Every since the release of CPA arbitrage almost two year ago  many internet marketing gurus have been heralding CPA as the best thing since Adsense.

And yes, you can make money with CPA.

But is CPA all that it’s cracked up to be?

For those who don’t know CPA stands for Cost Per Action.  Typically a CPA offer pays an affiliate when some action is taken by a website visitor. An action such as filling out a form or registering for a free trial.  For this “action” the affiliate is paid a commission. Commissions can range from a few cents for a simple zip code or email submit to $80 or more for a long form house or car loan lead.

The problem with CPA offers is most of the highest converting offers are what I would call scams.

Take a look at this one:

http://www.cellphoneincentives.com/rd_p?p=200236

Seems great huh!  Fill out your email address and get a free Blackberry.  Who wouldn’t go for that?   Then you get to the next page and oh yeah, we need to know where to ship your Blackberry so you need to fill out your name, address and telephone number.

“Ship it to me baby! Can’t wait to get my free phone.”

Wait, what’s this?  I have to fill out a survey?  No problem.  Small price to pay for a new Blackberry.

Now what?  Another survey?  Only this time I have to send my answer to my cell phone O_o?

And reading the small print reveals this gem…

By entering your cell phone number, you acknowledge you are allowing us to give your information to one of our service providers chosen at our discretion. Specific Terms and Conditions for the mobile subscription will be posted on the confirmation page after you have submitted your cell phone number. Unless noted otherwise on the terms and services listed on the following page AT&T, T-Mobile, Alltel, Dobson, Cellular One, Virgin USA, and Cincinnati Bell are billed monthly at $9.99 per month.

Digging a little further I find this:

To obtain the gift for this promotion you must: 1) register with valid information including e-mail address, shipping address, and phone number; 2) complete the survey; 3) complete at least 2 Silver, 2 Gold and 5 Platinum Sponsor Offers (offer availability will vary); 4) be a US resident 18 or older; 5) not cancel your participation in more than a total of 2 Sponsor Offers within 6 days of the Sponsor Offer Initial Transaction Date.

Holy cow it’s going to cost me more to complete the offers then the Blackberry is worth!

That’s the first CPA scam.  They’re called incentive offers and they are all over the CPA networks.  They draw you in with the promise of a free gadget or gift card and then suck you in to a never ending spiral of offers.

The next one is the Free Trial Pay Only Shipping.  This is most prevalent in the health and beauty and business opportunity niches.  I’m sure you’ve seen these… Get a Bottle of Wonder Pill X and only pay shipping of $4.95.

Sounds reasonable, huh?  Well, here’s the thing… The REAL reason they change you shipping  is so they have your Credit Card number.  Because when you click submit you are agreeing to the tiny tiny print where they tell you that you have just signed up for a monthly plan for $39.00 or $69.00.

Fun, huh?

No not really.  And that’s how your customers will feel too if you promote this junk.

The third type of scam are the offers that just don’t live up to their claims.  An example of this is Cash For Gold.  They claim to pay top dollar for your gold.  They’ll even send you a “kit” free of charge which you can use to send in your gold jewelry.

Sounds great, huh?  Get rid of your unused jewelry and make some money.

Problem is, the offer they make for your gold is laughable.  Appx 10% of the real value. At current rates that would be appx $120.00 per ounce and that if it’s 24 ct gold.

You’d be better off selling your gold to a pawn shop.

There are other types of CPA offers.  And some are legit.  One that I have been affiliated with for years is American Consumer Opinion.  ACOP is a legitimate research company that pays people to take surveys.

I’ve done some of their surveys and I can vouch that they do pay.  And beyond that they also pay 50 cents for each referral you send them.

If you’d like to join ACOP, either as a participant or an affiliate, my affiliate link is  http://www.snip2.com/re/acopbl

James

Filed under: James Rants

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!