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INB Team
February 10, 2026
If at the beginning of your work in affiliate marketing you ever felt like everyone around you was speaking a different language – know this: you’re not alone.
Chats, analytics, calls with managers, work discussions – everywhere there are abbreviations, shortcuts, and terms that no one is in a hurry to explain. Usually, the problem isn’t the niche itself or the complexity of the processes. It’s simply that many things in affiliate marketing are considered obvious. They’re rarely explained and even more rarely structured. That’s exactly why it can feel like everyone around you is “in the know,” while you somehow missed something right at the start.
To close this gap once and for all, the INB.bio team has prepared a complete glossary of terms and concepts used in affiliate marketing.
No unnecessary fluff. No formal textbook definitions. Just clear, easy-to-understand explanations and real examples.
But before we move on to specific terms, let’s first understand how affiliate marketing works in general and what nutra is.
Affiliate marketing is a collaboration model where you earn money by bringing customers to an advertiser.
The process is simple: you drive traffic → people fill out a form / make a purchase → the advertiser processes the leads → you get paid for each confirmed order.
You don’t need to manufacture a product, think about delivery, or communicate directly with customers. Your main task is to bring high-quality traffic.
Nutra is one of the most popular verticals in affiliate marketing. It includes products aimed at improving health and well-being: dietary supplements for joints, blood pressure normalization, weight loss, cardiovascular health, overall vitality, and more.
This niche is popular for a reason – people will always have a need for products that support their health. That’s why nutra is one of the most common entry points into affiliate marketing for beginners.
Below, you’ll find a glossary of the core concepts used in affiliate marketing.
You don’t need to memorize everything. It’s enough to understand what each term means and how it’s used in practice. Over time, these words will become familiar to you – just like “click” or “banner.”
You can always come back to this list whenever you forget something or hear a new term.
And now – let’s get started.
A/B testing is a method of comparing two or more versions of the same element to determine which one performs better.
In affiliate marketing, this usually involves testing creatives, copy, pre-landers, landing pages, audiences, or ad display timing. One part of the traffic sees version A, another sees version B, and decisions are made based on data rather than assumptions.
Approval is one of the core terms in affiliate marketing. Most commonly, it refers to the percentage of confirmed orders out of the total number of leads (Approval Rate).
Example:
If 20 out of 100 leads are confirmed, the approval rate is 20%.
At the same time, in everyday affiliate communication, the word “approval” is often used to mean an approved lead – a lead that has received the Approved status.
Example in context:
“Traffic is coming in, and we already have the first approvals.”
A call center is a team of operators who contact customers after a lead is submitted, confirm orders, and answer questions.
The quality of a call center’s work directly affects approval rates: even with good traffic and strong creatives, poor call center performance can significantly reduce the number of approved leads.
CR is a metric that shows the ratio of conversions to total traffic, meaning how many users who viewed the page went on to perform a desired action (submitted a lead, signed up, or moved further down the funnel).
Example:
A low CR usually indicates an issue with the creative, copy, offer, or overall trust in the product.
CPL is a metric that shows how much one lead costs you.
Example:
You spent $50 on ads, received 25 leads → CPL = $2.
It’s important to note that CPL is not only a metric, but also a traffic payment model.
In affiliate marketing, an advertiser may pay:
EPC shows how much money you earn from a single click.
Example:
100 clicks generated $30 → EPC = $0.30.
This metric helps you understand whether you can scale your ads and how much you’re actually earning.
GEO refers to the country or market you’re running ads in.
Examples of GEOs: Kenya, Pakistan, Morocco, Venezuela.
Important: each GEO has its own specifics – how people buy, how much they’re willing to pay, who they trust, what’s acceptable in advertising, and what isn’t. For example, what works in Algeria may produce no results at all in Côte d’Ivoire.
KPI stands for key performance indicators: approval rate, CR, ROI, traffic stability. These metrics are used to evaluate a partner’s performance.
