Affiliate Marketing Terminology

When you're considering getting involved with affiliate marketing, it's important to learn the terminology. Here are some of the most common terms related to this industry:

Affiliate Program

Affiliates usually get paid a commission for each sale that customers make through their website or link.

The commission model is based on a variety of different actions performed by your users. You'll either generate leads, have someone subscribe to a service, make a one-time purchase, or any other touchpoint with your website.

The advertiser will use one of many performances tracking software and track clicks and eventual conversions to find the affiliates that contributed to this process.

Many service providers run their own affiliate programs, where they buy traffic for themselves to increase their own profit.

Affiliate Manager

An Affiliate Manager is essentially the liaison between affiliates and the company. They might create offers, help track performance, etc. Basically, anything to do with the affiliate department.

Advertiser is someone who owns a business and offers customers services or products in exchange for payment.

Two ways affiliates are paid is when they refer a new lead - in which case they can get paid per lead - or when they make the sale. So the more you advertise, the more money you make!

Affiliate Network

One of the primary roles of an affiliate network is to act as an intermediary between affiliates and advertisers. This way, affiliate networks can help affiliates find affiliate programs that match what they have for inventory.

Affiliate networks like Commission Junction allow you to tap into a larger pool of affiliates to get your content seen by more people.

If you’re looking for a top affiliate program that not only provides instant access to top performing creatives and done-for-you email swipes, but also offers a free affiliate newsletter that provides powerful training tips and strategies that will help you maximize your income, you’ll want to join Million Dolla Challenge

Affiliate marketing can be competitive and challenging to make a profitable enterprise. But, when you offer a bonus to customers through your affiliate offers, they can get a discount or other special treatment that the competition is not offering. Affiliates offer bonuses to make their product seem more attractive. Typically, the bonus is additional content for the same price. The more value that we perceive in your product, the easier it will be for us to convince others to buy through your affiliate link. For this reason, it’s important to learn how to create high-quality bonuses that stand out and help you capture the attention of your target audience.

Building your bonus offer doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does require some design and/or copywriting knowledge.

One way around this is to use join program like Million Dolla Challenge, which simplifies the entire process of creating affiliate bonus pages.

They’ve already done the hard work for you. Million Dolla Challenge is available at Million Dolla Challenge

Bonus Offers

In affiliate marketing, you are competing against other affiliates, which often may advertise to the same customers as you. A great way to stand out from the crowd is by utilizing bonus offers. Affiliates offer bonuses to convince customers to purchase through their link in order to close that sale. Generally, a bonus is relevant to the product being promoted and works as an additional component. When people perceive a product as valuable, it will be easier to promote it. We know how important it is to keep creating new and exciting bonuses for your customers. Therefore, we make sure our bonuses are designed to capture the attention of whomever is actually reading them.

Building your bonus offer doesn't have to be difficult. We know what you need based on your design preferences, so give us a call!

One way around this is to use join program like Million Dolla Challenge, which simplifies the entire process of creating affiliate bonus pages.

They’ve already done the hard work for you.

Million Dolla Challenge is available at Million Dolla Challenge

Cookies

Cookies are used in affiliate marketing; they act as a way of tracking which customers were directed to the site through your affiliate link.

Cookies are a very common occurrence on most websites and usually last for a given period. If the visitor comes back within that window, the affiliate marketer will be paid whether that visitor used your link to make their purchase.

CTR

Your Click-Through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of impressions that result in clicks. It is often calculated for an entire network.

CPA, CPS, CPL & CPC

CPA, CPS, CPL & CPC are four of the most common cost per action models used in affiliate marketing. They each have their own respective

costs for an action carried out by a visitor. These are usually conversions of some sort.

The cost per action (CPA) payment plan is designed for affiliates who only profit from conversions. If a sale doesn't happen, you won't make any money.

Ad teams use the cost-per-sale (CPS) metric to calculate the amount of money that's paid for every successful sale generated by their advertisement.

A visitor either purchases the product or show an interest in it. This is also called Cost Per Sale (CPS) or Cost Per Lead (CPL), respectively.

Cost Per Click (CPC) is an online advertising model. For every click of the ad, there'll be a payment made to the advertiser.

Campaign or Offer

This is an advertisement for a product or service. Affiliates typically create offer promotions, and they often include the payout model, the commission rates, and actions to take in order to attain a target audience.

After clicking your promotion link or banner, the final URL is called the offer URL. This is where you want them to land. This is your landing page, where they will see your offer or campaign.

Conversion

This is generally the desired outcome for someone who was advertised to. They might sign up for a service, buy a product or download an app.

As an affiliate, it's your job to help businesses make the leap from prospect to conversion. This is when consumers are at their most easily persuaded by advertising and are more likely to make a purchase.

The Conversion Rate is the percentage of website clicks that turned into a lead or sale.

For example, if out of every 100 visitors to your site, 1 made a purchase, your conversion rate would be 0.1%.

Data Feed

This is a confidential file containing our advertisers' lists of products, including prices, images of products, descriptions, and affiliate links to purchase the products.

Disclosure

This is a notice on an affiliate’s website or blog. We are compensated or paid for sales, recommendations, endorsements, and advertisements of a product and/or service on this website.

Part of your marketing campaign is placing this statement on the top of

your landing pages. It’s important because it will help you comply with FTC laws.

Tracking Link

This is a unique URL that an affiliate will send their audience to get the offer. It can also be known as a click tracking link or affiliate link.

Third-Party Tracking

This is the principle of automatically notifying the affiliates if one of their conversions has been received. New conversions are automatically sent to tracking systems, allowing the affiliates to know about every conversion they receive.

For example, if a network decides to partner with another, it's likely that any post-back gets forwarded to the partner.

