Offer Types (Affiliate / CPA Marketing)

This is an overview of the most common CPA affiliate marketing offer types you’ll come across when working with affiliate networks and/or advertisers directly.

The affiliate marketing industry has its own lingo.

Every beginner affiliate should at least know the basic terms.

These offer categories are in no particular order.

But first, let’s clarify what exactly we’re talking about here:

What Is CPA Marketing?

CPA stands for Cost Per Action.

Sometimes it’s also refered to as “Cost Per Acquisition”, but the meaning is the same:

CPA Marketing Defined

CPA Marketing
An advertising model where publishers are paid for an action that is taken as a direct result of their marketing.

This differs from typical affiliate marketing in that you may not necessarily need to make a sale to get paid within a CPA network.

Payments are usually based on lead generation such as submitting a phone number or email address to get some free product or information.

What’s The Goal Of Advertisers?

What exactly are the goals of the advertiser?

The companies who are behind these offers (aka “the advertiser”) usually try to achieve multiple goals with their campaigns:

  • gain brand awareness (branding)
  • gain contact data of potential customers (lead generation)
  • ultimately generate more revenue (sales)

Now that we all know what we’re talking about here, let’s take a look at the different offer types within the world of CPA affiliate marketing…

Leadgen / CPL / Cost Per Lead / Pay Per Lead

Now, one could argue that - generally speaking - almost all CPA offer types available to affiliate markters are lead generation offers of some kind.

But what is usually meant in affiliate marketing jargon when someone refers specifically to the “leadgen offer type”, is this:

These offers collect some kind of (contact-) information about the potential customer (“lead”) in exchange for some benefit or access to a service.

When an affiliate marketer refers to a leadgen offer, he’s usually particularly refering to a “white-hat” offer/niche like the solar example below.

Very often, the advertising company (or “the advertiser”) requires the affiliate to acquire leads based on specific targeting criteria like

  • location (“GEO”),
  • language,
  • interests,
  • sex,
  • age groups,

and others.

Example Leadgen Offer

Home Solar US CPL $7.20 per lead eCommerce

Example CPL Solar Leadgen Offer

Home Solar Rebates - Save BIG On Solar Installation….

CPS / Cost Per Sale / Pay Per Sale

The affiliate gets a commission (usually a percentage like 5%, or 50%, sometimes even 100%) if a sale is made.

This is the typical or “standard” form of performance-based affiliate marketing.

Most affiliates wouldn’t think of CPS as a part of CPA marketing, but these offers are infact CPA type offers:

The “action”-part of this type of CPA offer is simply a direct sale of a product or service.

Example CPS offer: see info products below

Info Products

Think predominantly of ebooks, guides, audiobooks, and online courses.

One of the oldest - and most established - affiliate networks is clickbank.

Most offers on clickbank represent this type of offer: Info products.

(probably the second largest category on clickbank these days are supplement-offers which would fall into the category of ecommerce)

This type of offer usually is based on the “standard” affiliate marketing CPS model. (see above)

Sometimes, revshare/recurring is included in info product type of offers.

Example info product offer:

Diabetes Freedom Manual

Diabetes Freedom Manual Clickbank Affiliate Network 75-90% commission per sale

Sweepstakes / Sweeps

Sweepstakes are giveaways where a winner will be chosen at a later stage to get a prize by chance.

The most popular prizes that people hope to win are:

  • phones: iPhones and Samsung smartphones
  • gift cards: popular brands, gyms, shopping vouchers, prepaid credit cards, streaming services, consumer electronics, …
  • niche prizes: Sneakers, cosmetics, travel holidays, …

This type of offer is very newbie-friendly and has a low barrier to entry.

Competition in tier-one countries can be high; as it is the case for most offer categories.

Sweepstakes are an evergreen offer type. Companies of all kinds ran these kinds of advertising campaings throughout history.

There are lots of sweepstakes offers available across many networks. Therefore, even beginners shouldn’t have a problem with finding several of these offers at any time.

