Glossary

Affiliate or Publisher
This is the person responsible to promote merchant’s products or services. For their efforts, the affiliate gets commission for all the valid transactions/sales referred to the merchant by using their affiliate link.

Merchants
A merchant is a company that sells products or services. As an affiliate, you’ll have the option to partner with these merchants and help them sell their products online.

Pop Ups / Under & Exits
These are advertisements displayed in a new browser window. These advertisements or websites normally popup the same time as your site, but can be timed. A Pop-Under Ad will display behind your site so no one notices that it is there until they leave your site. Exit ads popup once a visitor leaves your site.

Referrals
Affiliates send visitors to a merchant’s site and if the visitor signs up to the merchant’s affiliate program, advertisers program, etc. then the affiliate will either be paid a one of commission or a percentage of the referrals commission,.

Pay per Click
Advertisement system, where publishers pay every time someone clicks on their ads. These system are the most common to drive traffic to an affiliate site. The big three companies are Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Pay Per Lead
Affiliates receive a commission for each visitor they refer to a site that completes surveys, downloads, signups, etc.

Affiliate Program
This is where merchants or companies allow web site owners to promote their products or services.

Affiliate Network
A company where merchants can list their affiliate programs. Affiliates can then join theses networks to find merchants’ products and services that can be promoted by using text links, banners, etc. Affiliates can join and track a large number of affiliate programs from one site.

Banner Programs
Affiliates get paid by placing merchant’s banners on their site. These banners are a graphical advertisement, typically 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall. Affiliates normally get paid per 1000 impressions, per sale, or per click-through.

Pay Per Impression
Earn commissions without your visitors having to make a purchase or clicking on the ad. All Affiliates have to do is place either a banner or text link on their site that takes them to the merchants site. Every time the banner or text link gets viewed the affiliate will get paid. Affiliates normally get paid per 1000 impressions/page views.

Pay Per Sale
An affiliate program that pays you a commission when you refer a visitor to a website then buy a product or service from that merchant. Affiliates usually get paid a percentage or a fixed rate of each product or service they sell.

Raw Visitors
A Raw visitor is counted every time a page is viewed.

Direct Referrals
These are people that you directly refer to an affiliate program.

Indirect Referrals
This is where visitors are referred to an affiliate program by your direct referrals.

Net 60, Net 30, etc
This is where a merchant pays it’s affiliates 60 days after the month for the Net 60 and 30 days after the month for the Net 30.

Pay Per Click Search Engine
These are search engines that allow you to earn on a pay per click basis. Their advertisers also pay on a pay per click basis. If a visitor clicks on a bided link that was referred by you, you’ll then earn a percentage of the bided amount.

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.

Advertiser
The person selling the goods or service; also knows as the merchant. The advertiser or merchant pays affiliates for sending traffic to the merchant’s web site after a product or service is purchased.

Affiliate Agreement
terms between a merchant and an affiliate that govern the relationship. This includes the terms on which the affiliate will be rewarded for the traffic sent to the merchant’s web site.

Unique Visitors
A Unique visitor is counted every time a site is viewed every 24 hrs. E.g. If a site receives a visitor at 2.30pm and receives the same visitor at 6.30pm on the same day then it will be counted as just one visitor. If he had visited the site 2.31pm on the next day then it would have counted as two visitors.

Search Box
A search box is another way for affiliates to link to a merchant’s site. It is coded specially to access a web address that is built into the merchant’s database. So if a visitor wants to search for a product or service on a merchant’s site that you have affiliated with, then they can search for that product straight from your site by using their search box. A Search Box is especially used in Search Engine Affiliate Programs.

Text Links
Text links are links that either describes a merchant’s product, service or their site. When the link is clicked on it will take you to the merchants site. This way of linking is becoming ever more popular as you can make the link and text look the same as the other content within your site. So your visitors won’t know if it is a link to another site or just a link to another page on your site.

2 Tier
These are affiliate programs that pays a commission for at least two-levels deep. For example, if you refer a visitor to a merchants site and they become an affiliate and he / she then refers someone and they also become an affiliate then you’ll be paid what you earn plus what your direct referral earns plus what your indirect referral earns up to two levels deep.

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 Link
A URL tracking link that identifies the affiliate and sends traffic to the merchant’s web site. For example, a link might look like http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage.asp?AffiliateID=5999

Affiliate Manager
The person responsible for running the merchant’s affiliate program. This includes recruiting affiliates, establishing incentive programs, creating media for the affiliates, reporting on sales and paying affiliates.

Affiliate Program
Can also be called an Associate Program, Partner, Referral or Revenue sharing program. In such a program the merchant rewards the affiliate for web traffic, sales or leads on a pay-per-click, pay-per-sale, or pay-per-lead basis.

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. Click here for a sample list of affiliate program directories.

Affiliate Software
A software program such as Affiliate Wiz 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.

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.

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

CPA (Cost Per Action)
The amount of cost for a conversion such as a sale or lead.

CPC (Cost Per Click)
Cost of an individual click when paying on a per click basis.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand)
The cost of 1000 banner impressions.

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

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.

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
How many times a banner advertisement was displayed or viewed.

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 such as Affiliate Wiz.

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.

P3P Privacy Policy
Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P). A protocol for sharing private information over the Internet from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). A Web site’s privacy policy is defined by the Webmaster answering a standard set of multiple-choice questions, which result in tags embedded in the Web site’s home page. Users also define their privacy requirements in their P3P-enabled browsers; for example, whether they allow their names disclosed to third parties. If the Web site policy and user preferences are not the same, the browser alerts the user.

P3P also assists with online sales. It lets users decide what specific data they are willing to divulge automatically to the site, such as shipping address and credit card number. If the site requests more data, the browser alerts the user, who can then decide whether to share it or not. For more information, visit www.w3.org/P3P.

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.

Pay-Per-Lead
Affiliate program that rewards affiliates for conversions to leads. A lead might include a signup form, software download, survey, contest or sweepstakes entry, signup for a trial, etc. Pay-per-lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange to high conversion ratios.

Pay-Per-Click
Rewards an affiliate for each unique click to the merchant’s web site. This type of affiliate program is uncommon because of click fraud or fake clicks.

Performance-Based Marketing
Marketing in which the merchant only pays commissions for results such as conversions to sales or leads.

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.

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.

Banner Ad
An electronic advertisement or billboard such as an animated GIF, Flash Movie, JPEG that advertisers a product, service, or web site.

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

Charge Back
An invalid sale that results in the affiliate’s commission being forfeited.

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
Situation where affiliates are able 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.

Cookies
Small text files stored on the visitor’s computer, which record information that is of interest to the merchant site. In affiliate software cookies are utilized to track which affiliate the web visitor came from and which banner or link they clicked. They can also store the date/time of the click for purposes of tracking the time elapsed between a click and a conversion to a sale or lead.

Residual Earnings
Programs that pay affiliates not just for the first sale a shopper form their sites makes, but all additional sales made at the merchant’s site over the life of the customer.

ROI
Stands for ‘Return on Investment’. This is what all marketing managers want to see from the money they spend on their marketing and advertising campaigns. The higher the sales, the large the number of shoppers and the greater the profit margin generated by sales – the better the ROI.

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.

Tracking System
The way that a program tracks referred sales, leads or clicks. The most common are 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 merchant’s software. Some programs also use cookies for tracking.

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

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. Two-tier affiliate marketing is also known as MLM (Multilevel Marketing).

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.