PPC(Pay Per Click) vs PPA(Pay Per Action)
May 22nd, 2008
I really hate writing Online-Money-Making-John-Chow Type articles but I just had to share this one with everyone. I have always wondered which is the best way of making money online , Pay per Action or Pay per Click.
Experience has taught me that none of the two is better but the best option depends on what kind of website you have and the volume of traffic you get.
Case Study
Let us start with a bit of background. My online journey began with the forex trading tutorial website called fxacademy.net. I chose the forex trading niche because of the high earnings per click. The site was monetized using Adsense and a commision based forex affiliate program from Easy-forex.
This niche was a bad option because I had no passion for the complexities of forex trading and soon ran out of steam. I abandoned the site for lack of content. I just left the site as was but it continued(s) to fetch a few dollars a day from adsense.
Last week, out of curiosity I logged in to my forex-affiliate account after about a year. My stats were as shown below
As you can see over a period of about one year I got about 832 clicks through to Easy-Forex.com.
A very High CTR BUT Easy-Forex does not pay anything for clicks.
That was my first mistake- I chose a Commision program that is purely PPA -Pay Per Action.
Lesson learnt: If you are going to choose a PPA program, at least choose one that includes a PPC option so that you at least get paid a few pennies for click throughs.
Again as you can see from the report I got 11 signups for Easy-Forex. Again Easy-Forex does not pay a penny for these signups.
Lesson learnt: Know exactly what you are going to get paid for before you sign up for PPA programs.
Of the 11 signups, only 1 became an Active trader and for this I got paid just over $6 whole bucks. Finally I get paid !! 
I don’t have anything against the Easy Forex affiliate program. It has the potential to pay over $500 per active signup however I think it was a poor option for a startup site like fxacademy.net. Their program is better suited to high traffic sites.
Conclusion: If you have a low-traffic site you have a very low chance of making it in the Pay-Per-Action sector. Your best option would be to get into a program that includes a component of PPC so that you get the best of both worlds while your site’s traffic grows.
Tags PPA, South Africa, PPC, Adsense, Making Money Online
