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Index / MAP of this site SITE-MAP

AFFILIATE / ASSOCIATE / PARTNER MERCHANT PROGRAM ACRONYMS:

Great "MONEY MAKING" affiliates you can join

Affiliate The owner of
   the site(s) that chooses to display a merchant's
   products and/or services. Affiliates agree to place
   merchant promotions on their Web site(s) in the form of
   graphic or text links for the purpose of selling a
   merchant's goods and/or services. In return, the
   affiliate(s) can earn commissions, which vary by
   merchant, on click throughs, leads, or purchases made
   through the links on their site(s).
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Affiliate Broker Gives
   up part of his/her commissions to sub affiliates who help via
   sites and web presence to sell a product or service that the
   Broker is affiliated with. The broker usually has very good
   site content that the sub affiliates can use by sending
   visitors there without loosing their percentage of profit.
   This is ideal for beginners, since they need to do very
   little work and expend little effort to make a sizable
   income every month.
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Two Tier Affiliate Program
   A two tier affiliate program is one that allows
   affiliates to earn commissions on two distinct
   levels. In a two tier affiliate program, affiliates
   earn commissions on their own direct referral sales
   as well on the sales or conversions by affiliates
   they refer to the same two tier program.
 
   Two tier affiliate programs are desirable because
   they allow you to earn a maximum amount of revenue
   for your marketing efforts as well as the efforts
   of those you refer to the program.
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Affiliate Marketing A
   system of selling products or services in context over
   the Internet that allows online merchants to promote
   their goods or services within the content of tens of
   thousands of Web sites. Affiliate marketing allows
   merchant s to pay their affiliates based on performance.
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Affiliate Sales Channel
   The relationship created when merchants and affiliates
   enter into a joint agreement that allows the individual
   sites to display the merchant's products or services in
   exchange for a performance-based commission.
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Affiliate Site Internet
   location where affiliates place links to a merchant's Web
   site. An affiliate can have one or more sites.
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Super Affiliate
    A super affiliate is a reseller capable of generating a 
    significant percentage of an affiliate program's total 
    sales production.
 
