to display. Note: AdSense policy allows up to 3 ad blocks on each page of your website.


2. Advertisements that are related to the content are displayed, and Google uses a real-time to ensure that the highest paying ads are shown.


3. Google bills the advertisers and networks for the advertisements that appeared on your website and pays you directly.

This program is among the most popular monetization methods because of its simplicity. There is no dealing with advertisers directly or chasing down invoices for payment. Google handles everything and you receive a check or direct deposit every month for the revenue that your website generated.



Anyone with a website can take advantage of this program and getting started takes just minutes, provided that you have a Google account. You can read more about Google’s AdSense program by reading our Google AdSense Review.

2. Affiliate Offers

Affiliate marketing is a very effective way to monetize your website traffic because it allows you to present your visitors with offers that they are likely to be interested in. For instance, if you had a blog about personal finance you would want to find an affiliate offer that would be of interest to your visitors, such as a credit card offer. You would place a banner or text link on your website that contained your affiliate link and directed the visitor to the offer. Now, if they signed up for the particular offer, which in this case is a credit card, you would be compensated with an affiliate referral payment. Some credit card offers pay out $50 – $100 for every referral an affiliate sends.

There are two different types of offers: Cost Per Action (CPA) and Cost Per Sale (CPS). An example of a CPA offer could be an insurance quote request where the user submits his or her name and contact information to receive additional information. Most CPA offers are lead generation offers. Now, a CPS will generally require a purchase be made and a credit card pixel to be fired in order for an affiliate payment to be issued. An example of a CPS offer would be a diet pill offer, where the consumer actually purchases the product. Generally CPS offers will pay out more than CPA offers.

It is important that you match relevant offers with the content and theme of your website. You wouldn’t place a credit card offer on your blog about diet tips and weight loss. You would want to find a health and fitness offer that you believe your website audience would be interested in. One of the best resources for looking for available affiliate offers is Offer Vault.



You can enter in any search term related to your website content and instantly review the available offers. It also tells you what affiliate networks manages each offer. Once you identify the offers that you want to promote on your website you will want to sign up with the affiliate networks that manage them. You can search Offer Vault by clicking here.

 

3. Create & Sell Your Own Digital Product

This is a monetization strategy that is great for those who have a very niche specific website combined with a large volume of website traffic. Creating your own product allows you to provide something very specific for your visitors and retain 100% of the revenue. Affiliate offers pay you a commission per action, but you don’t have to worry about customer service, refunds, or any issues that might arise. When you sell your own product you have to handle the customer service as well as any problems that pop up.

Don’t worry about stocking inventory and the costs associated with developing a product – go digital! The beauty about creating a digital product such as an eBook is that there are no production and inventory costs after you create it the first time. You can handle the complete creation or you can outsource the work.

There are several WordPress plugins that help you manage your digital downloads and integrate with your payment processor, only allowing your purchaser to download it once their payment is processed. Once you develop the product it is a relatively hands free process.

4. Direct Ad Space

Once your website has a significant amount of traffic and you have built up a following it gives you the ability to sell direct advertising space on your website. Don’t expect these offers to roll in on Day 1. It might take a couple of months but be sure to include details of how you should be contacted by a potential advertiser. Now, Google AdSense doesn’t have any traffic volume requirements, so you can implement that onto a brand new website and your revenue will grow as your blog grows. No advertiser will want to directly purchase exclusive space on a brand new website, but once the traffic numbers increase it becomes more attractive to an advertiser to purchase direct space for a flat monthly fee.

Advertisers that use Google’s platform are charged per click. This can become very expensive for the advertiser so they often look for opportunities to buy ad space for a flat fee. So, imagine that you had a blog about parenting and a retailer of children’s clothes was paying $5 per click on Google’s advertising network. If you charged $500 a month for a banner ad and your blog was receiving 30,000 visitors a month and generating 100,000 page views then it would be a great deal for the advertiser. Their ad would be seen 100,000 times for the same amount of money that they were paying for just 100 clicks using a pay per click model.

You can also combine Google AdSense with your own direct advertising to really generate some serious income from your website.

 

5. Sponsored Posts & Reviews

Publishing sponsored posts is another great way to generate income by leveraging the success and popularity of your website. Advertisers pay large sums of money for bloggers to write reviews about their products and services and post them for their audience to read. It is a popular form of advertising because visitors see it as more of a review than a direct advertisement. This type of non-intrusive advertising is very effective. The amount you can get for a sponsored post varies greatly based on the size of your niche, the niche itself, the popularity of your site and your social media following.

The advertiser will also generally provide the website owner with the product or service to review for free, so in addition to generating revenue you can also collect some nice products and services along the way. SponsoredReviews.com is a service that connects advertisers and websites and it is free to set up an account.

6. Gate Premium Content

If you develop a large loyal following you can start to gate premium content, which means that readers will have to pay to access it. Many websites that successfully gate content will offer the first couple of paragraphs for free in order to grab the interest of the reader. They will naturally want to continue reading so they will be more willing to complete an offer in order to access the rest of the content.

Now, it is important that you discuss this with the account manager of any affiliate offer you plan to require your visitors to complete in order to access your content. Some offers don’t allow incentive traffic while some do. Make sure that you only use offers that allow this type of traffic because the last thing you want to do is forfeit your earnings because you did not follow the guidelines. Just have open communication with your affiliate network and you will be fine.

You can also go straight to your affiliate network and let them know what you plan on doing and they can often suggest an offer that they feel will perform well for you while also remaining within the advertisers guidelines. Remember, they want you to be successful just as much as you do. Since they work with thousands of publishers they will typically have very good suggestions for you.

The key here is to create very high quality content that your readers are going to want to access so bad that they don’t mind filling out a quick survey or filling out a form in order to read it. Don’t gate all of your content though, as this will push away a large percentage of your traffic that isn’t interested in completing an offer.

7. Infolinks

Infolinks is an advertising platform that places in-text ads within your website content and pays you each time that they are clicked. Their software identifies your most valuable keywords within your website content and double-underlines theses keywords, and when your visitor hovers his or her mouse over them an advertisement related to the keyword is displayed. If they decide to click on the “learn more” you are compensated.

