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Category: Affiliate Vocabulary

If you’re just getting started in the Affiliate Marketing world and feel lost in a sea of acronyms and other technical jargon, look no further, this section was made for you. Learn not only the most popular affiliate terminology here, but all the terms & expressions every Affiliate Marketer ought to know.

What are “Chargebacks” and what are some ways to prevent them from happening?

What is a Chargeback?

Chargebacks are essentially refunds. It’s the term used to describe the reversal of funds when a consumer complains to their banking establishment over a specific charge / transaction on his or her credit or debit card.

The main idea behind chargebacks is to protect the cardholder at all costs from fraudsters and any other kind of unauthorized payments or theft.

It goes a little like this:
The consumer files a complaint with their bank over a specific charge, the issuing bank then investigates the validity of the claim; if the bank feels the complaint is valid and legit, the financial institution will then take the money directly from the merchant’s account and give it back to the consumer.

So, what’s the main difference between a chargeback and a refund?

The main difference is that the merchant has absolutely no say in the refund process that occurs during a chargeback.

So, how the heck can we prevent Chargebacks from happening?

  • Don’t Mislead
  • Detail the Product Well
  • Go for Quality over Quantity

Read More:

The Principles of Chargeback Prevention

Affiliate

An Affiliate is the owner of a website, social account or mailing list who earns a commission for each click, referral or sale on a merchant’s website.

In other words, an Affiliate sends traffic to the Advertiser in order to promote one or many products/offers.

Read more here:

Afiliate Marketing

Cookies

Cookies are messages sent to the browser by a web server and stored in a text file on the visitor’s computer.

Recorded data in cookies can then be used by merchants to optimize their websites according to the user’s preferences. Cookies are usually stored 30 days in a user’s browser, or less, if cookies are manually cleared by the user before.

For affiliates, cookies are invaluable since they are used to track where the visitor came from (geo/device) and how much time elapsed between the first visit and the click-through/lead/sale.

E-mail Link

An E-mail Link refers to the affiliate link found inside an e-mail, be it a newsletter or signature.

E-mail links are also often seen in dedicated e-mail blast campaigns.

Direct Linking

Direct linking is the process where an affiliate links directly to the merchant or advertiser without going through a landing page or pre-sale page.

In other words, Direct linking gets you straight to the product or offer so customers don’t have to jump through hoops before being shown the relevant page.

While the commission rate is usually higher than other methods, Direct linking grants you less control over your brand.

Here are some situations where Direct linking might prove smarter than using a landing page:

  • Gaming offers
  • App installs (mobile or desktop)
  • Submits (email or zip)

HTML

HTML is short Hypertext Markup Language and the standard programming language for websites.

As of 2017, the latest version of HTML supported by most browsers is 5.1.

With HTML, affiliates can place trackable links on websites or newsletters and send traffic to their advertisers.

Impression

Impression is an important term to keep in mind when toying with online advertising. This is how many times ads are displayed or viewed on a website.

Impressions – also called views – are recorded each time a specific ad is shown to the viewer.

In-house

When you do something in-house, you call the shots and don’t need any outside help.

Instead of using an affiliate solution provider or resorting to outsourcing, in-house refers to the creation and management of your very own affiliate program.

This can be done by acquiring a third party product or starting a new program from scratch.

Merchant

Merchant is just another name used for advertiser.

In a business relatiionship, the merchant pays affiliates after the’ve sent traffic towards specific offers or products in order to generate a desired action (lead/sale/etc.).

Pay-Per-Sale (PPS)

Pay-Per-Sale or PPS – also known as Cost-Per-Sale (CPS) – stands for Pay Per Sale.

It refers to a pricing model where affiliates are paid once they directly generate a sale from the merchant’s or advertiser’s website.

A PPS offer typically pays more per individual sale, but it often has a lower associated conversion rate than its PPL (pay-per-lead) counterpart. This is because PPS offers require the user to enter their credit card information to classify as a sale.

