The Beginner’s Guide To Common Affiliate Marketing Terms
Are you new to affiliate marketing?
Although taking on a new venture can be difficult to get started, Fiverr’s affiliate marketing program is designed to help you find success and clarity in the field. Even if you don’t understand all of the terms and concepts right away, your experience over time will lead to you being a pro.
In this article, you can explore a list of common affiliate marketing terms, along with phrases and industry acronyms that you might encounter. Feel free to reference this list whenever you need it!
Here’s everything you need to know:
Affiliate Marketing Terminology
Affiliate: a marketer who is paid by a brand in order to promote products or services for that brand.
Affiliate Agreement: the agreement between an advertiser and an affiliate regarding the terms of service that define the relationship. This includes commission, conversions and payout terms. Affiliates should read the agreement carefully to understand what goal metrics they are aiming to accomplish such as sales, clicks, or other metrics.
Affiliate Links: links that act as unique identifiers with a special code to help track affiliate activity and user conversions.
An affiliate uses affiliate links in every promotional effort for a brand from blog posts promoting the brand’s products or services, to banner ads on the affiliate’s site, or social messaging on social media.
Affiliate Marketing: an advertising model where brands pay affiliates a commission based upon certain desired outcomes of goals. For example, a brand might pay an affiliate a percentage for every referral they make towards a purchase.
Affiliate Network: an affiliate network consists of multiple brands that offer compatible or complementary products that can be promoted in order to earn money.
Affiliate Program: when a single brand offers affiliates to earn a commission in exchange for promoting their products. For example, Fiverr Affiliates is an Affiliate program, because affiliates can only promote Fiverr’s products.
Affiliate Tracking: this refers to the tracking and measurement that affiliate links provide, allowing marketers to track and monitor the number of sales, clicks, or leads they generate and determine the appropriate payouts. For example, in Fiverr Affiliates, you can track your affiliate performance by using the reports such as Media Report and Registration Report.
Banner ads: graphic advertisements used to attract visitors to a merchant’s website.
Click ID: After a visitor clicks an affiliate link, a unique number or Click ID is generated. It is used as an identification method to keep track of potential customers that have come from affiliate properties.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): the percentage of website visitors who see and click on your ad or affiliate link.
Commission: the money you are paid after a sale, a lead, or the desired action. These terms are typically pre-set in an affiliate agreement.
Contextual Links: a clickable text that is located within the webpage or a blog post. These editorial links can improve your SEO, increase traffic and boost site rankings.
Conversion: a high-value action for a brand. This could be the act of converting a visitor into a paying customer, but also there are lighter conversions such as eBook downloads, or lead form fills.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of people who have clicked on your affiliate link, and have also completed the desired action or conversion.
Cookies: data that tracks a user’s activity, and session information. This allows affiliate programs to track users back to an affiliate’s efforts. In Fiverr’s case, the affiliate link includes a 12-month tracking cookie. This means that if a user clicks on your affiliate link, then you will be credited with the referral, as long as the user registered to Fiverr within 12 months.
Cost Per Action (CPA): In affiliate marketing, CPA means cost per action. The CPA is the commission the brand is paying for a specific action.
Cost Per Click (CPC): In affiliate marketing, CPC means cost per click. The CPC is the commission the brand pays for each click on your ad or affiliate link.
Cost Per Lead (CPL): In affiliate marketing, CPL is the cost per lead. The CPL is the commission the brand pays for every lead that you generate.
Cost per 1000 Impressions (CPM): In affiliate marketing, CPM is the commission the brand pays for 1000 impressions on your affiliate link or ad.
Cost per Sale (CPS): In affiliate marketing, CPS means cost per sale. The CPS is the amount of commission a brand pays for every sale.
Cost per View (CPV): In affiliate marketing, CPV means cost per view. The CPV is the amount of commission a brand spends to earn one view or impression on your affiliate link or ads.
Deep linking: Affiliates linking to a specific product page or “deep” page. Hence the name, deep linking.
Disclosure: a notice on your website or email that lets visitors know you might be paid or compensated for promoting a product or service.
Hyperlink: often referred to as just “link,” is an element in an HTML document that links to either another portion of the document or to another document altogether.
Impression: the number of times that an advertisement has been shown.
Keyword: a specific word a user types in their browser’s search engine to find information online.
Payment Threshold: the minimum amount of commission that affiliates must earn before they can receive payment from the affiliate program.
Payout: the amount of money the affiliate marketer receives for each conversion.
Postback: a target URL used by an affiliate network platform to track conversions.
Referral: when someone clicks on an affiliate link, they were “referred” by that affiliate. Referrals are a way for marketers to track who is sending traffic, clicks or conversions to specific products or services.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the act of making it easier for search engines to find your website (and thereby your products or services) by increasing visibility in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): a group of results on a search engine based on a search query.
Social Media Marketing: often used by affiliates and other marketers to promote offerings and distribute content to their audiences. It is the use of social media to increase awareness of a brand, product, or service.
Subdomain: a part of the DNS (Domain Name System Hierarchy). The main domain is referred to as the “root domain” while the subdomain is a part of the primary domain. For example, in https://affiliates.fiverr.com/ “fiverr.com” is the root domain, while “affiliates.fiverr.com” is the subdomain.
Tracking Code: an ID attached to the affiliate link that allows you to track the traffic sent to the brand’s products or services.
Traffic: the total visitors to a website or page, typically tracked in a tool such as Google Analytics.
Unique Click / Unique Conversion: the number of times a link is clicked on or leads to conversion by an individual or unique person.
Unique User: an individual visitor who is counted as one user irrespective of the number of times they visit the site.
Universal Resource Locator (URL): a web address; example https://affiliates.fiverr.com/faq/
Viral Marketing: a type of marketing that encourages users to pass on information to others, often with rapid growth and popularity.
Web Host: a service that allows organizations and individuals to host a website or web page on the internet.
Getting Started with Fiverr
It’s an exciting time to get started in affiliate marketing with Fiverr to earn extra cash. Fiverr’s affiliate program is growing and it’s simple to sign up!