CPC (Cost Per Click)

Cost Per Click pays the affiliate for every click delivered to the advertiser's site, regardless of whether it converts. It shifts conversion risk to the advertiser and is more common in display and arbitrage models than in classic affiliate programs.

Cost Per Click pays the affiliate for each valid click delivered to the advertiser, regardless of whether that visitor ever converts. Payment shifts nearly all outcome risk onto the advertiser, who buys traffic and hopes their own landing page and offer turn it into value. Click validation strips out bots, duplicates and self-clicks before anything is credited.

Advertisers use CPC when they want volume and control their own conversion funnel, or when they are testing a landing page and need traffic quickly. For affiliates it offers the lowest-friction payout — no sale or lead required — which makes revenue smooth and easy to forecast from traffic alone. That smoothness is the trade-off for typically small per-click amounts.

The exposure to fraud is the defining pitfall. Because a bare click triggers payment, CPC deals attract bots and incentivised traffic, and advertisers respond with aggressive filtering, click caps and quality scoring that can retroactively void clicks. Affiliates sending genuine traffic can still see paid clicks discounted if the advertiser's downstream conversion rate looks too low.

Pure affiliate CPC has receded as advertisers migrated to outcome-based models to escape click fraud, though it remains central to paid search and display advertising. Where it survives in affiliate contexts, it is usually paired with quality thresholds that tie continued payment to the traffic actually performing.