50+ TOP CPA Affiliate Networks — Best Affiliate Cost Per Action Networks [2024] For Beginners In Money Making

You read this article so whether you plan to get into online money-making and marketing or you look for more instruments, sources, and ideas in case you’re a seasoned marketer or a webmaster. First things first: let’s see what CPA marketing is and how it differs from affiliate marketing. Next, we’ll describe major traffic sources for CPA offers’ promotion and then take a good look at some CPA Networks considering their advantages and disadvantages in key aspects.

What Is CPA Marketing?

As the name implies CPA (‘Cost per Action’) marketing is all about getting a specific action from the traffic. Well, action can be filling up a form, submitting an e-mail or a phone number, downloading a file, etc. In other words, you’re paid when you drive traffic to a specific task. Once your traffic converts into leads, further conversion into sales will be out of your mission. You are paid for the lead. Usually, your income may vary between $0.50 and $20 per lead. Though, there are high-paying offers (usually they involve entering credit card data) that allow you to earn $50 and more. Sounds pretty alluring, right?

CPA Marketing vs Affiliate Marketing

If you’re familiar with affiliate marketing you should know that it means sales. In CPA marketing you make money from a particular action, such as downloading an app, promoting free trials, pin submitting and so on. Let’s state the obvious: people don’t like spending money and they are much less suspicious about actions that do not involve their credit cards.

So in some respects making money via CPA marketing is easier than with affiliate marketing. Important: with CPA networks you get paid faster than in case of affiliate marketing. One more positive point – in affiliate marketing you’re on your own whereas CPA networks provide you with an affiliate manager who assists with choosing the best offer and advises on promotion methods.

Promotion of CPA Offers

Traffic is the key aspect of both CPA marketing and affiliate marketing. Some CPA offers can be limited to specific GEO locations or traffic sources; therefore, it’s important to check all the details of the offer.

So, the major part of your time will be spent on generating traffic. To be really successful you need to remember that we, online marketers, know where to get high-quality traffic, but we can never guarantee the results. Why? Because our success depends on several factors, such as quality of your landing page (both images and text), GEO, language, age and gender of your targeted audience, the popularity of the topic, etc. That is why it is important not to go blind but to test. Testing allows improving the efficiency of your campaign and, in many cases, save some money.  

There are numerous methods and traffic sources to promote CPA offers. Let’s see some of them below.

• Social media. One of the most efficient ways of generating traffic. You can share an offer in groups or communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+. Add here very efficient Facebook ad campaigns for fast promotion of CPA offers (you can set GEO filters and other required parameters). It works pretty well, see an example below. 

A marketer took advantage of targeted Facebook ads and generated traffic to Inflamaya gel offer from Everad.

Filters: men and women, 30+. Ads were published only in Facebook newsfeed. Ads costs during 1.5 week — $4 615; earnings from sales — $15 720; profit — $11 105 (240%).

• Video marketing (YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc). As we all know, YouTube is the second large search engine and a powerful source of traffic. With some knowledge and experience, you can influence your audience because videos represent a very efficient marketing instrument. The crucial point of video marketing is in optimizing videos for higher ranking.
• Blogs and websites. Whether your platform is specialized in fitness, beauty, fashion, finances, gaming, electronics, or whatever else, the majority of business verticals exploit CPA marketing. So, find a CPA offer related to your specific vertical or build a new website to suit the chosen offer, use SEO for relevant content, and see visitors clicking the link.    
• E-mail marketing and PPC. While e-mail marketing is free but requires a large database, PPC can be very costly if you’re not sure what you’re doing. Again, testing on a small budget is very important.
• Forums and article directories. Platforms like Quora, Reddit and numerous vertical-related forums are powerful tools in promoting offers. Remember and always take a close look at rules so not to get banned for improper use of ad links.
• Banner ads and push notifications. They also allow promoting CPA offers without having your own blog or a website (see case studies below). Google Ads and Propeller Ads are the most popular platforms for banners ads. Push notifications turned into a powerful ad method sometimes with higher CTR than other traffic sources (in some verticals rates approach 30%).

CPA Networks

CPA networks promote various CPA offers with the help of marketers and webmasters. The coolest thing about CPA networks is that they guide you through various offers: latest offers, highest converting offers, top offers, and so on. It’s a win-win option because CPA networks want to make money, so they are interested in your success as well.  

