What is CPA and affiliate marketing?

Any individual who is committed to make money online via internet marketing as a middleman, has two choices at their disposal. They can choose to become affiliate marketers or alternatively, they can choose to venture into the CPA world. The choice to make is dependent on a person and their preference. But what’s the difference between the two?

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is not a new concept. As an affiliate marketer, you basically act as a salesperson for various companies and promote or sell certain products or services online for a commission. Virtually every big company and even small companies run an affiliate program. The logic is that it’s simple to turn their customers into marketers of their products and services by paying them a small commission than it is to run a full-fledged marketing campaign.

How does affiliate marketing work?

1. First, the affiliate displays ads of the merchant or business they are promoting on their website.
2. The customer visiting the site will then click on the link or ad
3. The customer will then be directed using a tracking link to the site of the merchant
4. The directed customer then makes a purchase on the merchant website
5. The affiliate network will then record details of the purchase and transaction
6. Confirmation that the purchase or transaction made is legit
7. Once that’s done, the transaction made will be credited to the affiliate who referred the customer
8. Lastly, the affiliate marketer is paid their commission as was initially discussed

Simply put, as an affiliate marketer, your job is to promote various products and services on various niches and ensure that they are bought using your tracking link. You can only earn commissions if a purchase is made using your referral link, hence an SEO optimized website will greatly help to get organic traffic into your site. You need to do everything possible to ensure you make a mark and get to make sales. This could be reviewing your merchant, advertising their products, writing user guides and even promoting their products and services on social media.

To be successful, you need to do a lot of research on the products and services you are promoting and choose a niche that’s profitable and popular.

CPA

CPA is an acronym for Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action. The outstanding difference between affiliate marketing and CPA is that while affiliate marketing emanates from a manufacturer or a single company or store, CPA emanates from a network and a person has access to various offers from different sellers. In essence, its more or less like a market place. For instance, becoming an affiliate of Amazon provides you access to just what Amazon sells. On the other hand, if you are part of a CPA network, you get access to offers from various sellers, companies or manufacturers.

How CPA works

1. A user or customer makes a visit to your website
2. The user clicks on your affiliate link
3. The user then completes any kind of action like say fill a form or download an eBook
4. You get paid money

The difference between CPA and affiliate marketing is that CPA is not sale driven. You simply get paid for a user completing any action such as eBooks downloads, app installs, email subscriptions, form fills or any other action a customer completes. CPA pays you for a lead while affiliate marketing pays you for a sale. However, there are instances where a number of CPA offers will pay you a certain bonus if a lead converts into a sale.

Bluntly put, CPA is basically a branch of affiliate marketing with a different process as well as framework. So which one should you settle for? The best thing would be to settle for both. You will get to earn from a lead as well as a sale rather than settling on one and losing on the other.