Affiliate marketing glossary

Above the Fold - Describes the part of an email message or web page that is visible without scrolling down the page. This term is important because all content above the fold is assumed to be more valuable to the reader as they see it first. The size of the "above the fold" area will depend on the resolution of the users computer monitor and the number of pixels their monitor displays.

Adsense - Program from Google where relevant ads are displayed on websites. The website owner is paid every time one of these ads is clicked.

Affiliate - Anyone who earns commission for referring clicks or leads to a merchant. In most cases this commission is paid only when a sale is made in some however money is paid just for the referred click. This is most often done from a website but can be done via a mailing list or blog.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Advertiser - Also known as a merchant, is a company that sells products or services that utilizes an affiliate program to help them sell their products or services. As an affiliate, you’ll partner with these advertisers and help them sell their products online. These merchants pay affiliates for every transaction/sale.

Affiliate - A site owner (affiliate/publisher) that places special tracking links and/or other promotional material on their web site to promote a merchant’s (advertiser’s) products or services. For the affiliate’s effort, the affiliate makes a commission for all the valid transactions/sales referred to the merchant by using their affiliate link.

Affiliate Agreement - An agreement between an affiliate and a merchant that governs the relationship of the publisher (affiliate) and the merchant (advertiser).  Affiliate marketing glossary.
Affiliate Directory - A directory of affiliate programs, featuring information such as the commission rate, number of affiliates, and affiliate solution provider. These are great places to find relevant and profitable programs.

Affiliate Information Page - A page on your web site that explains the terms of your affiliate program including your commission rates, affiliate agreement, a link for existing affiliates to login, as well as a link to the signup page for new affiliates.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Affiliate Link - A special link that an advertiser gives to their affiliates. These special links are unique to each affiliate and allow for the advertiser to properly track visits and sales from the affiliate’s visitors.

Affiliate Manager (or AM) - The person in charge of the affiliate department for online merchants. The affiliate manager’s duties are many, and include support for affiliates, distribution of promotional material, and anything else that relates to their affiliate program.

Affiliate Marketing - Web site that sells products or services of other Web sites, called affiliates, to help market the products.The affiliate website will display an online advertisement of another website and receives a percentage of sales or some other form of compensation generated by that traffic.

Affiliate Network - A third party providing services to affiliate merchants and affiliates, including tracking technology, reporting tools, and payment processing. Click here for the top networks.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Affiliate Program - This is where advertisers allow web site owners (affiliates/partners/associates) to promote their products or services. This is done by the web site owner placing advertiser/merchant links on their site, when someone clicks on a special tracking link and a valid transaction has taken place, then the affiliate will get a commission of the sale.

Associate - Also referred to as affiliate. Refer to Affiliate.

Associate Program - Also known as affiliate program. Refer to Affiliate program.

Affiliate Program Directory - A comprehensive listing of merchants' affiliate programs. The directories are typically categorized by industry and include the typical payout or commission rates.   Affiliate marketing glossary.

Affiliate Software - A software program for running and managing an affiliate program. This typically includes signing up affiliates, managing links, tracking impressions, clicks, sales, leads. This also includes paying affiliates, etc.

Affiliate Solution Provider - 3rd party company that provides an affiliate tracking solution on a hosted basis. Typically an affiliate software solution is hosted by you with your web site. With an affiliate solution provider, they provide the hosting for you.

Affiliate Tracking - The process of tracking a link uniquely by affiliate using an Affiliate Link.

Associate - Synonym for affiliate.

Auto Approve - Affiliate application process whereby all application are immediately accepted/approved upon submittal by the affiliate. This term can also be used to describe the process of automatically accepting all sales recorded by affiliates.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Auto Responder - A piece of software that automatically replies to an email message by sending a pre-composed reply that can include images, text, files, etc.

Backlink - A link from another web site to your web site.

Banner Ad - A graphical advertisement from an advertiser that affiliates place on their web sites. These banners come in different dimensions and file extensions, and the most popular banner ads are 468X60 pixels. Although banner ads are still used today, they are no where near as affective as they once were. Banner ads should only be one of the affiliates promotional arsenals used to promote affiliate programs. Affiliate marketing glossary.

Blog (Weblog) - An online dated diary listing your periodic thoughts on a specific topic, often in reverse chronological order. Blogs are now used by some affiliates as a marketing tool.

Blogging - The act of posting on blogs (weblogs).

Browser - A client program (software), such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Opera, that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.

Charge Back - An incomplete sales transaction that results in a commission deduction from the affiliate.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Click-through - The action when a user clicks on a link and follows through to the merchant's web site.

Click Through Ratio (CTR) - Percentage of visitors who click-through on a link to visit the merchant's web site.

Co-branding - Allows affiliates to include their own logo and branding on the pages to which they send visitors through affiliate links.

Commission - Income an affiliate earns for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant's web site. Sometimes called a referral fee, a finder's fee or a bounty.

Conversion Rate - Percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity (sale or lead).  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Cookie Expiration/Cookie Retention - When a cookie is planted on a web browser, a date when the cookie expires is defined. This date is important because affiliate sales can only be recorded before the cookie expiration date. This period will also determine if repeat sales will be recorded.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Cookies - Small files stored on the visitor’s computer which record information that is of importance to the merchant site. Despite security concerns that some people have, cookies are in no way dangerous, and can not be used to record names, email addresses, phone numbers or credit card numbers.

