An important issue in affiliate marketing is the “partnership conditions” between the merchant and the affiliate themselves: how and for what must one pay a fee to the affiliate in order to get the desired effect from the promotion.
Let us take a quite moment together with the abbreviations to learn about the possible options of rewards. The main payout models are: CPA, CPL, CPO, CPI, CPV, CPC, CPS.
CPA (cost per action) — pay per action.
When promoting a site, the merchant pays a fee only for the predetermined “actions” committed by the site visitor.
We will provide an example to make the cycle of such relationships clearer:
- Leonidas is an merchant who sells tickets to Sparta through a landing page;
- He collaborates with a affiliate called Hoqulover2019, which attracts visitors, meaning that the potential customers on a landing with tours;
- The visitors get to the landing page via the Hoqulover2019’s link and take actions — click, fill out forms, view information, etc.
- Under the agreement, Leonidas will pay the affiliate only if one of the clients leaves their phone number and the name of their place of residence in a special form — this is the target action;
- Accordingly, when someone leaves their contact details, Hoqulover2019 receives their reward, meaning that the merchant paid “for the action”, and all other actions do not really matter.
Since CPA is a common name, this type of payment will not be among the available options in the offers on the HOQU platform.
CPL (cost per lead) — payment for leads (lead — the contact information of a potential client, any information may be relevant to a lead, for example, age, gender, etc.).
Everything is the same as in the previous example, except payments are made for leads. At the same time, the merchant and the affiliate agree in advance exactly how the visitor should leave the information about themselves. Filling out the forms with contacts on Leonidas’s landing page from the previous example is just one example of a lead.
CPO (cost per order) — payments for orders.
Leonidas’ second business is chariot transport. As a fan of landing pages, he made a landing page for these services. Hoqulover2019 is a trusted guy, you can collaborate with him this time too. Only in this case, simply contacts are not enough: Leonidas will pay only if one of the visitors places an order for transportation.
CPI (cost per install) — payment for installations.
This is actual for games, mobile applications, paid software. In other words, the affiliate will receive payment only if the user installs a promoted application / software. In this case, Leonidas is out of work.
CPV (cost per view) — pay per view.
This payment model is appropriate when the merchant uses advertising tools that can collect views — videos, banners, etc.
Let us say that Leonidas decided that he wants to use this particular model to advertise one of his businesses. Hoqulover2019 can help him gain views by giving ads as he broadcasts a battle of gladiators to the audience. Hoqulover2019 will receive a reward for each new viewing of Leonidas’s promotional materials.
Moreover, Leonidas himself can set the terms of payment for views: for example, 1 viewing of a Hoqulover2019 broadcast will be counted only if the viewer views the broadcast advertisement for at least 30 seconds; or maybe 1 view will be counted only if the viewer views the advertisement from the very beginning to the very end. If this is a pop-up advertisement in the form of a picture, then the viewing will be counted simply for its display.
CPC (cost per call) — pay per call.
Everything is also quite simple here — the affiliate is paid for the attracted call. At the same time, it is important that the call be precisely “targeted”, meaning that it is a call from a potential customer.
In some cases, the merchant may specify in the offer the maximum number of calls that can be processed per day.
CPC (cost per click) — pay per click.
Leonidas pays for each user click on an ad unit (ad or banner) that Hoqulover2019 posted on his advertising resource.
CPS (Cost per Sale) — payment for a sale.
The merchant shares a % of the sale or pays a fixed amount if a visitor who came to the site through the work of a affiliate makes a purchase.
The most obvious example is online shopping. If you use cashback services to buy goods on Amazon or any other online store, you will get to the product page using the link of this service, which will receive a commission, as you visited the site from their original pages.