In most cases, assuming the user enters their credit card information, the affiliate will still earn the PPS commission even on trials.

For additional terminology and key performance indicators for measuring success, please see:

All About Media Buying – Part 2 – Traffic Monetization

Recurring Commissions

Whenever a customer pays a monthly fee to enjoy a product or service, the merchant or advertiser can reward affiliates with recurring commissions.

For instance, a monthly fee for an adult website could net a percentage of each month’s payment to the affiliate who promoted it even if the initial sale with the user has been concluded long ago.

It’s kind of a gift that keeps on giving for affiliates. Being paid more than once for your efforts with recurring commissions is certainly a big plus for many.

Performance-Based Marketing

Performance-Based Marketing is a method of interactive advertising in which the merchant or advertiser pays affiliates only when a measurable action is completed – such as a click, a sale or a lead.

With the popularity of online advertising, Performance-Based Marketing is more relevant (and spread) than ever before.

Here are some of the many advantages for merchants or advertisers relying on Performance-Based Marketing:

  • Cost-effective advertisements (especially neat for tight budgets)
  • You only pay for results
  • Better targeting as the merchant or advertiser assumes all the risks

Performance-Based Marketing relies on measurable action such as:

ROAS

Just as Return On Investment (ROI), Return On Advertising Spending (ROAS) – also known as Return on Ad-Spend – is a metric used by digital advertisers.

It is useful to calculate the profitability of an online campaign. To do so, you will have to divide your ad’s revenue by its cost (revenue / advertising cost). If the result is less than one, your ROAS is negative, therefore in need of some tweaks.

Unique Click

A unique click is a click associated with a single Internet Protocol (IP) address or computer.

This means that no matter how many times a user clicks on your ads, it will only be registered once as a unique click. This is especially important to prevent fraudulent activity.

For obvious reasons, unique clicks are much more valuable than gross clicks or hits.

To learn more about the differences between various click types, read this:

What is the difference between gross clicks and clicks

Global Postbacks

Where single postbacks allow affiliates to track a single offer, Global Postbacks allow affiliates to track all offers with a single URL.

It is considered to be the most accurate and reliable tracking tool. One of its many advantages is how much of a time-saver it can be as it allows the tracking of multiple offers without hassle.

To set your Global Postback, contact our support team through the chat or at support@crakrevenue.com

You can learn more about Global Postbacks on our blog:

What are Global Postbacks?

How to setup your own Postback

Co-branding

Also known as brand partnership, Co-branding is a situation where affiliates can add their own logo and branding to an existing product or service from the advertiser.

Cookie Expiration/Retention

All cookies expire after a set amount of time in order to improve privacy. Cookie Expiration and Retention is primordial for affiliates as it records sales before the expiration date.

As long as the cookie is active, affiliates can earn commissions for their sales.

Read more:

Cookies

Conversion Rate

One term you will often hear in the online marketing world is Conversion Rate or CR.

It’s defined as the percentage of users who accomplish a desired action (ex: click) on a webpage, generating a commission in the form of a lead or a sale.

CPO

CPO is short for Cost per order. It is also sometimes called cost per acquisition or cost per purchase.

Money spent on marketing or advertising in order to complete a sale all fall under CPO.

This unit of measure comes in handy to make sure you stick to your budget.

Manual Approval

Opposite of auto-approve, Manual Approval requires an affiliate manager to approve the application of an affiliate or sale recorded in the system.

For the affiliate network or advertiser, manual approvals help eliminate undesired applicants (such as spammers) and sales by adding a screening process. It can also dissuade fraudulent activities, contrary to auto-approve which is much more prone to abuse.

Platform for Privacy Preferences

Platform for Privacy Preferences or P3P is a protocol allowing websites to declare their intended use of private data collected from the web browser.

Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Platform for Privacy Preferences acts as a safety net against controversial practices from merchants.

So, why is it useful exactly?

  • Websites implementing such policies enjoy higher levels of trust from users
  • It helps users understand the privacy policies of the website before disclosing their private information

Spider Detection

Spider Detection is a process where your system detects automated spiders and bots from search engines such as Google.

