I know when I started affiliate marketing, or internet marketing if you prefer, I was really confused with all the different acronyms and terms tossed around. I didn’t know what any of them meant, and had to go to dozens of places to find out what each thing meant, as well as how it applied to what I was doing. Having one place to find all these definitions would have helped me immensely when starting out, and so I’ve made a list, and done all the research to get it all in one spot for you all. So lets just get right into the definition list.
Affiliate Marketing – This is when one business pays another to market their product by generating leads, sales, or traffic. The affiliate uses links, ads, banners, graphics to link to the sponsors site, and uses that to get the customers to click the link and go to the sponsors site. They can get paid for clicks, sales, sign-ups, registrations, whatever the sponsor decides. It is usually a pay per performance program, and the more you send to your sponsor’s site the more you’ll earn.
Internet Marketing – See ‘Affiliate Marketing’.
Advertisers – These are companies who pay to have their ad on someone else’s website in order to generate traffic, sometimes businesses network together to combine their advertising and increase both their traffic.
Adwords – Google’s advertising program that pays per each click it receives from your site. It is a very popular form of affiliate advertising. You have to pay Google to use them.
Articles – Written material that pertains to a certain subject, they can be part of websites, an e-book, a web magazine or ‘zine’, and can be used to generate more exposure on search engines.
Associate Program – See ‘Affiliate Marketing’.
Auto Responder – A program that automatically sends an email to someone when they request information from a website, contact customer service, etc.
B2B & B2C – Business to Business or business to Customer. These terms basically describe the flow of goods; from the business to either another business or to the customer directly.
Black Hat – Websites that are not properly setup for search engine optimization. Basically they try to trick and really have no good information.
Blind Links and Blind Traffic – Blind links are links that are hidden to the user, and the traffic is given to the website from these blind links.
Blog – Short for web-log, usually a way to communicate, where a person can share their own personal experiences, and lately are used as a marketing tool as well, lately these have become more and more popular.
Branding – Using a particular brands image to generate traffic, as they are widely known. IE. The iPhone
Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) – The percentage of people who actually click on a banner.
Conversion – percentage of people who actually purchase something after clicking on an advertisement or a link.
Direct Linking – When the link you use to make money goes right to the sponsor’s page without using a landing page.
Direct Marketing – Email, snail-mail (Postal), or phone marketing, usually unsolicited.
E-Book – Electronic book, this is simply a book that can be seen on the computer or other portable devices.
E-Course – Like an e-book, but is an actual training course.
Email Marketing – Marketing to customers using just email.
EPV – Earnings per Visitor – How much your site makes on average based upon the number of visitors to the website.
Exit Traffic – What happens or patterns that take place when people leave a website, usually used to find out why people leave and change the site so that they don’t leave.
Ezine – electronic Magazine, much like an eBook, but in magazine format.
Filter Words – Words that have no or little impact when humans read them. IE: the, or, an
Headline – the start of a business or sales letter, and is the most important part as first impressions really count.
Inbound Link – a link that is on another website, which brings traffic to your website.
Incentive Based Traffic – A method of bringing traffic to a site that gives the people who visit some sort of incentive to be there.
Info-Product – A product that is only information, such as an e-book.
Keyword – Words used to help give a result for a search. These are integrated into websites in order to bring more traffic to that site.
Lead – a tip or insight into a new business opportunity or an individual who might be interested in some website or product.
Link – This is simply something you click on to go to a different page on the internet. You can exchange links with other websites, you can check your links using software to make sure they’re all not broken and you can use more software to find out how popular certain links are.
List – A list of people and their email addresses, usually used for marketing emails, or newsletters.
Mailing List – (See List)
Maslow’s Pyramid – Model created by Abraham Maslow which takes into account five basic categories of human needs. This is used by some businesses in order to create better marketing.
Members’ Site – A site that allows members or non members to access certain things that others might not be able to access.
Merchant Account – This allows people to accept credit card payments or other form of payments from customers.
Niche – A very specific type of business or market very detailed and helps to become successful in a certain overall market.
Opt-In – Allows customers to choose to sign up for emails, or other services online.
Opt-Out – The opposite of Opt-In, allows the customers to get out of an email list etc.
Outbound Link – This link takes the customers away from a certain website.
PPC or Pay Per Click – This is when you get paid each time a customer clicks a certain link.
PPI or Pay Per Impression – The advertiser pays for their banner ad to be posted on your site and pays per view. So every time a customer just views the banner.
PPL – Pay Per Lead – This is when you get paid per lead you send to the sponsor, they might pay per zip code they get or pay per email address etc.
PPP – Pay Per Post – This is rare, but sometimes you can get paid per posts on certain forums.
PPS – Pay Per Sale – This pays the affiliate a portion of a product cost each time someone clicks their link and then purchases said item.
Positioning – Getting your webpage top-ranked on the search engines in order to generate more hits.
Reciprocal Link – Links that go between two sites, so they both benefit from it.
Redirection – When you click a link and it takes you to somewhere other than the website you clicked to go on.
Return Days – How many days it takes you to receive payment from a merchant you’re working with.
RON – ROS – Run of Network or Run of Site, allowing the marketer to place their ads on networks or certain site.
RSS Feed – You have certain reader programs (Google Reader, IE has a reader) that allows you to subscribe to the RSS Feeds of different websites and see the updates those sites make as soon as they make them.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization – Used to ensure that a website ranks at the top of a search engine result. This is a popular marketing technique that uses articles, keywords and other methods to help ensure the website is within the top results and thus more likely to be seen by searchers.
Targeted Marketing – Advertising that is targeted to a person or group of people that would most like to purchase a certain product.
Telescope Test – A test to see which ads are most effective.
Testimonial – Quotes or reviews from those who have used the product in question.
Text Ad – An advertisement that contains only text and no graphical elements, it is simply a link.
Traffic – Used to describe activity on the web.
Spam – Email marketing which is unwanted by the receiver, and not very valuable in nature.
UCE – Unsolicited Commercial Email – Spam!
Unique Visitor – each person has a unique IP address and this can be used to track how many people actually visit the site.
Viral Marketing – Form of marketing that tries to get into as many different avenues as possible. IE: Videos, Cell phone transmissions, Forum postings etc.
Please comment and let me know if i forgot to put anything on here.
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