    To learn all the techniques and secrets of becoming a 
     super affiliate, you might want to check out the
     Associate Handbook by master marketer Marlon Sanders
     and Declan Dunn’s affiliate marketing bestseller,
     Winning the Affiliate Game.
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Affiliate Manager
     An individual or organization that owns and or manages
     an affiliate program. Sometimes used interchangeably with 
     affiliate merchant. Affiliate manager is also a term 
     sometimes used to describe software applications that 
     manage the administrative functions of affiliate 
     programs, such as commission payouts, charge backs etc.  
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Affiliate Merchant
     Sometimes used interchangeably with affiliate manager. An 
     affiliate merchant is the owner and product or service 
     fulfillment organization in an affiliate program.     
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Auto-Merchandiser Link
   A targeted, dynamic link type that allows merchants to
   display specific products or services on the affiliate
   site. Targeted offers are provided to visitors to the
   affiliate site based on their operating systems, browser
   types, and by the site categories the affiliate has
   chosen. The affiliate chooses the size of the
   Auto-Merchandiser link. The availablity of the
   Auto-Merchandiser links vary by merchant.
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Business Opportunities
    Also referred to as bizopps, bizops and sometimes
    referred to as income opportunities.
    A business opportunity can legally be defined as the
    sale or lease of any products, equipment, supplies,
    or services that are sold to the purchaser for the
    purpose of enabling the purchaser to start a business,
    for which the purchaser is required to pay the seller
    a fee.
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Click Through Occurs
   when a site visitor clicks on an affiliate link and is
   taken to the associated e-commerce site. A purchase may
   or may not follow.
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Commission The
   compensation an affiliate receives from a merchant.
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Cookies Very small files
   that store information about a visitor. A Web site stores
   cookies on the visitor's browser so that the Web site can
   remember something about the visitor at a later time. A
   cookie cannot include any information that the visitor
   does not provide. Cookies cannot access or read the files
   on the visitor's hard drive, or be used as viruses. They
   reduce the amount of work that a visitor would ordinarily
   have to perform, such as repeatedly entering information
   into fields.
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Cost per Click (CPC) A
   billing mechanism that pays an affiliate a set amount of
   money every time a visitor clicks through a link on the
   affiliate's site and is brought to the merchant's site.
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Cost per Lead (CPL) A
   billing mechanism that pays an affiliate a flat rate for
   every lead generated from a link on the affiliate's site,
   for example, a set amount for every completed loan
   application that originated from the affiliate link.
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Cost per Sale (CPS) A
   billing mechanism that pays an affiliate a percentage of
   the sale for every completed sales transaction.
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E-commerce Electronic
   exchange of value between a business and its partners,
   suppliers, and customers.
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E-commerce Site A
   merchant's site where merchandise or services are sold.
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FastApp An application
   form that anyone can use to apply to affiliate programs
   for merchants using Be Free. With the FastApp, applicants
   can join multiple programs with a single click of a
   button. SEE: commissionjunction
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FlexTrack A feature
   that allows affiliates to define a parameter that they
   can add to the click through URL of their affiliate
   links. This parameter gives additional tracking
   capabilities to master affiliates, charity programs, and
   loyalty programs. Availability of the FlexTrack feature
   varies by merchant.
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Form Search Link A
   link type that provides a search box for affiliates to
   place on their sites. The visitor enters key words
   into the search box. This link type is only available
   from merchants that have a search engine on their
   e-commerce sites.
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Gene rated Tag The HTML
   code that affiliates use to create the link to a
   merchant's site. Merchants create these tags and offer
   them through their Reporting.net pages. When affiliates
   generate these tags and paste the code into their sites,
   they create links to the merchant's site. Tag types
   include Auto-Merchandiser link, page link, text search
   link, form search link, and storefront link.
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Impression Occurs every
   time an affiliate link appears in a visitor's browser. It
   represents an opportunity to buy an online merchant's
   products or services. Analyzing the number of impressions
   served allows affiliates and merchants to assess how
   effectively products or services are selling.
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Merchant An online
   retailer or service provider that partners with
   affiliates, forming a strategic online sales
   relationship.
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Net Shipped Sales
   Shipped sales less any returned sales. This value is used
   to calculate affiliate compensation. For example,if a
   report indicates $100 of shipped sales and $40 if
   returned sales, the net shipped sales equal $60.
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1x1 Pixel A tiny, clear
   graphic that is placed with each affiliate link as a
   means of tracking link performance. The 1x1 pixel tracks
   impressions.
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Order A visitor's
   request to an e-commerce page to purchase an item or
   service. This information may or may not result in a
   shipment (see Returns).
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Page Link A link type
   that allows affiliates to place a link on their sites
   that leads to a page on a merchant's site. For instance,
   a merchant could offer a page link to its home page, a
   "what's new" section, or a "project of the week" page.
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Page Views The estimated
   number of visited pages within a Web site. For example,
   if a Web site contains 10 pages and an estimated 100
   unique visitors per month, the site receives
   approximately 1000 monthly page views (10X100=1000).
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Reporting.net
   (www.reporting.net) A password-protected site
   from which affiliates run their affiliate programs.
   Reporting.net has a gene ral content area and a
   merchant-branded area. The general content area gives
   affiliates the ability to change their account
   information and apply to new merchants. In the
   merchant-branded area, which merchants can customize,
   affiliates can access online reporting and HTML tag
   generation.
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Returned Sales The
   dollar amount of merchandise that is returned after being
   purchased through an affiliate link.
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Returns The number of
   merchandise items returned after being purchased through
   an affiliate link.
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Section Link A link type
   that leads visitors to a specific division or area of a
   merchant's site (e.g., a page with holiday products).
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Shipments The number of
   merchandise shipments made through an affiliate link.
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Shipped Sales The total
   dollar amount of shipped merchandise made through an
   affiliate link.
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Site An Internet
   location. See Affiliate Site and E-commerce Site for more
   information.
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Site ID A unique number
   identifying the site from which the click originated.
   Each affiliate site is assigned a unique Site Id.
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Site Revenue Affiliate
   earnings or commission made from purchases that
   originated from an affiliate link.
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Storefront Link A link
   type that provides a variety of different links in one
   space or on a full page. These links may have a theme,
   such as a holiday storefront with several links to
   different sections or products on a merchant's site.
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Tag Generator Located on
   Reporting.net, the Tag Generator creates HTML tags. These
   tags create links to selected areas of a merchant's site.
   They register impressions, click throughs, and sales.
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Text Search Links A link
   type in which affiliates choose the criteria for the
   search before they generate the tag. This link type is
   only available from merchants that support searching on
   their e-commerce sites.
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Transaction Any process
   between a visitor and a merchant that involves a purchase
   request. A transaction can be an order, cancellation,
   shipment, or return.
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Transaction Date The
   day a purchase was made that originated from an
   affiliate link.
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Unique Visitors The
   individual visitors that visit a site. A unique visitor
   may visit a site serveral times a week; however,
   because it is the same person, it can only count as one
   unique visitor.
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URL Uniform Resource
   Locator. The Web address for a specific site, section
   link, or page.
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WYSIWYG Editors
   What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get Web-editing programs are
   programs that are used to create Web sites. These
   programs will sometimes alter the generated link code
   after it is pasted into a page. Altering a generated link
   can cause tracking problems, which prevent affiliates
   from receiving proper credit for traffic and sales
   originating from their sites.
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CREDIT CARD SPECIFIC ACRONYMS:

Tools for Tracking your website visitors,
transactions and affiliate accounts

   
Account Number
A unique sequence
    of numbers assigned to a cardholder account that identifies 
   the issuer and type of financial transaction card.

