CPA marketing and other forms of affiliate marketing can have a tough learning curve, but there is one method of promoting offers that is about as close as you can come to “copy and paste.”

Sound too good to be true? It almost is, but it’s completely legitimate, and experienced marketers have been making fortunes with it for years. What is this mystery technique? Media buys.

The term “media buys” is far from new. For many years, it has been used to describe the process of purchasing advertising in traditional print magazines and newspapers, or on radio and television. Although these are still perfectly viable advertising mediums, the Internet is the new hot commodity in the advertising market, and holds opportunities for marketers without the deep pockets needed to advertise elsewhere.

Essentially, “media buys” involve buying banner advertising space on websites, with the cost depending on the website’s prominence and traffic, the size of the advertising campaign, the times at which the banners are to be displayed, and other criteria. Payment for these ad campaigns is usually calculated on the basis of “CPM” (cost per thousand impressions), meaning that unlike PPC, where you are paying each time your ad is clicked, you are paying a set rate whenever a visitor sees your ad. Depending on the ad rates, you could end up getting very cheap clicks.

Traditionally, advertisers have had to pay advertising agencies to design advertising campaigns for them. However, many companies with affiliate programs are now providing their affiliates with pre-made banner ads in various different standard sizes for free, either directly or through an affiliate network.

As the affiliate, this means that all you have to do do get started promoting affiliate and CPA offers with banners is literally cut and paste a snippet of code. Cut, paste, and you’re done – no need to wrack your brain to come up with ad copy, spend hours in Photoshop or write any code. It has all been done for you.

Of course, just like any other kind of offer promotion, there are tricks of the trade that substantially increase your odds of success, and while you can simply jump in and hope for the best, you are far better off learning from a professional who has tested and tweaked techniques for maximum profits. The Zero Friction Marketing course will show you the ins and outs of media buys and allow you to hit the ground running with confidence.

“Cost Per Action” marketing is two of the simplest methods for beginner Internet marketers to begin making money online. For years, this type of affiliate marketing has an industry secret of the insider "big players.” It was never really a “secret,” but while most people in Internet marketing had their hands busy promoting Clickbank products, the big kahunas were playing on a whole different level.

Cost Per Action, sometimes referred to as "CPA," is a type of Internet marketing that requires consumers to complete specific actions – this usually entails filling out a form and requesting a free product sample, signing up for a free trial. In some cases, it involves asking the consumer to try a new product or service by making a small purchase.

What it means is that you, as offer promoter, get paid for the "actions" taken by the traffic you steer to advertisers. As a basic example, let's say a company wants to test the consumer feedback on a new product line that they are introducing. They create an offer where they agree to pay $1.50 for each person who submits their e-mail address and zip code – your job is simply to direct traffic to that site and then collect $1.50 for each person who opts in.

This is a fairly standard promotion type. Others might pay as much as $37 for an optin (though if the payout is higher, the offer might require much more information from the customer or ask for a small upfront payment.

In essence you, as a CPA marketer, are really a traffic broker: You buy traffic on one end, send it to an offer page and get paid based on how well it converts. Sounds so simple, doesn't it? It can be easy, but it generally isn't.

Because it is so profitable, CPA marketing is extremely competitive, and for a beginner, it can be intimidating to start trying to compete with super-affiliates making $100k a day and even more, or even with the more common affiliates who are making $500 to $1,000 a day running CPA campaigns. When you try to get started, you're going to be up against all of that competition, and it can be very challenging. The truth is, a lot of beginners simply get frustrated and give up when they figure out that CPA marketing can be difficult and expensive.

CPA marketing can be all that the sales letters say it can be – you really can make $100k a day if you know what you’re doing – but it can also be frustrating if you jump in without the right information. The Zero Friction course can get you off on the right footing so that you can start making money almost right away without the stress of worrying you’ll lose your shirt.

For someone just getting into CPA marketing, the variety of different offer types can be confusing – it might seem overwhelming at first to try and figure out what all the different offers are.

Some common types you will find in nearly any CPA network’s portfolio are free-trial offers, zip-submit offers, and e-mail-submit offers.

Let’s begin with free-trial offers, because they are so popular among both advertisers and the marketers who promote them. The reason is simple: These free trial offers are often completely free to the customer, except for a small fee (as little as $1.95 or so) for shipping and handling. The customer gets a product they are interested for an incredibly low price, and the advertiser gets a valuable lead.

As a marketer, you might be wondering how this benefits you. Even though the offer is free, or nearly free, companies are often more than willing to pay generous commissions (as much as $20-$100 per lead). The reason is that many of these free trial offers are forced continuity programs – by accepting the free trial offer, the customer is agreeing to pay for more of the product when the free trial is up, often through a monthly auto-ship program.

All you need to worry about, however, is delivering the lead – retaining the customer is up to the advertiser. That means that you get a high commission on an offer that is easy to convert, and all you have to do is get the customer to the company’s landing page. Free-trial offers are popular for a reason…

Another very common type of CPA offer is a “zip submit.” All a visitor has to do in order for you to get paid is enter their zip code. You can be sure that the company running the promotion has a way to make money from the customer on the back end, but you as the CPA marketer get paid just for the customer’s zip code. These offers convert extremely well, although they are generally low-paying – you might earn as little as 75 cents to $1 for a zip submit, but if you can drive a lot of traffic to them even small change can add up to big money.

Another similar kind of offer is an “e-mail submit.” You have probably heard many marketers say that “the money is in the list,” but building a list of prequalified buyers can be tough, and so companies are willing to pay a lot for the right e-mail addresses. That's where you come in: All the visitor needs to do is enter their e-mail address and you get paid. Like a zip-submit, the payouts can be a little low, but you can make up for that in volume.

You can learn a lot more about the various types of CPA offers and, most importantly, how to choose the right offer to promote and how to promote it, by checking out the newly-released Zero Friction Marketing