Affiliate - is a person that is rewarded for bringing sales and leads from traffic via advertisements to a merchant website.  Affiliate Agreement - terms between a merchant and an affiliate that govern the relationship.  Affiliate Directory - is a website that lists affiliate programs, along with information about the program, in a categorized way.  Affiliate Link - a piece of code residing in a graphic image or piece of text placed on an affiliate's web page that notifies the merchant that an affiliate should be credited for the customer or visitor sent to their web site.  Affiliate Manager - the manager of an Affiliate Program who is responsible for creating a newsletter, establishing incentive programs, forecasting and budgeting, overseeing front-end marketing of the program, and monitoring the industry for news and trends.  Affiliate Marketing - a type of revenue sharing program where an affiliate receives a commission for generating a lead or sale for a vendor online.  Associate - synonym for affiliate.  Charge Back - an incomplete sales transaction (i.e. merchandise is purchased and then returned) that results in an affiliate commission deduction.  Click-Through Rate (CTR) - the percentage of people who click on an ad for every 1000 views.  Commission - income an affiliate receives for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant's web site.  Conversion Rate - percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity (sale or lead).  CPA (Cost Per Action) - cost metric for each time a commissionable action takes place.  CPC (Cost Per Click) - cost metric for each click spent on advertising.  CPM (Cost Per Thousand) - cost metric for one thousand banner advertising impressions.  CPO (Cost Per Order) - cost metric for each time an order is transacted.  Hybrid Model - affiliate commission model that combines payment options (i.e. CPC & CPA).  Lifetime Value of a Customer - the amount of sales in dollars that a customer in his lifetime will spend with a particular company.  Merchant/Vendor - an online business that markets and sells goods or services. Merchants establish affiliate programs as a cost effective method to get consumers to purchase a product, register for a service, fill out a form, or visit a Web site.  Pay-Per-Click - program where an affiliate receives receive a commission for each click (visitor) they refer to a merchant's web site. Pay-per-click programs generally offer some of the lowest commissions (from $0.01 to $0.25 per click), and a very high conversion ratio since visitors need only click on a link to earn the affiliate a commission.  Pay-Per-Lead - program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sales lead that they generate for a merchant web site. Examples would include completed surveys, contest or sweepstakes entries, downloaded software demos, or free trials. Pay-per-lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange to high conversion ratios.  Pay-Per-Sale - program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sale of a product or service that they refer to a merchant's web site. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions and the lowest conversion ratio.  Payment threshold - the minimum accumulated commission an affiliate must earn to trigger payment from an affiliate program.  Residual Income (also residual or life time commission) - Programs that pay affiliates not just for the first sale referred by affiliate, but also for all additional sales made at the merchant's site over the life of the customer.  ROAS - stands for 'Return on Advertising Spending'. This is the amount of revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. For instance, a ROAS of $1 means you're generating $1 in sales for every $1 in advertising spend, and a ROAS of $5 means you generate $5 in sales for every $1 in spending.  ROI - stands for 'Return on Investment'. This is what all marketing managers want to see from the money they spend on their marketing and advertising campaigns. The higher the sales, the large the number of shoppers and the greater the profit margin generated by sales ? the better the ROI.  Super Affiliates - those small percentage of sites - the top 1% of affiliates, based on performance and earnings - that generate the lions share of the revenue for your program.  Tier - affiliate marketing model that allows affiliates to sign up additional affiliates below themselves, so that when the second tier affiliates earn a commission, the affiliate above them also receives a commission.  Tracking Method - the way that a program tracks referred sales, leads or clicks. The most common are by using a unique web address (URL) for each affiliate, or by embedding an affiliate ID number into the link that is processed by the merchant's software. Some programs also use cookies for tracking.