_Potential _traffic source: This type of offer is often seen on POPs and PUSH traffic, mostly due to the nature of this kind of offer and it’s - _usually _- relatively low payouts.

Example sweepstake offer:

UK SOI Win A Playstation Sweepstake €1.40 per lead

uk soi playstation sweepstake offer

United Kingdom Single Opt-In Win A Playstation Sweepstake

Dating

Dating offers can be either “mainstream” or “adult”.

It’s practically an evergreen niche.

Very often dating offers are SOI or DOI leadgen offers: Potential clients get free or very cheap (trial-) access to a membership area.

But if they want to take advantage of some of the features (like contacting someone they’re interested in), they need to pay a membership fee - usually monthly or yearly pre-payments.

Therefore, many dating offers are based on rebilling and therefore can be a source of recurring revenue for the affiliate and the advertiser. (revshare)

You’ll also find plenty of “standard affiliate” CPS offers in this vertical.

Example dating offer:

Dating Academic Singles Norway Single Opt-In CPL €3.20 per lead

Dating Academic Singles NO SOI Offer CPL

Adult

Sometimes this offer category is also refered to as “casual dating”. 🙂

These offers usually cannot be promoted on mainstream traffic sources.

Instead, this type of offer is seen on “adult traffic sources” like porn sites and/or erotic-related websites and forums.

Example adult offer:

MilfsTinder Desktop / Mobile UK, AU, CA, NZ, IE SOI Dating - Adult CPL payout: €2.40 - €4.00 per lead, depending on GEO

censored

Gambling / Casino / Betting

Another very huge niche.

Since not all mainstream traffic sources allow these kinds of offers, there’s a huge demand (for great affiliates) from the advertiser’s side.

For the same reason these offers are often “adult-friendly offers”, meaning they can be found on adult traffic sources.

Very often, this type of offer is based on revshare or requires of the new customer to make a certain minimum payment first before the affiliate gets paid.

Example casino offer:

BoVegas UK, US CPS $170.00 - payout on qualified FTD of $25.00

bovegas cpa offer

BoVegas CPA UK, US

Crypto / Forex / CFD / Trading

Due to the advertising restrictions of many mainstream traffic sources, there’s - similar to the betting category - a huge demand for affiliates.

Many offers in this niche are based on revshare.

Often, you’ll come across “FTD”-offers: The refered, new client has to make a “First Time Deposit” before the affiliate gets paid.

Payouts in tier-one (and sometimes even tier-two) countries can be as high as $650 - or even higher.

Unfortunately, you’ll find quite a few scams within the crypto-offer vertical.

Therefore, as an affiliate, you want to make sure to only promote legit offers.

Example crypto offer:

Bitcoin Evolution CZ, CA, FR Payout: $440 per qualified FTD

bitcoing evolution CPA offer

Ecommerce

Another huge vertical.

Generally speaking, this type of offer represents physical products.

Most shopify stores as well as online market places and platforms like teespring represent this category of offers.

You can think of ecommerce as “classic retail business” now offered online.

Example ecommerce offer:

Drone XPro CPA INTERNATIONAL CPS: $63.00

drone xpro cpa offer

Nutra

Nutra offers represent a gigantic market of health-related offers:

Supplements, diet and/or weight-loss pills, musle and vitamin boosters, and skincare products are represented in this category.

This offer type also includes adult-related products like ED supplements, musle and penis enhancement pills, and others.

Usually nutra-offers are CPS or rebill/revshare offers.

Example nutra offer:

Skincell Pro US, CA, IE CPA $85.00 (Affiliates will receive the commission for every sale, and will not be impacted by refunds or chargebacks.)

skincell pro cpa offer

App Installs / CPI - Cost Per Installation

Welcome to the world of mobile offers.

In this niche you’ll find offers that require the potential customer to download and/or install some application on their smartphone.

Often, this type of offer requires the user to open the app, and use the app for a specific minimum time.

These applications can either be found on the official app- or playstore or they must be downloaded from an alternative/external store.

Example CPI offer:

Advanced PC Cleanup US, AU, CA, GB CPI + CPS $40 per sale after installation

advanced pc cleanup CPA offer

Surveys

This offer type is very similar to sweepstakes offers.