CPA (Cost Per Action) - An affiliate advertiser (merchant) pays an affiliate a commission each time someone clicks on a link on the affiliate’s website, goes to the merchant’s site and makes a particular action, such as an order.

CPC (Cost Per Click) - The cost incurred in getting one person to click on an advertisement, such as a banner ad, text or other form of advertising.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand) - A measure of the cost of displaying 1,000 advertisements of any kind, such as banner ads, text ads or any other form of ad that can be tracked.

CPO (Cost Per Order) - Same as CPA but refers specifically to sales.

CTR (Click through Ratio) - The number of ad impressions required to generate a click-through expressed as a percentage.

Customer Bounty - Pays the affiliate partner for every new customer that they direct to a merchant.

E-mail Link - An affiliate link to a merchant site in an e-mail newsletter, signature, or a dedicated e-mail blast.

EPC (Earnings Per click) - Average earnings per 100 clicks. A relative rating that describes the ability to turn clicks into commissions.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

HTML code - Refers to the lines of code that an affiliate places on their web page(s) for linking to the merchant's site. This HTML code contains the unique identifier that identifies the traffic as coming from the Affiliate's web site.

Impression - When an ad is displayed to a viewer. To count an impression the ad only needs to be viewed and not clicked.

In-house - Alternative to using an affiliate solution provider; building and managing your own affiliate program internal to your company. Typically this is accomplished by purchasing a 3rd-party product. Affiliate marketing glossary.

Manual Approval - Refers to the process of validating an affiliate application and then approving them after validation. This can also refer to the process of approving sales after they have been validated.

Merchant - The person selling the goods or service is referred to as the merchant. The merchant pays affiliates for sending traffic to the merchant's web site after a product or service is purchased.

Opt-In - A consent-based method of subscribing to a newsletter or mailing list. People must actively ‘choose’ to join the mailing list by inputting their email address into a signup form.

Opt-Out - The flipside to opt-in, opt-out is a non-consensual method of subscribing people to a mailing list.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Payment Method - The means in which the advertiser (merchant) pays their affiliates.

Payment Threshold - Minimum amount of commission earned before payment is sent to affiliate.

Pop-Ups - Advertisements or websites that display in a new browser window shortly after visiting a web site. This form of advertising is rapidly declining due to the many pop-up blockers that web surfers utilize in their web browsers. To many people, these pop-ups are very annoying and may deter visitors back to your site.

PPC (Pay Per Click) - Merchants pay affiliates for each visitor that clicks on an affiliate text link or banner that takes the visitor to the merchant’s site. Affiliates are usually paid per unique visitor to a merchant’s site.

PPI (Pay Per Impression) - Earn commissions without your visitors having to make a purchase from the merchant’s site or even click an affiliate link. Every time a banner or text link gets viewed the affiliate will get paid.

PPL (Pay Per Lead) - Affiliates receive a commission for each visitor they refer to a merchant’s site that completes surveys, downloads, signups, etc. Typically the affiliate is rewarded with a sale without having anyone buying anything.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

PPS (Pay Per Sale) - An affiliate marketing program that rewards affiliates based on each conversion to a sale such as when purchasing a product or service from the merchant's web site. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions but tend to have the lowest conversion rates.

Publisher - Also referred to as affiliate. Refer to Affiliate.

Recurring Commissions - The process of rewarding an affiliate on a recurring basis whenever the merchant charges a customer a recurring fee. For example, a web host that charges customers on a monthly basis might reward the affiliate a percentage of each month's payment from the customer.

Residual Earnings (residual commissions) - Refers to programs that provide affiliates the ability to earn an income, month after month, for referring a sale to a merchant. They are usually those that offer some type of service for which the customer is charged an ongoing subscription or product renewal fee.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

ROAS - Stands for 'Return on Advertising Spending'. This is the amount of revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. For instance, a ROAS of $1 means you're generating $1 in sales for every $1 in advertising spend, and a ROAS of $5 means you generate $5 in sales for every $1 in spending.

ROI (Return on Investment) - Return on investment, the percentage of income earned vs. total invested.

Sales Page - Merchant webpage that tries to persuade the visitor to buy their product.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - Optimizing your web site for indexing by search engines to improve search ranking.

Spider Detection - The process of detecting and ignoring automated spiders or bots such as search engines like Google/Googlebot.

Super Affiliates - The highest performing affiliates. Typically less than 1% of affiliates are super affiliates yet that 1% typically will bring more than 90% of your sales.

Targeted Marketing - Offering the right offer to the right customer at the right time.

Text Link - Link that is not accompanied by a graphical image.

Tracking Code - Refers to the hidden 1X1 pixel tracking code that is placed on the confirmation page of your store for tracking sales conversions.  Affiliate marketing glossary.

Tracking Method - Refers to the way that an affiliate program tracks referred sales, leads or clicks by using a unique web address (URL) for each affiliate, or by embedding an affiliate ID number into the link that is processed by the advertiser’s tracking software. Many affiliate programs also use cookies for tracking.

Two-tier - Affiliate marketing model that allows affiliates to sign up additional affiliates below themselves, so that when the second tier affiliates earn a commission, the affiliate above them also receives a commission.   Affiliate marketing glossary.

Unique Click - The process of only counting unique clicks from each web visitor. Unique clicks are typically tracked by recording the IP address and browser header.

Viral Marketing - A self propagating marketing technique. Common modes of transmission are email, blogging, and word of mouth marketing.

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