What's a Cookie?

No, not chocolate chip.

A cookie is a small data file that certain web sites write to your hard drive when you visit them. A cookie file can contain various types of information, including a user ID that the site uses to track the pages you've visited, and traffic patterns.

Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies; however,  browsers can be manually set to refuse cookies or indicate when a cookie is being sent or you can flush your browser of cookies from time to time.  If cookies are disabled or refused, you may not be able to access all areas of some sites.

What is An Alt Tag? (Or Alt Text?)

Alt Text is HTML that gives some alternative text with images.  It's often overlooked or not used at all, but it's an important and useful tool for improving SEO results. 

* It gives more info on an image or an image's hyperlink
* It can be helpful for folks with disabilities
* It can be helpful for text-only browsers
* It can help people with slow connections navigate a site while images are still rendering

What is a "rebill"?

A "rebill" is.....
a service, or  subscription that is billed on a continuous, ongoing basis.   Rebills are often associated with "free" trials that later bill customers until canceled, (in example: acai berry, colon cleanse, e-cigarettes, teeth whitening, male enhancement, penny auctions.)

Netflix is an example of a "legitimate" company that uses a rebilling system. 

What Does CPM Mean?

• CPM is a phrase used in relation to online advertising and marketing related web traffic.   
• CPM means clicks per thousand impressions. 
• Where does the M come from?  The M in CPM comes from the Roman numeral system.  (M means 1,000!)
• CPM shows an affiliate how much money they are making per thousand impressions.  
• Or, if you own a website, and want to sell an advertisement space on your website, you would typiccaly sell space per thousand impressions. So, if you are charging say $4 CPM and you want to show your ad 10,000 times, then you would charge $40.

What is a CPA offer?

CPA is the abbreviation for "Cost Per Action" meaning, sales are not required to receive compensation as an affiliate marketer.  An "action" could be something as simple as filling out a form with a name, a zip code, an email address.  Or perhaps signing up for a trial.  Once THE ACTION is completed, the affiliate receives commission that could be from a few cents to hundreds of dollars.

Companies can promote their products and services through CPA offers facilitated by CPA networks and executed by CPA affiliates who can direct target traffic to the offers using a number of methods: email marketing, video marketing, cost-per-click, etc....

What is FTP?

FTP is the abbreviation for File Transfer Protocol.

FTP is used to exchange files over the Internet (a TCP-based network).
Meaning,
FTP is used to download files from a server using the Internet
and
upload files (like a webpage) to a server.



The FTP technology works like HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) for transferring webpages from a server to a person's browser

 
and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) for transferring electronic mail across the Internet in that

FTP uses the Internet's TCP/IP protocols to enable data transfer.


TCP/IP is the abbreviation for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.
TCP/IP was created by The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency to interconnect defense department computer networks. The Internet, an international Wide Area Network, uses TCP/IP to connect institutions across the world. 

Words, Lets be Friends.

OMG!  Say wha? Slow down!  Speak English! Doooood.  What does THAT mean?!      #commonlyheardphrasesinmyhead 


When it comes to learning about affiliate marketing & monetizing content, one of my biggest sources of aggravation has been the inundation of new wonky terms.  Like cracking any field, this voyage comes with an entire set of acronyms and industry specific lingo that must be learned as if it's a second language.   There's so much that authors take for granted or consider common knowledge, that for a noob like me, it can be pretty #facepalm provoking.  But, alas, I know it's just a part of the process.

#sigh

Often times, I've found that to make meaning of posts, I had to decode sentence by sentence, literally googling terms and abbreviations one at a time.  It became clear that starting a list of those terms would be a good idea.  That way I could refer back to it later, pop-quiz myself,  and

Don't be confused: It's all the Same Thing

Publisher = Affiliate = Associate = Partner = Reseller = Content Site

Affiliate Marketing Terms

NOTE TO SELF: LEARN THESE, K?

From:  Google Affiliate Network publisher glossary:
Cost-per-action (CPA)
With cost-per-action (CPA) advertising, advertisers only pay when someone makes a purchase or completes an action on their site..

Commission
The payment you get from from advertisers for a qualified transaction. Commission rates, which vary by advertiser, are typically a percentage of sale revenue.

Bounty
A flat fee paid by advertisers to publishers for a qualified action (such as a lead or subscription).

Impression
The number of impressions is the number of times an image ad unit hosted by Google Affiliate Network is displayed. Impressions are not tracked for text ads, or for image ads not served by Google Affiliate Network.

Click
If a user sees an ad on your site and clicks on it to do business with your advertiser, it's recorded in your account as a click. Clicks are counted within a 30-second time period.