In fact, often they’re combined: The person has to fill out a survey in order to get a chance to win something.

On the other hand, there are still plenty of survey companies and offers that will payout a small amount of money (compensation) to the person for filling out the survey.

This compensation serves as an inventive to complete the survey.

Example survey offer:

Survey Junkie US Mobile Only CPL $0.80 per lead

survey junkie CPA offer

Pay Per Call

This type of leadgen offer converts on an interested person calling a specific phone number.

Often the advertiser has more, specific requirements for the offer to convert for the affiliate… Like the person having to stay in the call for a specific minimum duration.

Sometimes these offers require the person to call a “premium” phone number that comes with high charges for the caller.

Usually, one can find plenty of pay per call offers in niches like insurance or law, but also dating and/or adult.

Example Pay Per Call offer:

Debt Settlement Onshore Live Transfers US
$47 per qualified lead (120 sec call time minimum) “We’re looking for callers interested in Debt Settlement who have over $10K in credit card debt and can afford a minimum payment of $300 per month.” Call hours: Mon-Fri 10:00am-6:30pm (lunch from 2 pm to 3pm), EST timezone.

PIN Submit / Carrier Billing

PIN submit offers are focused on mobile phone users.

The billing is done via premium charges on the phone bill.

This type of offer and billing is very popular in some second and third tier countries, and covering a wide range of niches.

Usually the payouts are rather low, and often these offers are sweeps or app install offers (CPI).

Example PIN submit offer:

Total Relaxation (app for meditation and sleep) | Qatar | PIN Submit | $2.40 |
“Pixel Fires on PIN Submit. Carriers Allowed: Vodafone & Ooredoo.”

total relaxation CPA PIN submit offer

SOI / Single Opt-In

Single Opt-In offers require only one action from the person to be completed:

Usually it is filling out a simple form or just entering an email address.

Example SOI offer: see dating offer above

DOI / Double Opt-In

Double Opt-In offers require more than one action from the lead to be completed:

Originally, this concept required to enter an email address (as the first step) and then clicking a confirmation link in the “welcome email” (second step).

These days, DOI offers usually mean there are more requirements than just filling out a simple form, for example:

Creating a profile, answering questions, defining interests, rating answers or pictures, uploading a profile picture and others.

Example DOI offer:

UK DOI 40pluslove CPL €9.00 Cap: 50/day

UK DOI 40pluslove

Incentive

Usually, when an advertiser makes this type of offer, he/she wants a specific user engagement.

In other words: Incentive offers normally give something to the users in return to make them perform a certain action.

The “compensation” varies and could mean a small payment, or some sort of freebie, these days very often in the form of some virtual currency.

This usually means some form of “in-game” virtual game currency.

Examples of incentive offers:

  • watching a (video-) ad in exchange for a few in-game “diamonds” or “energy”
  • downloading another application or game in exchange for “gold nuggets”

Content / Content Billing

Content billing offers work this way:

A user/customer gets access to some sort of “premium” content via a members area for example. (to then be able to download some content like videos or other files).

The premium content could also be wallpapers, ring tones or games.

Rebills / Rebill Offers

You’ll find rebill type offers in many verticals, like physical and digital (info) products and services based on the subscription model.

Think of SaaS (Software as a Service), or grocery/product subscriptions, or coaching programs, or membership websites.

These models often start as a (free) trial membership for a certain period of time, like two weeks or a month.

Afterwards, the customer is charged on a recurring basis. (like monthly)

Revshare / Revenue Sharing

These types of offers usually pay the affiliate a specific % of the generated revenue.

You’ll come across revshare offers in niches like ecommerce and info products, but also in betting/casino and forex trading.

Often, these types of offers are also recurring/rebilling offers, like memberships and other subscriptions.

Closing Thoughts

I hope you find my offer type overview valuable.

Thank you for your reading and stay awesome,

Tim for Online Business Dude

PS: Start And Grow Your Own, Affiliate Marketing Business From Scratch, Today!

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