Affiliate marketing remains one of the most lucrative ways you can make money online.
It’s been around a lot longer than you probably think (since the mid-1990s), and since the internet has become more accessible, it has grown into a billion-dollar industry. If you are thinking of getting into affiliate marketing, it can feel massively overwhelming at the start. There are several types of affiliate offers from CPA (cost per action), CPC (cost per click, CPL (cost per lead), and CPM (cost per mille).
In this guide, we are going to focus on CPA affiliate marketing. This is where you get paid if someone completes an action by clicking on your affiliate link. The action could be buying a product, registering for a service, or even signing up for a newsletter.
Getting these conversions is another conversation, and before you get to that stage, you have to think about what CPA affiliate program to sign up for. It is a challenge because there are a lot of affiliate networks out there.
Let’s find out how you should go about finding the best CPA affiliate program.
What is a CPA Affiliate Program?
Before we take you through the six things we think you should consider before choosing an affiliate program, we want to explain what an affiliate program actually is.
There are tons of businesses that offer affiliate programs. Basically, it is a partnership between a business and you, where you promote the products and services they offer. What do you get in return? Depending on the type of affiliate program it is (in this case, we are going to cost on cost per action), you get paid when someone clicks on your affiliate link and completes an action.
Let’s say you sign up as an affiliate of a dating site. They want more subscribers, and you start promoting the dating site through your own website or social media. If someone clicks on your unique affiliate link and subscribes to the dating site, you get paid.
Choosing The Right Affiliate Program Is Important
Now that we have established the basics of how an affiliate program works, we want to let you know why choosing the right CPA affiliate program matters. Before you go offer and sign up to the first affiliate program you find, it is important that you put the research in beforehand because not all affiliate programs are equal.
I’m going to take you through six things that you should consider before signing up later on in this guide, but why do you need to do this?
Well, opting for an affiliate program with a good reputation and an established history is vital to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible. There are many programs and affiliate networks out there that regularly delay payments, have offers not worth bothering with, or don’t pay very much, and it can mean that your hard work isn’t rewarded.
This can eat into your profits and simply waste your time.
So, doing the research in the beginning is paramount because choosing a CPA affiliate program that rewards your hard work, pays you on time, and has lucrative offers is a much more effective way of making money.
Six Ways To Find the Best CPA Affiliate Program
1. How Trustworthy Are They?
The first question you should ask yourself when you come across an affiliate program is “Can you trust them?”.
We mentioned above some shady affiliate programs and networks that do not pay affiliates or promote fake or low-quality products. What you are looking for is a program that has an established reputation and one that other affiliates are using. The good news is that this research isn’t that difficult to do.
We recommend searching the affiliate program's name to find reviews that other affiliates have posted online. There are many affiliate marketing forums that will offer insight into how trustworthy an affiliate program is, and you might even come across some blogs written by affiliates that review how they found the program.
For those of you who are just starting off, established affiliate networks can be a good starting point as they offer a reputable platform for you to find affiliate offers. Clickbank, Commission Junction, and ShareASale (soon to be Awin) are all good examples of reputable affiliate networks.
2. What Are Their Payment Terms and Methods
This is extremely important to know. After all, the reason that you are working as an affiliate marketer is to make money, right? So, if you find that an affiliate program doesn’t have the best reputation for paying its affiliates, why would you sign up with them?
Also, your own circumstances will dictate what affiliate program you sign up for, as some will have different payout structures than others. For example, the frequency of payments that you get from the program is something that you should definitely research first. Certain affiliate programs use Net-30 (you get paid 30 days after the month ends) and Net-15 (you get paid 15 days after the month ends) structures, while others will offer weekly commission payments.
You should also consider how they pay you. Does the program offer PayPal or direct money into your bank account? In an age when cryptocurrency is becoming more prevalent, some affiliate programs might offer this as a payment option, but does that suit your needs?
So, while finding a trustworthy affiliate program is a good starting point, you also need to look at the finer details of how and when they pay you.
3. What Offers Do They Have?
Some affiliate programs specialize in certain types of offers or operate in specific niches. Others are more general.
The types of offers and what niches they reside in are another important thing that you should consider when finding the CPA affiliate program that suits you best. If you want to start promoting only certain types of offers (for example, 18+ offers), then you will need to find an affiliate program that caters to this niche, as not all of them will.