Spiders – or their less frightening appellation, web crawlers – browse the World Wide Web to index all websites.

Viral Marketing

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years, viral marketing shouldn’t be a concept you know nothing about.

The goal of viral marketing is to harness the power of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) in order to produce high levels of brand awareness.

Just like a virus replicates itself, a viral marketing strategy aims to infect (read: reach) as many users as possible.

Here are 3 examples of successful viral marketing campaigns:

What do these campaigns all have in common? They trigger an emotion or a reaction from the user. When done right, this is one of the best strategies out there.

Targeted Marketing

Targeted Marketing aims to identify the best audience for a specific product or service. The goal is to show advertisements tailored to the needs and interest of people who are already interested by what you’ll be offering them.

Using targeted marketing has many advantages, especially for businesses with specialized products or services. Since you you will be advertising products or services that matter a lot to users, they will be more likely to spend money.

Here are some key elements that distinguish targeted marketing from other strategies:

  • It’s much more focused and segmented
  • The ability to pinpoint a very specific group by geo/age/salary/etc. is great
  • It’s more productive than broader marketing strategies

There’s a downside though: targeted marketing is limited in scope since you’re not really interested by the larger picture: you already have your ideal customer in mind.

If you’re interested by web marketing, read on:

What makes a good web marketer?

Tracker (Sub ID)

A tracker (Sub ID) is a way to tag your campaigns, traffic sources, ad spots, and banner names. A tracker helps you pinpoint how many hits are coming from a particular source and how many sales are being generated.

Trackers are data… and data is information.

The information contained within a tracker should be relevant to your campaigns.

Trackers can be thought of as little memory cues that can help jog your memory on what you’ve done (that turned out to be successful), or that provide you with great insight of your success.

 

Read more here:

TRACKERS: THE SILENT HEROES OF EVERY CAMPAIGN

Be on the Right Track Part 2 –  Analyzing Your Trackers

BE ON THE RIGHT TRACK PART 3 – EFFICIENT TRACKERS

Revshare, RPS, and RS

Revshare — sometimes labeled as RS or RPS — stands for Revenue Sharing.

At CrakRevenue there are 2 types of Revshare programs:

 

1) Revshare Lifetime

When you promote a Revshare lifetime offer, it means you get a percentage of whatever your user spends — anytime your user spends anything.

Revshare Lifetime income is for the lifetime of the user you refer and it never expires.

Example: If you are promoting a Lifetime Revshare Cam offer, and the user registers for free, you receive no commission for this lead. You would only receive a commission if this lead of yours eventually decided on upgrading their account and purchases “tokens” or “credits.”  If the token or credit package costs $19.99, you would receive X% of that number, and this would be your Revshare earnings on that particular amount.

 

2) Revshare

When you promote any Revshare offer, it means you receive a promised percentage of the commissions paid by your traffic, from the advertiser.

This means that the commission paid is shared by CrakRevenue and its affiliates.

Example: If you are promoting a Revshare Nutra offer, and your user purchases a bunch of products, you receive a percentage of the commission paid by the advertiser: The commissions are shared between CrakRevenue and you. If your user spendings are $100 for instance, and the payout offered is set at 80% Revshare, you’ll receive $80 by of the payout.

 

 

For examples on how profitable Revshare offers can become, please see:

3 RevShare Rationales That Lead to Skinny-Wallet Syndrome

Rev-up Your Earnings, Permanently!

PPC / RPC

PPC stands for Pay Per Click.

RPC stands for Revenue Per Click.

If you were promoting a PPC offer, Pay Per Click means that you would get paid each time a user clicks on your ad or sponsored link. It’s by far the fastest way to earn money! However, the amount you would typically earn per click is comparatively low when compared to CPA payouts.

