I’m done with Clickbank. Starting tomorrow I’m going to focus on promoting CPA offers. From scratch.
Let me tell you why.
A couple of days ago I started to check out some CPA offers and I did some simple keyword research in order to see how competitive the markets are. To my surprise I noticed that I was able to find some pretty good keywords relatively fast compared to the hours that I had to spend in order to find some keywords to promote popular Clickbank products.
When it comes to SEO, you’ll have less competition to face when promoting CPA offers. Here is my opinion on why that is:
1) Newbie Flood
When you started out with Internet Marketing, where did you start to look for offers? Think about all the ebooks and courses from the Gurus that you’ve bought, where do they tell you to start out as a newbie?
Right, Clickbank!
There are hundreds if not thousands of newbies joining the Internet Marketing world daily; and I would guess that 95% of them are starting out looking for offers on Clickbank, because all the ebooks, blogs and courses are telling them to do so. Not only that, you also find thousands of experienced marketers on Clickbank and many of them use SEO in order to make sales. We have to compete with all of them.
Have you ever tried to find good keywords for popular Clickbank products like ‘The Truth About Abs’, ‘Get My Ex Back’ or ‘Panic Away’?. It’s basically impossible to find keywords for these popular Clickbank products, let alone to rank for them.
Google’s first pages are flooded with review sites and Web2.0 sites. Ezinearticles.com is flooded with articles from newbies as well as experienced marketers promoting the popular Clickbank products.
The competitiveness is ridiculous and there are more and more marketers joining every single day.
2) PPC and Laziness
Most Internet Marketers are lazy and they are always looking for a fast solution. CPA networks don’t accept just anybody. For most CPA networks you actually need to apply and often you need to talk to an affiliate manager for a couple of minutes.
Newbies don’t like that. Why should I bother to apply for a network, talk to a guy and then wait to get a response if I can be lazy and go ahead signing up for Clickbank immediately?
That’s exactly why you don’t have the same level of competition when promoting CPA offers, especially if you promote them through SEO. You can actually get accepted into a CPA network the same day you apply and it’s well worth the time as you’re going to get access to profitable offers that you can’t find on Clickbank, let alone the fact that you’ll have much higher conversion rates.
It’s a lot easier to get somebody to sign up for a free trial than convincing them to spend 45 bucks for an ebook about loosing weight. They could get a real book next door for less.
The fastest way to make money online is to send paid traffic to a CPA offer, and that’s exactly what experienced Internet Marketers do. They don’t bother with SEO, article marketing and all that stuff. That takes way to long for them.
This is great for us. This means there is less competition within the organic search results and this makes it a lot easier for us to break into a niche.
So not only are there less marketers that you have to compete with, most of them focus on PPC.
This opens the door for us.
Don’t get me wrong, there are marketers promoting CPA offers with SEO – but I tell you what, I prefer to compete with 20 marketers rather than 2,000. What about you?
No BS CPA Newbie Bootcamp
Tomorrow I’m going to start a CPA Newbie Bootcamp. I and my members, we’re going to start promoting CPA offers, from scratch. This CPA bootcamp is all about SIMPLICITY. You won’t find lengthy reports, underground scripts, fancy landing pages or anything like that. This stuff would only overwhelm you.
Offer + Traffic + Conversion = $$$
That’s it.
We’re going to pick an offer that’s already popular and making people money. Then we’re going to create a simple WordPress blog and use it as landing page, pre-selling the visitor. After that we’re going to get some free targeted traffic through Article Marketing in order to test the offer.
If it doesn’t convert we dump it and do the same again. Fast.
If it converts, we move on and get more traffic, build a list and start to promote our articles.
Once the system is set up, we can start to worry about the advanced stuff.
Keeping everything simple stupid! This will make it easy to implement every step.
The whole point of this bootcamp is to get you to take action and to have results at the end of the day. I don’t care how many ebooks you’ve read about CPA. If you don’t have any results to show, you’re just a fan – just like me.
That will change tomorrow!
I’m not a CPA guru and I don’t even have a lot of experience with CPA to be honest. But what I’m extremely good at is to make things work – in simple steps. This time I’m going to make CPA work for me and my members and I invite you to join us tomorrow, 6pm EST.
Keep an eye on your inbox.
To Your Success!
Mario Brown – Proud [NBS-IMS] Member
p.s. I’m looking forward to your comments.
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
As usual Mario, right on the money!
Now I no why I’m getting virtually no sales as a Clickbank affiliate.
I agree with you mario, but I find that with CPA offers they dont stick around for too long… As soon as I have set up a site and everything, then I find out the CPA offer is cancelled or my links are redirected to another offer. I need to find CPA offers that are available for at least 6 months.
