CPA offers are the things that you literally promote.
Physically, an offer is a link that you direct people to.
When they click the link and complete all the necessary data for the action, you get paid.
There are different kinds of offers.
The ones that pay the least are email and zip submits, ranging from about $1 to $1.
75.
All the user has to do to complete the action is input their email or zip code.
Other offers are harder to classify, and are generally classified by categories like "Weight Loss", "Credit Score", "Insurance" - the main theme of the offer.
The payout on these other offers ranges from anything above $1 to $60 or more.
On some offers, like credit reports, the user may have to enter their SSN, or their credit card number.
Others may require him to complete long, 3 page forms.
What this all does is that it increases the difficulty of the offer for the user, but also increases the payout for the affiliate.
You're generally not going to promote Email and Zip submits through PPC, because your CPC would have to be really, really low to make it profitable, somewhere between 1c and 5c, but PPC and other promotion methods will be covered in future articles.
The best way to find out how all this looks like is just to sign up to a CPA network.
I highly recommend Hydra Network.
They're great to work with, they don't use directtrack (which is a pain in the ass platform for people that know what I'm talking about), they'll place tracking pixels for you and they have the most awesome offers.
It's good to know a few offer types when signing up with a CPA network.
When calling them (yes, this is mandatory with big networks, and it's not a big deal), they'll ask you "What offers were you successful with in the past?".
I've never said I'm just getting into CPA when calling a network, I think it's pretty dumb to do that - it just ups your chances of not getting in.