My CPA Journey – The Best CPA Networks
By Troy | August 23rd, 2009 | Category: CPA, Headline, Reviews | 2 comments
I have accounts with NeverBlue, MaxBounty, ClickBooth, Hydra, Affiliate.com, and COPEAC. I can honestly say that I have not had any serious problems with any of the networks. The biggest problem I’ve had so far is that Google will report more clicks than a couple of the networks. This typically happens when I’ve iFramed an offer.
CPA offers and iFraming is an entire series of posts so I won’t go into it.
The rest of this post is on my favorite CPA networks. This is purely my opinion based solely on my experiences.
NeverBlue – My Favorite CPA Network
As far as I’m concerned NeverBlue is the best network for the newbie. The interface is far superior to the other CPA networks. New offers are shown on the home page in an easy to see manner. NeverBlue provides the EPC and overal revenue of each CPA offer on their network.
NeverBlue was the easiest CPA network to get approval for and has been the most helpful so far. (Read most willing to helpfully and quickly answer stupid newbie questions.)
Pros:
- First and Fastest Network to Approve Me
- Best Interface
- Most Helpful Affiliate Manager
Cons:
- The payout isn’t as good as some other networks
- The number of offers seems to be a little smaller than other networks (although I’ve never found this to limit me)
MaxBounty & ClickBooth – Close Seconds
MaxBounty and ClickBooth are close seconds to NeverBlue. The primary differentiating factor is the NeverBlue interface. My affiliate manager at NeverBlue has never suggested a fake blog or review site and neither have these networks. ClickBooth prides itself on the best payouts and most stringent ethics. Ethics in the CPA world is in short supply so I take ClickBooth’s claims and behavior very seriously.
MaxBounty Pros:
- Helpful Affiliate Managers
- Best Reporting with Time Stamps
- Typically Better Payouts than NeverBlue
ClickBooth Pros:
- Helpful Affiliate Managers
- They advertise the best payouts but they are the exclusive network of many advertisers so comparisons are difficult (I hope to do a comparison by the numbers in the future)
- Leading the industry in Ethics (they’ve already banned flogs – Fake Blog Reviews)
The main cons of MaxBounty and Clickbooth are the same. First, I don’t like the interface of either (that said I prefer the MaxBounty interface to the Clickbooth interface). Second, the affiliate managers for both networks have been very helpful but not quite as much as my NeverBlue affiliate manager.
Thanks for the information about those three CPA networks, NeverBlue, ClickBooth, and MaxBounty. I would like to know more how to get started working with any CPA networks. Plus, what are the pitfalls I have to watch out is very important.
I know a lot of people found it difficult to get started with CPA networks. However, I did not. I already had an established website but I told them right away that I wasn’t going to be using it for the CPA offers. My plan was to do most of my promotions via Google AdWords and other PPC advertising. I applied to several networks on the same day and Neverblue was the first – and most friendly/helpful – of all of them. ClickBooth was probably the hardest to get into but also one of the most helpful.
The main pitfalls of CPA are as follows:
1) PPC is difficult. And when you screw it up it is expensive. Especially for CPA. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. One of the things many gurus don’t know or forget about is that Google’s Price-Per-Click (PPC) depends on your ad’s content, your landing page content, you domain’s history with AdWords, and your account’s history with AdWords. If your first couple of ads on a new account get a low Click-Through-Rate (CTR) then that AdWords account is just about worthless. You will be paying through the nose for any ad you run. The same is true if you create a new account and drive PPC traffic to the same domain as the previous ads with a poor CTR. And what constitutes a poor CTR is entirely dependent on the keyword. Many traditional affiliate marketers will say anything over 0.5% CTR is good. I’ve personally run campaigns for free gift cards where a CTR less than 5% meant my ads stopped running.
2) A lot of people are making a lot of money with unethical tactics such as flogs (fake blogs telling an entirely fictional account of a person’s experience with a given product) and fake review/research pages. The fake blogs are used with Teeth Whitening and Weight Loss (Acai, Rezveratol, etc.). The fake review is used for Acai, RezV, and others. It’s unethical but some networks will suggest to you that this is a good way to sell product. That said it is pretty hard to compete with these guys.
3) My main success (and it isn’t much) has been with a domain I purchased and then did a lot of SEO work on. This is a lot of effort though and I’m now exploring other means of creating these sites using automated tools to speed up the process.
The real key to doing well in CPA without a website is PPC. And the real key to a well performing PPC campaign is keyword research and a lot of it. There is a lot of competition on the obvious words and the not-so-obvious words. You have to be more creative and dig deeper than the majority until you are established. Once established you can get lower PPC rates and negotiate higher payouts from the networks. (Even if you aren’t established you can sometimes negotiate a higher payout.)
Good Luck