Affiliate Marketing is a concept with it's own terms. To get started, you'll have to know what the middlemen and affiliate program pitches mean when they use them, otherwise it will strike you as a bunch of gibberish. For those of you with some experience already in this matter, these terms are for the beginners.

Ad Copy: A written sales pitch, also known simply as 'copy'. Most follow the AIDA form (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and examples can be seen on any site that's selling something.

Affiliate Link: This is how the company knows who to pay. These are the hypertext links given to you by the affiliate program that differentiates you from generic traffic at large. Unless you send someone through an affiliate link, you don't get paid.

Affiliate Program: An agreement with a given company that has this sort of program to advertise and promote their products in exchange for payment, usually as a commission per sale. You do this at your own expense, although the programs themselves are free to join. I have heard of those that require payment to join, but I strongly recommend against them, as there are plenty of good programs you can join for free.

Commission: This is how you get paid by all affiliate marketing programs. It's not a salary or a fee, and taxes are not deducted and thus your problem to track. Commissions are usually expressed in percent, although some are given in dollars per sale.

Conversion: The percentage of people you send to an affiliate site that buy. 1% is the industry average. Getting conversions is the name of the game in affiliate marketing.

Creative: The collective reference given by some programs to the sum total of all their advertising stuff, like ad gif's, testimonials, product photos, and copy text.

Pay Per Click: You get paid anytime someone clicks on a link from your site. The biggest example of a program that does this is Google AdSense, which gives you Pay Per Click ads to put your site and pays you every time someone clicks on it. Miva ARX and Yahoo! also have ad programs that work this way.

Pay Per Lead: This one is not common but very handy. When you send someone to a site and they sign up for a free trial, e-mail list or sales call, it's called a lead. Some companies pay you to give them leads, which is good for you, because you are getting paid to give a potential customer something for free.

Pay Per Sale: The most common ways to get paid in affiliate programs. When you send someone to a site and they buy a product, eBook, download, or membership, you get paid a percentage of the gross on it.

Super Affiliate: An affiliate marketer in the top 5% of all affilate marketers. These are the ones that make 80% of all the commissions in affiliate marketing and the aspiration of all affiliate marketers looking to get rich doing this.

Two-Tier Program: An affiliate program that pays you for your sales and those of anyone you recruit. For all intents and purposes, if you recruit and train your second tier, they will make you money.

Some programs are also multi-tier, which means you get paid on downline several tiers beneath you or more.

These will get you started with your affiliate marketing understanding.

Ryan Ambrose is the webmaster for Financial Self-Reliance, a web site about ways to actually make money with your computer. The Affiliate Marketing Section can be viewed directly from here. Copyright 2006 Ryan Ambrose