Glossary

Above the Fold

Part of a Web page that is visible after the page has loaded; normally it is the top part of a Web page. This term is derived from the newspaper industry, referring to the portion of the front page that is visible with the paper folded.

Affiliate

A Web site owner that earns a commission for referring clicks, leads, or sales to a merchant.

Affiliate Agreement

Terms between a merchant and an affiliate that govern the relationship.

Affiliate Information Page

A page (or pages) on your Web site that explains clearly and concisely what your affiliate program is all about.

Affiliate Link

A piece of code residing in a graphic image or piece of text placed on an affiliate’s Web page that notifies the merchant that an affiliate should be credited for the customer or visitor sent to its Web site.

Affiliate Manager

The manager of an affiliate program who is responsible for creating a newsletter, establishing incentive programs, forecasting and budgeting, overseeing front-end marketing of the program, and monitoring the industry for news and trends.

Affiliate Program (also an Associate, Partner, Referral, or Revenue Sharing Program)

A merchant pays a commission to an affiliate for generating clicks, leads, or sales from a graphic or text link located on the affiliate’s site.

Affiliate Program Directory

A directory of affiliate programs, featuring information such as the commission rate, number of affiliates, and affiliate solution provider. Associate-It, AssociatePrograms.com, and Refer-it are among the largest Affiliate Program Directories.

Affiliate Solution Provider

A company that provides the network, software, and services needed to create and track an affiliate program.

Associate

A synonym for affiliate.

Auto-Approve

An affiliate application approval process where all applicants are automatically approved for an affiliate program.

Auto-Responder

An e-mail feature that automatically sends an e-mail message to anyone who sends it a message.

Banner Ad

An electronic billboard or ad in the form of a graphic image; these come in many sizes and reside on a Web site’s Web page. Banner ad space is sold to advertisers to earn revenue for the Web site.

Charge Back

An incomplete sales transaction (merchandise is purchased and then returned) that results in an affiliate commission deduction.

Click & Bye

Refers to the process of an affiliate losing the visitor to the merchant’s site once they click on a merchant’s banner or text link. What you should strive for is “Click & Buy,” where customers stay on the affiliate’s site—or seem to—and buy the product or service.

Click-Through

The action when a user clicks on a link.

Click-Through Ratio (CTR)

The percentage of visitors who click-through on a link to visit the merchant’s Web site.

Co-Branding

A situation where affiliates are able to include their own logo and branding on the pages to which they send visitors through affiliate links.

Collaborative Commerce Networks

Networks of merchants and Web sites that work hand in hand as true business partners. Merchants treat their affiliates as sales and distribution channels worthy of any and all support that manufacturers would give to their resellers.

Commission

The income an affiliate receives 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

The small files stored on the visitor’s computer that record information that is of interest to the merchant site. With affiliate programs, cookies have two primary functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases, and to track which affiliate was responsible for generating the sale (and is due a commission). Be especially wary of programs that only use cookies because they have many inherent limitations: the user can turn them off, they expire after a certain date or time, and they can be deleted off the visitor’s computer.

Context-Centric

Matching your product or service offer closely to the visitors of an affiliate’s site. Place the product or service in-context (closely related to the content it’s next to) and more people will buy.

Contextual Link

The integration of affiliate links with related text.

Contextual Merchandising

Placing targeted products near relevant content.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity (sale or lead).

CPA (Cost Per Action)

Cost metric for each time a commissionable action takes place.

CPC (Cost Per Click)

Cost metric for each click of an advertising link.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand)

Cost metric for one thousand banner advertising impressions.

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.

E-mail Signature (or Sig File)

Signature option allows for a brief message to be imbedded at the end of every e-mail that a person sends.

e-Zine

Short for electronic magazine. Some e-zines are simply electronic versions of existing print magazines, whereas others exist only in their digital format.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

FAQs are documents that answer the most common questions on a particular subject.

HTML code

The lines of code that affiliates use to put links on their Web sites. Affiliate solution providers often provide a tool where affiliates can simply copy the code for an affiliate link and paste it into their own HTML pages.

Hybrid Model

Affiliate commission model that combines payment options (CPC & CPA).

Impression

Advertising metric that indicates how many times an advertising link is displayed.

In-House

The alternative to using an affiliate solution provider; building affiliate program architecture within a company.

Lifetime Value of a Customer

The amount of sales in dollars that a customer in his lifetime will spend with a particular company.

Manual Approval

The affiliate application approval process where all applicants are manually approved for an affiliate program.

Media Metrix

Measures traffic counts on all the Web sites and digital media properties on the Net. It regularly publishes the names of the Top 50 sites in the United States, the Global Top 50, and the Media Metrix Top 500.

Merchant

An online business that markets and sells goods or services. Merchants establish affiliate programs as a cost-effective method to get consumers to purchase a product, register for a service, fill out a form, or visit a Web site.

Mini-Site

A prefabricated HTML page for affiliates that displays new or specialized products with integrated affiliate links.

Onesie

Low-traffic sites that provide a degree of revenue and visibility for your program. These normally are sites that focus on original content or community niches, such as sports, movies, or rock stars. They might also focus on other areas of interest, or they may be community sites that host discussions on specific topics.

Pay-Per-Sale

A program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sale of a product or service that he or she refers to a merchant’s Web site. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions and the lowest conversion ratio.

Pay-Per-Lead

A program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sales lead that he or she generates for a merchant Web site. Examples would include completed surveys, contest or sweepstakes entries, downloaded software demos, or free trials. Pay-per-lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange-to-high conversion ratios.

Pay-Per-Click

A program where an affiliate receives a commission for each click (visitor) he or she refers to a merchant’s Web site. Pay-per-click programs generally offer some of the lowest commissions (from $0.01 to $0.25 per click), and a very high conversion ratio because visitors need only click on a link to earn the affiliate a commission.

Residual Earnings

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

ROI (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.

Spam (or Spamming)

Electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings, generally e-mail advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup. A must to avoid if you treasure your company’s reputation!

Storefront

A prefabricated HTML page for affiliates that displays new or specialized products with integrated affiliate links.

Super Affiliates

The small percentage of sites—the top 1% of affiliates, based on performance and earnings—that generate the lion’s share of the revenue for your program. They are born marketers and are very successful with the affiliate program they promote from their sites.

Targeted Marketing

Offering the right offer to the right customer at the right time.

Tracking Method

The way 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.

Text Link

A link that is not accompanied by a graphical image.

Two-Tier

An 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.

Up-and-Comer

Those affiliates that do not generate the types of revenues that super affiliates do, though they do show that kind of potential. With a little training and education about your product or service, they could join the ranks of your super affiliates.

Viral Marketing

The rapid adoption of a product or passing-on of an offer to friends and family through “word of mouth” (or “word of email”) networks. Any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do.