Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing Terms
Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Above the Fold
The portion of a web page that is visible to the visitor without scrolling down the page. The is considered prime real estate since a visitor will most likely make a decision about staying on the site based on what is seen in the above the fold area.
Affiliate
A person who earns a commission or pay-per-lead fee for referring traffic to a merchant which results in a specific action such as a sale by the merchant.
Affiliate Agreement
This is the contract terms between an affiliate and a merchant which governs their relationship. This includes how the affiliate will be rewarded for the traffic and/or buyers sent to the merchant's website. In addition, it will often define how an affiliate may advertise the items that the merchant has to offer.
Affiliate Link
A URL tracking link that has embedded in it the id of the affilate who is sending the traffic to the merchant website.
Affiliate Manager
Merchants who have an affiliate program will typically have a person assigned to run their affiliate program. This person's duties may be recruiting new affiliates, creating media and sales materials for the affiliates, establishment of the incentive programs and reporting on sales and affiliate payouts.
Affiliate Program
Often times referred to as an associate program, partner network or program and a referral or revenue sharing program. This is the program that is established by the merchant in order to reward affiliates for such things as web traffic, sales or leads on a pay-per-sale, pay-per-click or pay-per-lead basis.
Affiliate Software
A software program typically used by merchants to facilitate running and managing an affiliate program. It will normally provide for signing up affiliates, managing affiliate links, affiliate payouts, and tracking clicks, sales and leads.
Affiliate Tracking
A process of tracking the activity of affiliates via their affiliate URLs.
Auto-Approve
Some affiliate programs require approval of an application by a human moderator and others allow anyone who applies to be automaticly approved into the affiliate program.
Banner Ads
A banner type electronic advertisement that advertises a product or website. This is typically a GIF, JPEG or Flash Movie type of advertisement.
Best Affiliate Marketing Programs
Those affiliate programs which have the highest payouts are typically considered the best affiliate marketing programs.
Charge Back
An invalid sale or return of an item to the merchant which will result in the loss of the affiliate commission as well.
Click-Through
This is when a visitor to a website clicks a link and follows through to the retailer's website.
Click-Through Ratio
The percentage of vistors to a site who actually click-through a link in order to visit the merchant's website.
Commission
The amount of money that an affiliate earns for generating a lead or sale to a merchant's website. Might also be called a referral fee.
Cookies
Small text files stored on the computer of a visitor to a merchant site. In affiliate marketing these are typically used to identify who sent this customer to their site originally so that they can pay that affilaite any rewards due from additional purchases or recurring fees generated by that client after the original sale.
Cookie Expiration
A cookie that is placed on a visitor's computer will have in it a date of when that cookie is to expire. Affiliate sales will only be rewarded for purchase made prior to the expiration date of the cookie.
Cost Per Action (CPA)
The amount to be paid out to an affiliate for the required action, according to the affiliate terms, by the visitor.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
The cost of an individual click when the merchant is paying on a per click basis.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM)
The cost for a 1000 banner impressions.
Cost Per Order (CPO)
This is like CPA only it refers specifically to sales and not leads.
Directory of Affiliate Programs
A listing of the different merchants' affiliate programs that are available to join. These lists are usually categorized by niche and will give a brief summary of the payout or commission rates.
E-Mail Link
An affiliate link to a retailer site contained within an advertising e-mail.
Earnings Per Click (EPC)
The average earnings per 100 clicks. This is a rating system used to describe the ability to turn clicks into commissions.
Impressions
The number of times an advertisement was displayed or viewed.
Merchant
The person or company who is selling the goods or service is referred to as a merchant. With regards to affiliates the merchant will set up an affiliate program so that others may sale his goods or service and in return will be paid a reward or commission for those sales.
Recurring Commissions
If a merchant sales a service where the purchaser pays say a monthly fee then the merchant will also pay the affiliate a monthly commission. This type activity is termed recurring commissions.
Residual Earnings
Programs where the merchant will pay affiliates for future sales made to a customer who was referred to the site for the first sale by the affiliate. Unlike recurring monthly commissions these will be random sales for any products that the merchant markets.
Super Affiliates
These are the highest performing affiliates in a merchant's affiliate program. Normally this is less than 1 percent of the merchant's affiliate and will be those that bring in more than 90 percent of the merchant's sales.
Targeted Marketing
The practice of offering the exact offer for which the customer is looking for at that time.
Text Link
This is a link attached to text within a site and not behind a graphical image.
Two-Tier Affiliate Marketing
A marketing model which allows affiliates to sign up other affiliates below themselves so that when the 2nd teir affiliates make a sale and earn a commission the first level affiliate will also receive a commission from that sale.
Viral Marketing
Advertising that propagates itself through word-of-mouth, forwarding of emails, retweets, etc. is termed viral.
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