All important affiliate terms at a glance

To get you started as an affiliate marketer, I've listed the most important terms for you.

CPC -> Cost per click.

CPC is used within all facets of online marketing, and it mainly refers to the cost per click. For example, the cost you pay when someone clicks on your ad in Google.

If we talk about affiliate marketing and look at it from the publisher side, the cost the per click is the cost the advertiser pays you for someone who clicks through from your website to his/her website. For example, through a banner or affiliate link.

CPA -> Cost per acquistion.

The total cost of bringing in a customer or closing a deal. If we relate this to affiliate marketing, this is often a revenue model where you get paid for bringing in a customer(lead or actual customer).

CPL -> Cost per lead.

This abbreviation is stands for cost per lead. This term is virtually interchangeable with CPA and thus means essentially the same thing.

CPM -> Cost per mille.

The cost per thousand impressions. That's the online marketing broad explanation of CPM. If we relate this back to you as a publisher, this is the revenue you get when your banners are viewed 1,000 times.

CPS -> Cost per sale.

A revenue model where you get paid per sale. This is the main revenue model in affiliate website. The CPS is virtually redeemable for CPA or CPL. Only the CPS is more about product-oriented affiliates(B2C). The CPA and CPL are more about leads (and therefore B2B).

EPC -> Earnings per click.

How much you earn on average per click as a publisher. The EPC is calculated by dividing your total revenue by the number of clicks. So if you take €1000 commission and you have realized 15.000 clicks, your EPC is 0,0667. So you earn about 6.7 cents per click.

ECPC -> Effective cost per click.

The ECPC is actually redeemable for the CPC, only with the ECPC they look more often at it a medium or campaign. So with CPC they look across the entire account and when they talk about ECPC it is often about a specific campaign or banner. the CPC

Merchant

Also called advertiser. This is someone who uses an affiliate network to bring in more visitors, sales and more visibility. So these are often the web shops that want to sell more products and pay you as an affiliate marketer with commissions to make that happen.

Product feed

This is a file that contains all the information about the products the advertiser sells. This can be a CSV or XML file that you can load into your comparison website.

CTR -> Click through rate

Also called click-through rate. This is the percentage of people who click through from your affiliate website to the advertiser. You can also view the CTR per ad or per affiliate link. You can calculate the CTR by dividing the number of clicks by the number of views and then doing that times 100.

First click attribution

This is an attribution model where the affiliate network looks at who provided the first click. So suppose your website generated the first click to a website, you get the commission. If another website provided the first click to the advertiser, you get nothing.

Last click attribution

This is an attribution model where the affiliate network looks at who provided the last click. So suppose your website provided the last click to a website, you get the commission. If another website provided the last click to the advertiser, you get nothing.

Click fraud

Click fraud is a type of pay per click ad fraud in which ads are deliberately clicked on with the aim of generating additional revenue.

Committee

The commission within affiliate marketing is the percentage or amount you pay (as advertiser) or get paid (as publisher or affiliate marketer) when someone has made a purchase or when someone has become a lead, for example. In other words, when someone has made a conversion.

Cookie

A cookie is left behind when someone visits your website. Information is stored in the cookie. Within affiliate marketing, cookies are used to determine who earns the commission. Here, of course, the attribution model is also very important.

Attribution path

The path (aka the channels and websites) that someone "walked" before making a purchase. The attribution path shows all the channels and websites that contributed to the conversion. This can include multiple affiliates and channels.

The attribution path is important because then you can see who created the sale or lead and therefore who deserves the commission. With first click or last click, the first or last website will get it. With some affiliate networks, this is split evenly.

Conversion

A conversion is the moment when a website visitor proceeds to make a purchase, request information, download a brochure or call or email, for example.

Affiliate ID

This is a unique string consisting of numbers and letters embedded in the affiliate material (banners, links, etc.) Each publisher gets its own affiliate ID. Because the ID is embedded in the material, the affiliate network knows that the commission is attributable to you. After all, it is your ID.

Conversion rate

The percentage of people who make a conversion on your website. And if we look at it from the publisher's point of view, you can also explain it like this: the percentage of those people who make a conversion, after they click through your affiliate material to the advertiser.

Deeplink

A deep link is a link to a specific page within a Web site, but not to the home page. For example, to a landing page, a blog or a product page.

Referral

A referral literally means a referral. Offline, this can be, for example, a recommendation from your neighbor. An online referral is an online referral. As a publisher, you provide referrals to the advertiser.

Banner

A banner is a visual advertisement on your website. The banner belongs to the advertiser and you can place it on your website. Then you can get paid based on impressions or clicks.

Clicks

As a publisher, when you see the number of clicks somewhere, it's the number of times that were clicked from your website to the advertiser. In nine out of ten cases, these are not unique clicks. If someone clicks 3 times, then you see 3 clicks listed.

Leads

A lead is someone who has clicked on an advertiser and then performed a soft conversion such as downloading an e-book or whitepaper. Or, for example, requesting a trial. He/she has then not yet become a customer, but can be classified as a potential customer or interested party.