Infolinks allows you to customize the look and frequency of the text ads. Making them the same color as your website theme makes them appear to be part of your content, and this will increase your click through rate significantly. Also, they allow you to determine how often they appear. The last thing you want is a page full of clickable ads. One or two per piece of content is enough to attract interest without pushing away visitors.

This is a great platform to sign up for when you are just getting started because every little bit of extra revenue can help you cover basic website expenses like web hosting and domain registration. The payouts per click are fairly low though, so once you build up your traffic and your site becomes more popular there are other monetization methods that will provide you with a bigger and more attractive return.



You can get more information on the infolinks program by clicking here.

8. Generate & Sell Leads

Once you build a strong following and your traffic numbers are constantly increasing you have the ability to generate your own in-house leads that you can then sell directly to an end buyer. This requires a little more work on your end, but the payout per lead generated can be significantly higher than what you would be paid by an affiliate offer.

Not every website is going to have a niche that has a direct demand for leads. Examples of niches that have this demand are finance, retirement and employment. If this isn’t for you then there are ways to come up with very targeted offers that you could create. For example, if you had a website about cars that discussed reviews of new models it would be hard to create an offer around those that wanted to purchase a car, because your visitors would be from all over and you would need to create relationships with nearly every dealership to make that work. It just wouldn’t make financial sense. So, you would think of something complimentary to the new car shopping experience, such as financing the purchase.

You could create an opt-in lead form to generate car-financing leads and then sell them to one of the largest auto financing companies. They wouldn’t have geographical restrictions, so it would allow you to sell all of the leads to one source. This would make it extremely manageable for you as you would just have one purchaser to deal with. If you decide to generate your own leads just make sure it is something general enough that it will interest a large percentage of your visitors and try to sell them all to one buyer.

 

9. Related Posts

Outbrain is a great way to help monetize your blog, as it only includes adding a snippet of code to your website and they tend to have high click through rates. At the end of each blog post you publish the Outbrain widget is displayed and it suggests additional posts that their algorithm feels that your reader would also be interested, as they relate to the content they just finished reading. Each time they click through to one of their recommended articles you are compensated.

You don’t have to worry about the quality of the content being displayed on your website visitors, as Outbrain has a very strict policy and only syndicates content from high quality websites. Your visitors just see the post title and an image, so it really doesn’t distract them from your website. It is a great way to earn additional revenue, especially if the user was going to just leave your website after reading the content of the page they were viewing. You might as well maximize the revenue for every single visitor, and Outbrain is a great way to further monetize your website.



You can get more information about Outbrain by reading our Outbrain Review.

10. Paid Private Forum

Creating a private paid forum on your website is another great way to generate extra revenue. This is a strategy that can take a lot of time and should be attempted when you have more of a following and experience. If you built your website using WordPress then you can install the bbPress plugin and instantly create a forum on your website. The settings allow you to make it a private forum and there are add-on’s that allow you to manage paid subscriptions.



To justify charging a price to access your website forum you need to provide something of incredible value. You need a very strong USP (unique selling point) to justify making it a member’s only forum. Premium content, special offers and having well known industry influencers as members provide incentive for your visitors to sign up.

This provides you with a great opportunity to generate steady residual income, but you need to price you forum access in a way that it will encourage a large user base. Charging a high monthly fee will only attract a small pool of users and the forum will be inactive, causing your users to fall off and cancel their subscriptions. Keep it affordable so a large percentage of your user base will sign up. Even a $3 – $5 monthly fee can translate into a good return if you have a massive group of participants.

With several monetization options, it is a good idea to try several and then stick with the ones that earn you the most money per visitor. With all of the analytical and conversion data available you will be able to determine exactly how much each visitor is worth. Some of the most profitable websites have multiple income streams, so don’t be afraid to test several to determine what results in the biggest return for your site.

A key to successful display ad monetization is placing ads in areas of a site where visitors will see them and engage with them. Typically, this leads to focusing on the most viewed areas of a site such as above-the-fold placements.

It makes sense to prioritize above-the-fold display ad optimization; improvements made there will yield the most meaningful increase in revenue. There are, however, less obvious areas of a webpage that are often ripe for monetization. Specifically, identifying sections that:

1. Are positioned below-the-fold


2. Generate high levels of visitor engagement

For many sites, the comment section fits both of these criteria. Though positioned as one of the last elements on a page, engagement levels are often very high. On certain web sites, many visitors read comments as intently as they consume the page content. That means that a high percentage of visitors will see the comments section and spend a decent amount of time reading what has been posted there.

Ads In Comments

The Wall Street Journal recently unveiled a redesign that featured a wider layout and cleaner font. In addition, the new page templates include a 300×250 banner ad next to the box where users can enter in comments. This banner ad will scroll with visitors as they read through existing comments, keeping it in view throughout the experience:



SB Nation has put integrated ads into its comments sections for a while, typically in the form of a 160×600 skyscraper or 300×250 rectangle that is right aligned alongside this section of the site:



The performance of this ad unit could be improved further by allowing it to float down as visitors scroll down.

These two examples above are the exception; most sites give little thought to monetizing below-the-fold elements of a webpage. Most comments sections look more like the example below–completely devoid of ads:



Comments in particular are an interesting monetization opportunity, primarily because of the high level of engagement that is typical of users interacting with that section. Put another way: if someone is interested enough in a topic to be writing comments, there is a decent chance that they will be interested in a relevant ad shown adjacent to the comment section.

Publishers looking to start selling display ads directly will be forced to make a number of decisions in their attempt to monetize this traffic. If you’re fortunate enough to gain traction and start getting some RFPs from potential advertisers, you’ll likely need to decide which pricing methodology you’ll use to sell your display ads.

