How Is Affiliate Marketing Different Than CPA?

Agree with areevez, a lot comes down to the mindset. When you are marketing anything you are trying to appeal to your target, your audience, etc.

As such, you are going to approach marketing to group A perhaps different than group B.

Affiliate marketing, with regard to selling products and memberships, deals with sales and getting people to put their CC info in, etc. Search PPC and such is great for this because you can target buying keywords, etc. You can also use this for CPA offers.

That being said, you'll find certain methods are more suited to one form or another. For example, Facebook is a great PPC platform because there is so much on-demand volume. That beind said, what mindset are people on facebook in? Most of them want to waste/pass time, goof off, just 'hang out.' Marketing a product on Facebook where a person must enter a CC# is typically more difficult and often requires more of a sales funnel and other back-end tools.

Now if you are pushing a dating offer or a gaming offer where the person simply needs to put in their name, e-mail, and setup a quick account, you are more in line with their mindset. They are there to browse people, play games, etc.

Think of it in terms of a sales cycle or the purchase decision process in general. For a purchase,

1. A person first has a problem or need
2. They then search for information on how to solve/fulfill it
3. They then form a list of options/alternatives
4. They then make a decision to purchase

This is abreviated but the general process. When you are targeting search you are targeting people usually at 3 or 4 in that process. Sometimes you'll get people early on as well in 1 or 2 and build a good back-end process to market to them in the long run (list building, etc).

Some CPA offers can fall into that (i.e. Insurance, Dating, etc). They all stem from some need.

I'm rambling and it's late so I apologize for the lack of direction here. The bottom line is you can follow some approaches similarly for each, but in my experience, there is a much different mindset between a lot of the more common CPA subscribers vs people who are purchasing a product.

I would say to focus on one or the other when starting out. It's too easy to get overwhelmed trying to tackle two different methods. Pick one and go for it 110%. If after a few months you can't seem to get anything to stick you can try to switch it up. Good luck!