Affiliate Marketing Glossary: 40 Terms Beginners Actually Need, in Plain English
Nobody tells you this at the start: half the reason beginners feel lost is vocabulary. Someone says “split-test your squeeze page opt-in rate” and you smile, nod and quietly close the tab.
Use this page as your decoder. Skim the group you need.
The basics
- Affiliate: someone who recommends a product and earns a commission on sales they refer.
- Vendor: the person or company that owns the product.
- Affiliate link: a web address with your ID in it, so referrals are tracked to you.
- Commission: your share of a sale.
- Niche: the specific topic and audience you focus on.
- Offer: the thing being promoted.
- Disclosure: a clear statement that you may earn from a link.
- Network: a platform that connects vendors with affiliates and handles tracking and payment.
Pages and funnels
- Funnel: the path a visitor follows from first click to offer.
- Landing page: a page built for one single action.
- Squeeze page: a landing page that only asks for an email address.
- Bridge page: a short page from you that sits between your content and the offer.
- Sales page: the vendor’s page that explains and sells the product.
- Thank-you page: what someone sees right after signing up.
- Call to action (CTA): the one thing you ask the reader to do next.
- Done-for-you (DFY): built in advance so you don’t have to build it.
- Hosted: stored and kept online by someone else, so you don’t pay for web hosting.
- Lead: a person who has given you their contact details.
- Lead magnet: the free gift you give in exchange for an email address.
- Opt-in: the act of choosing to join a list.
- Subscriber: someone on your email list.
- Autoresponder: software that sends emails automatically, such as AWeber or GetResponse.
- Sequence: a set of emails sent in order over several days.
- Broadcast: a one-off email sent to your whole list.
- Open rate: the share of people who opened an email.
- Click rate: the share who clicked a link inside it.
- Unsubscribe: when someone leaves your list.
- Deliverability: how reliably your emails reach the inbox instead of spam.
Offers and earnings
- Front end: the first offer someone sees.
- Upsell: an extra offer shown straight afterwards.
- Back end: everything offered after the first step.
- Upgrade: moving to a higher membership level.
- High ticket: a more expensive product.
- Recurring commission: a commission paid repeatedly while a customer keeps paying.
- Refund: money returned to a buyer, which normally cancels the commission.
Traffic and tracking
- Traffic: people visiting your page.
- Organic traffic: visitors who find you without you paying for the click.
- Solo ad: paying someone to email your link to their list.
- Conversion: a visitor doing the thing you wanted, such as signing up.
- Conversion rate: conversions divided by visitors, shown as a percentage.
Terms you’ll meet inside the ClickBank Profit Club
- Team, Partner, VIP: the three membership levels. Team costs nothing.
- Tagged: linked to you as the person who referred them.
- Platinum vendor: a ClickBank status awarded for high sales. The Club’s founder has reached it nine times.
- Nickname: your ClickBank account ID, used for tracking.
Put the words to work
Read this sentence again: “Send traffic to your squeeze page, offer a lead magnet, and let your autoresponder run the sequence.” A minute ago that was noise. Now it’s a plan.
At first when you hear the tech terms for things, you just nod even though you don’t actually know what they mean, but buy learning little by little these terms become second nature, and you even find yourself using them when explaining things to other people.
Glossary questions people ask
What is the difference between a squeeze page and a landing page?
A landing page is any page built for one action. A squeeze page is a landing page whose only job is to collect an email address.
What does opt-in mean?
Opting in means someone has actively chosen to join your email list, usually by typing their address into a form.
What is an upsell?
An upsell is an extra offer shown to someone straight after they sign up or buy. They can accept it or skip it.
Do I need to learn all these terms before I start?
No. Learn them as you meet them. Bookmark this page and come back when a word trips you up.
Bookmark it, then use it
Save this page. Next time a word stops you, look it up and carry on. And if you want to see most of these terms working together in one place, look inside the Club.
