If you’re new to affiliate marketing or online marketing, the multitude of acronyms and abbreviations that are used can be very confusing. Understanding the many acronyms is crucial because affiliate marketing and online marketing grow bigger every day. Affiliate marketing is an online marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. To help you get up to speed quickly, here are some of the most important terms to know:
OPM – Outsourced Program Manager
This is someone who manages a merchant affiliate campaign. The outsourced program manager acts as the main point of contact in connecting merchants with networks and affiliates. Outsourcing affiliate management has become very popular because of the large amount of knowledge and time that is required to run a successful affiliate marketing campaign.
EPC – Earning per Click
The acronym EPC stands for average earnings per 100 clicks. EPC is the ultimate test to tell how well an affiliate merchant campaign is performing. Just because a campaign pays a high commission doesn’t mean it is a preferred program. A campaign with a lower paying commission but a higher EPC will actually be more appealing to affiliates. This is because the affiliate will earn money on average for each click they can generate even at a lower commission rate.
EPM – Earnings per Thousand
The acronym EPM stands for average earnings per 1,000 impressions. An impression is each single instance that the ad is viewed. The acronym is derived from the fact that “M” is the Roman numeral for 1,000. Affiliate networks use both EPC and EPM in publisher performance reports.
ROI – Return on Investment
ROI is the measure of how much profit is made after advertising and other costs have been subtracted. It is the best measure of how successful a marketing campaign is in terms of the returns on money spent.
RON – Run of Network
If you purchase RON banner advertising, your banner will be rotated among a certain number of your affiliate’s network sites with no particular targeting used. For example, a website owner may sell you 50,000 banner impressions at $2 CPM, RON. This means you will pay $100 and your banner will receive 50,000 views on the network.
ROS – Run of Site
If you purchase ROS banner advertising, your banner will be rotated among all pages of a particular website only (not multiple sites like a RON ad). This would be preferred over RON when you want to advertise on just one specific site that is targeted to your product.
USP – Unique Selling Proposition
A USP is the reason why somebody should buy from you and not your competition. What are the unique benefits that your products or services offer consumers? What it is that makes you special or different? Affiliates look for products with a USP.
These are just a few essential terms that can be confusing or difficult to understand. Master these terms and you will be well on your way to a successful start in affiliate and online marketing.