I hear you. If they cancel an offer, just grab the next best offer for now. That happens, CPA is fast paced. I want you guys to build a list. Once you have an autoresponder set up, you can promote several products related to the original offer and every time that a new CPA offer comes out, you can send it to your list and make money again =)
Cool, I’ll start working CPA with you, Mario.
I’ve applied to a few different networks and have been rejected, so I’m open to suggestions re: networks.
Yep we’ll talk about that inside the course. Starting out I want you to apply for Markethealth and Commission Junction. They have a couple of CPA networks and you’ll get accepted immediately =)
I couldn’t agree more, click bank is over run over marketed and leaves many new marketers burnt out trying to compete and all classes and programs are recommending click bank, Your on to something here.
Sweet!! Hey Mario,
I just got brave enough this month to start with paid CPA offers. One of mine converted within the first day and made me some money. I am so stoked that you are doing this and I can join in and see what works and what doesn’t. I’m in the right place and it’s the right time. I look forward to making great cash with this.
Monique
Fantastic Mario !!
I’ll be on the front row watching you and also in the trenches working CPA with you !
It’ll be cool getting your take on all of this each step of the way.
Definitely looking forward to you making this CPA move of yours into another success !
Wes ~
Warning: This bootcamp is all about doing, not watching buddy. The whole point is to get you to get your hands dirty, creating content and driving traffic. Get ready for action =)
Sounds good Mario, but what about people who have problems getting accepted by CPA networks. I have tried a couple and gotten turned down. I am interested to see what you have come up with.
Gene
Hi Gene, you have to keep trying. Starting out I want you to sign up for Commission Junction and Market Health. You’ll find some CPA offers in there to promote, and you don’t have to jump through hoops to get accepted. After that it’s all about how persistent you are, apply to 5 networks a day for 5 days and I promise you that you’ll be signed up for at least 5 at the end of the week. Let’s do it!
I agree with you Mario. I just seriously start IM few months ago, spent money in PPC, I don’t want to say how much, just got 2 sales. Same here, want to do CPA instead and learn organic traffic. Yes, it will take some work to get approved from the CPA networks, but it will be worth it!
Hey Guys,
Mario’s right about getting into the networks. Just apply to a few each day and surprisingly you’ll find that some will accept you with no problems [even some of the better known ones] while others just reject you for no apparent reason. So just go for it – you’ve got nothing to lose and a lot to gain…
I’m really looking forward to Mario’s take on CPA because I have about 6 dormant CPA accounts open and ready for A.C.T.I.O.N!!!
Cheers,
Mark
Hi Mario,
I understand your reasons, but I’ve been in affiliate marketing for over 10 years now, and there are major drawbacks to CPA. Here are just a couple:
1. CPA offers change regularly. Which means you’ll have to find replacement offers for each of your websites on a regular recurring basis. It’s impossible to build an affiliate site that runs on autopilot when using CPA.
2. The majority of companies advertising vis CPA offers are notorious for not dealing ethically with their customers. They use “bait and switch” tactics, they don’t honor refund requests, they force them into monthly purchases with no way to cancel… just to name a few. I’m not willing to risk my own business reputation by teaming up with companies like that… and neither should you.
On the bright side, clickbank and CPA aren’t the only choices out there. If you start by identifying your market, it’s much easier to find products to sell to them… without being locked into just these two choices.
Hi Holly,
thank you for your input, you are raising some very good and interesting points! Regarding point 1, you are absolutely right, CPA offers change on a regular basis and one will need to update his website every couple of weeks. I don’t think that’s a big deal, all we have to do is to go the the website and change the link to the new offer, that’s it. My goal is to have the process as automated as possible, changing some links once in a while is okay with me though. I have to check my sites anyway once in a while to add new content and to monitor comments and so forth.
Regarding your second point, I agree that there are some black sheeps among the advertisers but I wouldn’t say that it’s the majority. I think you are referring to the free trial offers with forced continuity. Let’s not forget that most CPA offers are lead offers and there are also many e-mail submit offers. People just have to enter their e-mail address and zip code or some information like their address and you can get pai 1-15 dollars. No continuity involved. There are some of the biggest names promoted through CPA (McDonalds, Coca Cola etc) and I’m sure they are not going to risk their reputation.
Yes there were some ‘bait and switch’ offers, especially regarding the Acai offers and Credit Card offers, but that’s just a couple of cases. Master Card and Visa actually just changed their policies, advertises have to make clear now that people are going to sign up for a continuity program.
