Does anyone here use the CPA(Click per action) model?

[vinh.giang]

Hey everyone,

Thanks in advance for reading this :) We are looking at exploring CPA marketing. So far we are having some decent feed back from numerous websites, we are about to engage in working with some websites and just was wondering if anyone could tell me about their experiences with this. Just incase I have my terms mixed up from what I know I believe the CPA model is where we place our banners up on another persons website and every person that clicks through that link on the banner and subscribes we will split our earnings with the website owner.

I was hoping to get in touch with some people who have done this. I'd love to hear how it worked for you :)

Vinh

[The King Game]

Hey everyone,

Thanks in advance for reading this :) We are looking at exploring CPA marketing. So far we are having some decent feed back from numerous websites, we are about to engage in working with some websites and just was wondering if anyone could tell me about their experiences with this. Just incase I have my terms mixed up from what I know I believe the CPA model is where we place our banners up on another persons website and every person that clicks through that link on the banner and subscribes we will split our earnings with the website owner.

I was hoping to get in touch with some people who have done this. I'd love to hear how it worked for you :)

Vinh

Are you talking about 'Affiliate Marketing'. Affiliate Marketing works on a similar principle using either ads or text based links.

If so, then Clixgalore is an okay - just okay - third party facilitator for the Aussie market.

There are a range of global (read US/UK) services also.

Whoever you choose you can set commission rates.

Remember that Affiliate Marketing should be part of any marketing efforts, not the whole gig.

[Dubbo Pete]

King is, as always, kind of right and kind of wrong.

With Affiliate Marketing you can choose the type of financial base you wish to engage with site publishers (website owners). You can choose paying commissions based on a % of sales, a flat fee, a fee per click ... to name just a few.

As Wikipedia says regarding CPA ...

"Let's say that out of 20,000 impressions, you had a 5 percent click-through (CTR) to your landing (destination page) and 30 percent of those 5 percent convert to paying customers.The calculation is: $200/[20,000 x .05 x .30] = $0.67. That is, the cost per acquisition is $0.67."

The question is how these are tracked ... and that's where Affiliate Marketing programs can help.

[vinh.giang]

Ah I see.. Thanks King and Dubbo Pete! That really makes sense now guys thanks! I guess for us at the moment we should work on a % of sales basis until we work out what our cost per acquisition is. Hope you guys dont mind me asking another question, so does it mean that we should really perfect our sales pages and product before we put it on affiliate networks like click bank and like king mentioned clixgalore etc? That way we ensure that the affiliates will get the highest conversions rates? and while we do the AB split testing of the sales pages and improve the product we should just approach websites individually to get small samples sizes? Sorry for my noob questions I am just a little confused by it all. Thanks again guys!

[Dubbo Pete]

Ah I see.. Thanks King and Dubbo Pete! That really makes sense now guys thanks! I guess for us at the moment we should work on a % of sales basis until we work out what our cost per acquisition is. Hope you guys dont mind me asking another question, so does it mean that we should really perfect our sales pages and product before we put it on affiliate networks like click bank and like king mentioned clixgalore etc? That way we ensure that the affiliates will get the highest conversions rates? and while we do the AB split testing of the sales pages and improve the product we should just approach websites individually to get small samples sizes? Sorry for my noob questions I am just a little confused by it all. Thanks again guys!

No problem.

% of sales is kind of industry standard. The % is very important though. And one other suggestion, you should have at least 90 days or more on cookie expiry. Too short and some affiliates hate it.

clixgalore is only good for Aussie sites. If you have a global biz go for one of the larger offshore networks.

In my humble opinion, sales pages are always requiring improvements. It never stops. It may also take a while to attract the attention of decent affiliates.

However, you are right. If your site is not watertight (no 'leakage' means there is no way a customer can buy from you without the sale being tracked and therefore the affiliate getting their commission) you will NOT attract decent affiliates. And if you scare them off first time, they won't look a second.

So, trialling with some smaller sites first may be best.

[OnefortheMoney]

Another thing to keep in mind here, but there may not be a direct end product with CPA so be careful about the way you perceive sales. It isn't called 'cost per action' for nothing. Although the action could be (and often is) a sale, it could be something as simple as submitting an email address, subscribing for a newsletter or applying for third party product (such as a loan or credit card) where no initial cash transaction takes place.

CTR's are usually higher with CPA because your traffic won't necessarily have to commit to making a purchase straight away. However, you'll have to spend much more time monitoring performance with CPA and carry out a fair bit of tweaking before you fall upon a system that works. Even then, you'll probably find that what works for one campaign won't always work with another.

[vinh.giang]

Thanks so much guys, I just received an email back from a website that gets quite a lot of traffic and he is happy to explore the CPA affiliate option with us. Its exciting and scary at the same time! I can already see how much work these is to be done before and during a launch like this, it seems to be a world of AB split testing.

Will keep you all posted on how we go!