Back in June 07 I wrote a post about how to set up a campaign on Google’s pay per action (PPA) beta network. There wasn’t much interest in the post and the service in general, but I saw this as a huge opportunity. I have been running many PPA campaigns every day since then and making solid money off of the program. Unfortunately the service is ended in August, but it was great while it lasted. Here’s what I did, and hopefully it provides a concrete example of thinking outside the box.
Since you can arbitrage anything I got to thinking why not do an offer to offer arbitrage. The idea was basically a PPA to CPA arbitrage, essentially just CPA to CPA. The beauty of the PPA/CPA system is that it puts the burden of advertising on the publishers, in this case Adsense publishers. You set your conversion action amount you are willing to pay that publisher for brining you the sale. The number of clicks are irrelevant because you don’t pay for them (but more on that later).
So in this example I had a CPA offer that paid $12 per lead. I set the PPA action amount for $7. So for each completed lead I netted $5 after giving $7 to the adsense publisher. The high payout generated a lot of action for publishers, I tried lower amounts but that led to less interest by publishers.
Now the big problem with this type of setup is technical. You have to have a white label or self hosted offer, because the action confirmation code Google used need to be a static and final confirmation page. The dynamic pages that most affilite networks use to place normal Google tracking code or other pixels did not work for the PPA network code. Luckily I had an offer I could have total control over, so this worked.
So how did it go? Very well. Once publishers started running the ad the clicks started pouring in. Since the action amount was higher than most, a lot of people tried it. The conversion rate was low, but that wasn’t where the majority of the money was made. Which brings us to the part about the free clicks. Finding a way to monetize the free (non converting) traffic is the key to the whole thing.
The defined action was not the only exit point on the landing page. There was a small email signup link to grab double opted in emails for future selling. There were thousands of clicks coming into that page that didn’t convert well on the primary action, but did sign up for the email. Then I was able to convert these free clicks into sales via newsletters. In fact, when I calculated a CPC cost, using the paid out actions I was charged for against the free clicks – I was effectively paying .002 a click. That’s over 100,000 Google clicks for $200
Even though the Google PPA network is gone, there are lots of similar things you can do like this (not the Google Conversion Optimizer though, because that does charge you for all clicks). Hopefully lightbulbs are going off in your head as you read this 
I do not really understand this. Guess that’s why i’m not a super afiliate. Thanks for posting though!
Chad, a couple questions:
1. Can you give some more info on finding white label/self-hosted offers like the one you used that normal affiliates like us could find/have access to? I’ve often craved a self-hosted offer as then I can setup my own conversion tracking code and don’t have to sit waiting on ridiculously slow/stupid affiliate managers.
2. How does the white label offer work with the tracking code? Don’t you still need to host the page yourself? Wouldn’t a white label offer just send them to your merchants site (albeit with a clean URL)? I know we had emailed briefly about you possibly doing an in-depth post on tracking (particularly when the merchant hosts the conversion completion page) so I’m really curious how this ties in.
3. Thats great that free clicks were able to be monetized. I wonder how long it will take for Google to close that loophole…I imagine lots of people will setup a low CPA offer that will drive easy, targeted clicks, and then try to optimize the landing page to monetize the traffic in other ways beyond the intended CPA offer. Do you foresee mass abuse of this program by the affiliate world?
Great article as always.
Mike,
1. Just ask your AM, each network has offers that can be self hosted.
2. Its very clean since you just place whatever action tracking code you want on the proper pages in the order/lead process. Only the final sale info was sent to the merchant.
3. The loop is closed, the program ended Aug 31st. File this one under one of those things you don’t blog about until it stopped working
I might be going by a different definition of white label than you then.
It was my understanding that white label programs allowed you to send the user to their site with a plain link, so the user would click a link on http://www.myaffiliatesite.com that would direct them to http://www.amazon.com (just an example, i know they’re not white label) and wouldn’t have the AID in the URL.
It sounds like what you are talking about uses a merchants API to have the entire transaction take place on your site (including having a conversion completion page to put your conversion code on) and then passing along that info to the merchant. If this is indeed what you are talking about, what is the best way to find these specific programs? Isn’t there a concern/liability on the merchant’s end that you would have access to the credit card info and personal info?
Really curious about the details on this–perhaps it warrants its own post. Thanks for your responses.
Mike,
Your second description is the proper definition of white labeling in regards to affiliate marketing – having the entire signup process take place on your own site. As far as sending the users to the merchant’s site using a plain link, you can do that through web coding in your .htaccess file without any action needed from the advertiser.
Posts like this are why this blog is hands down the best place to learn how to really think like a true (I hate using this word) superaffiliate.
Thanks bro!
Hey Chad,
If you were willing to write a how to manual on this one, I would buy it. I get the idea, but I have no idea how to implement it. I guess this is what separates a super affiliate from the pack. Great Post!
I’ve never commented on this blog before, but I have to say, this post is a perfect example of why I would rank it as the #1 affiliate marketing blog out there. Chad may not post every day, but when he does, you know that you’ll get unparalleled quality. Thanks!
On a more relevant note, I can personally vouch for this idea. I’ve been doing something similar for a few months now with an offer – but I’m not saying any more since the venue I’m using is still live! This certainly works, but it’s a very advanced tactic only for those who are already doing enough volume to get a white label and some serious payout boosts.
Thanks Jordan, and glad to hear its working for you too. I love this technique.
I was going to make a post about this myself since Google PPA has ended (guess don’t need to now). it was great while it lasted as there were plenty of offers you could reguritage from netwoks to google.
to bad it ended but just as you said there are other ways to still make this happen. the only really good part was google could produce some volume! 
[...] The CPA to CPA arbitrage play [...]
That was a pretty smart idea actually, I wish I had thought of that. How much money did you end up actually making when it was all said and done?
Great post. As long as the brain keeps thinking, there’s always money to be made.
yes, brain is the key to success indeed
[...] Probably the “biggest trick” I let out of the bag was this post: The CPA to CPA abitrage play [...]
Yes .. Arbitraging the CPA networks is a very good way to make some decent coin
But most of them won’t allow you to cross promote the offers. However there is a workaround .. as long as you pay to get a lead in your newsletter and market it later
It’s not exactly a new method, but can work wonders if you have the cashflow for it
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Gabriel
http://cpaarbitragex.com/
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.