Hey all,
I just wanted to tell you the easiest way that I got accepted into the CPA networks. I just simply wrote that I own a web design company (which I do) iWebCents – And that we do online marketing parallel with our web design jobs. I followed Mario’s advice and contacted them as soon as the application went through. For MaxBounty you are supplied with your managers AIM name, for azoogle I just e-mailed them. I simply asked if there was anything that I could do to assist them in approving my application, and at that point they requested the phone interview. I have no problem with any of you saying that you are employed as a sub contractor of my company. I believe simply stating that you work for a web development company in the internet marketing department, and you decided to branch out and take up affiliate marketing last year would be just fine. They are looking for reputable people that are not going to abuse the system, it really has nothing to do with not having a website in my opinion. They are just trying to eliminate people coming in looking to scam the submission forms etc. So like I said, if anybody wants to put that they are an employee of iWebCents I would have no problem with it. I would say something like “I am a sub contractor of iWebCents in the internet marketing department, and I have the capability to create custom campaigns for each offer. We are very well versed in organic white hat SEO and that is where the majority of our traffic will come from. We specialize in search engine placement and I believe I will be able to drive a great deal of traffic to my selected offers via organic traffic” They will ask you what niche you like and I responded with something like “Weight loss, being that it is the new year everybody is going crazy with diets so I am focusing on that. I actually have been promoting one of my own products in Detox, so I would be interested in anything that you have to do with that”. It worked like a charm for me on neverblue, maxbounty, and azoogle.. and I’ve never done any kind of CPA marketing.
Ok Mario,
I’m in on both MarketHealth and CJ. Let’s do this!!
TJ
Hi TJ,
make sure that you apply to more networks. The two you mentioned aren’t really CPA networks. I just mentioned them for people
who don’t have a CPA account at all.
I am looking forward to this really, I tried CPA before with no success to write home about.
What are some sound CPA networks that are not highly difficult to sign up for -as I am a beginner with CPA am creating new sites and have a high traffic site now. I need to know so I can start applying for my new sites. I had heard that its difficult to get into some and they want really high traffic sites, not all beginners can get in this way. Any help would be great. I agree with you totally Clickbank kept some of my money because of a ridiculous rule on credit card numbers from people that ordered from me. It was totally a steal of my commission, I am deleting my account with them, they are theives!!!
Thanks
p
Hi Pete, don’t believe everything that you here out there, it isn’t that difficult to get into the networks. Zolika mentioned two networks and commission junction and
Markethealth are two networks that will approve you immediately.
I know that it’s difficult for newbies to apply for CPA networks because they are afraid to talk to a real person about their (non-existing) marketing experience, but there are 2 CPA networks where you don’t need to talk to anyone, you just have to fill out the application and will get approved
http://www.adsquarenetwork.com/
http://offerfusion.com/
If you know of any other networks where you get accepted without too much hassle, please share.
Good luck to all of us with CPA marketing!
Thank you for mentioning these networks, I haven’t heard from them before but I’ll check them out.
One more tip…
Check out the http://offervault.com/ website. It has super valuable info on absolutely everything related to CPA. I don’t want to go into details about all the good stuff they have, just go there and see for yourself.
Hey Mario,
Did I understand that you recommend putting all the eggs in
one basket ?
I can’t believe…
J
Hi Marion,
received the link to your blog via newsletter. I would love to be part of this bootcamp as well. Wanted to start with CPA but the problem was that I was denied by some because I had no clue what it was, they wanted…
bookmarked your page and looking for your offer.
Phil
Hey Phil,
thank you for your interest! You can check the offer here: http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/173812-cpa-newbies-frustration-only-solution.html
Been playing around with both and cpa is out pacing anything else I have offered.
I’ve often wondered about CPA – looking on the warrior forum I do sometimes get the impression that this is the most lucrative part of IM to be in.
But you still have to get the basic IM skills under your belt!
Really looking forward to getting access to the boot camp!
Francis
Only joined today. Never done any CPA offers. Am I too late? How did people get on?
No you are not too late. You can start anytime, but it’s important that you first decide what you want to focus on online. If you don’t do that, you’ll keep jumping from one thing to the next.
Hi Brian, I’m still using and working through the info in this bootcamp
you could start anytime…
It’s got me taking action at least-no results to speak of, but I read somewhere that this is a marathon not a sprint!
welcome aboard mate
Hey
I joined neverblue to promote offers as part of a IM course. Unfortunately the course was garbage but on the plus side I now have access to a CPA network.
No matter what you are promoting you still need a vehicle to display the offer and a way to drive traffic to it.
I have an offer on the 1st page of Google (pos 4) that converts at 3.85%… but I only get 3 visits a day !!
I just blow at traffic generation.
Regards
Keep pushing, if you only get 4 visits a day, you might want to re-consider the keyword or you want to push harder and order more backlinks so that
you gain the nr. 1 spot.
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