Affiliate & creator marketing glossary
The vocabulary of affiliate and creator marketing, defined in plain English for both creators and brands. Every term leads with a one-sentence definition you can quote, then explains how it works in a real program.
A
Affiliate
→An affiliate is an individual or company that promotes another business's products in exchange for a commission on the sales or actions they generate.
Affiliate Fraud (Click Fraud)
→Affiliate fraud is any attempt to earn commissions illegitimately, such as fake clicks, forced cookies, self-referrals, or fabricated conversions.
Affiliate Marketing
→Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing model in which a business pays external partners a commission for each customer or sale they refer.
AOV (Average Order Value)
→AOV, or average order value, is the average amount spent each time a customer places an order, calculated as total revenue divided by number of orders.
Attribution
→Attribution is the process of determining which affiliate or marketing touchpoint should receive credit — and the commission — for a conversion.
C
Clawback (Chargeback)
→A clawback is the reversal of a previously credited affiliate commission when the underlying sale is refunded, cancelled, or charged back.
Commission
→A commission is the payment an affiliate earns for each qualifying conversion they drive, set as a percentage of the sale or a fixed amount per action.
Conversion
→A conversion is the qualifying action — such as a sale, signup, lead, or subscription — that triggers an affiliate commission.
Conversion Rate
→Conversion rate is the percentage of referred clicks or visitors that complete a qualifying action, calculated as conversions divided by clicks.
Cookie Window
→A cookie window (or cookie duration) is the length of time after a referral click during which a resulting conversion will still be credited to that affiliate.
D
Deal Registration
→Deal registration is a process that lets a partner formally claim a sales opportunity so they receive credit and protection if the deal closes.
Deep Link
→A deep link is an affiliate tracking link that sends the customer to a specific product or page on the merchant's site rather than just the homepage.
L
Last-Click Attribution
→Last-click attribution credits the entire commission to the final affiliate or link the customer clicked before converting.
LTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
→LTV, or customer lifetime value, is the total revenue a business expects to earn from a customer over the entire relationship.
M
Merchant
→A merchant is the business that owns the product and runs an affiliate program, paying partners a commission for the customers they refer.
MRR Commission
→An MRR commission ties an affiliate's earnings to the monthly recurring revenue a referred customer generates, paying a percentage of that MRR over time.
Multi-Tier Affiliate (Sub-Affiliate)
→A multi-tier affiliate program lets affiliates earn a commission not only on their own sales but also on sales made by the sub-affiliates they recruit.
P
Payout Cadence
→Payout cadence is how frequently an affiliate program pays out approved commissions, such as weekly, monthly, or net-30 after a sale clears.
Payout Threshold
→A payout threshold is the minimum balance an affiliate must accumulate before the program will release a payment.
PRM (Partner Relationship Management)
→PRM, or partner relationship management, is the software and process used to recruit, onboard, manage, and grow a company's network of business partners.
Promo Code (Coupon Tracking)
→A promo code is a unique coupon assigned to an affiliate so that purchases using the code are attributed to them, even without a tracked link click.
R
Recurring Commission
→A recurring commission pays the affiliate a share of every renewal payment a referred customer makes, not just the first sale.
Referral
→A referral is a new customer or lead brought to a business by an existing customer or partner, typically tracked so the referrer can be rewarded.
S
S2S / Postback Tracking
→Server-to-server (S2S) postback tracking records conversions by sending an event directly from the merchant's backend to the affiliate platform, without relying on browser cookies.
SaaS Partner Program
→A SaaS partner program is a structured program through which a software company rewards external partners — affiliates, referrers, and resellers — for driving new subscriptions.
Put the playbook to work
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