-What is CPA?
CPA means "Cost per Action" and means that you get paid when people do certain actions on the offers you are promoting. This can mean registering for a free trial, downloading and/or installing an app, even buying a product can sometimes mean CPA, but that's usually not referred to it as CPA anymore in order to avoid confusions between sales and CPA.
-How it works?
You join a CPA network, you get your affiliate link for one (or more if you feel capable of handling multiple offers at once) and promote it in places that the product owners allow. CPA networks are usually very restrictive with which country you come from, how much experience you have in the "make money online" and internet marketing industries, how you advertise / promote their offers, and so on. So, you will have to read their requirements very carefully once they accept you into their networks because they are usually very strict about these things. Don't know why they freak out so easily (possibly because of refunds and spamming) because at the end of the day it's money in both your pockets, but oh well... you have to play by the rules
-Best
CPA Affiliate Networks?
No idea cause I've stopped doing CPA marketing many years ago, so I'm not up-to-date with the latest and greatest networks in the industry. But plenty of people around BHW say good things about OGADS. So you might want to check that one out
-What's required to start?
Traffic, amigo. Traffic is the hardest thing to master in my opinion. Real and targeted traffic I mean. If you can drive targeted traffic to your offers - ANY offers - continuously you will inevitably make money sooner or later. How much you make depends on your traffic flow and how good you are at converting that traffic, but if you master these 2 arts (driving targeted traffic on daily basis, and knowing how to convert it) you are good to promote anything, not just CPA.
Other things that you might need are a website (I actually don't think too many networks will approve you into their network without a site, it certainly was like this 10 years ago when I last bothered with CPA networks). But even if they don't require a website, it's a good in general to have one cause you look more professional with your own website instead of telling them "hey, I would like to promote your offers but I don't have a website. Can I still join?" ... I don't think too many networks might want to work with you if you don't have a website
And... I think that's all there is to it. If you're going the paid route (PPC, media buys, etc) you will obviously need money, too.... a shit-ton of it, too since PPC usually requires big upfront investments until you tweak your campaign to become profitable. But if you go the free route you only need time, dedication and motivation to continue advertising your links on social media, youtube, google, whatever.... although.... to get into google you will need money, too for content and backlinks
