Here’s a strategy I’ve used in the past, it really gets me boiled up to see things work out the same day!  Try and follow the guidelines, and see how you fare!

1) Choose the right CPA offer

2) Do some keyword research in the niche to find 8-12 keyword phrases that have enough searches, but not much competition

3) Go get a domain with your best keyword.  It should be keyword.com, .org or .net, but don’t add a word, keep the keyword phrase intact and in the same order.

4) Set up your hosting, point your domain at it, install Wordpress (via Fantastico if you have it), choose an attractive theme real quick

5) Make categories for the remaining keyword phrases

6) Have a post with each keyword phrase in its respective category

7) Install All-in-one SEO and configure it

Social bookmark each post with a killer title

Number eight should start driving a lot of traffic, and some of that traffic should start converting right away!

An interesting technique I’ve come across is using polls that actually link to your CPA offer or affiliate link.  Here’s the step-by-step.

1)  Go to Google Trends (seriously give this site some love every day, you gotta know what’s hot).  Find something in the top few that you think people might be divided on.

2)  Real quick, write an article about that topic.  It’s not as hard as it sounds.  Jut put your opinions and thoughts down.  For something like Christian Bale Loses it On Terminator Set, you could write…

What’s with Christian Bale, eh?  Does he think he’s actually a superhero or something?  People in Hollywood need to get more down-to-earth, because, really, he’s nothing.  If that’s the kind of personality he has, how far can he go with anyone, in any kind of relationship, beyond a short encounter?  And if that’s the case, what’s the point of having all the money and fame?  He’s just going to be alone anyway, and it’s not like he’s in his 20s.

See, you can just spew crap words on any topic if you just let yourself.  The funny thing is, being a hot topic, tons of people would be interested in reading your thoughts.

Make sure you use the exact title you saw at Google Trends, and use the term a few times in your article, and near the end too.

3)  Use GoArticles for instant approval, Ezine for heavier traffic that will come later.

4) Drive them to your landing page which is essentially a poll.

5) Both outcomes of the poll lead to your CPA offer.  If you want this to be a real poll, you can install a poll plugin from Wordpress.org/extend/plugins and then have the page redirect to the CPA offer after 3 seconds or so.

Once you’ve tested, tested and tested that mofo again and again, you’re probably at a point where you’ve found a reasonably profitable, well-converting CPA offer.  So how do you progress at this stage?

You need to scale your traffic!  Remember that conversions are a ratio, so the more traffic you have, the more money you will make.  For example:

You’re spending $40 a day on Google Adwords and you’re making $100, so you’re profiting by $60 a day.  Spend $400  a day on Google Adwords and you’ll be making… gasp!  $600 a day in profit!  I know the spending numbers sound big, but the earning numbers are even better, aren’t they?

If you’re really squeamish about paying for traffi, yes, you could try to get free  traffic, but understand that there’s a lot of work that goes into this.  Time as well.

So you’ve already selected a CPA offer that is converting well, and so, what do you do now?  You need to test, test and test that mofo!

Unfortunately, my slang won’t make up for this next bit of dissapointing news:  you need to spend a little bit to test, and you may lose money here.  But that’s okay, because losing a little bit here usually means you make a lot later.

The best way to test is to use paid traffic, aka PPC.  And in PPC, use Google Adwords.  Why?   You want to know as quickly and reliably as possible if the CPA offer you’re promoting is any good, so a steady, incredibly random and ready-to-buy/try stream of traffic is ideal.

Driving traffic yourself can be a heapload of work, slow, and may not even work very well, so at least for testing, I definitely recommend going with PPC.  In my opinion, you need to form an opinion around the 1000 impressions mark.  If, after 1000 impressions you haven’t seen any conversions, you need to drop that CPA offer, cut your losses and move on to another one.

And since conversions depend on a number of factors, you need to test as many of those factors as you can.  For example, your landing page.  How many people click through it and on to the company’s page depends a lot on your sales copy.  Look…

You already know you’re overweight.  You dread travelling in coach, because you don’t fit in the seat, and you need a seatbelt extension.  How embarassing is that? People look at you and you know what they’re thinking.  ”How FAT is that guy?”  You don’t have to be that guy anymore.  You don’t have to turn yourself sideways to squeeze through restaurant tables.  You can make the right changes in your life that will lead to you slipping into that aircraft seat comfortably, and buckling your seatbelt… with belt to spare.

vs.

Are you a fat slob?  Did you binge too much, and now you wanna lose weight? Click here to lose 394 pounds in 4 nights, guaranteed.  I lost double that in just 2 days, and now, I live in a multi-million dollar beach house in Hawaii.  Girls look and me and lose self control.  This is the life you’ll have if you buy these Chinese panda fur extract pills.  <picture shows some guy, frolicking with a bunch of chicks in front of Hawaii beach mansion>

So you need to develop your landing page more and more, and split test a pair all the time to try and find the best possible version.  And of course, test multiple offers at once to see which ones are the most profitable.  That’s it… testing is always the answer.

Naturally, choosing the right CPA offer is key to your success.  But as with so many things in Internet marketing, the learning curve isn’t just steep, it goes straight up!

The most common type of CPA offers you’ll find at the majority of networks include things like free-trial offers, e-mail submit offers and zip-submit offers.

People in CPA love free-trial offers… ever heard of Acai berry?  You can understand where they’re coming from; the customer doesn’t have to pay for anything except maybe a shipping/handling fee which is pretty small, and they, as the promoter, get a nice little cut of cash.

How nice is that little cut?  Depends, but they range between $10 and $120 for the free-trial offers from what I’ve seen.  Acai berry pays $14 I believe, but is said to convert incredibly well.  The catch here, if that’s what it is to you, is that after the customer accepts the trial offer, the company will try to send them more of the product and of course, bill them as frequently as possible.

That doesn’t really affect you as the person promoting the  product, all you do is deliver the lead and collect the cash.

And then there’s zip-submits.  Just like the name implies, you get paid for each person that pops in their zip code.  This sounds incredibly easy, and in many scenarios, it is, but keep in mind that you don’t get paid all that much, only up to a dollar per submit.  But, anyone that uses Adsense will know that if you have enough traffic, you’ll make money with this.  Example?

(1000 visitors/day)  x (0.03 – a 3% conversion rate) x ($1) = $30/day = $900/month

Email submits are similar to zip-submits in that they’re fairly easy to capture, and don’t pay that much, but driving lots of traffic can turn  that into a lucrative channel as well!

So what do you need to know in order to choose the right CPA offer?

You need to choose something that is already converting well.  Higher conversions mean you have to do less work.  That’s pretty much it!