The Complete Dictionary of Affiliate Marketing

А 

Advert/Advertiser

A customer or advertiser who has his own product or offer and who pays the Affiliate Network for certain actions on the offer (confirmed order, registration, etc.). Adverts are also called webmasters who drive traffic to themselves (to their own offers).

Who is this? An advertiser or a client (customer) who has his own product (offer). He offers his offer and is ready to pay the Affiliate Network for targeted actions that are carried out on his offer.

What activities are paid for? Confirmed order, registration, collection of personal data, subscriptions, etc. Sometimes an Affiliate Network can have its own offers and be an advertiser for itself and others.

Also, an advertiser can be a webmaster who drives traffic to his offers.

Adult 

What is it? The name of the Affiliate Marketing vertical, which includes all categories marked 18+ (media content and physical products).

Adult nutra are physical products that are directly aimed at the intimate needs of a person. The vertical is in great demand among webmasters due to good rates, high conversion and relevance in any region and season.

What is the target audience? Men and women around the world who want to either improve their intimate health or make a better impression on their partner.

What are the best creatives and funnels to use? Due to the fact that the vertical is quite specific in terms of the visual design of advertisements, not all sites allow their placement. Therefore, the webmaster either needs to make them as white as possible to the required format, use a cloaca, or use sites with less strict rules to place them. Read more about how to create creatives for advertising nutra products in our article: “How to create a converting creative for adult?".

Account

What is it? Personal user account/cabinet, which contains the necessary data and settings about him in the computer system.

What is it needed for? Any user uses a personal account for authorization and authentication in the system in order to use all the resources of the platform on which he performs targeted actions. When a user enters personal data, the system sees that he is the one using the account. The user can have an account in any computer system (website, social network, software, etc.).

What do you need to get an account? It is necessary to register in accordance with the rules of the site or site on which an account is required, upon completion of which, the user is provided with a login and password for further use.

Account farming

What is this? A step-by-step algorithm of actions in the created account for launching advertising, in order to simulate the real actions of the user and his activity.

The algorithm is always thought out, since the farming process itself is aimed at reducing the possibility of getting an account blocking. To work, a webmaster may need several accounts, he chooses the most suitable type of accounts for himself, based on his own experience.

Advertising cabinet

What is this? A place to create and run an advertising campaign. In the advertising account, the webmaster can work with statistics, make changes, set target settings, analyze his advertising campaign, and much more.

Also here you can analyze the volume of traffic, advertising costs and statistics metrics. Advertising cabinets are created on various platforms where you can carry out advertising activities, including social networks.

Advertising campaign optimization

What is this? Improving the current advertising campaign to get the best result and the opportunity to increase traffic volumes.

What can be optimized?

- Reducing the cost of a user action (click, registration, transition, etc.).
- Increased traffic volumes for an ad without increasing the cost per action
- Optimization of the quality of the advertisement.

How is optimization carried out in arbitration?

- Analysis of the launched advertising campaign
- Working with black and white sheets
- Conducting tests
- Adjustment of pre-landers and landings
- Work with trackers

Affiliate Program

What is this? Type of cooperation between the seller (advertiser) and the partner.

The advertiser offers its products or services for sale through partners. The partner receives a reward for the sales he makes through an affiliate link or a unique affiliate code. Thus, the advertiser gets a large audience for the sale of their products, and the partner earns on the sale of these products. The partner can use various methods to promote the advertiser's products or services, after agreeing on the conditions in advance. Commissions are usually paid for every sale made through an affiliate link or code.

Affiliate Network

What is this? It is an aggregator of affiliate programs that collects various offers from advertisers and then offers them to webmasters. They act as intermediaries between advertising and webmasters. At the same time, affiliate networks track all the activity of publishers and help with most of the interaction processes, including the installation of links, to enable advertisers to track traffic and understand which advertising campaigns are most effective. Affiliate Networks also provide additional useful tools and options for the webmaster.

How to choose an Affiliate for cooperation was told here.

Antidetect browser

What is this? Software that masks or replaces the browser fingerprint, showing it in the system for another user and simulating his activity on the site.

