CPA (short for CPA network marketing) is a more recent way of affiliate marketing and stands for “Cost Per Action” or “Cost Per Acquisition”. This action often consists of a sale or a lead.
The industry has four core players at its heart: the Merchant (the advertiser), the Network, the Publisher and the Consumer.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC), e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising.

Affiliate marketing —using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile.

A “CPA” network brings merchants and their products together with publishers/affiliates and their traffic.
The network lists the advertiser’s product, together with their promotional banners, emails, etc – often called “creatives” to their database of publishers or affiliates. It provides tracking links to the affiliates so they can send more traffic and get credited for every lead or sale.
The merchants will pay the network a certain “cost per acquisition” for every lead or sale that was made.

A $20 CPL means the merchant pays $20 for each lead. (Cost Per Lead)
A $20 CPS means the merchant pays $20 for each sale (Cost Per Sale)

The CPA network makes money by keeping a certain percentage (usually 15-20%) commission from the payout of the merchant. So for a $20 CPA, the affiliate ends up getting paid ~$16 and the network keeps ~$4.
CPA networks can be considered as “super affiliates”, as they are themselves affiliates of merchants via the traditional affiliate networks, and recruit other affiliates to promote the merchant through them, instead of directly via the merchants program at the traditional network.
CPA networks take advantage of the ability to get higher commission rates due to their high volume, which they pass in part down to their affiliates. Average affiliates usually get paid a lower commission if they promote the merchant directly, because they are rarely able to generate the required volume to reach the higher payout tiers.

You see, using a CPA network as an affiliate marketing strategy has many advantages for both publishers and advertisers. On our CPA Network List page, we list the CPA Networks SEMTiX has been working with successfully.