Hello, my name is Joshua Miller. I blog about making money, the internet, and programming. I’ve been a CPA marketing since 2012. Throughout that time, I’ve experienced highs and some occasional lows.
Today, you’re going to learn something new. You’ll learn how to make money with CPA, specifically through content locking.
The beauty of making money through CPA is that you earn money by creating content that you’re interested in, a passionate lover, or know much about. You’ll have to put in a little effort and a relatively small amount of money to get a website up and running. Thankfully, you don’t need to know how to program a website. You’ll make money while you sleep and earn it at work. Most importantly, you’ll be able to repeat the process and compound your earnings.
You could have cold, hard cash sitting in your bank account a month from now. That’s a nice thought, right?
What You Are Going To Learn In This Tutorial
- What CPA marketing is
- A few key terms that you should know before you start
- How content locking works (regarding CPA marketing)
- The Top 3 CPA networks – and the one that I use
- How to find a profitable niche to target, and how to make sure there is a demand for it
- Starting a website, getting a cheap domain with hosting, and installing WordPress
- Some great methods to create content that you can lock
- Simple but effective tried-and-tested techniques to drive visitors to your site
- How to optimize your earnings, so you earn the big bucks
Hopefully, you’re enticed to read my tutorial by now. However, I must stress before we start, don’t skip any content unless you already have (or know) the content I’m deconstructing.
What Is CPA Marketing?
CPA stands for “Cost per action.” This term refers to the cost an advertiser pays for every action completed. For example, an apple advertiser pays you $1 every time you get your friend to eat an apple.
CPA marketing works by getting “publishers” to advertise offers to their viewers. However, the publisher is produced when a specific pre-determined action is completed instead of paying for views or clicks on the offers.
An “action” can be anything. They tend to be simple to achieve, such as getting your viewers to:
- Fill in a short form, such as submitting an email address
- Get a quote for something, for example, insurance
- Signing up for a free trial
- Entering a competition
- Buying a product
- Doing a small survey
- Voting in a poll
- Downloading an application
Content locking makes this process much easier to do. By locking content, you will incentivize the completion of the action.
Key Terms & Concepts Used In CPA Marketing
CPA marketing can be as complicated or as easy as you want to make it. Understanding the key terms and abbreviations will make way more sense by understanding the dashboards and statistics.
- Publisher – A person who creates and distributes content, like a blogger or a musician.
- Locker – Something that asks a user to complete an offer to proceed to the content, URL, or download.
- EPC – Earning Per Click (Earnings are divided by the number of clicks on an offer).
- Leads – Completed actions, potential sales generated, amount of people that have made you some money.
- CTR / CR – Click-through rate. This is the number of people who make you money versus the number who have clicked an offer.
- Niche – A section of a market. For example, “red socks” is a niche in the “socks” market.
How Content Locking Works
The incentivization principle I previously mentioned is key to the content-locking concept.
For example, if I decided to write a short eBook called 10 Weight Loss Tips That Are Proven to Work, I would “lock” the download and ask my visitor to sign up for a dieting newsletter so they could download the eBook. I would then be paid anywhere between $1 – $20+ (on average) per download. This is dependent on the offers available on the network at the time.
I will explain how to create content effectively later in the tutorial, but you must join a CPA network first.
The Top 3 CPA Networks For Content Locking
Now that you understand CPA and how content locking works in theory, it’s time for you to join a CPA network that provides content lockers.
The CPA network is the company that connects you to the advertisers. They handle the hard work. They provide pre-set out-of-the-box lockers for you to use.
Most of them require an application process. You should sign up for one as soon as possible to get ahead quickly. Be truthful and fill it out to the best of your ability. Hopefully, you’ll be accepted when you’ve read this tutorial!
#1. CPAGrip (a personal favorite)
I’ve been with CPAGrip for at least two years now. They’ve never missed a payment. They also provide highly competitive rates on their offers, as well as having a super user-friendly dashboard.
If you’re not the most tech-savvy, I would strongly advise this network simply because the dashboard is so easy to use.
Once you sign up, check out the chat-room-style facility in the dashboard. You can ask questions, contact the affiliate, and discuss CPA marketing content with the rest of the community. This is a potent tool that you should take advantage of.
Main Features:
- Page lockers
- URL/File lockers
- Offer walls
- Virtual currency lockers
- Referral program
#2. AdWorkMedia
AWM is a network that deserves a place in the Top 3. It has the same features as CPAGrip but has many more pre-set lockers, a product checkout locker for multiple offer completion, and some other more advanced features.