Why is it needed? Antifraud site systems track user behavior and collect data, even if the user is not authorized, through the browser API. The service allows you to create an infinite number of browser profiles inside the browser (each open tab has its own data: ip-address, settings, cache, cookies, etc.) that the user uses. Therefore, with the help of these services, the webmaster can quickly and conveniently prepare accounts for work and avoid blocking by the site.

Main functions:

- Bypass anti-fraud systems (reducing the risk of blocking)

- Anonymity and security (protection of the account from data collection and data loss)

- Team Access

What are there? Some of the most popular and proven anti-detect browsers for work: Dolphin{anty}, Indigo, Multilogin, GoLogin.

API/ Application Programming Interface

There are several definitions for this concept:

- Service for interaction, exchange of information with various servers (receives requests and sends responses).
- Data about user activity on the webmaster's site, which is sent directly to advertisers or to the Affiliate Program. For example, a user has performed a target action (left a request to purchase a product on a landing page), and data about this action is transmitted via the API directly to the client or to the Affiliate Network.

Main advantages:

- automation and time saving
- availability of online statistics
- automatic integration between services
- working with targeting
- work with blacklists
- working with an advertising campaign using scripts

Affiliate Marketing/
Traffic arbitrage

What is this? Buying Internet traffic in one place and reselling it on more favorable terms in another.

How it works? It is necessary to attract as many customers (traffic) as possible to the pages where the advertiser's product/offer is presented in order to sell this product or perform any other actions (registration, collection of personal data, subscriptions, etc.) for which the advertiser will pay.

What is the benefit? The income of an affiliate is the difference between the income from the sale of goods and the cost of advertising.

Where can you do this? A group on a social network, a website, a blog, any source on which there are users and from which they can go to the required site using links can act as a traffic source.

Learn more about the affiliate marketing, basic concepts, verticals in our video: What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate/Webmaster

Who is this? Specialist in the field of advertising and marketing, who is engaged in Affiliate Marketing.

What is he doing? Creates, launches and optimizes advertising campaigns in order to attract traffic and increase traffic volumes for a specific offer. It can be a product, service or product.

How does he earn? Its profit is the difference between the income from the sale of goods and the cost of advertising. He first invests his own money in the launch of the advertising campaign, and then receives payment for the attracted traffic.

Unlike a marketer, an affiliate bears the cost of advertising himself.

Approval rate

What is it? A certain percentage or number of approved targeted actions on the advertiser's website.

What could it be? An order confirmed by a call center, registration, collection of personal data, subscriptions, etc.

Also, this term can mean “Approval by moderation of an advertising campaign”.

A/B testing (Split testing)

What is this? This is a way of testing in marketing.

What is it for? Helps to determine the best conditions under which a higher conversion of an advertising campaign is achieved.

How is it carried out? Different advertising materials are shown to the same target audience. After the test is completed, statistics are collected that show which changes improve the target.

Where is it applied? Absolutely in different elements of the funnel: creative, landing, header, etc.

Here we talked in detail about the main and important aspects of A / B testing, metrics for analyzing results and tools for working.

B

Bid

What is this? The maximum price an advertiser offers per click on their ad.

Where is it used? Teaser networks, Google Adwords, Yandex Direct.

What determines the cost per click? It depends on the chosen country, CTR, competition among webmasters, etc.

Black list, BL

What is this? A list of traffic sources or sites that advertising campaigns will not be launched on.

Why is it being compiled? The webmaster makes an optimal choice of sites with a suitable target audience and is used as a kind of filter from low-quality traffic.

Where is it used? In teaser and contextual networks.

Black Page 

What is this? A landing page that contains a product for sale.

Why is it being created? In order to pass moderation on various sites with strict rules for advertising, the webmaster needs to change his page to a valid one (whitepage), which the system will see and which will be fully relevant to the rules of the site. At this time, targeted traffic will be sent to the black page, where the user sees the product advertisement directly.

How it works? We told in detail in our video: Cloaking. Setting up in Keitaro and HideClick.

C

Captcha

What is this? A specially created code that is used to protect against automatic actions (mailings, spam, registrations, etc.).