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Acquirer
Electronic Merchant 
   Systems or another financial institution, which receives 
   electronic financial data from a Merchant relating to a 
   transaction and initiates that data into an interchange 
   system.

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Authorization
This is a process 
   that assesses transaction risk, confirms that a given 
   transaction does not raise the account holder's debt above 
   the account's credit limit and reserves the specified amount 
   of credit.

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Average Ticket
A predetermined 
   dollar amount that the merchant can process on a per-sale 
   basis.

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AVS (Address Verification 
   Service)
A service provided by Visa that checks to 
   match the street number and zip code of the cardholder's 
   address. It provides a level of fraud protection that helps 
   to prevent fraud and charge-backs.

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Batch
A collection of 
   transactions that are processed as a group. You can batch 
   orders for authorization or for capture. Your processing 
   requests may in turn be batched for settlement by 
   banks.

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Capture
A transaction sent after 
   the merchant has shipped the goods. This transaction will 
   trigger the movement of funds from the Issuer to the 
   Acquirer and then to the merchant's account.

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Cardholder
Customer associated 
   with the primary account number requesting the transaction 
   from the card acceptor.

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Credit
A claim for funds by the 
   cardholder for the credit of his account. At the same time 
   it provides details of funds acknowledged as payable by the 
   acquirer (and/or the card acceptor) to the card 
   issuer.

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Chargeback
A chargeback is when a 
   customer calls their credit card company disputing a charge 
   because the products/services were not received. If the 
   merchant cannot prove otherwise, then the charge is refunded 
   to the customer at the merchant's expense.

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Discount Rate
The fee a merchant 
   pays its acquiring bank/merchant bank for the privilege to 
   deposit the value of each day's credit purchases. The fee is 
   usually a small percentage of the purchase value.

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Factoring
This term refers to the 
   practice of allowing more than one merchant to process 
   transactions through a single merchant account. Factoring is 
   not permitted under Visa, MasterCard and American Express 
   regulations.

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Interchange
The exchange of 
   information, transaction data and money among banks. 
   Interchange systems are managed by Visa and MasterCard 
   associations and are very standardized so banks and 
   merchants worldwide can use them.

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Interchange Fee
A fee paid by the 
   acquiring bank/merchant bank to the issuing bank. The fee 
   compensates the issuer for the time after settlement with 
   the acquiring bank/merchant bank and before it recoups the 
   settlement value from the cardholder.

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Internet Payment Gateway
A 
   payment gateway is a service that gives merchants the 
   ability to perform real-time credit card authorizations from 
   a web site over the Internet.

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Issuer
A financial institution 
   that issues the identification payment card (e.g. Visa® 
   Card) to the cardholder identified by the primary account 
   number.

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Merchant
An Electronic Merchant 
   Systems approved seller of goods, services, and or other 
   information who accepts payment for these items 
   electronically. The merchant may also provide electronic 
   selling services and/or electronic delivery of items for 
   sale.

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Monthly Minimum
Charge levied by 
   the merchant bank instead of the monthly credit card volume 
   multiplied by the discount rate if the merchant's monthly 
   credit card volume multiplied by the discount rate is less 
   than the monthly minimum.

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Monthly Volume
A predetermined 
   dollar amount that the merchant can process.

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Retrieval Request
A request from 
   a cardholder's bank for information about a charge, which is 
   being disputed. Retrieval requests usually precede a 
   chargeback.

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Reversal
A transaction from the 
   acquirer to the card issuer informing the card issuer that 
   the previously initiated transaction cannot be processed as 
   instructed, i.e., is undeliverable, unprocessed or cancelled 
   by the receiver.

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Real-time
The term "real-time" 
   means to incur immediately. For credit card processing, this 
   means that the validity of a customer's credit card, as well 
   as their available credit limit can be checked immediately 
   before processing is accepted. This is extremely important 
   for card-present and Internet transactions, in which it is 
   difficult and costly to get back in touch with the 
   customer

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Secured Sockets Layer (SSL)
SSL 
   is used to encrypt and protect data usually on an order from 
   an online merchants web site. Since the intended client 
   machine can be identified, only that machine is able to 
   decrypt the transmission. 