 

 

For additional terminology and key performance indicators for measuring success, please see:

ALL ABOUT MEDIA BUYING PART 1 – PLAYING WITH TRAFFIC

ALL ABOUT MEDIA BUYING PART 2 – TRAFFIC MONETIZATION

ALL ABOUT MEDIA BUYING PART 3 – PROFIT CALCULATION

Postback

A postback is like a trigger set on the offer that sends a message back to the server as soon as an action – usually a conversion – is made. Therefore, you can set postbacks to receive information to your own statistic tool.

If you only wish to check your Stats with us from your CrakRevenue affiliate panel, you do not need a postback.

 

Read more here:

How to set your own Postback

WHAT ARE GLOBAL POSTBACKS?

 

Multi-CPA

The Multi-CPA label is used to indicate that an offer can be paid on different payout types.

For example, when you use CrakRevenue Smartlinks or promote a CrakRevenue Survey, the offers shown to the user will vary depending on their geographic location and the device he or she is using. Therefore, the conversion model may vary as well and – consequently – the payout type.

Therefore, a multiple-payout model usually consists of a mix of Pay Per Lead (DOI & SOI), Pay Per Sale, and Revshare & Lifetime Revshare payouts.

Lead Scrubbing

Lead scrubbing is the term attributed to the process of removing non-legitimate leads.

Advertisers, affiliate networks, lead buyers — heck — ANY industry that deals with lead generation or prospective leads and potential consumer interest all set forth criteria to define what constitutes a legitimate lead from a non-legitimate one.

So, what generally constitutes a non-legitimate lead?

  • “bogus” entries (e.g., fake email submissions, “Asdf@Asdf.Com“, etc.)
  • inaccurate or falsified info
  • duplicate submissions (based on IP address)
  • fraudulent activity
  • leads generated through Spam and other Terms of Service infringing techniques

Another way of looking at leads is qualified vs unqualified.

Here are the 2 biggest misconceptions behind the term and the things you can do to actually help lower your scrub rate…

Misconception #1 – “Lead Scrubbing is a network shaving.”

Misconception #2 – “Lead scrubbing isn’t necessary.”

Read our entire post to find out How to Reduce Your Scrub Rate as an Adult Affiliate!

Continue Reading:

Landing page

A Landing page — also known as a Pre-lander — is sometimes called a Sales page.

The Landing page is particularly important because it’s the first page your visitor will see after clicking on an advertisement; the role of the page is in many ways to sell or convince the visitor to do something.

In CPA terms, we want this page to convince the user to perform a certain action.

 

Read more here:

LANDING PAGES 101

LANDING PAGES 101 – PART 2

LANDING PAGES 101 – PART 3

3 TIPS TO CREATE BETTER LANDING PAGES

HOW TO MAKE A DEDICATED LANDING & AVOID THE CRASH – PART 1

HOW TO MAKE A DEDICATED LANDING & AVOID THE CRASH – PART 2

 

Flat rate

Flat rate buys are purchases that are fixed in price. For example, a flat rate traffic buy means that the price won’t change regardless of how much – or how little traffic you receive.

Flat rate buys are typically reserved for the biggest media buyers out there.

Many great ad spots that provide high volumes of traffic sell at a fixed monthly price.

But remember, when dealing with flat rates, you need to pay the right price, and that requires a very accurate evaluation so you know what you’re getting.

 

 

For additional terminology and key performance indicators for measuring success, please see:

All about Media Buying – Part 2 – Traffic Monetization

FROM NEWBIE TO MEDIA BUYING AUTHORITY PART 2 -10 THINGS TO ASK BEFORE BUYING FLAT

EPC

EPC stands for Earnings Per Click.

EPC is an important metric used to measure performance. The EPC for an offer can be determined using a very simplistic calculation:

Your Earnings Per Click (EPC) is your earnings divided by the number of clicks your ad received.
The formula is: Earnings ÷ Clicks = EPC

For example:

In the same spirit, you will notice EPC figures when browsing our offers in your Affiliate dashboard. Those are what we call network EPCs.

