Probably one of the easiest (legitimate) ways to make money when it comes to CPA is incentive marketing.

The problem is, virtually everyone trying to get into it just copies everyone else and expects to make a profit, not unlike every other strategy to make some cash out there.

You probably hear a lot how incentive marketing "won’t last" or it’s "the end of incentive marketing".

Funny how the people who say things like this are always the ones whose opinions are completely worthless.

Incentive offers make companies big money, the consumer data alone allows them to make a fortune selling one thing after another to these people, or just renting the list to other companies who want to try and sell these people things.

After all, these customers took an incentive to try a product, and sure, maybe it was just for the cash, or to get an ipod, but what these companies are really paying for is the mindset of a person who would do such a thing in the first place, in laymen’s terms, they are an easy sell on multiple fronts, the proverbial weak minded consumer.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen a lot of ebooks being put out on "how to make a fortune with incentive marketing". Every single one of them says the same crap:

Get an incentive site script

Make a fortune

            If it was five years ago, that alone could probably make you a couple grand a day in profits, consumers thought it was a dream come true to get free money or free gifts to sign up for a few free trials, the blackhatters weren’t hip to it yet and trying to beat the system, and people generally filled out their real information and took the full trial.

But…………..   It’s not five years ago.

Today, you have to get crafty, but a couple grand a day in net profits is still more than realistic if you’re willing to do a little work.

Let’s quickly highlight the main points of what you need to accomplish:

•  Number one, legitimacy is KEY. These sites are now known to be mostly scams where the consumer does offer after endless offer only to give up, obviously never getting the gift, and word has spread about this. If you can’t look legit, you can’t make any money. My strategy really doesn’t make legitimacy the issue it normally is, but it will only help your bottom line so it’s non negotiable.
  

•  Your target audience is no longer freebie seekers, let that sink in. Freebie seekers are nothing but trouble, they are bad leads, there is now a huge business based around being a freebie seeker (see freelunchroom.com/projectpayday.com), and just everything about the typical freebie site model and user is an absolute nightmare.
  

•  Your target audience has changed so now the target site has changed. Gone are the days of throwing up a script, dumping in offers and promoting free ipods. The big money is and has always been in thinking outside the box, so that’s how we are going to roll out our sites.

Ipods, Xbox, Playstations and Cash…..It’s over, just accept it and move on. If you’re going to be another cookie cutter site, expect a cookie cutter outcome.

The new key to success is to go much smaller and much more targeted.

Your sites will only offer ONE gift (typically under $60), one targeted completely unique but in demand gift, think:

• A new national best seller
  
  
• A new in demand skin cream
  
  
• A magazine subscription
  
  
• A cool NEW cooking tool

I could sit here all day on the list alone, I’m just trying to get some raw examples in your head to start the correct thought process.

You could go about this one of two ways, sub domains working off one main site such as PeopleMagazine.GetItForFree.com, or you could make a unique site for each gift to make it more appealing to the user, be able to optimize it with its own blog or forum (I’ll get into this in the Dominate IM forum), and have the option to sell it off for a nice profit if you choose.

One of the other HUGE drawbacks on both the consumer side and the merchant side, and the fundamental flaw in the system of incentive marketing is that typically, a person either has to do dozens of offers to get the free gift, most of which they could care less about, or they have to refer tons of friends, who are probably only registering to shut their friend up and have no real interest either.

The consumer gets screwed because the process sucks for them, they either have to sign up for a million offers, deal with cancellations, and spam, or they have to humiliate themselves by trying to sell their friends on signing up so they can get a lousy ipod.

The merchant gets screwed because they have so many people signing up that could care less about their product or service. As I mentioned above, yes, you better believe they still make serious money, but it could be a lot more, and that would also allow them to pay you more for incentivised customers.

The incentive site owner gets screwed because they have to deal with miserable administrative work dealing with all these schmucks including the CPA networks, they often get scrubbed huge each month for bad leads risking actually going into the red after advertising expenses already paid out, they deal with scammers and cheats all day, and the shelf life of their site will often times be less than six months before CPA networks wont accept their leads anymore.

My structure, however, solves everyone’s problems and I’m not shy about saying it.

Consider the following:

By promoting one targeted gift (let’s just run with my people magazine subscription as the example) we target a normal person, who is interested in the subscription yes, but would also generally be willing to take a free trial of something they find interesting if they could get that subscription free.

They would only have to complete 1-3 simple free offers at the MAX to get this free one year subscription, pay your advertising costs, and leave you with a nice profit in your hands.

They would not have to refer ANY friends to receive their free gift.

The offers on the site would be demographic targeted and plentiful. What’s that mean? It means we would target the offers we promote to the demographic of the person who would want that gift, aka People Magazine, so females, 18-45, who are into entertainment and fashion. We would also make sure there were a few dozen offers to choose from so that odds are good the user will be able to take a trial with something they actually may enjoy.

The merchant gets great quality customers trying their products. These customers did not set out to get a freebie, they were looking to BUY something, and thanks to your add jumping in front of them, decided to try a new product or two (that they actually could have some interest in) to get it free.

The site owner deals with far less admin, fraud, and general bullshit from the networks and merchants, their sites may make smaller profits singularly than a typical large incentive sites, but the shelf life could be years, and they can create literally thousands of sites offering virtually anything as a free gift.

Even though the user didn’t HAVE to refer friends, you better believe they will be talking about how they got a free subscription to People for taking a free trial of a diet pill or skin creme, and no advertising my friends, is more powerful than good old word of mouth.

You’re also instantaneously solving one of the biggest trust issues with typical consumer incentive marketing, the BIG gifts.

What’s more realistic to you?:

I’ll give you a free $500 Playstation 3 just for doing a few free offers and telling your friends!!!!!

Or:

We’d like to offer you a free one year subscription to People Magazine just for taking a free trial of ????????

Pretty obvious right? The bigger the prize, the less likely people will believe they can really have it. That’s why I like to stay under a $60 value, many times under $10. You’d probably be amazed how many women would take a free trial for a free Cover Girl Mascara that they like.

Men are no exception, they can be bribed, but they are far more pessimistic than women. I typically suggest targeting your sites primarily to women at first because they are a much easier sell and you need to get comfortable with the business model before venturing into more difficult customers.

I’m saving a lot of detail for the forum so I can answer questions live, but the last seed I would like to plant on this is yet another thing no one is ever willing to talk about.

With the right site, you can write your own ticket, meaning that CPA networks are not the only option; advertisers will be willing to give you direct offers if your traffic is good and that is serious money.

You can literally go straight to tens of thousands of companies who’s products/services fit the lifestyle of your typical user and say "Hey, I can get you hundreds of new quality customers per month if you are willing to offer a trial to them, and I have the data and references to prove it".