K

Keyword; a relevant word or phrase that has been defined by the website developer to describe the essential content of a given web page; is used by search engines to locate and categorize webpages that match a given search query.

Key performance indicator (or KPI); metric used to evaluate a certain – quantitative or qualitative, financial, etc – factor which is vital to the success of a given business or strategy.

L

Landing page (or lead capture page); a single webpage displayed as a first touch-point when a potential customer has been approached with a marketing campaign as a result of a search result or an online advertisement. The landing page is used to display additional engaging marketing copy in order to generate a desired action (conversion).

Last click; attribution model that gives the conversion credit for the last touch point – affiliate or marketing channel – connected to a given customer. At a certain point on the customer’s computer can exist more different, unexpired cookies for the very same merchant; the commission will be paid to the affiliate responsible for placing the last cookie.

Lead; a person who is supposed to be interested in purchasing the products or services offered by a given merchant; in affiliate marketing is also used to describe a certain qualified action (e. g. subscription).

Link farm; a directory website set up specifically for the purpose of creating outbound links to other websites in order to improve their rankings; nowadays link farming is generally viewed negatively.

Locking period; a predefined amount of time that can be used by the merchant to reverse or adjust a given transaction due to a certain customer or affiliate behavior (e. g. canceled order or fraudulent transaction).

M

Manual approval; the joining application of a new affiliate is reviewed and approved or denied manually by the affiliate manager; the opposite is the instant approval upon joining.

Master affiliate network; these networks will give you a short piece of Javascript code that must be embedded in the source code of your website in order to generate affiliate links pointing to different merchants or products; obviously, they will get their share, usually somewhere between 20% and 25%.

N

Newsletter; a regularly developed publication, report or informational material distributed via electronic mail.

Niche; a specific topic category or segment; if you are promoting diabetic products, you are in the health niche.

O

Opt-in rate; the percentage of new subscribers acquired after running a promotional campaign; if your offer has been presented to 100 people and you got 4 new subscribers, your opt-in rate is 4%.

P

Payment threshold; the minimum amount that must be reached by an affiliate in total commissions in order to request a withdrawal or to receive a payment; in most cases is defined by the merchant.

Pay per call (or PPCall); retribution model where the affiliate is credited only when qualified phone calls are received by the merchant.

Pay per click (or PPC); retribution model (or advertising option) where the affiliate is credited every single time when his affiliate link has been clicked by someone.

Pay per lead (or PPL); retribution model where the affiliate is rewarded for generating a so-called “commissionable lead” using methods clearly defined by the merchant.

Pay per sale (or PPS); retribution model where the affiliate is paid exclusively for the generated sales.

Pay per view (or PPV); retribution model where the affiliate is credited for every view, visitor delivered to the merchant’s website.

Point of difference (or POD); the unique angle – product, service, advantage, approach, etc – that will make your website to stand out from the crowd.