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Settlement
As the sales 
   transaction value moves from the merchant to the acquiring 
   bank, to the issuer, each party buys and sells the sales 
   ticket. Settlement is what occurs when the acquiring bank 
   and the issuer exchange data or funds during that 
   function.

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Shopping Cart 
On an e-commerce 
   enabled web site, a method of collecting the items chosen by 
   a consumer for purchase from an on-line catalog. 

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Statement Fee
Charge levied by 
   the merchant bank for monthly reports detailing activity on 
   a merchant account.

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Ticket
Another name for the sales 
   slip or its monetary value that results when a credit card purchase is made.

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Transaction
There are several 
   types of transactions but the most common transaction is the 
   process that takes place when a cardholder makes a purchase 
   with a credit card.
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Transaction Fee
A per transaction 
   fee that is charged by the bank for processing transactions.

   Back to Top


  


| More on Affiliates |

An affiliate program is a simple agreement between two parties where 
an “affiliate” earns commissions for referring customers or leads to
 a “merchant” website.  You are the affiliate.  All you need to do to 
start earning money is to join a few affiliate programs and post 
product links on their websites.  You’ll learn how to build a little
 traffic…then wait for the commission checks to start rolling in!  
You’ll be able to check daily reports to track your referrals and 
commissions owed to you.  You’ll be a website owner!

Website owners are joining affiliate programs on mass for obvious 
reasons – there is no charge to become an affiliate; there is no 
inventory to buy; and there is no maintenance required.  Once set 
up, everything continues to generate income for you.  And you don’t 
need to pay rent for an office; you don’t need to hire employees; 
and you don’t need to maintain inventory.

| Summing up the meaning of affiliate |

An affiliate is someone quite literally ‘affiliated’ to a large 
company without being on their payroll directly. You would be 
self-employed and starting your own business, but without all 
the hassle associated with old-style work for yourself schemes. 
No stock to buy. No offices or warehouses to take out an expensive 
lease on, and then maintain. No people to hire that might prove to 
be unreliable when you’re not around. In fact, virtually no start-up 
costs at all!


| More on Super Affiliate |

A super affiliate usually has many sites > 50 and is affiliated via
links etc. through optimized web pages to multiple large companies
and their products or services.



Glossary of Spamming Techniques:
Weather you're am affiliate / associate or a merchant your desire to
improve site visits by w3 surfers may drive you to employ a SEO
( search engine optimizing ) specialist or to resort to one or a few
of the following methods to attempt to improve your search engine
rankings.


Link Farming (1) Swapping, exchanging or selling reciprocal links in 
order to boost the number of sites linking to a particular site in 
order to increase SERPs visibility. 
LinksManager manages reciprocal links, and helps increase website 
traffic through linking with other like-minded quality sites -> 
more info


Junk Forums (2) Discussion forums
developed specifically to promote discussion or interest in certain 
topics in the hope of seeding pages with keywords and phrases which 
will be spidered by search engines.


Domain Duplication (3) The development of (almost) identical websites
with different domain names, often modified to suite regional
specificity or targeted keyphrases. 
Empire Building (4) The process of building interlinked 
websites and/or web logs (blogs) in order to mutually enhance each 
site's SERPs. 


Linked Blogs (5) Similar to Empire Building (4, above)
but usually more refined to promote a group of similar thinking 
individuals. Can be used to influence site ranking with the 
introduction of specific domain (site) references. 


Wikis (6) Much like Linked Blogs (5, above) except far more crude
in operation and unlikely to be afforded authority status like 
'professional' blogs. 


JavaScript Link Manipulation (7) A technique used to redirect web
visitors to specific pages, often forcibly through mouse-over 
triggers, and difficult to detect automatically. 


Dynamically Spawned Pages (8) Pages produced by server-side
code like ASP or PHP served in response to specific, highly 
targeted keywords, dynamically generated from template text, 
often served to web crawlers. 


Doorway Pages (9) Keyword rich pages specifically optimised
to perform well in the SERPs which add nothing to overall 
site content and whose links invariably point to the index 
or other targeted website page. 


ODP-Driven Databases (10) Categorised data dumped from the
freely available ODP RTF (Rich Text Format) to supply 
keyphrase-rich doorway pages supporting a core site. 


Generated Pages (11) As ODP-Driven Databases (10, above)
but machine generated from similar database content. 


Hidden Links (12) Used to increase PR (PageRank) and
SERPs visibility of a site or page by providing link 
content for crawlers generally to doorway pages and 
concealed from web visitors. 


Keyword Stuffed Anchor Text (13) Links to other pages
comprising targeted keyphrases, often irrelevant to 
surrounding text. 


Cloaked Redirects (14) Serving one set of pages to
spiders, another to users.

Met-Art POD