We determine an offer’s network earnings per click by calculating the average revenues generated for each click by affiliates who promote the offer efficiently, ensuring that this calculation encompasses a significant volume of clicks.

Here’s a quick example:

An affiliate (e.g., a Webmaster or a Media Buyer) displays three distinct offers on a website’s front-page spot and gets 900,000 impressions/day. Here’s the breakdown:

Offer #1

  • 300,000 Impressions / 2000 clicks / CTR: 0.60%
  • Income: $100
  • EPC: $0.05
  • E-CPM: $0.33

Offer #2

  • 300,000 Impressions / 500 clicks / CTR: 0.16%
  • Income: $60
  • EPC: $0.12
  • E-CPM: $0.20

Offer #3

  • 300,000 Impressions / 4000 clicks / CTR: 1.30%
  • Income: $150
  • EPC: $0.038
  • E-CPM: $0.50

Offer #2 clearly has the best EPC, but you would make only 0.20$ per 1000 impressions generated (E-CPM) on your website. On the other hand, Offer #3 has the worst EPC, but you will make $0.50 per 1000 impressions.

Example 2: A media buyer runs a CPC (cost per click) campaign.

Takeaway: If you only look at the EPC, you will miss out on bigger profits. In this case, you’re better off promoting a product that has a lower EPC but attracts a bigger proportion of your traffic.

It remains crucial to consider additional metrics other than simply relying on an offer’s EPC to assess its quality.

Many factors can affect a campaign’s performance, including the banners you use, your traffic, the location of your banners, and your overall marketing strategy.

EPC is an interesting tool for making comparisons and conducting an in-depth analysis of your campaign. However, it is by no means an absolute metric that you should rely on to assess your campaign’s performance.

So, what’s the absolute best way to analyze your campaign’s performance?
There is none. You have to look at the big picture.

Read more here:

Earnings Per Click: What Does EPC Mean in Affiliate Marketing?

eCPM

eCPM stands for Effective Cost Per thousand (Mille) impressions.

It’s used to determine your earnings per thousand impressions. First, you need to divide your earnings by your number of impressions. Then, you multiply this number by 1000 to bring it back to your eCPM.

 

For an example of eCPM calculation, please see:

All About Media Buying – Part 3 – Profit Calculation

For additional terminology and key performance indicators for measuring success, please see:

All About Media Buying – Part 2 – Traffic Monetization

CTR

CTR stands for Click-through-rate.

Uttered in a percentage, a click-through-rate refers to the number of clicks related to the number of impressions.  For example, let’s say that 2 people clicked on your banner out of 100 impressions — this would mean that your banner has a CTR of 2%.

Knowing something’s CTR is a way of measuring the success of a campaign.

 

For additional terminology and key performance indicators for measuring success, please see:

All about Media Buying  Part 2 – Traffic Monetization

CPM / RPM

CPM stands for Cost per thousand (Mille) impressions.

RPM stands for Revenue per thousand (Mille) impressions.

In other words, CPM is the price you’d pay each time your ad has been seen 1,000 times.

Fun facts:

  • ‘Mille’ means thousand in Latin
  • The ‘M‘ in CPM is the Roman numeral for 1,000

 

 

For additional terminology and key performance indicators for measuring success, please see:

All About Media Buying – Part 2 – Traffic Monetization

For examples on calculating your ECPM (Earnings per thousand impressions), see:

All About Media Buying – Part 3 – Profit Calculation

CPA / RPA

CPA stands for Cost Per Action (also sometimes referred to as Cost Per Acquisition).

RPA stands for Revenue Per Action.

As you might have guessed, this is the backbone of the CPA-based advertising model, where the advertiser determines how much every conversion is worth. In this case, a conversion can be a click, a lead, a sale, and so on…

For instance, let’s say that your ad was clicked 500 times and that you were paid $1 for each click (Don’t get too excited, this example isn’t very realistic in the real world!).

In this example, the provider is reporting that you made $500 in new revenue. The CPA is calculated by dividing this number by the number of conversions (“sales” for example) generated.

