The affiliate glossary ↗AFFDude / Field notes
Affiliate marketing
In plain English
What does Affiliate marketing mean?
Performance marketing where a publisher earns a commission for each sale, lead or action they send to an advertiser through a tracked link.
Affiliate marketing is a pay-for-results arrangement: the advertiser only pays when a tracked visitor completes the agreed action (a sale, a lead, an install). The affiliate supplies the traffic, the advertiser supplies the offer and the payout, and a network or tracking platform sits in between to attribute conversions.
The three models you will meet everywhere are CPA (pay per action), CPL (pay per lead) and revenue share. Most of this site is about choosing the offers, traffic sources and tools that make that equation profitable.