Because digital display ads can be tracked and analyzed in ways that don’t apply to more traditional advertising media, they can also be priced in different ways. Advertisers are able to track when their ads are clicked and what actions are completed once an ad is clicked, opening up the options for compensating publishers based on different criteria.th

There are three primary ways to price display advertising:

• Cost Per Thousand (CPM)


• Cost Per Click (CPC)


• Cost Per Action (CPA)

This post will take a look at the specifics of these options, including the pros and cons of each.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM)

Under a CPM arrangement, the advertiser agrees to pay the publisher a predetermined amount for every 1,000 ad impressions served. This effectively means that the publisher is compensated for every ad shown.

Here are a few things to know about CPM pricing arrangements:

• Commonly used in direct ad sales


• Commonly used for “branding campaigns” where primary objective is to increase awareness of a company or product


• Results in most predictable income stream for publisher


• Gives publisher nearly full visibility on value delivered to advertiser

For example, an advertiser may agree to run a campaign on a site under the following terms:

• 100,000 impressions in 728 x 90 leaderboard at $5 CPM


• 100,000 impressions in 300 x 600 large skyscraper at $7 CPM

Under such an arrangement, the publisher would make a total of $1,200: $5 for every 1,000 leaderboard impressions served (for a total of $500) and $7 for every 1,000 large skyscraper impressions (for a total of $700).

CPM rates can range from less than a dollar to three figures, meaning that showing 1,000 ads can generate a few cents in earnings or more than $100. That range is so wide because the compositions of audiences from site to site varies so dramatically. Sites that can offer access to targeted, valuable Web traffic can command higher CPMs, while those catering to a broad, relatively unattractive audience will be able to command much less.

Here’s a page from the PopSci.com media kit, showing off the impressively high CPMs that site commands:



Advantages: The most obvious advantage with a CPM agreement is that you make money for every display ad you serve, regardless of whether or not it generates a click, lead, or other action. Every visitor who comes to your site makes you money, plain and simple. This results in a relatively stable stream of earnings; if you can predict your traffic, you can predict your revenue.

The ability to maintain control and visibility is also an advantage here; you know exactly how many ads you serve, and therefore exactly how much you’re owed from your clients.

Disadvantages: From a publisher’s perspective, there aren’t many disadvantages to a CPM pricing model for display ads. But in exchange for the stability achieved, you do risk leaving some money on the table if your site has an audience that performs well from an advertiser perspective. In other words, CPM arrangements don’t always lead to the highest earnings; if your site has an audience that is a good fit for an advertiser’s message, you may be able to generate more by being compensated for each click or each action.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost per click, or CPC, means that the advertiser pays the publisher each time one of their ads is clicked. In other words, the advertiser is paying for visitors sent to their site from the publisher’s site.

Here are a few things to know about CPC:

• Results in more volatile revenue than CPM


• Advertisers pay nothing for ads served that do not generate clicks


• Expands universe of potential advertisers (i.e., many advertisers prefer CPC to CPM campaigns)


• Preferred by advertisers running “direct response” campaigns


• Often used by ad networks such as Google AdSense


• Publishers should have full visibility into revenue generated, since they are able to track and record clicks in most ad serving software programs

Publishers are suppliers of pageviews, so they should always measure their total revenue relative to pageviews (i.e., revenue per 1,000 pageviews) even if they sell ads on a CPC basis.

For example, let’s assume that the same publisher and advertiser from our example above enter into a CPC agreement where the advertiser pays $5 for each click / visitor sent. The publisher runs the ads as follows:

• 100,000 impressions in 728 x 90 leaderboard: generates 100 clicks


• 100,000 impressions in 300 x 600 large skyscraper: generates 120 clicks

This would create $500 in revenue from the leaderboard and $600 in revenue from the large skyscraper ($5 for every click) for a total of $1,100. That translates into an $11 eRPM for the publisher; they generated $1,100 in earnings from 100,000 pageviews ($1,100 / 100 = $11).

Advantages: If you have an audience that is a good fit for a certain type of ad–meaning that the message is likely to appeal to your visitors and they in turn are likely to click on it–CPC campaigns can be great ways to monetize. Just because they are low risk for advertisers (who pay only for the ads that work) doesn’t mean that they can’t be big earners for publishers as well.

You’ll also find that a willingness to participate in CPC campaigns will significantly expand the universe of potential advertisers. Because many companies only want to pay for clicks (and not just eyeballs), there is no shortage of advertisers looking to run CPC campaigns.

Disadvantages: There is a pretty big risk to running CPC campaigns: if the ads aren’t resonating with your audience, you can end up with zero compensation for serving a large number of ads. In other words, you risk giving away a large number of ad impressions for nothing, and making the lion’s share of your revenue from the few ads on which your visitors click.

Cost Per Action (CPA)

There’s another pricing model that requires even more steps to be completed in order for the publisher to be compensated. Under a cost per action (CPA) campaign, the advertiser pays only for clicks that subsequently see visitors complete some specific action. This action can be a purchase of a product, download of a document, sign-up for a newsletter / membership, or countless other steps.

This form of advertising is essentially affiliate marketing, an arrangement where the publisher is compensated for each sale (or another non-monetary transaction) they’re able to generate for the advertiser. This is obviously low risk for the advertiser since they pay only for transactions that generate their desired outcome.

Here are a few things to know about CPA campaigns:

• Lowest risk for advertiser; they pay only when their desired outcome occurs


• Publisher loses visibility into revenue earned

Advantages: Advertisers are willing to pay a lot more for a completed transaction than they are for a single ad impression, so CPA arrangements can allow publishers to make quite a bit of money–up to $100 or even more–from a single ad impression.

Again, the opportunity exists here if you have an audience that is a great fit for a specific advertiser campaign. If you’re trying to convince visitors to your big game hunting blog to sign up for a free sample of lipstick, you’ll probably see a terrible conversion rate. But if you’re presenting that same audience with an opportunity to buy hunting apparel, you might be in business.

Disadvantages: The biggest disadvantage to this arrangement is the increased volatility in earnings. It’s possible that days could go by without a single conversion, even if you’re serving lots of ads and generating lots of clicks.

Another big downside is that the loss in transparency. Once a visitor leaves the publisher’s site and enters the advertiser’s, it’s impossible to know if they convert or leave immediately. The advertiser will of course track this carefully, but this means that the publisher has to take the word of their partner to report honestly on revenue earned.

