When I think about making money on the Internet I immediately think affiliate marketing. Now affiliate marketing is very broad and there’s a lot of different ways to do it, but the newest, hottest, trend right now is cost per action marketing or CPA.

CPA is not quite like a regular affiliate program because we are not actually trying to get people to buy. What we are doing is trying to generate a lead for the merchant. A lead can be as simple as a name and email address or a full out credit application. All we want is people to sign up.

Businesses will pay good money for the leads that you send them. This is because these leads are targeted consumers. They already are showing an interest and usually need just a little more info to make a purchase.

Similar to affiliate marketing we can setup a landing page with various free samples of different products. A visitor to our page may see something they like and click through to the merchant page. If the visitor then signs up for the free sample we get paid.

What is great about CPA over affiliate marketing is that we are not really selling anything. We are not trying to get anyone to take their wallet out and buy. We just need them to sign up. And usually this sign up is for free samples of a quality product that they already use!

Like affiliate programs we have programs available to help get us started with Cost per action. Do some research for cost per action networks and apply. Once your setup you can search their client list for potential campaigns. Check to make sure but usually you can market via web, email, newsgroups, etc.

All in all it is a pretty simple and quick way of making some cash on the side. If you really want to get deep and explore CPA further I recommend a new product from Craig Beckta called Secret Cash Blueprint. He is giving away all the tips and secrets to be extremely successful at CPA.