How it works? The form with the code is displayed on the sites in the form of a window, where it is proposed to solve the task in different ways: entering words, numbers, finding pictures, etc.

The site will be available to the user only after the successful solution of the task, thus the program determines that you are a real person, not a bot.

Case/CPA 

What is this? A step-by-step description of certain actions that the webmaster took to get profit when working with traffic.

What does it consist of?

Most often, webmasters describe their cases by specifying the following criteria:

-Offer(niche)

-GEO

- Affiliate program

-Traffic source

-Creatives (description and recommendations)

Examples of cases in dr.cash:

+$660 with 143.55% ROI on Prostatitis in Morocco

+ $45,077 with 106.22% ROI on weight loss in India

+ $4266 with 110% ROI on diabetes in Poland

Cloaking

What is this? Software or service, with which the user has the ability to replace the pages of the site, both during the period when the page is under moderation, and during the launched advertising campaign (hides the real page from moderation).

What is it for? Carries out moderation in order to identify:

- moderators who are shown the content allowed by the rules of the site.

-potentially interested users by showing them the real landing page of the offer.

What does it consist of? White page (page that complies with the rules of the site), Black page (selling page), cloaca.

More information about cloaking in our video: Cloaking. Setting up in Keitaro and HideClick.

Cloaca

What is this? Cloaca - special software for cloaking, namely trackers or special services. See "cloaking" for details.

 Conversion Rate

What is this? The conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who completed the target action on the page to the total number of users who clicked on the advertising link. Expressed as a percentage or fractions.

What is it needed for? Shows the effectiveness of the webmaster's work and the success of the launched advertising campaign.

How to create landing pages with a high envelope was discussed at the link.

Creative

What is this? The first thing a potential buyer sees when they see your ad on the Internet. It depends on a correctly composed creative whether the user follows the link further or not. Therefore, it is one of the visual components of your advertising campaign.

What could it be? Teaser/banner/advertisement/video, accompanied by text, which should fully reflect the benefits of the advertised product for the user and encourage him to click on the link and further purchase.

D

Dashboard

What is this? A panel where the user sees all the necessary information from the necessary systems and arranges it in a convenient format (metrics, processes, goals, etc.).

What is it for? Time optimization, structuring, the possibility of more competent planning of certain tasks.

Domain

What is this? The name of the site/resource that has its own IP address.

What is it for? After launching an advertising campaign using an affiliate link, the webmaster in most cases can get the landing link blocked. Therefore, it is a waste of budget and time. This is often due to the fact that these same links that the affiliate network provides to the webmaster are already recognized and marked by advertising sites as “undesirable”. Such links are banned along with the domain and advertising account, which makes it difficult to launch advertising on the site that the webmaster needs.

Domain parking

We told you how to park a domain in our video: Domain parking in dr.cash.

Deeplink

What is this? A hyperlink that directs the user (traffic) to a specific section of the site.

What is it for? Hyperlinks are used to minimize the number of intermediate steps of the user and direct him to the desired page in the minimum number of clicks, thus increasing the conversion.

Doorway

What is this? Searching spam tool.

What is it for? The goal of a doorway is to get to high positions in the search query column and redirect website visitors to the landing or pre-landing that the webmaster needs.

How it works? To do this, a website is created that is optimized for a large number of search queries. Doorways are used only to attract traffic.

Drive traffic

What is this? Directing traffic to the offer that the webmaster is working with.
How can you drive traffic?
- Get income from a running advertising campaign.
-The costs of the webmaster for advertising are completely equal to his income, which he received from it.
-The webmaster spends more on traffic than he earns.

FanPage

What is this? A public business page on Facebook on behalf of which content and advertising are published (it is impossible to launch advertising without creating it).

Fraud

What is this? Low-quality traffic that is primarily presented as valid leads in order to get paid. Fraud traffic is much cheaper for the webmaster (in other words, all leads are fictitious), but using it, the webmaster plays a dishonest game and risks lowering his rating for the Affiliate Network and the advertiser.

Funnel

What is this? A set of elements in an advertising campaign that gives a certain result when an advertising campaign is launched. Any profitable combination is searched by the webmaster through the tests carried out and various changes in the advertising campaign after analyzing the obtained indicators. A webmaster can drive traffic using one funnel for quite a long time.

