Glossary
The affiliate words nobody explains clearly.
Every acronym, tracking term, and funnel-page name an affiliate needs to know — defined in plain English with real examples. No gatekeeping, no marketing fluff.
Commissions & Metrics
How affiliates get paid and measure performance
Metric
EPC — Earnings Per Click
The average revenue you earn per click sent to an offer. The single most important number for comparing offers.
Commission Model
CPA — Cost Per Action
A flat payout for a specific completed action — a sale, signup, install, or form submission. The dominant model in lead gen.
Commission Model
CPL — Cost Per Lead
A payout triggered by a qualified lead — typically an email submission, quiz completion, or form fill.
Commission Model
RevShare — Revenue Share
A percentage of revenue a customer generates, often recurring. The model behind most SaaS and subscription affiliate programs.
Metric
ROAS — Return on Ad Spend
Revenue divided by ad spend. The single number paid affiliates use to decide whether a campaign is paying for itself.
Metric
Conversion Rate
Conversions divided by visits, expressed as a percentage. The lever that turns the same traffic into 2× or 5× the revenue.
Metric
CTR — Click-Through Rate
Clicks divided by impressions. The gatekeeper metric that decides whether the algorithm keeps showing your ads, posts, or listings.
Metric
AOV — Average Order Value
Total revenue divided by orders. The underrated lever that decides how much an affiliate can pay for traffic and still profit.
Metric
LTV — Customer Lifetime Value
Total revenue a customer generates over their relationship with a business. Underwrites every RevShare commission you'll ever earn.
Tracking & Attribution
How conversions get credited to the right affiliate
Tracking
Affiliate Link
A unique tracked URL that tells the advertiser which affiliate sent the visitor. The building block of every affiliate program.
Tracking
Postback URL
A server-to-server callback that fires the moment a conversion happens — more reliable than pixel-based tracking.
Tracking
S2S Tracking — Server-to-Server
Cookieless tracking that bypasses browser privacy restrictions. The standard in paid media and post-iOS 14 attribution.
Attribution
Cookie Window
The window of time an affiliate will still get credit after a click. The difference between Amazon's 24 hours and SaaS programs' 90+ days.
Tracking
UTM Parameters
Query-string tags appended to URLs that tell analytics tools where a click came from. The cheapest, most universal campaign-tracking method.
Tracking
Deep Link
An affiliate URL that lands the user on a specific product page rather than the homepage. Converts 30–80% better on product-specific content.
Tracking
Affiliate Cloaking
Hiding the raw affiliate URL behind a branded redirect on your own domain. Cleaner clicks, link-rot protection, and one-place destination swaps.
Tracking
Tracking Pixel
A 1x1 invisible image (or JS snippet) that fires on page load to record an event. The legacy mechanism behind Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel, and most ad-platform tracking.
Tracking
First-Party Data
Information you collect directly from your users on your own properties. The replacement for restricted third-party data post-iOS-14 and cookie deprecation.
Tracking
Last-Click Attribution
The default attribution model in affiliate marketing — 100% credit to the final touchpoint. What it gets right, what it systematically misses.
Tracking
View-Through Conversion
Conversions credited to an ad the user saw but didn't click. Reported by most display platforms and famously over-counted — discount accordingly.
Tracking
Click ID
gclid, fbclid, msclkid, ttclid — the persistent identifiers ad platforms append to URLs so they can attribute conversions in the post-cookie world.
Pages & Funnels
The page types that sit between your traffic and your offer
Funnel Page
Bridge Page
The intermediate page between a paid ad and an affiliate offer. Required by most ad networks and essential for compliance.
Funnel Page
Pre-sell Page
A content page that warms cold traffic and builds buying intent before the offer. The difference between a 1% and a 5% conversion rate.
GEO & AI Visibility
Getting cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview
GEO
GEO — Generative Engine Optimization
Structuring content so AI engines cite it. The natural evolution of SEO for an era when answers happen before the SERP.
GEO
AI Overview
Google's AI-generated answer above the search results, with a 3–7 URL citation list. Where most commercial discovery is going.
GEO
LLM Citation
When ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude surfaces your URL as a source. The AI-era equivalent of an organic ranking — and increasingly more valuable.
GEO
EEAT — Experience-Expertise-Authority-Trust
Google's quality framework, now widely used by AI engines too. The trust signals that decide which pages get cited and which don't.
GEO
Search Intent
Informational, navigational, commercial, transactional. Intent match is one of the strongest signals affecting both ranking and AI citation.
GEO
Featured Snippet
The boxed "position zero" answer Google shows above the regular results. Same signals as AI Overview — one structural pass captures both.
Programs & Networks
How affiliate programs are structured and where to sign up
Programs
Affiliate Network
A middleman platform aggregating thousands of merchant programs under one account, dashboard, and consolidated payment.
Programs
In-House Program
An affiliate program run directly by the merchant — no network middleman. Often pays more but harder to manage at scale.
Programs
Sub-Affiliate
An affiliate working under another affiliate's account. SubID tracking, when it makes sense, and why most affiliates should skip it.
Programs
CPA Network
Performance-marketing platforms (MaxBounty, ClickDealer) paying flat $/action for lead-gen, mobile, dating, sweepstakes verticals.
Go deeper
These terms come up constantly in our playbooks.
Once the vocabulary clicks, the strategy does too. Every glossary page links to the playbooks and courses where that term is put to work.