If you already have a well-established traffic source coming into your website, this also plays a part in how you choose an affiliate programme. Let’s say most of your traffic comes from Africa. If you find a good affiliate program that is trustworthy with solid reviews but doesn’t have any offers that are targeted to an African audience, why would you choose that program? You wouldn’t.
There are also affiliate programs that have exclusive offers to their registered affiliates, and these can be more lucrative than generic offers, so this is also something to keep in mind.
Once you have found an affiliate program that has a good reputation and whose payment terms match your needs, don’t dive in before you look at the types of offers they have and whether or not these are suited.
4. How Good Are Their Tracking And Reporting Tools?
The whole point of affiliate marketing is that someone clicks on your link (which has a unique ID), this is tracked by the program, and when someone completes an action, you get paid commission for it.
Sounds simple? Well, it is, but the last thing you want to do is sign up for an affiliate program that has a poor tracking history. This could be a sale or conversion not being attributed to the affiliate or even mistakenly given to another affiliate. Again, this is where your research comes in because this is the type of information you need before you sign up for the program.
Similarly, you want to choose an affiliate program that also has solid reporting tools.
The affiliate marketing journey never stops, and you need to monitor your own performance through reporting and conversion reports. This involves examining what campaigns brought in the most money and which ones underperform. Knowing this means that you can adjust and tweak your strategy as necessary to generate the most revenue.
Poor link tracking directly hurts your ability to make money while using networks and their CPA affiliate programs that don’t have accurate and detailed reporting will also damage your ability to scale and modify your campaigns.
5. Will They Support You?
You might find an affiliate program that has great payment terms, has a variety of fantastic offers, and all the reporting tools you need - but will they provide any support when you are promoting their offers?
Just leaving you to your own devices and to do your own thing isn’t a sign of a good affiliate program. In an affiliate network, having a good affiliate manager can help massively by offering guidance on how you can get the best from your campaigns, providing advice on high-value offers and niches, while also answering technical and general queries.
Find out what other tools and resources the network or program provides too. This could be things such as:
- Creative assets like website copy or banners
- Landing page designs for optimal conversions
- Training materials to get you started
- On-hand support if you run into any issues
While there are many good affiliate networks out there, some are much better at supporting their affiliates than others. If you have a ton of experience with affiliate marketing, then this might not always be at the top of your list, but for anyone just starting out, it can be invaluable to your success.
6. Commission Rates
Something that we haven’t really mentioned or touched upon yet is commission rates, and we have purposely left it to last.
We know that the whole idea of affiliate marketing is to make money, and you do that by earning commissions. So, you want to choose the programs that offer the most commissions? Well, not always.
There is a lot more to it than that. You could find a product that has a really high commission rate and think, “Fantastic, we’re going to make lots of money on this!”, when the reality is that it is a poor product or is limited to a very specific geo-location that isn’t going to be very profitable.
While the commission rate is an important metric to look at, it can vary widely between 5% and 25%, so don’t just choose an affiliate program based on this alone.
Some More Guidance On Choosing CPA Programs
Before we start to wrap this guide up, there are a couple of other things we want to mention to you about choosing a CPA affiliate program.
Avoid putting all your eggs in one basket and going all in with one affiliate program. While it might seem great on paper, it is better to diversify your options and use several CPA programs at once.
In fact, we think you should start by using a few CPA affiliate programs to try them out and then start upscaling one of the programs that works best for you.
Six Ways To Find The Best CPA Affiliate Program
Let’s recap what we have gone over today on how to find the best CPA affiliate programme.
Before you start your affiliate marketing journey, there are six main things you should think about before you sign up for a program or network.
- How trustworthy is the program, and what is its reputation among other affiliates?
- Do their payment terms match your needs?
- What kind of offers do they have?
- Will the program provide any kind of support to you as an affiliate?
- What are their tracking and reporting tools like?
- Are their commission rates profitable to you?
These are all things that you need to consider before you jump in and start choosing offers to promote on an affiliate platform. While you might be keen to get started with implementing your big ideas for making money as an affiliate, neglecting to do your research at the start will lead to failure.
Affiliate marketing and programs can seem overwhelming; however, if you put the work in at the start to choose the best CPA affiliate program, you will have a better chance of success.