Most CPA advertisers are ethical and honest in their reporting to partners. But in some niches there are less than reputable characters, and dishonest reporting can be fairly common.

CPM vs. CPC. vs. CPA

There’s no hard and fast rule about which pricing methodology is the best; it depends on the site, audience, and campaign. Publishers generally prefer CPM arrangements since that yields the most predictable cash flow, but that approach won’t necessarily produce the best results (i.e., most revenue) in all situations.

Consider the following hypothetical ad campaign running on your site:

• 1,000,000 ad impressions (in a 300×250 unit we’ll say)


• 1,500 clicks (a click-thru rate, or CTR, of 0.15%)


• 300 memberships created (a conversion rate of 20%)

The revenue generated and the optimal pricing strategy from the publisher’s perspective depends on how much revenue is associated with each deliverable. For example:

• $10 CPM nets $10,000


• $10 CPC nets $15,000


• $100 CPA nets $30,000

Obviously, the revenue generated is very sensitive to the compensation figure associated with each arrangement. In this particular example, the publisher can offer an audience that converts at a relatively high rate–and therefore would make the most money with a CPA arrangement.

 

Affiliate marketing is all about making money as quickly as possible, in as much volume as possible. Therefore, you want to sign on with the most lucrative networks. Here are a bunch to choose from.

1. MaxBounty

First on the list is one of the most highly recommended networks from marketers around. Maxbounty is very widespread and has a quick and easy signup process, with the caveat that they take a while to join and may reject you. They’re surprisingly exclusive, which makes for a good network full of great offers. Sellers don’t have to worry about their products being advertised by low quality sites, so they’re more confident and willing to pay more.

The only downside to Maxbounty is that their personal support isn’t the greatest. They’re serviceable when you’re in need, but they don’t step in with a personal touch unless you’re one of their most valuable affiliates.

2. vCommission

vCommission is an interesting network for one reason, and that’s their international presence. Based in India, their low operating costs and wide network make them an ideal network for certain types of marketers, particularly those who are able to focus on international marketing.

They’re also quick to get up and running, with the time from acceptance to first payment measured in days if you’re timed properly.

3. Affiliate.com

Affiliate.com is one of the oldest networks around, as evidenced by their domain name. They’re also one of the most successful. They’ve maintained this level of quality over the years by offering a range of added services, including domain parking and stable, regular payments. What’s not to like?

Perhaps the one thing that sets Affiliate.com ahead of the rest is their personnel. They have a very helpful staff that take each case on an individual basis. Many affiliate networks suffer from a disconnect between different departments, leading to contradictory messages. Not so from this network.

4. Peerfly

Peerfly has some of the highest paying offers out of any CPA network in the world, and for that reason it’s a very good network to join if you’re looking for single sales of high value. On the other hand, it suffers from being more exclusive than many other networks. It’s hard to get into, particularly if you’re a beginning marketer and don’t have an established history of successful traffic.

That said, if you can get in, you can make a great living through Peerfly alone. While I don’t recommend putting all of your eggs in one basket that way, as long as you stay within the rules and avoid black hat techniques, it’s not the worst plan in the world.

5. Rakuten Affiliate Network

Rakuten isn’t a household name for many, but the previous name of the network – LinkShare – was very common. Rakuten is the Japanese company that purchased Buy.com, and brings a lot of legitimacy and support to the affiliate network. If you’ve ever been concerned about the quality of the network you’re using, Rakuten is the way to go.

Their platform is very slick, with a host of great tools and platform options that allow you to find the information you need to optimize your site quickly and easily. Plus, like Amazon and eBay mentioned later, you have access to a huge catalog of potential products to sell.

6. eBay’s Partner Network

Most people think of eBay as an auction site, something like craigslist, where a seller posts an item and buyers bid. There seems to be no room for affiliates in this equation, but eBay has found space. What happens is certain types of product sales happen on a storefront basis rather than an auction basis. Sales through these storefronts can earn affiliate bonuses.

eBay has two primary benefits. The first is that their commissions tend to range quite high, particularly compared to other product-based affiliate programs. The second is the new user bonus; referring a first-time buyer earns you double the commission. If you’re great at convincing users to try a new site, eBay can be incredibly lucrative.
7. Matomy

Matomy may not be a familiar name to some, but many of the networks they have purchased over the years are more familiar. Part of the power of Matomy comes from having so many previously popular, large networks under their banner.

Matomy also has a lower payout than many of the other networks, only requiring a minimum of $50 to get a deposit, as opposed to the $100 or more of many other networks. For marketers, they offer some great tracking options as well, giving them ad edge over similar affiliate networks.

8. Neverblue

Neverblue is a network that strongly polices their affiliate traffic. This makes it a difficult network for black hat marketers, who tend to be very vocal about labeling things “scams” when it was their own mistakes leading to their downfall.

For a legitimate marketer, who doesn’t rely on black hat techniques or referral spoofing, Neverblue can be a fantastic network. It’s entirely possible to earn thousands every month with a decently tuned site and the right choice in products to promote.

9. Clickbank

Clickbank is one of the oldest and largest CPA networks out there, and as such is surrounded by as many myths and lies as it is truths and legitimate stories. It’s hard to differentiate one miffed and failed affiliate from a deliberate scammer from a real story. That said, they’ve lasted as long as they have by being legitimate; no scam affiliate would still be alive.

Clickbank has a massive library of potential products to promote, and as such it’s highly variable in performance. You can sell some products with individual commissions above $500, or you can sell thousands of $1 products. Where you find success depends on trial and error.

10. iTunes Affiliates

iTunes has a lot of support coming from Apple, and it’s a great little media platform to use as an affiliate. If you want to sell digital products, music, movies, apps and the like, you have a perfect niche through Apple.

Apple’s commissions not only work on apps, but on in-app purchases as well; if you link to Plants vs. Zombies, and the user buys the app and a bunch of in-game perks, you earn a commission from those perks as well. This can be an unexpected benefit to selling otherwise free with in-app purchase apps.

11. Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program allows you to sell anything that Amazon sells, and earn a small commission from those sales. It’s hugely potent because of the massive library and support behind the product catalog. On the other hand, it’s very easy to run into stiff competition with a site that’s not optimized to handle the strain.

Success with Amazon Affiliates requires a highly focused niche site, though you can make quite a bit from secondary sales. Anyone clicking through your link earns you commissions, even if the user didn’t buy what you linked to in the first place. The only downside is the performance-based fee structure; you have to sell in a decent monthly volume to reach the highest tiers of commissions.

 

In the world of affiliate marketing, you have essentially three options. You can work through an affiliate network run by a giant, reputable company. Networks like Rakuten, Amazon Affiliates, the iTunes Affilaites or eBay Partners all fall into this category. They tend to be very legitimate, but not very well converting, as far as affiliate networks go. Obviously, when used properly, they’re great. It’s just a matter of using them properly.

The second option is to go with one of the higher quality non-corporate-backed affiliate networks. Among these, Clickbank reigns supreme. Any other high-quality network is typically going to be measured against the bar set by Clickbank.

The third option is to use one of the smaller, shadier affiliate networks. Most savvy marketers tend to avoid these networks, either because they’re unlikely to pay or because they require heavy use of black hat techniques to properly utilize.

This post will discuss Clickbank, as well as two of its primary competitors; Clicksure and Commission Junction. Is Clickbank really as potent as I’ve claimed? Can you succeed with other networks?

Clickbank

Clickbank is one of those affiliate networks that is hard to quantify when you do a simple Internet search. You’ll end up with a lot of low-quality “how to make money” posts, coming typically from people selling products through Clickbank they want you to buy. You’ll find people complaining that the network is a scam, though when you dig deeper, some details just don’t add up. Yet Clickbank is still running. Why is that?

As it turns out, satisfied users don’t post as much about their success as dissatisfied users post about their failures. It’s why a product can have excessive negative reviews and still be a good product; satisfied users just don’t often leave reviews. This means the search results are full of dissatisfied users, while the good users are making bank every day.

Clickbank is a huge network with a massive number of products you can pick through for your affiliate. Where many people go wrong is they go too broad. Much like Amazon, you have to pick a niche and go all-in with it. If you’re too broad, you don’t have the SEO focus to get users in, and the quality of your traffic will be worse.

On the other hand, many people just look for Clickbank affiliate products with high commissions and go for them, disregarding the competition. Clickbank, being a large and popular network, has a lot of users. That means there’s a lot of existing competition for the best niches. You need to find a niche you can make your own.

Clickbank has numerous benefits. It’s a large, old network, so it’s not going to screw you on payments or by disappearing out of the blue. It’s available in 150 countries, so it’s ideal for international marketers. It has very low entry requirements, so it doesn’t take a lot of effort to be approved to sell. It is, thus, an ideal starting point for new affiliates. If you’re good enough, you don’t need to spread out beyond Clickbank’s walls.

Clicksure

Clicksure is a competitor for Clickbank, but as an affiliate marketer, you can use them both if you so desire. Unfortunately, the site has a bad reputation. At various times in their history, Clicksure has been accused of being a scam business.

Clicksure itself is not a scam. They are aware of their bad reputation, but they haven’t done much to combat it, which doesn’t help. However, they do honor legitimate sales and they honor refunds. The only problem is the products sold on their network.

Because Clicksure has a low bar for filtering products marketers sell through their network, you end up with a lot of low quality or scam-like products. This means that you have two options as an affiliate trying to sell products from their marketplace.

The first option is to spend a significant amount of time digging through and researching legitimate products. When you find them, you’re probably going to be faced with stiff competition from the other marketers trying to find those same products. If you can find a new legitimate offering and capitalize on it, you can be the one to dominate the niche.

The second option is to delve into low quality marketing and sell the poor products. You’ll end up with high refund rates and highly variable paydays. It’s possible, but it’s not ideal.

Commission Junction

The third affiliate network I’m discussing here is Commission Junction. CJ is another of the old, powerful networks with a lot of variance in the quality of their offerings. On one hand, you have a lot of good products, including physical products, to sell through their network. On the other hand, they have a filter lower than Clickbank’s that allows in some low quality offers. They aren’t as bad or spam-ridden as Clicksure, but they aren’t the fertile grounds you see elsewhere.

CJ is quick and easy to get into. The problem is their internal affiliate interface. There’s a lot of issues with finding everything you want, particularly as a new user. It’s simply not intuitive.

One of the biggest benefits of Commission Junction over Clickbank and other networks is that a lot of famous, highly-recognized products can be found in their system. You don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to convince your readers that the products you sell are legitimate; they’ll have heard of them and already know.

On the other hand, CJ has one issue that puts it behind Clickbank in terms of value for affiliate marketers. That’s the commission rates. CJ is generally lower for individual commissions than the better networks. You can find cheap products on Clickbank, and you can find valuable products on CJ, but in general you won’t find the best on CJ. That said, if you’re operating on a volume is better than value proposition, you’ll be able to do well on Commission Junction.

Overall, which of the three is better? While it all depends on the offers you find and the niche you choose, generally Clickbank is going to be the best. Clicksure has the worst issues out of the three, and honestly, I don’t recommend it.

 

Cost per advertising, particularly CPM – cost per thousand – is a game of optimizing your numbers. A lot of times, you’re going to want to experiment with different networks until you find one that meets your requirements. Some will be perfectly fine networks, but fail to support your niche. Others may let you down in terms of tools or support. Test out these networks; ideally, several of them will work for you, and you can integrate them on your sites.

Tribal Fusion

First on the list is one of the older and more recognized names in CPM ads, Tribal Fusion, a division of Exponential Advertising. They might be considered a baseline from which other CPMs are measured. They do require a site to have a high level of regular viewership, though, making them unsuitable for new or small sites.

Banner Connect

Based in the Netherlands, Banner Connect partners with several companies, including Appnexus and IBM. They do a lot more than just ads, though, so feel free to explore their platform and see what use you can get out of it. You never know where the next implementation may lead.