The only notable downside is the slightly more complex dashboard, but don’t let that deter you.
#3. CPALead
The guys and gals at CPALead proudly state that they “invented content-locking.” They also offer the opportunity to lock adult content, which other networks rarely provide. More or less, they have the same features as CPAGrip and AWM. Their dashboard is reasonably straightforward.
Now that you’ve chosen a network, you need to consider a niche. Researching that section of the market you’re providing content is vital.
Finding A Profitable Niche
Most people go for the evergreen niches when they first start; however, they can prove difficult due to the number of competing websites. Evergreen niches include weight loss, investment strategies, relationship advice, or ache treatment. In other words, these are niches that don’t die.
The best tactic is to find a niche that is trending.
#1. How To Find Trending Niches
If you want to start making money fast, the best way forward is to start locking content in trending niches. These are specific niches that are popular now, like news headlines, on TV, or season specific.
Daily news provides a fantastic source of trending niches. Keep your eyes on current events. When breaking news comes out about some software (or concept, or person), create some relevant content. This could be an eBook on how to get, achieve, or complete the range. It could be anything from a set of artwork you’ve created to a competition page to win the item. Essentially, it could be absolutely anything that you could potentially lock.
If you want to find the very hottest content on the internet, you should check out Google Trends, which highlights the most searched-for content daily. It also has a ton of statistics.
#2. How To Research What’s In Demand For Your Niche
There’s no point entering a niche if there’s no demand or traffic for it unless you’re going to create the market (which is hard).
It’s much better to use tools such as Google AdWords: Keyword Planner to determine how many people are searching for the content on the internet. This tool allows you to type in a particular keyword and show how many people are searching for it monthly.
I’ll discuss how you’ll rank your website on Google so you can start feeding that traffic to your lockers. If you’d like a tutorial on how to use the Keyword Planner tool to find robust niches, check out this great tutorial by eCommerceFuel.
Once you’ve got a good idea for a niche you want to enter, you will need somewhere to start putting your content.
The Easiest Way To Start A Website
Once you’ve found a killer niche with apparent demand and a significant potential gap for traffic, you need to set up a website.
Scary concept? Hopefully not, but thankfully I’m going to show the easiest way to start a website without learning any programming or web design.
A little web-design knowledge and experience with WordPress will help, but it’s not essential. Once you’ve started making money from CPA, you’ll probably want to make more, in which case you’ll probably find yourself interested in learning HTML and CSS. That’s a little while off yet, though.
#1. First, You Need Hosting And A Domain Name
- Hosting – A “rented” place on a server for your website to live on. It sounds more complex than it is.
- Domain Name – Your .com-style name for your website. For example, TrueMiller.com is the domain name for my blog.
HostGator is the most popular hosting provider on the internet. Fortunately for you, they offer domains along with their hosting packages.
Use the HostGator Coupon code: TRUEMILLER. This will get your first month of hosting for $0.01.
I would advise purchasing the Baby Package. It has unlimited add-on domains (for when you make more sites), total disk space, unlimited bandwidth, a shared SSL certificate (which keeps your website secure), and it is super easy to install WordPress.
I cannot stress the importance of considering an excellent niche-relevant domain. Buying the domain “BlueBabyToys.com” will be an utter waste of time and money if you create content about “The Cabbage Diet.”
Remember, make your domain niche-relevant, or at least make it catchy and unspecific – like Tumblr, Twitter, or Google.
#2. Next Up: Install WordPress
WordPress is the most popular content management system used on the web. A content management system is a software that runs your website for you. This means you don’t need to know how to program. The software handles all the complicated stuff and is ready to work out of the box. The best part is that it’s free and super-easy to install once you’ve purchased your HostGator hosting package.
To make a long story short, here’s a tutorial offered by HostGator on how to install WordPress to your site using the “Quick Install” feature in your hosting panel.
Quickly Get To Grips With WordPress
It’s not difficult to use at all. You have a posts section, plugins, themes, and a handful of relevantly named units. I’m not going to write an extensive WordPress tutorial, so here’s another WordPress introduction video that will take you through every aspect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1adVEWOEpcc
It’s essential to make your site look reasonably attractive. This is easily achieved by using the free themes from the WordPress themes library.
Now you’re going to need to create some content for your site.
Simple & Effective Method To Create Content That You Can Lock
Information products are the easiest things for you to start distributing.
