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Comment by vaksel | Hacker News Reader

yeah CPA really sucks. I have a car related site, and I have a bunch of CPA ads, and they aren't making any money whatsoever.

Statistics:(40K users, 450K page views)

   Insurance(banner): 36 clicks, 0 sales
   Tires(multiple banners): 82 clicks, 0 sales
   Tires(click here type links tied into content): 213 clicks, 0 sales
   Leasing: 12 clicks, 0 sales

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This brings up an interesting point. I think most advertisers consider display to be primarily about branding and not so much about conversion. This makes sense because even with relatively targeted ads, you're probably not in search / buy mode when you're simply viewing a website. That happens when you search for something (insurance, tires, etc.).

However, there are studies that show an increase in overall ROI when using display and paid search together. In this context, CPA ads are beautiful to the advertiser because they know they won't get conversions on them. But people are clicking. So they get free branding impressions without the cost of impressions!

CPA doesn't suck and can make you a lot of money however like everything it has its place. It's not nearly the same as just sticking a banner on your page and counting impressions. If managed right on a properly targeted site and a well thought out plan you can make a lot more with CPA.

CPA only works if you build your site around a specific offer. It's not something that you can really use to monetize an existing site.

I have to disagree with you there. I formerly worked in the CPA industry and we saw a lot of people with sites that weren't build around specific offers able to monetize them very well using CPA offers. As I said before CPA won't work for all sites. Same with CPC and CPM but it does work on a lot of sites both old and new. The difference is you have to spend a bit more time understanding your audience and researching offers.

I understand that you've had issues monetizing a site with it but that is far more likely to be an issue with your target audience or your advertising strategy.

If you don't get conversions from your CPA offers I'm guessing your CPC and CPM ads aren't converting well for the advertisers either which as we all know isn't going to last for ever.

Maybe your visitors just aren't interested in any of those offers. Or maybe you don't know how to convert your visitors into buyers. There are many people making a killing with CPA offers who know that statement is flat out wrong.

Yeah, I'm getting 600k monthly uniques and 3m page views and not even coming close to covering the cost of my dedicated server. I think big brand advertising is where it's at, but it's not easy to get.

What site?

http://imgfave.com

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