Back to Basics: Affiliate Program Terms
In previous articles, we have taken a look at a wide variety of advanced techniques for improving affiliate program performance and strategies on how to properly promote them and receive profitable results. Over this time, many visitors have come to ClickQuick that are new to the affiliate program concept.
This article, I would like to take a step back to the basics, and define some of the common terms that are used when discussing affiliate programs, and that are often used in my reviews. For advanced users, this may seem a bit redundant, but for those new to affiliate programs, this guide should help you quickly get up to speed on how affiliate programs can make an excellent addition to your web site.
Here are terms used when describing affiliate programs and the most common definitions:
Affiliate: An independent party that promotes the products or services of a merchant in exchange for a commission. Also sometimes termed an associate, partner, reseller, or referral partner.
Merchant: A company that has set up an affiliate program and has agreed to share a commission with affiliates that promote their site, products or services. Also termed an advertiser or simply referred to as an 'affiliate program'.
Commission: An amount of income you receive for referring a sale, lead or click to a merchant's site.
Affiliate Program: Used in a broad sense, an affiliate program is any type of revenue sharing program where an affiliate web site receives a portion of income for delivering sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant web site. In a
narrow sense, affiliate programs are commonly considered those programs that use a pay-per-sale model. Also termed associate, partner, referral, reseller, or sponsor programs.
Pay-per-sale: A program where you receive a commission for each sale of a product or service that you refer to a merchant's web site. Pay-per-sale generally offers the highest commissions and the lowest conversion ratio. Also referred to as Cost-per-Action (CPA for short) and generically as an Affiliate Program.
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