What does it consist of?

- Select Affiliate Program.
- Offer. You can choose an offer to suit your needs by contacting the manager in the Affiliate Program.
- Traffic source, it is better to choose an offer already for the existing traffic.
- Pre-lander and lander
- Target audience and target settings.
- Creative

GEO 

What is this? Location of the target audience, traffic or offer.

Also “GEO” is an abbreviation that is used to mark a location/country. For example: IN-India.

Geo-targeting

How does geo-targeting work? You can select this option in your ad's settings. Geotargeting allows you to display an advertising campaign only in the selected country.

What is it for? Geo-targeting allows you to show a certain advertising space only where it is relevant and the purchasing power will be higher for this offer. Thus, the effectiveness of launched ads is optimized.

What are there? All countries of the world can be divided into three groups: Tier-1, Tier-2 and Tier-3. We wrote more about this in our article: How to choose a GEO for working with nutra in dr.cash?

Hold

What is this? The period of retention by the Affiliate Network of the webmaster's earnings in order to check the quality of traffic. The advertiser checks the traffic received from the webmaster and after that the payment is made. Each Affiliate Network has its own period, before work it is better to immediately discuss it with a personal manager.

Hosting

What is this? Hosting - certain services that ensure the existence of the site on the service and its display on the network.

Incentive traffic

What is this? Certain targeted actions of users for which they can receive a reward. This can be registration, feedback, passing surveys, tests, levels in the game, etc.

What is it needed for? Quick promotion of the necessary resource, application or site. The webmaster in this case receives a reward for the volume of attracted traffic. Earnings with this model consists of the difference between the earnings of the webmaster from the advertiser and the amount that he spent on paying users for the completed action.

Lander

What is this? One-page website  on which the direct sale of the product is carried out. The site can have a product presentation with detailed information about it, its image, scientific research and its results in numbers, a call to action (purchase), promotions, roulettes, etc.

Classic landing consists of blocks:

- Title and subtitle
- Product presentation
- The offer of goods and its sale.
We discussed how to create landing pages on the cards.

Lead

What is this? A potential user who saw the ad clicked on the link and took the targeted action. A webmaster's earnings are based on the number of approved leads.

M

Moderation

What is this? Checking any published content in accordance with the rules of the site.

What is it for?

- Monitoring users for compliance with the established rules in communication and restricting their access (ban) in case of their violation.
- Monitoring of the correctly selected format of advertisements placed on the site.
- Removing prohibited, irrelevant, spam content, blocking suspicious links.
- Cleaning bots and fake accounts.
- Checking the relevance of existing content.

What are the types of moderation?

- Preliminary. All content is reviewed prior to publication.
- Postmoderation. Checking existing and recently published content.
- Automatic content verification by special programs and services that filter out content according to the specified settings.
- Moderation after blocking. Not all users agree with the received ban and apply for unblocking.

Monetization of traffic

What is this? A way to make money from certain content or created product.

What are the main models?

- CPM (Cost per mille) is a model where the advertiser pays for 1k impressions.
- CPC (Cost per click) is a model where the advertiser pays per click.
- CPA (Cost per action) is a model where the advertiser pays for the completed target action: application, purchase, subscription, etc.

N

Nutra

What is this? A vertical in affiliate marketing that includes beauty and health products (these products are not drugs).

What are the subverticals?

Nutra includes various categories of products, the main of which are:

- Weight loss
- Anti-aging cosmetics
- Varicose
- Diabetes
- Prostatitis
- Parasites
- Joints
Learn more about subverticals here.

News showcase

What is this? The site, which is a complete copy of the news feed, imitates it according to relevant features, includes several offers at once that are similar in niche or direction. Each article, headline or entry there is supported by a link to the pre-landing or landing of the product.

What is it needed for? After the user leaves the lander, he gets to the news showcase. Therefore, this is an additional chance to show your ad to the user, increase the conversion due to a larger number of offers to choose from and implement demonetization.

O

Offer

What is this? The service, offer or product of the advertiser, for the promotion of which the webmaster receives a reward.

