Step-by-Step Affiliate Marketing Glossary Explained

Are you new to affiliate marketing and need help finding your way around? Then this dictionary will be helpful during the trip.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make serious money and promote goods, but all the new terms can be hard to keep track of.

We made this cheat sheet with partner slang to help you figure out who’s who.

Here are 50 of the most popular terms used in affiliate marketing. This will help you learn more about the field and communicate better with your partners or affiliates. (Save this link, because we’ll be adding more!)

1. Affiliate

A person or organisation that advertises a service or product in return for a cut of the profits made from the sale of those products or services. Publishers and affiliate marketers are additional names for affiliates.

2. Affiliate ID

An affiliate’s performance and commissions can be tracked by the merchant with the help of a unique identification code.

3. Affiliate Network

A system that facilitates communication between affiliates and retailers while also providing tools for monitoring and payment processing.

4. Affiliate Link

Affiliates can monitor website traffic and sales with the use of a special URL. With this connection, the merchant may track which affiliate received credit for any sales or leads generated. Online referral software allows businesses to generate these links.

5. Affiliate Agreement

A formal agreement outlining the parameters of a legal relationship between a company and its affiliates. Performance objectives, programme conditions, and commission rates could all be part of this agreement.

6. Affiliate Program

Referral programmes are another name for this. They allow companies to encourage the promotion of their products through the use of personalised affiliate links.

7. Affiliate Manager

The person who runs a partner programme. Some of their duties include helping friends and finding new ones. This person helps affiliates achieve by being their main point of contact and giving them advice. Affiliate managers can find material and a dashboard to keep track of all metrics in the best referral software.

8. Anchor Text

The text that when clicked on inside a hyperlink takes people to a certain site. Tracking clicks and sales from a partner’s website or content is done with anchor text in affiliate marketing.

9. Attribution

The process of giving credit to the right partner for a sale or lead that was brought about by their promotion.

10. Campaign

A specific marketing effort designed to promote a product or service to a particular audience or demographic.

11. Advertiser

Affiliate marketing is used by a company to promote its goods. People like them are also called traders.

12. Commission

Affiliates are paid a portion or a flat fee for every sale or lead that comes from their promotion.

13. Caps

Refers to limits on how many sales or leads an affiliate can bring in for a business in a certain amount of time.

14. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the share of website users who do what you want them to do, like buy something or fill out a lead form.

15. Cookie Length

The affiliate can earn a fee on any sales or leads that come from the link for as long as the cookie is active. A seller might have a cookie that lasts for 30 days. If a user clicks on an affiliate link and then makes a purchase or gets a lead within 30 days, the affiliate can get paid.

16. Cookie

A cookie is a small file that is saved on a user’s computer and keeps track of what they do on a website. This lets you accurately attribute sales and leads.

17. Chargeback

A transaction that is subsequently rescinded as a result of a dispute or fraudulent conduct. Chargebacks are a potential consequence in affiliate marketing when a client withdraws their payment for a product or service facilitated by an affiliate link, or when the transaction is deemed fraudulent.

18. Cost Per Action (CPA)

The cost per action payment model is an affiliate marketing approach in which compensation is contingent upon particular actions performed by affiliates, such as concluding a purchase or submitting a form.

19. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The percentage of website visitors who click on a particular link or call-to-action is referred to as the click-through rate (CTR).

20. Click Pixel

Place a small picture or tracking code on a website or email to keep track of clicks and sales.

21. Earnings Per Lead (EPL)

This measure shows how much you usually make from each lead your promotion brings you.

22. Exclusive Offer

A special offer that is only made to certain affiliates to encourage them to do better.

23. Impression

This shows how many times your ad or partner link is shown to people who might buy something. You should get in front of as many people as possible, but it’s also important to do so.

24. Landing Page

The website that people go to when they click on an affiliate link. This website is usually meant to support a certain product or service. Most of the time, landing pages are designed to get people to convert.

25. Vanity Code

A vanity code is a unique code or tag that is added to an advertising link to keep track of and report on offline or print ads.

26. Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost per click is a way for partner marketers to get paid. They are paid based on how many times their links are clicked. This model is all about getting people to visit your website.

27. Creatives

Affiliates can use banners, text links, and product images that the seller gives them to use in their promotions.

28. Deep Linking

The act of linking to a specific page or product on a store’s website instead of the home page in order to make the link more relevant and increase sales.

29. Earnings Per Click (EPC)

An affiliate’s earnings per click (or CPC) is the typical amount of money they make whenever a user clicks on one of their affiliate links. An affiliate’s promotion efforts can be measured by this parameter.

30. Verticals

An affiliate marketing industry’s “verticals” are its subsets that focus on certain product or service categories. The fashion, beauty, health, banking, and tech industries are typical verticals.

31. White-Labeling

The term “white-labeling” describes the business strategy of retailing an existing product or service under a different name. Affiliates can sell a product or service under their own label.

32. Zero Risk

Affiliates in this programme can earn commissions on sales made via their promotions without having to put any money or buy anything themselves.

33. Lead Magnet

A helpful resource, such an e-book or guide, that can entice readers and produce leads. Lead magnets are essentially freebies that ask for personal details like an email address in return.

34. ​​Lifetime Value (LTV)

What a customer is worth to a business based on how many times they buy from them and how many people tell their friends about the business.

35. Link Cloaking

The act of hiding an affiliate link so that it appears to be a standard, non-affiliate link. This can help to boost click-through rates and keep people from being put off by affiliate links.

36. Merchant

There is an affiliate programme for a company that sells a product or service. Small businesses and big companies can both be merchants. Advertisers is another name for them.

37. Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)

Affiliates can make money from both their own sales and the sales of the affiliates they bring on board.

38. Network Fee

A fee that affiliates pay to an affiliate network to connect with merchants and promote their goods through their platform and services. It’s not true that all partner networks cost money.

39. Pay Per Click (PPC)

An affiliate marketing payment plan in which affiliates are paid based on how many times their links are clicked, even if the links don’t lead to a sale.

40. Payout

The commission that an affiliate receives when their promotion results in a sale or new lead.

41. Performance Bonus

Extra money that affiliates get on top of their commissions when they reach certain targets.

42. Performance marketing (or performance-based marketing)

A marketing plan that aimed to get specific results, like sales or leads, instead of just getting people to visit or learning about the brand.

43. Program Terms

Everything that an affiliate program’s agreement specifies in terms of rules, criteria, and restrictions.

44. Publisher

Another word for an affiliate, this one describing someone whose work incorporates affiliate links in its publication or promotion.

45. Recurring Commission

A recurring commission is a kind of affiliate compensation that is paid out whenever a single referral leads to continued purchases.

46. Return on Investment (ROI)

The term “return on investment” (ROI) refers to the ratio of an investment’s earnt revenue to its expenditure. Software as a service affiliate tracking allows you to constantly monitor your triumphs.

47. Sub-Affiliate

One kind of affiliate is the sub-affiliate, who works with another affiliate network to promote a brand’s goods and services in exchange for a cut of the sales or leads generated.

48. Super Affiliate

an affiliate who, through their wide reach and marketing efforts, produces a significant amount of leads or sales for a merchant.

49. Target Audience

The specific demographic that a merchant or affiliate is trying to reach is known as their target audience.

50. Two-Tier Affiliate Program

An affiliate programme that lets affiliates make money from both their own sales and the sales of other affiliates they bring on board.

Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing

It’s now time to start your own affiliate programme after covering the fundamentals of affiliate marketing. And it turns out to be far simpler than you may imagine. See Rewardful to have your own affiliate marketing programme up and going in a few minutes!