Nevertheless, there are some crucial differences between affiliate programs and CPA advertising networks.

Firstly, affiliate marketing programs are always focused on selling a product or service, and the affiliate for such a program almost never receives any reward if no sale is made. Under a CPA based advertising arrangement, however, it is possible that the advertiser will be willing to pay for other events as well, either in addition to or instead of paying for every sale that is made.

For example, in many industries, advertisers are willing to pay for leads so that when a visitor goes to the advertiser’s site and completes an online form, the affiliate who sent the visitor earns himself a commission for generating this highly qualified targeted lead. It is also common for CPA advertising network websites to work in close partnership with their advertising clientele, whereas most sites that offer affiliate products (such as Clickbank.com) deal with ‘advertisers’ (i.e. those who create the affiliate products that they then promote and try to attract affiliates to through sites like Clickbank) in a much more distant, ‘arms length’ fashion.

CPA advertising networks are, in this way, very client focused whereas the majority of affiliate networks tend to be considerably more passive when it comes to the individual performance of their affiliates.

In addition, affiliate networks commonly ask affiliates to pay a joining fee, and they may also want to attract only affiliates who are also pre-qualified.
CPA networks, on the other hand, are generally much less demanding about who can enroll in the network and are most often free to join.

As well as tending to be very focused on individual advertisers’ performances, CPA networks are also likely to work very hard to retain their affiliated ‘sales people’, often by adopting the simple but expedient tactic of paying them extremely well and making sure that payments go out on a regular timetabled basis.