Although I am not new to building web sites or to SEO, I am a total novice when it comes to CPA. I have finally found a company that will accept me as a "newbie" but want to make sure that I set this thing up correctly. I am quite confident that I can drive people to a product/service page where they only need to provide basic information in order to get something "free" or obtain more information. (Getting a credit card number is a different story, however.) What would be the best place to drive those people to? A single landing page that then links to the CPA offer? Should I collect their E-Mail address myself ("for more information, please provide your E-Mail address") and then E-Mail them the offer(s) or more teaser copy? Or, should my main source of advertising drive the people directly to the CPA companies' link(s), rather than to my own site or individual landing page(s). My final idea was to create an entire site based around CPA offers and to have specific pages (which I could use as landing pages for PPC leads, for instance) for each PPC offer? I know there are those of you out there that are masters at this. Any help at all would be appreciated!
Using sub domains for CPA offers is a great way to start your journey. But as you progress, move over to .com domains for your work. The best way to start marketing your offers is to research keywords thoroughly and to have some great content reviewing your product. Make sure you add plenty of reviews and videos. Add a newsletter feature to build your email list. Try making a website giving out free products in exchange for email address. I made over $500 a few months back with quite a few email addresses. They were interested in a weight loss product and I mailed them with a link and write up about a new weight loss product. There are a lot of ways to market a new website made specifically about a product. Make sure you use squidoo, blogspot, wordpress and other free blog hosts which have high crawler rates. Hire a team of writers to write content for you. Content is the most important thing and you can never have enough of it. You will find that doing that will give you more time to manage your websites and campaigns. Don't get down by the low conversion rates when you use Adwords etc because it takes time to make the right kind of campaigns and landing pages.
Thanks for the advice VCCMatey! As I stated, I know I can get the traffic. I did a test ad via a rarely used but highly effective advertising medium before being accepted into a CPA network to see if it was viable and got over 1,500 clicks in three hours at a ridiculously low CPC. (Incidentally, it was for a "Lose 10 pounds in 10 days" ad that I really didn't have a product for). 300 people provided their E-Mail addresses and my total advertising cost was a little over $50 bucks! I'm a a highly accomplished writer who currently has the time to do it, so creating written content is not the issue. I have absolutely no clue how to put together a video for a product or how to produce a slideshow or "look over my shoulder at my computer screen" type of presentation. Does anyone have any recommendations for easy-to-use and inexpensive methods of developing these type of video presentations? I know that the experts all seem to agree that video is not only the highest converting method, but that it is also great for SEO.
Indeed, you'd better make some video presentation(s) - more like infomercials - and yes, use Camtasia to make them.
One word of advice, if you are looking a PPC campaigns, the inevitable "Human Review" will see that your site is a "bridge" and your PPC costs will skyrocket and/or your campaign will be dropped entirely. As mentioned, SEO is the best route with relatively low cost. Just make sure you choose you keyword targets wisely. Good Luck! Bealed