• How to join a CPA network? Here comes an important difference with affiliate marketing. Most affiliate networks approve you automatically; however, CPA networks usually implement a manual approval process. You might be contacted by a network representative in for the purpose to ensure that you’re qualified enough to cooperate with the network and promote CPA offers. Nothing to worry about as they try to filter spammers, not new marketers.

Attention: CPA networks always need marketers more than marketers need them. Always be confident, specify verticals you’re interested in, and what traffic sources you’ve worked with. Beginners, don’t lose hope! These are several CPA networks that give instant approvals: ClickDealer, CPAGrip, CPAfull, AdscendMedia, Convert2Media, AdworkMedia, etc.

• How to find the right CPA offer? Needless to say that you’ll be looking for a profitable offer. So, you can look through the member’s part of a CPA network. Another option is to search for top CPA companies and their offers.

Anyway, before joining a network check all the details related to the offer (landing page, GEO, traffic sources, and payout rates).

• How to choose a CPA company to work with? There are three main aspects to keep in mind while choosing a CPA network:  types of CPA offers, commission rates and payment methods, and level of support provided to marketers. One of the crucial aspects is the reputation of a CPA network in the market. Well-established companies provide highly qualified support to their marketers and ensure various payment options.

Two types of CPA networks:

• Single-vertical networks. As the term suggests, these networks provide offers related to a specific vertical (for example, Dr.cash network is focused on Nutra offers, while BidVertiser is specialized in gambling).
• Multi-vertical networks.  They are one-stop-shops for marketers as they provide offers from various verticals (i.e., MaxBounty, Peerfly, etc.)

Pros and Сons of Working with CPA Networks

Pros:

• You get access to multiple advertisers. Networks take on the responsibility to find advertisers from all over the world in order to provide you a wide selection of affiliate offers.
• You get a personal affiliate manager to guide you through offers and campaigns.
• Scheduled payments. Networks act as a protective barrier in terms of payments. Usually marketers receive their payouts on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis; moreover, minimum payouts are lower than in case of in-house affiliate programs.  
• You get access to some exclusive offers that are available only via networks.

Cons:

•  CPA networks are mediators (or ‘middle entities’) between you and an advertiser, so they get a commission.
• Networks (in the person of an affiliate manager) may share your successful experience with other marketers.

E-learning and Communication

All of us once were just beginners. Learning is a never-ending process. In fact, many free CPA marketing online courses (or e-books) and articles are quite useful and helpful. They help you get the right mindset, reveal numerous free and paid traffic sources, and explain the main principles of cooperation with CPA networks.

Besides being one of the traffic sources, forums are a great source of information and experience exchange too. Check up Warrior Forum, BlackHatWorld, SEOChat and DigitalPoint to see which community of marketing gurus you prefer. And don’t forget Reddit, r/SEO, a very popular and active place for marketers and SEOs where all your questions will be answered.

Case study # 1: Jane and Kjrocker 

Jane has called her campaign a "Lucky Combo": traffic via Push notifications + PropellerAds and non-standard GEO.

• CPA network: AdCombo
• Offer: Ecospray
• GEO: Lebanon
• Traffic source: PropellerAds + Push Notifications
• Ad expenses: $387
• Revenue: $1 050
• ROI: 171%.

She chose push notification traffic for its simplicity and GEO, "not overheated" with other marketers. Launching the campaign for Lebanon, the average CPC was around $0.007-$0.013. Results of testing the offer without prelander were good but tests of prelander + landing page demonstrated a much better outcome.

All banners with text in Arabic worked pretty well:

AdCombo provided $14 payout for this offer, with 40% approval and 146 conversions Jane got 58 confirmed leads and total revenue of $1 050:

Case study # 2: ROI 325% on a Dating Offer

One more successful CPA case from Kjrocker with ROI 325% on a dating offer.

• Network: CrakRevenue
• Ad format: push notifications from EvaDav
• GEO: France
• Ad expenses: $1 448
• Total earned: $6 164
• Net earnings: $4 716

RjRocker chose a tier-1 GEO — France. Required action — registration of target audience (i.e. leaving personal data).

Landing pages for the offer:

Visitors were asked to confirm registration by code from an e-mail. So pre-landing page was created:

As you see, it was just a simple age-check that served to traffic segmentation too. Push notifications from EvaDav were chosen as a traffic source due to previous successful experience. Creatives were more than simple — images of pretty girls with short texts.

The results were indeed impressive. Give a look at CrakRevenue dashboard:

And statistics from EvaDav dashboard:

So, he got around 1.2% CR but due to huge traffic, net earnings amounted to $4 716 with ROI 325%. Quite impressive.