Million Dolla Challenge will share an excellent affiliate program with you at Million Dolla Challenge

This affiliate program has thousands of affiliates already, and you would be eligible to promote all their top-selling platform and tools and

Receive A Recurring Affiliate Commission Every Month Forever!

You'll also get access to insider tips and strategies, exclusive discounts, free trials, and early beta access to new services.

You also have instant access to top performing converting email swipes to use in all your promotions.

Creative

Any form of content that advertises the product is considered an ad, including graphics & banners. There are many kinds of creatives used by affiliate marketers. Depending on what kind of advertiser you are, choosing the right one can be tough.

Large & impactful advertising creatives are an effective way of

promoting products without disrupting your users’ experience.

Interactive banners are like nothing else. They're dynamic and highly interactive, giving numerous ways for users to engage. Ads like this contain an interactive element (e.g. a video or game) as well as a contact form for user engagement.

An ad tag or snippet is an HTML element that displays ads by dynamically fetching them from an ad server.

Referral Bonus Program

This is a type of commission unique to this affiliate program which is awarded to affiliates that recruit new affiliates into the program.

The more affiliates you refer, the bigger your monthly commission. You can earn a percentage commission on their sales in a different way.

Client-Based Tracking

This is a tracking method that uses cookies to store information about visitors on their computer. The cookie tracks the advertising affiliate that brought in the user and then links them back to the source of where they came from.

With an appropriate pixel placed on your site, cookies are recorded whenever a visitor performs an event. They carry the information of where the conversion came from which allows you to get credit for bringing traffic to your website.

The pixel is also called an impression pixel or iframe pixel, depending on which of these two methods are chosen.

Client-based tracking is easier to set up, but it is less accurate since it uses cookies to follow your visits.

Impressions

This refers to the number of times a particular ad or message is shown.

Landing Page

You can use this website or webpage to which affiliates promote products.

When a user clicks on an ad or banner, they are redirected to the page for that product for more detailed information and purchase options.

The main purpose of a landing page is to get the user to complete an action. It may be purchasing a product, signing up for a service or downloading content which have all have positive value for the advertiser.

A good way of incentivizing a conversion is to create a landing page that reflects your online persona and "sells" them on the benefits of taking whatever action you want. Your charisma should encourage users to take that step instead of moving onto the next page.

You can also use a bonus page as your destination URL when promoting offers. See a previous section for information on how to easily create a bonus page with Million Dolla Challenge

Niche Marketing

This type of marketing is focused on a specific group of people.

General ads target a wide variety of people, but niche marketing is more targeted. If you're running ads for yoga related products, your niche is the yoga industry while your primary industry might be health & fitness.

When a marketer chooses a niche, they can create more targeted ads that will elicit a better response from the target audience.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of getting your website to rank higher on search engine results. Doing this will help you gain more exposure and get more traffic, which leads to better sales or leads.

Lead

People who join your mailing list or download your content probably have a good amount of interest in what you offer them and so they might become customers. On the other hand, those who just surf around on your site without signing up for anything are mostly just looking around and so they usually won't become customers. A prospect is also known as a potential client.

It's important to know that for some companies, a lead can be different than for others.

For some companies, a lead is someone who has expressed interest in their product or service. Other companies take contact information from any company to be a lead. You want to turn these leads into

customers so your goal should be to convert the highest number of leads possible.

EPC (Earnings Per Click)

You earn a percentage of proceeds from every person that clicks on your link and visits the merchant’s website.

A/B Testing

A/B testing can be known a split testing. Split testing allows you to check the effectiveness of different websites or creatives when they are being run in parallel.

Affiliate ID

This is a unique identifier given by the affiliate or merchant programs that you are promoting. It tracks your sales, clicks and often traffic to ensure you are entitled to any compensation this program provides.

Ad Blocker

This technology is what prevents ads from displaying on a website.

Ad blocking is on the rise, so the IAB has launched their L.E.A.N. program to make ads better and give them a more pleasurable experience so they can take down their blockers.

Ad blocking technology has for a for a long time made it possible for people to take back their privacy and limit how much information is collected about them. And now, due to the proliferation of this technology, over 15% of online consumers are starting to use this as an option. Not only is this problematic because so much content is served based on preferences and data.

One of the problems with advertising is that advertisers are starting to use more intrusive ads that disrupt the customer experience. Advertising is not just about luring in customers, but also providing them with an enjoyable experience. The best way to stop ad blocking is to improve the user experience across all modern browsers.

Encrypted

For advertising on secure websites, it is actually necessary to ensure that you're making creative pieces that are SSL-compliant. This means

that they will be more secure and adhering to the particular protocol for establishing a secure connection.

The goal is to ensure that the content of your communications are encrypted so that unauthorized parties can't read them.

Return on Investment (ROI)

This is the profit you made. It's calculated by taking the money you made minus your total expenses and other costs like taxes and fees.

A high ROI means that your profits are higher than the costs, so you’re making good money.

The ROI calculation is one of the easiest to calculate which means it doesn't require complicated math. It has input fields that are easy to fill in and will provide you with useful information on your decision-making process.

First Click

Affiliates will be rewarded commissions when they introduce the customer who made the purchase. This is because the customer will

use their cookie for a certain amount of time, and the affiliate who introduced them during that window will get rewarded.

Last Click

Programs that give commissions to affiliates, determined by who was the last person to link the customer with the product or service they bought.

The list below contains a few of the most popular abbreviations in affiliate marketing:

• SERP: Search Engine Results Page • AOV: Average Order Value • SEM: Search Engine Marketing • B2C: Business to Consumer • EPC: Earnings per Click • B2B: Business to Business