CPX Interactive

CPX has a number of ad divisions, including Realtime, AdReady, CCDRMedia, and Consumed Media. They all have different focuses, such as micro-ads and video advertising, in addition to the general CPXi CPM ads.

Adtegrity

Seeing the power of deep targeting, Adtegrity has put a lot of effort into their bid systems, their retargeting, their lookalike audiences and their behavioral targeting. It’s really one of the better alternatives to using traditional Facebook ads, which are better used for CPC or conversion objectives than CPM.

Advertising.com

You would expect the owner of advertising dot com to be a business deep into advertising,and you would be right. They are one of the oldest and one of the best solutions for ads of all sorts, from both sides of the fence, both as publisher and as advertiser. Sites of all sizes in all niches are welcome somewhere in their system.

AdPepper

AdPepper is an interesting take on the theme. They’re an independent network, not part of a larger technology like AOL or another setup. They also serve a global and international audience, with their homepage even translated into both German and Spanish. An excellent option for those outside of the US.

Conversant

Formerly Valueclick, Conversant is up there amongst giants. They are a very old network that has weathered the storms of negative publicity and the backlash against various advertising techniques in their long history. They’re still alive and thriving, so know they’re always ready to adapt to the next big thing. Plus, they work great for even small sites.

Clove Network

Smaller than many of the other networks on this list, Clove is nonetheless a powerful network with a wide range of ad formats available for use. They also have quite a bit in the way of optimizations to help sites implement their ads properly.

Infolinks

The biggest benefit of Infolinks is their smart ad technology, that applies ads in various ways determined to eliminate ad blindness. Too many people tune out or ignore ads; Infolinks has an innovative system to help eliminate that problem. If you find too few people are paying attention to your ads, try this network.

Axill

Axill is a fairly standard ad network with one notable benefit that is largely irrelevant to the vast majority of you, but a primary selling point for a few of you; bitcoins. That’s right, they deal both in accepting and paying out in bitcoins, if you’re the kind of person who keeps up with rapidly inflating virtually profitless digital currencies. Note: They don’t yet deal in Dogecoins, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for those.

Sovrn

Primarily focused on the US to the exclusion of much of the rest of the world, Sovrn – formerly Lijit – has some of the best pay rates of any networks, despite being a smaller and more exclusive network. Just don’t rely too heavily on their analytics.

Propeller Ads Media

Yes, I know this post is primarily about CPM, but you can’t talk about ad networks without talking about Propeller. They’re a damn good network with surprisingly high payouts, more than double those of some other networks, and they’re always on time.

Pulse Point

Pulse Point doesn’t have the slickest website, but don’t let that deceive you. The primary benefit of their ad network is the automation. They have programmatic and algorithmic buying and selling, so you can optimize your ads without ever having to look in detail into the sites you’re using.

Matomy

The Matomy media group is a great ad platform that does display ads, but also works with mobile ads, video ads and social advertising in over a dozen different categories and a wide range of niches. You might not get in – their high level of support requires decent sites – but if you can, they’re pretty great.

Burst Media

Another one of the old giants, Burst Media has a lot of high-profile clients, including Paramount, Loreal, and Disney. They do more than just leverage display advertising; they reach out specifically to brand advocates, those people most interested in promoting your brand, and hook you up.

Popcash

The most controversial entry on this list, Popcash doesn’t so much do page display advertising. Instead, they’re the ones primarily responsible for pop-under ads. Sure, it’s not entirely a modern technology, being replaced by exit intent pops, but they’re still surprisingly effective. Give them a try, if you don’t mind the possible hit to your reputation for using pop unders.

Technorati

Specializing entirely on tech companies, tech sites and others in those niches, Technorati is a widespread provider of information, content marketing and display advertising. Fit their niche and they’re perfect; try to jump in with a cooking blog and you might not find much of use.

AdMarvel

Not to be confused with Marvel Comics, AdMarvel is a network that works with some major companies, including Verizon. They’re great for developers, they have some interesting dynamic optimization options and they give you a lot of control over the ads you display.

Index Exchange

Formerly known as Casale, the rebranding is actually a very modern development. They’re still the same great old network, though, so if you’ve found success with them before,you’ll find it still.

Buzz City

Don’t be turned off by their 90s cartoon logo; Buzz City is a surprisingly great network specializing in mobile ads. More importantly, they’re primarily an international provider, with a huge number of ads served in India, Indonesia, and various African countries.

Vibrant Media

Rounding out this list is Vibrant, an advertiser with a lot of brand connection options that benefit both advertisers and publishers alike. Keep your ads consistent across multiple platforms and hook up with the people you need seeing your ads.

 

The main determining factor for the quality of a CPA network is the quality of the people using it. Low-entry public CPAs tend to have low payouts and poor advertising because they let everyone in. Higher tier public CPAs are that much harder to get into, but they’re more beneficial to those who maintain the quality standards necessary.

The best CPAs are the private networks that rarely advertise and are rarely open. You have to be someone special or fit special criteria to get in. However, you can take a few steps to help make it much more likely.

1. Learn the Industry

There’s one thing that unifies virtually every private CPA network, and that’s their exclusivity in the face of the inexperienced. If you want to get in, you can’t just try to jump in. It’s like trying to compete in Olympic swimming when you’ve never been in the deep end of a pool before.

Thankfully, the Internet is filled with great information and guides. Unfortunately, a lot of it comes from affiliates looking to sign you up under their programs, or users developing and selling courses and training that you can otherwise find free. Some of it might be valuable, some won’t; it’s up to you if you trust someone enough to spend money on their courses.

Once you’ve learned the basics of CPA marketing, you can start looking for specific offers within specific industries. Use something like OfferVault as a CPA search engine and build up a list of potential offers in your niche. This will give you an idea of what rates to expect for what kind of offers, as well as how the industry itself works.

You should also take a moment to review this questionnaire. It’s full of questions you are likely to be asked when you sign up for a CPA network, as part of an interview process. Treat it like a job; be transparent, be honest, and don’t try to misrepresent your history,experience or performance.

2. Establish Legitimacy

It’s entirely possible to be successful in CPA using platforms that already exist. For example, you might base your entire project on a series of custom audiences you’ve built up on Facebook and Twitter. However, it’s generally better and easier if you establish yourself a niche website.

