You have to know any kind of technical term when you are working in internet marketing business, or making money through internet. These technical terms will usually come up when you are in this business.
Here I want to share my knowledge about those terms; I organize them into glossaries of Affiliation:
Advertiser – this is the first composition series as the fund source of internet advertisement. It could be corporation which sells their products or services, or even website owner.
Affiliate – someone or website as the location to put on advertisement.
Affiliate Marketing – play role as representative to create/produce certain action for other site. Web publisher usually considered to be an affiliate by an advertiser. The promising action is sending visitor to other site, up to order transaction on the advertiser’s site. One of affiliate marketing inventors is Commission Junction where this site confronts advertiser and publisher could interact and do transaction. Mostly, interaction and opportunity that created between advertiser and publisher based on CPA.
Autoresponder – autoresponder is an application which is automatically respond to an email by send available composed counter mail that contain image, text, pdf file, etc. Aweber and GetResponse is the example of the best autoresponder services in these days.
Banner (ad) – banner is graphical advertisement, commonly in size of 468 x 60 pixel. Actually, banner is the early form of web advertising which is still used until now, despite its popularity decreasing down. Other form of this type is text ads and obscure advertisement which proven more effective to raise CTR (Click through Rate).
Click Through Rate/Ratio (CTR) – calculation number that is defined as the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions for the page of ads that appears when a link unit is clicked. It shows as percentage and it used to create “click through” (bring in visitors to click advertiser link). In other words, when it needs 20 ads impressions to create one click-through, then the CTR is 5%.
Conversion – this term is used to shows number of web visitors that do an action suits to CPA requirements.
Conversion Rate – calculation number that is defined as the number of conversions divided by the number of impressions, it shows in percentage.
Cookie – small application which is given by publisher’s website to visitor’s computer to monitor visitor’s action as the core notation and calculation in internet advertisement process.
Cost Per Action (CPA) – costs have to be paid by advertiser when a certain action, which compromised before, is complete by the user. It depends on the action form was compromised, Publisher has the big portion of risks compared to advertiser (advertiser will only pays a certain action).
Cost Per Click (CPC) – advertisers will pay each time a user clicks on his/her ads. This kind of ads gives risks to the publisher, because publishers will only be paid when visitors click the ads. One publisher could produces million of impressions without receive anything if visitors do not click the ads on their site. Several ads program based on CPC are Google Adsense, Bidvertiser, and Adbrite. CPC is meant as the price/cost which appear when visitor click one ads link (banner, text or another ads form) and move to another site through a certain link. An affiliation program pays only few amounts for each click through that send visitor to destination site through one affiliation link.
Cost Per Lead (CPL) – categorized as part of CPA, where an action is fill in a certain form, download something or install trial program. Publisher will be paid when user do kind of action above.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) – M is come from Roman letter for number of 1000. This is the basic form to measure ads on internet; this is price for showing 1000 ads in any form of ads (banner, text or another form). Advertiser buys impressions from publisher and pays based on one thousands impressions. For example, one advertiser buys 1.000.000 ads impressions for the price $10 CPM, it equals to $10.000. CPM is kind of ads type which gives more benefit to publisher side because there is no risk at all; risk is on advertiser side (advertiser will pays irregardless whether visitor do an action or not). Publisher usually uses CPM to compare two-affiliate program.
Cost Per Sale (CPS) – look for CPA definition. Publisher will be paid in form of commission for visitor purchase in advertiser site. It could be in certain nominal or percentage of transaction price.
EPC – EPC is an abbreviation of Earning Per (100) Clicks. Each of affiliate programs has their own definition about EPC. Commission Junction defines EPC as “average per 100 clicks”, while others define as “average earnings per one click”. You have to make sure about it when you decide to join an affiliate program that using EPC. EPC could be calculated by divide received commission with the number of necessary click to produces that commission.
FAQ – is an abbreviation for Frequently Asked Questions. Usually provides by a certain site to anticipate the most common questions along with the answers. FAQ containing information relates to problem-solving and further information.
Hit – this is the most common misunderstanding term in web traffic measurement. One “hit” registered each time web browser send request for information, for example is HTML code that forming a site or graphic on the site. One hit is registered for every element which is on a page. For example, will be registered 31 hits while load one page that containing 30 graphics (HTML + 30 graphic elements = 31 hits). Hit is one measure method that always buzzed to make a certain site looks amazed. (“Our new site got a million hits last month!” – where the webmaster is not publishing that the page has 100 graphics).
Impression – an action to shows ads to website visitor. One website page might have several impressions (when that page has more than one ads unit).
Merchant – company or organization in the payer side in affiliate relationship. Usually, merchant is one e-commerce site that compensate their affiliate because bring in customer to them, but in affiliate program perspective a merchant could be in other site form. For example is company that pay for every visitor that subscribe free newsletter.
Monetization – the number of earning that produced by a certain website or page.
Pageview – the number of page that is viewed by visitor while in a certain website.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – an action to buy keyword from search engine machine like Google or Yahoo!. Advertiser pays a certain price for getting high position in search engine result.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – an action to optimize a certain website for a certain keyword, thus it will be in first page of search engine result.
Traffic Exchange – it could be in form of link exchange in internet, banner exchange, image exchange, etc. The main Principe is you send one visitor to other site and for compensation is you will get visitor from that site.
Web Publisher – commonly known as website, this is the place where visitor comes and see the ads.