- eBooks
- Video Guides
- Audiobooks
You can distribute anything: software, videos, music, and art. For now, I’ll advise on information products. The same concepts can be applied to anything.
You’re probably thinking, “I don’t know how to write an eBook,” or “I don’t see anything about weight-loss.” Writing an eBook is simple. You can write up a document in Microsoft Word (or any word processing alternative) and export the file as a .pdf file. There you have it, and your eBook is ready to go. Most of the content you need to create an eBook is available on the internet.
For example, if I were to create an eBook, I’d simply pull information from sources such as:
- 16 Ways to Lose Weight Fast – Health.com
- Drop 5 Pounds in a Week – Cosmopolitan.com
- How to Lose Weight Fast: 3 Simple Steps, Based on Science – AuthorityNutrition.com
These are all reputable sources; most people would have no problem rewriting some of the given points. Freelancer.com provides an excellent platform for paying expert freelancers to do the writing for you if it were a chore. A 1000-2000 word passage would only cost in the region of $10-$30.
#1. How To Make An Attractive Information Product With Ease
I mentioned earlier that you could make an eBook by writing a Word document and saving it as a .pdf file. It is as simple as that.
Let’s theorize that you’ve started a diet website called “JoshsSuperDiet.com.” Now you need to create a product with a catchy name, like “How To Get Ripped: 9 Simple Expert-Verified Methods”.
Next, I’ll Google “how to get ripped,” and I’ll open the top few articles. Each article will have a few methods on how to get ripped.
Grab your nine favorite methods and rewrite them into your Word document. Throw in a copyright disclaimer so you can sue anyone that distributes your eBook without your consent. Here are some copy-and-paste copyright disclaimers.
Finally, save your product as a .pdf. Next, upload your book to a file host such as Zippyshare or Mega. Make sure you set your upload to “Private” so your link isn’t put onto Google.
#2. Find Hot Content Within Your Niche
You’ll employ the same method as earlier. Use Google Trends to find what’s hot. If you’ve started a dieting site, you could look for celebrities that look especially attractive in the news. Using their name as the selling point, you could create a new eBook called 5 Ways To Get Slim: Like Kim K at VMAs – or something like that!
Driving Traffic To Your Website
So, you’ve got your site up, written a little information about your product, and locked the download link for people who want it. Next up, you need some traffic. This is hard for many; however, there are suitable methods available.
#1. Search Engine Submissions
First, you must submit your site to the search engines. Otherwise, people can’t find you. Here’s a list of a few:
If you go through each search engine’s webmaster’s dashboard, you’ll also be able to submit your sitemap, which has several benefits.
#2. Get On Social Media
Create pages on social media. Most people are on social media networks, so put yourself out there too. Simple. The first apparent few are Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. However, Pinterest is fantastic too. It’s excellent for pictures especially. Any good site or reputable business will have a social media account. It’s an incredibly overlooked SEO indicator. Social media is an excellent tool for keeping in touch with your customers. They can follow you and share your content, which helps you rank better on search engines.
#3. Make Videos And Post Them On YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world – and it’s all videos. It’s bigger than AOL, Bing, and Yahoo. Videos are great marketing tools. You can influence your viewers to buy things. More importantly, you can tell them about how your fantastic diet eBook is available for free when they sign-up for a simple offer. People love free stuff, right? Right.
If you’ve never made a video, you can pick one up for $5 from Fiverr.com. $5 is pennies to pay for a high-quality video with a voice-over, especially when you could make more than that after one download!
You must optimize your YouTube videos. I read this article on how to rank YouTube videos quickly and effectively.
#4. Boost Your YouTube Videos And Your Website
This is the essential part of getting traffic to your locked content.
You need to boost it. You need to increase views, subscribers, and likes. You also need to increase the comments – good comments. The best place for this is SEOClerks. Click the link, and you’ll see what I mean firsthand. You can get YouTube packages including a few 1000 views, 100s of subscribers, 100s of comments, and likes for $1-$5. It’s a little investment to rank your YouTube videos #1 for the keyword you’re aiming at.
Other services are available where the sellers will boost your site to page 1 of Google. This presents a strong possibility of making money.
Optimizing Your Offers
Once your traffic starts rolling and you start making some money, then you need to optimize your offers. You don’t want to end up being paid pennies when you could be earning dollars for each download.
And that’s all…
Of course, now you’ll want to practice all of these new strategies. Bookmark this page and come back, or check out some more making money tutorials I’ve written. Please, feel free to ask any questions!
Remember to share this super tutorial with friends and family.