You don’t need to be dominating the Google search results to have a website that’s attractive to CPA networks. All you need is an audience of interested, real people. Emphasis on real, here; buying traffic and trying to leverage that traffic into a CPA admission isn’t going to help. They might let you in, but you’ll have no future with the network when you try to run their ads and your fake traffic doesn’t convert.

A website also gives you a URL and a potential reputation to use to back your application. You can claim to be the owner of a business rather than just a newbie looking to break into the already-saturated industry.

Once you apply to a network, contact that network. Think of it like trying to get a job; a bit of eagerness and a dash of being proactive is near-essential. The easiest way to get in touch with the managers of a CPA network is to just give them a call over the phone, which you should do pretty much as soon as your application is submitted. However, you can also use Skype, AIM, GTalk or any other messenger, as long as the managers of your chosen network publish contact details for those messengers.

Make sure you do plenty of research into the rules and regulations of the networks you’re applying to or are part of. You need to make sure you’re avoiding anything that will give you a bad reputation or will get you kicked out of a program. Not only does this hurt your income; it hurts your ability to get into more networks in the future.

3. Work Your Way Up

You’re not going to be able to join the exclusive country club style CPA networks when you’re new to the business, for much the same reason that you won’t be hired on as a CEO or upper manager when you have no experience with a firm.

Once you have your legitimacy established, you can apply to some of the less exclusive and more open networks. You won’t get a lot of work from them, or if you do, you won’t be earning a lot for each offer. That’s okay. Your goal is two-fold. First, you want to be able to tell CPA Network B that you’re a member of CPA Network A. Second, you want to be able to present legitimate statistics of your conversions and traffic.

Essentially, you’re going to want to work your way up the ladder of networks. Apply to as many low-quality open CPA networks as possible, determine which are best in your niche, and roll with those for a while. Once you’ve established a presence, dial back to only the best offers and apply to a list of one tier higher CPA networks. Leverage your history and experience to get in with these networks, drop the less valuable networks, and continue.

After a few rounds of this, you can begin applying to the high tier exclusive CPA networks. You should have some name recognition, a history of conversions and a proactive attitude backing you up.

Don’t worry too much about rejections. Sometimes, CPA networks just aren’t taking on new publishers. This is particularly true of the highest tier private networks, which have to maintain a careful balance of publishers and advertisers so they can monitor quality. The most time consuming part of this entire process, actually, is waiting for the best CPA networks to open up to new publishers.

You’re probably going to spend as much time looking for networks and reading up on their reputations, their niches, their contact information and their terms as you are advertising, especially in the beginning. Unfortunately, there’s no true shortcut in CPA marketing; you either do the legwork, or you suffer rejections

 

If you want to make money as a middleman between a customer and a product seller, you have two options; you can take up affiliate marketing, or you can get into the world of CPA. What’s the difference, and which is better?

Affiliate Marketing

First, let’s take a look at affiliate marketing. You’ve certainly heard of it; it’s all over the web. Affiliate programs are available for just about anything. Amazon has one, with their Amazon Associates program. Video games have them with benefits for players who sign up other players. Even small companies often offer affiliate programs, because paying a few bucks to customers to turn them into advertisers and brand advocates is cheaper than running comparable ad programs.



The basic premise of an affiliate marketing program is simple. On one end, you have the customers. On the other end, you have the store, like Amazon, selling products. In the middle, you have the affiliate marketer. As an affiliate marketer, it is your job to curate a list of products in a given nice and do everything you can to sell them. This might mean writing reviews, it might mean creating user guides, it might mean advertising, and so forth.

Your goal as an affiliate marketer, with this website full of products and reviews, is to get users to use your affiliate-flagged link to purchase products. With Amazon, for example, you create links to a product with your affiliate ID appended to the end. From there, any product the user buys during that session of browsing counts as an affiliate purchase for you. You got the user there, so you get a commission out of whatever they buy. If you refer them for a $5 widget and they decide they need a $1,000 TV, you get a cut of that TV.

As an affiliate marketer, you have a lot of work to do to be successful. You need to build a website. You need to choose a niche. You need to research the hell out of that niche and find a place where you can succeed without unnecessary competition. You need keep that site up to date and making money. Most successful affiliate marketers also run wide networks of sites, so they have a number of different income streams.

CPA Marketing

Now let’s compare affiliate marketing with CPA marketing. First of all, what does CPA stand for? It’s Cost Per Action, or sometimes Cost Per Acquisition.

CPA is available for just about anything, the same way as affiliate marketing. You can find it for a variety of products and services, in a wide range of niches.



One difference between affiliate marketing and CPA is that usually affiliate marketing comes from the manufacturer or seller of the products. CPA, on the other hand, comes from networks with a range of offers from various sellers, more like a marketplace than a single store. Becoming a part of, say, Joe Blow’s Affiliate Shack gives you access to just what Joe Blow sells. Becoming a part of a CPA network can give you access to a lot of different offers from various manufacturers in different niches.

CPA also doesn’t rely on a sale. You still have the same customer – CPA – seller layout, but instead of requiring a sale to get paid, you can get paid for other actions. They might be form fills, or email submissions, or sales calls, or ebook downloads, or app installs, anything else the seller wants. Essentially, you’re being absolved of the need to sell. Instead, all you need to do is hook the customer up with the sales people of the seller. Some CPA offers will give you a bonus if the sale happens, while most just pay you for the lead.

If all of this sounds an awful lot like affiliate marketing, well, you’ve found out the dirty secret of the industry. CPA marketing is a subdivision of affiliate marketing, with a slightly different framework and a different process.

Which Should You Use?

So, the debate between affiliate marketing and CPA marketing is often one that comes down to the simple choice of which you should use to make money. Which is easier? Which earns you more?

The fact is, there are so many affiliates and so many CPA networks out there, with so many products and so many offers to pick through, that it’s impossible to recommend any one system, network or product above all others. Even the best high-converting offer earns you nothing if your site is terrible and you can’t sell. Conversely, you can make a ton of money out of bland, low-payout offers with a great site and a low-competition niche.

