People who are just getting started in affiliate marketing can find it very overwhelming and confusing when they read any affiliate marketing article.
Affiliate marketing has so many terminologies because it is a subset of internet marketing and it has many technical aspects to it.
My goal in this article is to help you read any affiliate marketing related article and be able to understand what each word means.
This is the only way you can improve your affiliate marketing skills and stay updated with the current trends.
But before I start introducing affiliate marketing terminologies, you first need to understand how affiliate marketing works.
This way you can put each terminology into perspective, and understand how to fits in the great scheme of things.
The above diagram shows you the process of getting paid as an affiliate marketer.
Starting from when a visitor comes to your affiliate website and up to making an affiliate commission.
Now let me explain to you the common terminologies used among affiliate marketers.
16 Affiliate Marketing Terminologies for Beginners
Vendor or Merchant
Also known as the product owner, this is a person or a company that owns the product you are promoting as an affiliate.
Affiliate or Affiliate Marketer
This will be you, the person who doesn’t own the product but tries to promote and sell it so that he can make money from it.
Vendors benefit when there are many affiliates promoting their products, even if they have to give out a percentage of the sale they still make profits.
Just imagine having a product and then having 50 affiliate marketers selling it, and if each affiliate made 100 sales then as a product owner you are making 5000 sales. Profitable!
Affiliate Website
This will be the website of the affiliate marketer; from there you try to sell your affiliate products (even more than 1 product).
Affiliate Product
The vendor creates a product and the affiliate marketer tries to sell it, this product is called affiliate product.
Each product has its own price that greatly affects how much you will earn from it as an affiliate.
Affiliate Commission
This is a percentage of the sale that the affiliate will earn if they managed to successfully land a sale.
So if the product vendor told you that your commission is 50% then you will earn 50% of the product price.
Affiliate commissions can be low as 4% or as high as 75%, the product owner is responsible for setting this percentage.
Affiliate Program
Any product vendor creates what is called an affiliate program; it is what affiliate marketers join to officially become affiliates for this certain product.
Affiliate program is a virtual concept and it is not a web object like a website or a product.
You can think of it as a system (program) that give affiliates some information on their affiliate commission (how much is it) and give them tools to help them sell the product more.
Most product vendors will include a page on their website called “affiliate page” and on this page the vendor will explain everything the affiliate needs to start promoting their products.
So when you pick the affiliate product to promote, find this page on their website.
Affiliate Network
Affiliate network is a company that is responsible for running the affiliate program of the vendor.
Usually these companies run the affiliate program of 1000s of products.
They are also responsible for sending out the affiliate commissions (payments) to the affiliates and not the product owner.
Affiliate Manager
This is a specialized person or company whose responsibility is to recruit affiliates for product owners.
Giving how affiliate marketing is also important to the product owner, the job of affiliate managers became in high demand.
Affiliate Link
This is a link that when clicked it will redirect to the product website.
Affiliate links always contain tracking data containing your affiliate id and the product id.
So your goal as an affiliate marketer is to make sure people click on your affiliate link to go to the product page and buy it from there.
And affiliate links will tell the product owner that he should give you a commission since you are the one who referred the buyer.
Cloaking Affiliate Link
Cloaking is a practice most common among affiliate marketers; it is the process of turning a long and ugly affiliate link into a shorter and cleaner version.
Giving how affiliate links contain so many tracking codes (affiliate and product ids); it is better to shorten them.
Cloaking also protects your affiliate commission, because it hides the product website so people won’t be able to just copy and paste it into their browser without clicking the affiliate link.
Niche
Niche means the market; there are many markets you can build your affiliate website around and sell relevant products.
Some niches are very lucrative because they are known to have high priced products, like luxury watches, cars…etc
ROI
Short for return of investment and it is a term mostly common among affiliates who use paid advertising techniques to sell their affiliate products.
So if an affiliate decided to run an advertising campaign that costs $100, he then tries to get his invested $100 back plus a profit of say $100. This means his ROI is 200% or $200.
List Building
One of the most successful techniques for promoting affiliate products is list building.
It is the process of collecting emails of people interested in your niche, and later on you try selling your affiliate products by sending out an email message to those subscribers.
The list here refers to a list of emails or subscribers.
Conversion Rate
How many sales you will make from X number of visitors to your website, or X number of people who clicked on your ad is called a conversion rate.
So if your affiliate website received 100 visitors a day and you made 3 sales from those 100 then your conversion rate 3%.
Cookies
This is a technical word and it refers to a file being placed on a PC automatically without any approval from the PC owner.
These files are not viruses; they instead contain tracking data that protect your affiliate commission.
For example, if a person visited your affiliate website and clicked on your affiliate link, then the product website will put this cookie file on the visitor’s PC.
Now if this visitor didn’t buy the product and closed his browser and after 1 week or a month he decides to buy the product, then you will still get paid.
That’s because the cookie file will tell the product owner that you referred this person (even if it was a month ago).
Traffic
This term is associated with websites and it means the number of people coming to the website.
Getting more traffic (visitors) to your affiliate website is vital if you want to sell many copies of your affiliate products.
Conclusion
Learning all of these terminologies will help you learn about affiliate marketing faster.
You could be learning from affiliate marketing blogs or from affiliate marketing courses.
You still need to be aware of this lingo to achieve a faster learning progress.Share