Glossary

  • Above the fold: What you see when you get to a website without moving anything
  • Advertiser or Merchant: the company that produces what you’ll sell as an affiliate
  • AdwareSpyware: is an (unsolicited) part of free software that includes ads (unwanted)
  • Affiliate: is a person who promotes the products or services of one seller, and thus makes a profit
  • Affiliate agreement: is the contract that establishes operating rules between the affiliate and the merchant
  • Affiliate Link: is the code that gives you the merchant to track sales made through your activity
  • Affiliate Manager: is responsible for managing the affiliate program of a merchant and their relationship with affiliates
  • Affiliate Network: provides tools and resources to the merchant to manage their affiliate program
  • Affiliate Program: allows an affiliate refer other people to the products or services of a merchant in exchange for a profit
  • Affiliate Software: allows the merchant to manage his/her own affiliate program excluding the use of an affiliate network
  • Affiliate Tracking: is performed by a code or ID provided by the merchant to record sales through an affiliate
  • Associate: is a synonym for affiliate within the affiliate marketing
  • Auto approval: the merchant approves any request of a potential affiliate automatically
  • B2B: Business-to-Business, originally it meant sending business documents via the web. By extension now is used as a generic term of online marketing
  • Banner ad: is a visual element that an affiliate put into his/her website to promote products or services from a merchant
  • Buzz Marketing: also called word of mouth marketing is a technique within the viral marketing, which aims to generate conversation between people to a brand or a particular product
  • Chargeback: occurs when an affiliate is deducted the amount of a non-closed or canceled sale
  • Click Fraud: occurs in a strategy of Pay-per-click (PPC) when the affiliate generates false clicks to make a profit
  • Click through (or Click thru): a client or referral is driven to a merchant’s site by clicking on an affiliate link
  • Cloaking: is the fact of hiding content (not allowed) or affiliate code (allowed)
  • Co-branding: a page that contains both the brand and logo of the merchant and the affiliate
  • Commission: is money that a merchant pays an affiliate to sell some of their products
  • Contextual Link: is a word or phrase within your text that contains a link, unlike a banner link
  • Conversion: is to get a visitor to take the action requested, usually buy through a link
  • Conversion rate: is the number of times a link produced the action requested by the number of times that link was seen by 100.
  • Cookies: It is a file in the browser of an individual who registers and remembers when he visited a site. It used to track the activities that individual done on site during a given period that individual visited
  • Cookie Expiration: is the time period in which a click on a link will credit the sale for you. Lasts between 30 to 90 days
  • Cookie stuffing: is an unethical and illegal practice of inserting cookies in the browser someone even though that person has not visited the site
  • CPA: Cost Per Cction is the money get paid someone for performing a specific action on a site
  • CPC: is the money you get when a person click on one of your  links
  • CPM: Cost per Thousand is the money you pay for every 1000 impressions or times people see your ad
  • Creative: Is any text or graphic that contains a link to promote an affiliate program
  • CTR: (Click Through (Thru) Rate), is the index of times someone clicks on the announcement of a website by the number of times the ad was viewed (impressions)
  • Customer bounty: is when the seller pays an amount to the affiliate every time he/she sell something through his/her site
  • Disclosure: It is a note that you place to inform your visitors that you can receive compensation for the products that you recommend through your site 
  • E-mail link: It is a link that you put in an email to direct people who read it to a specific site 
  • EPC: Earnings per Click, it is a ratio of the amount of money you earn for referrals through a link and the number of times that link was clicked
  • First click: between two identical affiliate links, it refers to the commission accredited to the link clicked first 
  • Impression: It refers to the times an ad on a page is shown
  • In house: the affiliate program of vendors using their software instead of affiliate network
  • Indie program: it is the same of “in house” just adding “indie” for independent
  • Joint Venture (JV): also called JV partnership, is when two businesses join efforts to promote or sell one particular product, event, campaign, etc.
  • Last Click: some affiliate programs consider the last click as valid to accredit the sale despite the cookie track of the first one
  • Manual Approval: it is the merchant and not an automated program who decide people accepted as affiliates
  • Merchant: Also known as vendor o advertiser is the business which produces what affiliates promotes and also who pays a commission for it
  • Niche: it is any specific topic targeted to people interested in it
  • OPM: Outsourced Program Manager or Affiliate Manager, is an external source that administers the affiliate program of a merchant, not being his employee
  • Payment treshold: it is a dollar amount that an affiliate must reach to receive a payment from a merchant
  • PPC: Pay Per Click, the affiliate gets paid for every click that manages to get from a visitor
  • PPL: Pay Per Lead, the affiliate gets paid for every lead that manages to generate from a visitor
  • PPS: Pay Per Sale, the affiliate gets paid for every sale that manages to generate from a visitor
  • POD: Point Of Difference. It is what makes your site unique and different to others in the same niche market
  • Privacy Policy: It is a page of your site that informs your visitors what you do with the information you receive from them by various means
  • Raw Clicks: It is any click on an affiliate link, no matter if one person does several times in one day and from the same computer. All clicks made are taken into account
  • Recurring Commissions: It is a commission that is obtained for services that are periodic, each time the consumer of these services pay for them. The amount paid to the affiliate is defined in advance
  • Residual Earnings: Also known as lifetime commissions, which are obtained for each purchase of a new referral and not only by the first one
  • ROAS: Returns On Advertising Spending. It is a relationship between your income and spending in a multiplied by 100 and expressed as a percentage campaign. Also known as ROI = Return of Investment
  • ROI: Return Of Investment. It is the same as ROAS
  • SID Tracking: Sub Campaign Affiliate Link Tracking. It is an option to generate different tracking codes for specific affiliate links
  • Squeeze Page: It is a page designed specifically to request data from a user visiting the site
  • Supper Affiliates: Small percentage of members of a program that made the most sales
  • Tracking Method:  It is the means by which a seller tracks the activity of an affiliate
  • Two-Tier (2-Tier): Commissions earned in an affiliate program for own sales and sales generated by any affiliate referral
  • Unique Clicks: It refers to the number of different people who have clicked on a link in contrast to several clicks made by the same individual (raw clicks)
  • Whitelabel: A vendor allows an affiliate to sell products or services under the brand name affiliate without mentioning the original merchant