Here’s the thing; you can do both. In fact, you very likely should do both. If you design your site properly, and you integrate your ads into your content with appropriate disclosure, you can do very well.

Someone coming to your site might be looking for something somewhat related to the products you offer. If you’re limited to just affiliate marketing, you lose the conversion, because the items you have on offer aren’t exactly what the user wants. If you have a few CPA offers scattered throughout, however, then the user can contact various sellers to ask about a product that meets their needs. Rather than a bounce, you get paid for a lead.

One benefit of affiliate marketing is the lack of human contact necessary to be successful. I can easily write dozens of blog posts with affiliate links peppered in, and make money from people clicking through. I don’t need to talk to anyone at the seller, I don’t need to be a pushy salesman directly to the customer, I just set it up and make money.

CPA networks, meanwhile, often require an interview process before you can get started. This means at a minimum that you need to be in contact with the manager of the CPA network.

On the other hand, you can be successful with CPA without a website. You can run successful CPA ads on Facebook, for example, without needing a landing page and a website between the user and the seller. You just need to know your audience, know your niche, and have plenty to spend on ads.

When you bring both methods together, that’s when moneymaking harmony sings. Design a nice site in a good niche, run CPA offers and affiliate links, and make money from a dozen different sources at once.

 

 

Driving traffic to a CPA offer is more or less identical to driving traffic to any website. You can still get traffic from all of the usual black and white hat sources, and the conversion rate you get depends on the quality of that traffic.

There’s just one catch with CPA; often offers will specify one particular type of traffic. If an offer you take specifies banner ad traffic, and you use the offer link in a text ad, none of the referrals you make will count for payment. You’re breaking the terms of the offer, and thus forfeiting any earnings.

CPA Specific Terms

Some CPA offers are not limited. Others will specify types of traffic, such as banner traffic, traffic from emails, or organic traffic only. Keep this in mind as you read on about types of traffic and various traffic sources; you will need to either focus solely on one type of traffic, or use a variety of offers to capture each type of traffic.

One thing you might want to watch for is Incent offers. This keyword, when present in an offer, means you’re allowed to incentivize the traffic in any way you desire. You can, for example, tell users that if they fill out the form, they get a free copy of your ebook or a 10% off coupon for a product.

You might even tell them they can sign up for an exclusive deals mailing list which you use for other offers. Giveaways work as well; record the people who sign up and award a gift card to a few lucky winners each month. If you’re getting enough conversions and your offer pays enough, it’s a small chunk of your available profits.

Finding Offers

Part of driving traffic to your offers is finding the right offers in the first place. You want to develop a website – or multiple websites – in a niche. Each niche has limits, and you need to have discipline to keep your offers focused. If you find good offers in a different niche, don’t slap them on to your site, save them for a new site in a different niche.

You can find offers using sites like OfferVault or oDigger. Put in keywords relating to your niche and look for offers. By registering for these sites, you can use advanced search criteria, which are extremely helpful for weeding out the offers that don’t apply to your site. You’ll want to specify offers in the right country, for example. An offer in French doesn’t apply to your US-only site, does it?

When you find applicable offers, you will need to review them for any specifications that make them difficult to monetize. Such specifications include limits on the type of traffic, incentives you’re allowed to offer, and the action required to count as a successful conversion.

With a selection of offers in hand, you will need to apply to the networks that host the offer. If you don’t get accepted into the network, you can’t run the offer, so you might have to search for replacements. If you’re already a member of the applicable network, you’re good to go.

Types of CPA Sites

The first choice you need to make is do you opt for a volume-based approach or a quality-based approach.

A volume-based approach has you spending the absolute minimum amount of time and money on your site. You slap up some content, you use a template site, you throw in a few offers, and you run a few ads. That’s it. You do this tens or hundreds of times, creating a lot of minor sites with a lot of offers, trying to hit all the bases. At some point, you reach critical mass and make more money than it takes to set it all up.

A quality-based approach is much more stable for the long term. You create a custom niche site and put your all into it. A custom site design, nicely integrated offers and a constant update schedule keep the site running and hopefully flourishing. You can leverage this site into other monetization methods later, such as affiliate marketing, direct sales of ad space, and even selling your own products.

I recommend the quality-based approach for a few reasons. For one thing, a quality site has more long-term growth potential. For another, a horde of thin sites can earn you a spammer label and cause your sites to be removed from Google rankings, which can hurt quite a bit.

Driving Traffic

Once you have a site set up with some offers, it’s time to drive some traffic to it. You can do this in a number of different ways.

• Organic search. This is the best method for long term growth, but it’s not as good for the quantity-based approach. With organic search, you’re working with SEO to build a brand presence and a trusted reputation, so you need to carefully cherry-pick your offers to avoid scamming your readers.


• Search ads. Using Bing PPC, Google AdWords or other search ads allow you access to a huge amount of targeted traffic. The caveat, of course, is that you have to pay for ads and you’re not guaranteed conversions. If your targeting is off or you’re paying too much for ads, you’ll see very few people actually filling out your CPA offer form, so you won’t be earning back the money you spent, let alone making a profit.


• Mobile ads. Using mobile ad exchanges like Buzzcity opens your site up to a whole wide world of mobile users. Just make sure that your offers are targeted at mobile users, and that your site works perfectly on all mobile devices. This might require shelling out for a responsive design.


• Social media. Organic social media works with the quality-based approach, because you’re building a brand as much as you are an affiliate site. You can curate content, share blog posts and interact with industry veterans through Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, all with the goal of driving traffic to your site and your offers.


• Social ads. Much the same as search ads, Twitter, Facebook and other social outlets offer their own PPC ads. Use these to drive traffic to your sites. You can even use targeting information from your audience to run offers you haven’t implemented yet, to give them a trial run.


• Mailing lists. Building your own mailing list is great, but you can also buy space in other site newsletters or in newsletters designed to share affiliate sites with interested consumers.

Using a mixture of these traffic sources is ideal, so you’re not relying too much on any one traffic source. Experiment, find where your best conversions come from, and push for growth.