The following abbreviations are commonly used in affiliate marketing.
AD – Advertisement, text, banner, flash, video etc.
CJ – Commission Junction (Network)
CPA – Cost per action
CPC – Cost per click
CPL – Cost per lead
CPM – Cost per mil (mil/mille/M = latin/Roman numeral for thousand)
CPS – Cost per sale
CR – Conversion rate
CTR – Click through rate
DRM – Dynamic rich media (type of Ad, technology). It has nothing to do with DRM as in digital rights management
EPC – Earnings per click / earnings per 100 clicks
LS – Linkshare (Network)
NCS – Nationwide Card Services (Network)
OPM – (or APM) – outsourced (affiliate) program management
PFI – Pay for inclusion
PID – Publisher ID (Affiliate/Affiliate site ID) (more…)
Affiliate sites are often categorized by merchants (Advertisers) and Affiliate networks. The main categories are:
Search affiliates that utilize Pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers offers (Search arbitrage)
Comparison shopping sites and directories
Loyalty sites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back or charitable donations (more…)
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. Compensation or commission may be made based on a certain value for each exposure (CPM), visit (Pay per click), registrant or new customer (Pay per lead), sale (usually a percentage, Pay per sale or revenue share), or any combination of them. (more…)
Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners. In practical terms: publisher “A” signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor. If publisher “A” attracts other publishers (”B”, “C”, etc.) to sign up for the same program using her sign-up code all future activities by the joining publishers “B” and “C” will result in additional, lower commission for publisher “A”. (more…)
In the early days of affiliate marketing, there was very little control over what affiliates were doing, which was abused by a large number of affiliates. Affiliates used false advertisements, forced clicks to get tracking cookies set on users’ computers, and adware, which displays ads on computers. Many affiliate programs were poorly managed.
Email Spam
In its early days many internet users held negative opinions of affiliate marketing due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled. As affiliate marketing has matured many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming. (more…)
The rise of blogging, interactive online communities and other new technologies, web sites and services based on the concepts that are now called Web 2.0 have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to get closer to their affiliates and improved communication between each other.
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The following compensation models are relevant for affiliate marketing.
Pay-per-impression (PPI) / Cost-per-thousand (CPM)
Cost-per-mil (mil/mille/M = latin/Roman numeral for thousand) impressions. Publisher gets from Advertiser $x.xx amount of money for every 1000 impressions (page views/displays) of the Ad. The Ad can be text (AdSense), banner image or rich media. (more…)