 

For additional terminology and key performance indicators for measuring success, please see:

All About Media Buying – Part 2 – Traffic Monetization

 

CPI

CPI is an acronym for Cost-per-install.

Cost-per-install — also known as Pay-per-install — is an advertising model where an amount is paid anytime a user installs an application.

Browser

A Browser is an application program used to interact and look at information available on the World Wide Web.

Here are some of the most popular browsers freely available for download:

  • Google Chrome
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Safari (Mac)
  • Internet Explorer

Bid price

Bid price is the price that a dealer or other prospective buyer is prepared to pay. In other words,  Media buyers and advertisers alike, determine the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for certain traffic.

When it comes down to web marketing, there are a few places where you get the traffic with the highest bid price: Ad Networks, Google Adwords, etc.

 

 

For additional terminology and key performance indicators for measuring success, please see:

All About Media Buying  Part 2 – Traffic Monetization

A/B Testing (Split testing)

A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) is comparing two versions of a promotional tool to see which one performs better.

Example:

You compare two web pages by showing the two variants (let’s call them A and B) to similar visitors at the same time.

The one that gets a better conversion rate, wins.

Read more:
A/B Testing: The Method That Works

A Custom, Easy-to-Use Popunder Script Perfect for SPLIT TESTING

The Complete Guide to A/B Testing

Why You Should Spend More Time A/B Testing Your Ads

Above the Fold

Above the Fold content – also known as Above the Scroll in web design – refers to an area of the webpage shown without the need of scrolling down. This spot is extremely important to take into consideration for online marketers since it is the very first thing readers see.

The Above the Fold area is not static and will be adjusted according to the different screen resolutions used by the viewers and the number of pixels displayed by their monitors.

Read more here:

What are some common Ad Placement possibilities on a website?

Draw in Conversions with the PERFECT Call-to-Action

Affiliate Solution Provider

An Affiliate Solution Provider is a third party company specialized in providing or operating an affiliate tracking solution.

Most of the time, affiliate software solutions are hosted on your own website whilst an Affiliate Solution Provider will be hosted on another server.

Affiliate Software

Affiliate Software is used to manage an affiliate program by providing tools such as tracking and reporting.

Generally speaking, it’s an all-in-one solution used for the management of links, affiliates, sales, leads and more.

Affiliate Program Directory

An Affiliate Program Directory is a comprehensive, categorized listing of the most important affiliate programs available

These listings usually include crucial information such as commission rates and possible payouts for the affiliates.

Affiliate Marketing

As you probably already know, online Affiliate Marketing is a type of performance-based marketing. It consists of displaying a product or service to influence web users.

In other words, it means that you only get paid when a visitor completes a desired action (i.e., registers on a site, pays for something, etc.) and that is what’s called a conversion.

Desired goals may vary, but the most common is to convert a web visitor into a paying customer.

The entity paying the affiliate for each conversion is the provider of an offer (also known as the sponsor). It’s a company that has something to sell and needs someone to promote it.

Sponsors typically deal with affiliates through an affiliation program which allows would-be affiliates to advertise their offers for a commission in return. This commission may be paid per click, per action (Lead), per sale, or even Revshare – which is a shared percentage of revenue earned.

Here’s a little diagram that illustrates Affiliate Marketing below:

 

Read more here:

How to Make Money Online with Adult Traffic

Affiliate Manager

The Affiliate Manager is acting on behalf of the advertiser or merchant.

The Affiliate Manager develops, supports and manages an affiliate program while offering dedicated help to the affiliates which, in turn, help drive the sales of the program.

 

Meet ours HERE!

Advertiser

An Advertiser, also known as a Merchant, pays affiliates to promote various products or offers.

An Advertiser owns or at least controls the advertised products or offers.

Affiliate Agreement

An Affiliate Agreement refers to the terms of service between an advertiser and an affiliate.

The Affiliate Agreement outlines all responsibilities for the parties involved, including payout terms and commissions earned.