CPA networks

A CPA network is the middleman between advertisers who sell a product and affiliates who bring buyers. The advertiser agrees to pay a fixed amount for a defined action, for example an approved cash-on-delivery order. The network lists that offer, gives each affiliate a tracking link, records the leads, collects the money from the advertiser and pays the affiliate, keeping a margin in between. This is the affiliate model in practice.

In nutra the most common setup is cash on delivery. The visitor leaves a name and phone number on the offer page, a call centre (run by the network or the advertiser) calls to confirm the order, and the product is shipped and paid for on delivery. The affiliate is paid per approved lead, meaning per order the call centre confirmed, not per form submitted. This site covers two networks built around that model, Dr.Cash and AdCombo.

For the affiliate, the network supplies three things: offers with ready landing pages, a postback so your tracker learns about conversions, and payment. Everything else, the traffic, the prelander, the optimisation, is your job.

Compare networks on the money that actually reaches you, not on the payout printed on the offer.

1. Approval rate. In COD, a lead only pays if the call centre confirms it. If one network shows a $30 payout at 40 percent approval and another $25 at 60 percent, the second pays more per lead: $12 against $15 (illustrative numbers). Ask for the approval rate by offer and country, then verify it on your own traffic, because networks quote averages.

2. Payout by offer and geo. Payouts differ per country and per offer, and the same product can be listed by several networks at different rates. Compare the same offer in the same geo.

3. Hold and payment terms. How long leads stay on hold before they become payable, how often payouts are made, the minimum payout, and the methods (bank wire, crypto, e-wallets) and their fees. A network that pays weekly frees up cash for testing faster than one that pays monthly.

4. Call centre quality. The network's or advertiser's call centre decides your approval rate. Working hours, languages, number of call attempts, and whether leads with bad phone numbers are rejected as trash or retried all show up in your earnings.

5. Trash and rejection rules. How the network decides a lead is invalid (duplicates, fake numbers, wrong country) and whether you see the reasons. Unexplained rejections are a red flag.

6. Offer pages and compliance. Nutra offer pages and prelanders often carry exaggerated or banned health claims. That drives moderation rejections on traffic sources and legal risk. Check whether the network's landers can pass your traffic source's moderation, or whether you will need to rebuild them.

7. Tooling. A clean postback with click ID and status (lead, approved, rejected), an API or statistics export, and support that answers in your language.

8. Traffic rules. Allowed and forbidden sources per offer. Some advertisers forbid certain sources or brand bidding, and violations mean unpaid leads.

If you can, run the same offer through two networks for a short period and compare approval and payout timing on your own leads before committing your volume.

What separates networks in daily work:

• Real approval rate on your traffic, which you only learn by sending leads and reconciling in your tracker.
• Payout transparency. Whether rates are shown per geo in the dashboard or only given by a manager on request.
• Hold period and payout frequency, which decide your cash flow while scaling.
• Postback detail. Separate statuses for new, approved and rejected leads, so your tracker shows expected and confirmed revenue apart.
• Exclusive offers. Some networks run their own products or have exclusive advertiser deals, which means offers you cannot get elsewhere.
• Geo coverage. The number of countries and languages with working call centres, which limits where you can scale an offer.
• Manager quality. A good affiliate manager raises payouts for proven volume and warns you when an offer's approval drops.

CPA networks do not charge affiliates. Joining is free, offers are free to run, and the network earns the difference between what the advertiser pays and what it pays you. That makes pricing a question of payouts, not fees.

Payouts are set per offer and country and usually move with volume and quality: a manager can raise your rate once you send steady, well-approved traffic. In nutra COD, payouts are per approved lead, so the number to compare is payout multiplied by approval rate, which is the revenue you get per lead sent.

Dr.Cash publishes payout and approval per offer on its public offer list. On September 29, 2026 a Serbian weight loss offer paid $20.00 per approved lead with 36.10% approval, or about $7.20 per lead sent (HP GoSlim, RS), while a Polish parasite offer paid $24.00 with 20.18% approval, about $4.80 per lead sent (Retoxin, PL). Many zero-price Polish and Czech offers on the same list sat at roughly $21 to $25 with 15 to 27% approval, and some Indian and Bangladeshi offers paid $5.50 to $13 (Dr.Cash offers). The higher payout is not the better offer here: approval changes the ranking. AdCombo's offer list requires a login, so its payouts per offer can only be checked from inside an account.

Costs that behave like fees still exist: payment method charges, minimum payout thresholds, and currency conversion.