How to Make Money on Affiliate Programs: Step by Step Guide

Working with CPA affiliate programs is a great way to make money on the Internet in a convenient format and with a minimum initial investment. This type of cooperation consists in the fact that the advertiser pays the affiliate marketer for the targeted action performed by the user.

Different actions can be considered targeted: buying product or service, registering on a website, filling out a form, downloading an application. That is why the CPA model is most often used in the B2C industry. But in order to get a stable income in the CPA network, you need to start somewhere. We will tell you about what should be the first steps on the path to success in affiliate marketing.

Search for an Affiliate Program

The affiliate program brings together advertisers and affiliate marketers, and each of them benefits from cooperation. Typically, affiliate networks sign contracts with various Internet resources on the one hand and with advertisers on the other.

However, it is important to be cautious of affiliate marketing scams and thoroughly research the reputation and transparency of statistics before partnering with a CPA program.

However, if you have never worked with a CPA network before, you should start with direct programs. This is a special type of CPA affiliate program where the network acts as an advertiser. That is, you will work without intermediaries or complex schemes. Benefits of working with direct programs include:

• A huge selection of offers
• Your own support service
• Reliable and regular payments
• High rates.

When choosing an affiliate network, also find out how open the company is, how much traffic it has, whether the statistics are transparent, whether there is a possibility of direct interaction with affiliate marketers to discuss individual conditions. The transparency of statistics will help you partner with the best affiliate programs.

Selection of Offers for Promotion

The next step in working with an affiliate program is choosing the offers that you will promote. An offer is a commercial offer that should interest the buyer. Offers are combined into verticals, and each of them has its own characteristics. Some of the most profitable and popular verticals are nutra, e-commerce, household, lifestyle and online gaming.

It is worth choosing offers you are well versed in, because in the future it will be difficult for you to advertise products that are unfamiliar and uninteresting to you. When choosing offers in a CPA network commodity, examine them for three criteria:

1) How relevant are the offers to the consumer?

2) What payouts does the CPA network offer for these products?

3) What is the expected cost of traffic?

Product Study

You have decided on the offers. Now you need to pay attention to the target audience of the product. Different factors are important: gender, age, level of education, target audience areas of employment. Geo plays a particularly important role – having studied it, you can take into account the peculiarities of the culture, language and mentality of buyers.

In addition, it is worth learning about what desires, needs, problems that need to be solved, interests and hobbies users have, as well as where they most often spend time (in the future, this will help you choose the right traffic channels).

This analysis of the target audience is necessary in order to understand how much the consumer may be interested in your offer, and to choose the most effective tools for its promotion.

Find the Audience Source

After choosing an offer, you will need to select a traffic source. The main task is to find the most effective channels that will help attract an audience to an offer from an affiliate network. If you are a beginner, it would be optimal to start with 2-3 channels, if necessary, changing the traffic sources or their number.

Please note that most offers have lists of allowed and prohibited sources. Popular traffic channels include social networks, native ads, push notifications, pops, banners and other types of advertising.

One of the most powerful tools it to use SubID tracking for affiliates. This is a way to track additional data on your affiliate link that gives you granular detail on the customer. Tools like this are invaluable to get the focus no need to succeed.

Audience sources that increase the effectiveness of the offer, combine well with each other and bring traffic, form the so-called “working bundle”.

Run Ads and Earn

We advise you to start working with a CPA network commodity with one product – this way the cost of a mistake will be insignificant, and you will be able to gain experience in promoting the offer. Run ads on offer and start earning.

When the first successes appear, connect other products to the promotion. It is desirable that the offers are from the same affiliate program, so you will have a better chance of getting good traffic and profit from all offers.

Do not be afraid to practice and test different offers – you can profit from any of them. With minimal experience and a willingness to develop, working with a CPA network can be an excellent source of income. Your task is simply to take the first step.