What’s the key to a successful CPA campaign? Hmm, wouldn’t we all like to know?

While I can’t give you the “magic bullet” to making an offer work, I do have a few tips you can use when working with your affiliate manager to greatly increase your chances of making money. These are questions you should ask before running the offer, to make sure you’re ready and armed.

Remember, your affiliate manager makes money when you do, so it’s in his/her best interest to provide you with as much information as possible to ensure your success.

1) Establish A Personal Relationship First: This may seem like a no brainer, but getting to know your manager a bit on a personal level can be hugely beneficial to you both. Meet him/her in person if you can at an Affiliate Summit or other event. Get on the phone with your manager on a regular basis, chat via IM, Facebook, and make it happen.

2) Ask For A List Of The Top Converting Offers: Your affiliate network will regularly send out newsletter blasts with some of their top offers. But go the extra step by getting a more concise list from your affiliate manager and if available, make sure they include the conversion rates for each offer, with the offer/campaign ID, and street payout.

3) Can I Have A Raise?: I always, always ask for a payout increase, even before running an offer. Your affiliate manager has a ceiling on the payout that is usually quite a bit higher than the posted street payout. The difference in a $.50 boost may not seem like a lot, but trust me…it can make or break your campaign.

A higher payout not only means you make more per lead, but you can bid more for your keywords, allowing you to take better ad positions, hence potentially increasing your CTR, hence lowering your CPC. Win Win, and the worst they can say is “No”.

4) Ask For Numbers: When choosing an offer among a few recommended offers by your affiliate manager, see if he/she will give you some numbers on other successful affiliates. What I mean is, find out how much gross revenue the top affiliate for that particular offer drove during the previous month. You aren’t asking for a net amount, because of course your AM won’t know an affiliate’s advertising costs. But hearing real numbers is a whole lot more motivating than just knowing an offer converts at 10%. Now, you may not get this information from your manager. It really depends on the CPA network, and how well your manager trusts you. They can’t always give this information out, but again, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

5) Find Out The Best Promotional Method: Before running an offer, ask your manager how the most successful affiliates are also running it. When you get an offer that says it’s converting at 10%, you need more information to make an informed decision. Is that 10% on Search, Email, Web, Content, Social, etc?

If it’s a search offer, what method works best? Direct Linking, Bridge Page, Review, Comparison, etc.

When you get a conversion rate from you manager, remember, this is the conversion rate of the offer itself. This number will fluctuate depending on HOW you are promoting it. An offer via direct linking will have an entirely different conversion rate than one with a landing page. So knowing the method that is already working for the other affiliates will save you time and help you become successful with it sooner.

Also, see if your AM knows which search engine/country is converting best for the offer. Sometimes an offer will sail on one engine, but tank out on another. There are a number of factors at play, including the demographic of the engine’s users, as well as the ad competition.

And if you have an offer that is available in multiple countries, find out which country is converting best. In many non-US countries, you’ll have more success with it simply because of a less crowded ad space.

The traffic restrictions should be available from within the CPA network’s campaign settings, but if not, be sure to ask. You definitely don’t want to run a global campaign, only later to find out that only US traffic was allowed. This can eat your ad budget to shreds, leaving you with leads you probably won’t get paid for.

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Filed under: Affiliate Networks • CPA Offers • Getting Started

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