The main parameters of the offer:

- The product itself, its niche and its packaging
- Vertical and subvertical
- Billing payment model (for Nutra offers - COD, SS, Trial - more details in our article: Trial, SS or COD: what is better to drive on?)
- Lander and pre-lander
- Suitable traffic sources
- Bid
- Approval percentage
- Offer rank
- Available cap
- GEOs where you can promote the offer
- Call-center working hours

What are the offers?

White, gray and black. Details about the types of offers and how best to choose one for work were described in the video: What is Affiliate Marketing?

Offer page

What is this? The landing page with the offer that the user lands on after clicking on the ad. As a rule, the offer page is a sale page, which includes a direct promotion to purchase the product and an action button. 

P

Postback

What is this? A mechanism for transferring data between the Affiliate Network and the tracker, namely, transferring information about any targeted actions from one platform to another.

How does this happen?

- Affiliate Program server - Advertising Network server
- Server Affiliate Network - tracker
- Affiliate Network server – tracker – Advertising Network server

Why is it needed? The webmaster can collect all the necessary information about their advertising campaigns in one place. After that, on the basis of the data obtained, draw up detailed reports and carry out better optimization of work.

Read more about services and setting up postback in our video: How to set up postback in an affiliate network and in a tracker using Keitaro and dr.cash as an example.

Pre-lander

What is this? A separate page or site that the user gets to after clicking on an ad and before going to the lander. The pre-lander contains all the necessary additional information about the advertised product (how it solved the problem with an unobtrusive reference to the product itself). If the user is interested, then further he goes to the lander, where direct sales are carried out with an order form.

What functions does it perform?

- Warming up traffic by providing a large amount of useful information
- Increase in conversion.
- Removal of non-target users.
- Passage of moderation
We tell you how to work with pre-landers in our video: Pre-lander for Affiliate Marketing.

Profit

What is this? Earned income from running advertising campaigns.

How is it calculated? From the money received from the advertiser, the webmaster subtracts all costs for traffic and services.

What formula is used to calculate?

Profit = earnings - costs.

Private offer

What is this? An exclusive offer with favorable conditions for a webmaster. Private offers, as a rule, are not displayed on the offer wall of the Affiliate Network, but are issued to webmasters with good and proven traffic quality or volume on request.

What conditions?

- Low competition
- Favorable rates
- Possible bumps or increased cap
- Exclusive GEOs

R

Reach

What is this? An indicator of the total number of users who reacted to the posted content and took some action, such as watching a video or clicking on a link, in a fixed time period. Each user in this case is unique and is recorded once, regardless of the total number of actions performed by him.

Redirect

What is this? Redirection of the user from one link to another, which occurs automatically and, as a rule, remains invisible to him.

What is it needed for? The webmaster uses URL redirection to take the user to the desired site. The page from which the redirect is configured is the donor. The page to which the traffic is redirected is the acceptor.

ROI (return on investment)

What is this? A financial ratio characterizing the profitability or un profitability of an advertising company. This is the percentage of return on funds spent (how much profit there is for every dollar spent). Typically, ROI is measured as a percentage and is calculated using the following formula: ROI = ( Revenue − Expense ) / Expense × 100%

Advertising company in plus: ROI is more than 100%

Advertising campaign to zero: ROI is 100%

Advertising campaign at a loss: ROI less than 100%

S

Sales Funnel 

What is this? The full cycle of the user's journey from the first touch with an advertisement to the completion of the necessary targeted action.

What is it for?

- It helps to build a better chain of interaction with the user.
- Analysis of the current advertising campaign, changing the elements of the funnel to identify a more workable approach.
- Analyze the level of interest of the audience.
- Work on creating a quality brand and a trusting attitude towards it.
What types of sales funnels exist in affiliate marketing?
There are 2 most popular and stable types of funnel for working with nutra.

- The user sees an advertisement on the Internet (creative), goes to it and gets to the website (lander).
- After clicking on an advertisement (creative), the user gets to the pre-lander (transit), where he sees all the necessary information about the product, interested in which he follows the link to the lander to perform the target action.

