Making the move from using Adsense exclusively and starting to add CPA offers to your pages can be a bit scary. I was asked about this in an e-mail last week and thought that there are probably quite a few people out there who are stuck on the same thing. Going from only having Adsense on your pages can be a little daunting so this is how I promote CPA offers on my pages, using only organic traffic (All the way through this I’m talking about adding CPA offers to your keyword targeted content pages and the organic traffic you get. It’s a totally different story if you’re buying traffic!)
First of all you need to understand what a CPA offer is. CPA stands for Cost Per Action and if you start promoting these offers you will be paid when a visitor performs a certain action on the ADVERTISERS website. This could be something as simple as completing a form submitting their name and zip code or could be as complex as actually completing the purchase of an item. Obviously the easier it is for the action to be completed the less you are likely to be paid for it. Some ballpark figures may be $1-$1.50 for a zip submit all the way up to perhaps 50% of the sale price for a sold item. In fact if you are dealing with ClickBank products you may be able to get up to 80%! The traffic flow for CPA offers is:-
Visitor To Your Site>Clicks Link To Advertiser>Performs Action On Advertiser Website = You Get Paid
This is different to Adsense which works this way:-
Visitor to Your Site>Clicks Link To Advertiser = You Get Paid
Whilst that last step seems like a small thing it actually makes a world of difference. No longer are you in control of your own destiny, the second your visitor leaves your website you are dependent on the advertiser converting them in order for you to get paid. The technicalities in adding a CPA offer to your page couldn’t be simpler really, all you are doing is creating a link. The advertiser will be able to provide you either with just the link text or perhaps some HTML to add to your page.
The trick to making good money with promoting CPA is 2 fold. The first part is simple, you absolutely, 100%, completely and utterly, I can’t emphasise this enough – MUST match the offer you are promoting to what the visitors to your page are interested in. The whole reason that Google Adsense works so well is because the contextual targeting of their ads is brilliant. The Google targeting algorithm is the secret to their success and if you’re going to replace Adsense on your pages you have to target your visitors as best as you can. I have numerous examples where I’ve cocked this up good style. On one of my diet related sites I had an article about the best gym exercises to help you lose weight. It pretty much concentrated on the treadmill and after seeing some decent money with Adsense I took a leap of faith, put 2+2 together in my head, came out with 5 and swapped the page around to bin the Adsense and include some CPA offers for some trainers. Treadmill = trainers? Nope. Over 20,000 visitors, about 170 clicks and not even close to a sale. The people on my site were interested in losing weight, not running. That page was doing $10 a day in Adsense ads all about magic diet solutions. Second guessing your visitor can be a real pain in the ass. One of the best ways of finding out what CPA offers to promote on any given page is to have a look and see what the Adsense ads are promoting. Obviously don’t click your own ads, just have a look at the target URL for each ad.
The second part of making good money with CPA offers (and this sounds really obvious) is to only promote offers that convert. If you are promoting offers from a CPA network then your Relationship Manager should be able to give you some clues as to what offers are converting well. If you’re not going to promote offers from a CPA network then it comes down to trial and error. I do have this one piece of advice for you, if you find an offer getting lots of clicks but no conversions then dump it sooner rather than later. It’s far too easy to convince yourself that it’s just a matter of time and miss out on a lot of money. When everything matches up nicely you’ll usually know after only a day or two’s traffic. Do not be afraid to swap things out and try something new. Of course in order to do this you have to be able to track how many clicks the offers are getting, most affiliate programs can track this for you but if not then the easiest way is to just use Google Analytics to track the outbound link. If anybody needs help with this just let me know and I’ll do a post?
I’ll finish of with some slightly more practical tips.
* I’d recommend you avoid CPA networks if you’re going to promote CPA offers from your pages organic traffic. The reason for this is that with the CPA networks offers get dropped/changed all the time. It can become a bloody nightmare trying to keep track and it is really easy to be promoting offers that no longer exist and see your traffic clicking out in to the ether. The exception to this rule is ClickBank. The first place I look for an offer to promote is to search Google for any relevant affiliate programs direct with the merchant, my next choice is a ClickBank product, I’ll then look for a product through Amazon/Another store (if applicable) and as a last resort I’ll use a CPA network.
* Banners never work. That could be classed as a sweeping statement but for me it’s oh so true. The modern web user has no interest in banners, the trick with converting CPA is to make it look less like an advert. Where I’ve had the greatest success is to create a link to the product between the page title and the page content. My preferred format is along the lines of What You Were Looking For – I found it here here cheaper than anywhere else. This works well on pages that are about a very specific topic. On more general pages then I’ve had the most success linking from a prominent phrase on the page. Look at your Google Analytics, see what people are searching for to land on that page, highlight that text and link it to a relevant offer. Sound simple but it works.
* Emulating Adsense can work. As I’ve mentioned above those 2 techniques have worked great for me but it can be a little daunting to go from having Adsense on your page showing 3-6 adverts to perhaps only 1 or 2 CPA offers. A really good way of getting started with CPA if you’re nervous is to remove the Adsense block but then add your own offers in an Adsense style. 3 adverts, advert title linked (Blue), 2 lines of text, url linked (green). As long as you don’t include Adsense on the same page then it’s OK to do this. Users are used to seeing Adsense and whilst they know it’s an advert they seem to be more accepting of this than banner ads.
* Real products & real services work best. A lot of people in the MMO niche make their first attempt at CPA by promoting some junk MMO e-book from ClickBank. It fails, they give up on CPA. If you can get this to work for you then good luck, I never have. Real products and real services have always converted best for me, ClickBank has some great services away from the MMO junk. There’s nothing wrong with promoting a physical product either, the only downside is that your cut will be smaller. Another way to look at this is the returns/refund rate. If anything I’m promoting goes above a 15% refund rate then I bin it straight away, no questions asked.
* Don’t fear the sale. When it comes to using pay-per-click traffic to promote a CPA offer a lot of guides suggest going after the lower value, easier to convert offers such as zip submits and being paid per lead. With my organic traffic I’ve found that the higher return from product/service sales pays me better than converting higher volume but lower value offers. This could be a numbers game, most pages targeting organic traffic don’t see the traffic levels that can easily (if expensively) be got from PPC.
That’s about all there is to it. As I have eluded to in the past promoting affiliate offers from my keyword targeted pages is how I make most of my money, it can be a big step to go from Adsense and it definitely involves more work for you. In exchange for losing Google’s contextual algorithm and self optimising adverts you get to take a bigger chunk of the cash. I’ve never had a single page make more than $100 a day with Adsense, I’ve had plenty of days where a single page has made more than $500 promoting affiliate offers. In saying that there will be some pages where Adsense just works better, never lose sight of the bigger picture, keep track of your eCPM figure and don’t feel bad if you have to go back to Adsense, it happens to the best of us. Good luck with your CPA promotion, there’s a lot of money out there, go and get it!
One Response to “How To Move From Adsense To CPA”
Derek
May 19, 2010
Sometimes, people are scared to move from Adsense to CPA because they are not getting paid per click anymore. I had a few niche sites of mine that went i switched from Adsense(CPC) to a CPA offer, my earnings more than tripled.
Test it out, if it works, keep it. If it doesn’t, go back to Adsense. My 2 cents.
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