Spam

What is this? Mass mailing with aggressive advertising or dangerous links without the user's consent to a specific database (obtained by parsing, hacking and leaking databases, buying them).

Where is it carried out? Basically, spam is sent through email, social networks, instant messengers and SMS, forums, etc.

Conventionally, all spam can be divided into safe (advertising content for the purpose of selling or agitating for certain actions) and unsafe (mailings from scammers, phishing emails).

Smartlink

What is this? A system for distributing traffic in order to show the user the most suitable offers with high conversion. Smartlink, as a rule, is integrated into the Affiliate Network and significantly optimizes the work of the webmaster.

How it works? Smartlink can provide data about target users for this offer, information about which it takes from large databases (which is collected from other webmasters). Therefore, the system automatically determines the required targeting and displays the offer relevant to the user.

Shave

What is this? Hiding from the webmaster the true number of real conversions, approved leads or their retention.

How to define shaving?

- Tracker discrepancy with Affiliate Program
- Sudden decline in approval or leads
- Decrease in indicators on the offer

T

Target

What is this? A system for creating advertisements in order to find the necessary (according to specified criteria) target audience, which will be interested in purchasing this product or service.

Target settings include: location, age, gender, interests, etc.

Targeted advertising allows you to narrow down the campaign criteria, thereby optimizing your time and budget.

Teaser

What is this? One of the types of native advertising, the main feature of which is intriguing content or clickbait headlines.

What does it do? One of the main tasks of teasers is to encourage the user to click on the ad and follow the link to the landing page, this can be done by generating increased interest.

The target audience

What is this? The group of users that the advertising campaign is focused on. People can be grouped according to various criteria (geo, gender, age, interests, etc.). Having identified the optimal target audience, the webmaster forms an advertising campaign based on its needs in order to ensure an increase in targeted actions.

Tracker

What is it for? Using the tracker, the webmaster can see all the necessary information in one interface, which greatly simplifies and speeds up the optimization process. Also, the tracker helps to manage and automatically redistribute traffic, test funnels, cloak, etc.

We talk in detail about working with trackers in our video: Trackers for Affiliate Marketing.

Traffic Back

What is it? A traffic monetization tool.

How does it work? With the help of trafficback, a webmaster can redirect or return uninterested users to a landing page with another offer, thereby trying to sell the product again and leveling the drawdown of the spent budget.

Trash

What is this? Invalid applications (leads that were not confirmed for various reasons).

What kind of trash happens:

- Technical - incorrectly entered data in the application form
- Non - technical - the client did not confirm the order and the operator marked the refusal on the application, the buyer did not reach the legal age for purchasing the goods, did not pick up the phone, etc.
In all cases, if the application for the purchase of goods is not confirmed, the lead is marked as “trash”.

Traffic Exchange

What is it? System that provides the purchase and sale of a certain type of traffic. On such a site, the user independently chooses the traffic that is suitable for him at a set price.
Then he can sell this traffic, monetizing his site and increasing the amount of income.

Traffic Tools

What is this? tools that the webmaster uses to prepare for the launch of an advertising campaign.

What are the main ones?

- Antidetect Browser
- Proxy server
- Tracker
- Accounts

Traffic source 

What is this? A specific channel through which users get to the desired website or application. This includes all resources where there are users and they can go to the site using the links posted.

What are there? Paid, free, shareware.

V

Vertical

What is this? Direction in affiliate marketing, which includes a group of products of the same niche or topic.

What are there? Nutra, information products, e-Commerce, HR, dating, crypto, finance, gambling, betting, sweepstakes, etc.

For example, Nutra (Health and beauty) is a vertical of beauty and health products, which includes more than 55 categories (anti-aging cosmetics, weight loss, prostatitis, varicose, parasites, etc.).

Conventionally, verticals can be divided into several categories: white, gray and black.

Read more about verticals in arbitrage in our video: What is Affiliate Marketing?

W

White page 

What is this? White page with created advertising campaign.

What is it for? White is used to successfully pass moderation when launching an advertising campaign that may not comply with the placement rules on this site.

What happens next? After passing the moderation, the white is replaced by the necessary landing or pre-landing.