A landing page is where a user submits a lead or places an order. This is where the conversion happens.
A lead is a request submitted by a user.
For example:
But it’s important to remember: a lead ≠ a sale. The person may change their mind, not answer the phone, or decline during the call.
Scaling means increasing traffic volume after a successful test.
The key rule is simple: only scale what is already stable and profitable, with clear metrics for conversion rate, approval rate, and overall performance.
In everyday affiliate communication, teams often say:
“Great results, let’s scale it.”
A pre-landing page is a page shown before the main site. It doesn’t sell directly, but instead:
Example: An article, a quiz, or an “expert tip” that leads the user to the landing page. A pre-lander helps increase approval rates and reduce drop-offs.
ROI is a metric that shows whether you made or lost money. Simply put, it measures how profitable your investment was.
ROI formula:
ROI = (Revenue − Costs) / Costs × 100%
Example:
You spent $100 and earned $150.
(150 − 100) / 100 × 100% = 50% ROI.
A positive ROI means profit. A negative ROI means the campaign is losing money.
A test is the practical validation of an idea. You can test:
In nutra, testing is constant because markets and audiences are always changing.
Traffic refers to the people you bring to the site. They click on ads and land on the product page.
Traffic can be:
What matters most isn’t quantity, but quality: are these real people who are actually willing to buy?
Fraud refers to low-quality or fake traffic: bots, fake leads, or people who submit forms for a reward.
Fraud drains budgets and damages relationships with advertisers.
An API is a way for different services to “talk” to each other and exchange data.
In affiliate marketing, APIs are used to pass statistics between affiliate networks, trackers, analytics systems, and CRMs–for example, so clicks, leads, and payouts are automatically pulled into a single system.
A domain is a website address on the internet, for example: example.com.
In affiliate marketing, the domain is the foundation for landing pages, pre-landers, and branded pages. The domain often affects user trust and ad stability.
A hyperlink is a page element that takes you to another page or website when clicked.
Most navigation happens through hyperlinks, and they are also the basis for click tracking and conversion tracking in affiliate marketing.
Alexa Rank is a website popularity metric based on estimated traffic. It gives a general sense of a site’s size and reach, although it is not a precise metric.
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. For Google, it is a trust signal: if other sites link to you, your site looks useful and authoritative.
A content farm is a site or network of sites that publishes a large volume of low-quality content purely for traffic. These sites usually lose rankings and search engine trust quickly.
Domain authority is a conditional metric of trust in a website overall. It is shaped by content quality, the number and quality of external links, domain history, and user behavior.
Duplicate content is identical or very similar text on different pages or websites. Search engines dislike duplicates because it is hard for them to decide which page to show in results. In nutra SEO, it is important to create unique content for each project.
Internal links are links between pages on the same website. They help users navigate between materials and help search engines understand site structure and distribute SEO value.
Keyword research is the process of finding real queries people type into Google. SEO starts here.
Example: instead of writing “a unique joint remedy,” you see that people search for “what to do when your knees hurt,” and you create content for a real query that brings traffic.
This is the ratio of keywords to the total length of the text. Too high a density looks unnatural and can hurt SEO, so it’s important to use keywords organically rather than forcing them into every sentence.
Link building is the process of getting external links to your website from other resources. In nutra SEO, it is one of the key growth factors, but it works only when the links are high quality. A few links from relevant sites are better than dozens from questionable ones.
“Link juice” is the SEO value or “trust” that one page passes to another through a link. Put simply: if an authoritative, high-quality resource links to your site, it “shares” its reputation, and Google sees your page as more reliable.
Example: a link from an article on a popular medical blog is more valuable than a dozen links from unknown or questionable sites. That’s why link quality matters more than quantity.
A meta description is a short snippet under the title in search results that explains what the page is about. It does not directly boost rankings, but it strongly affects clicks. If the description is clear and useful, people are more likely to click.
Example: “Learn why your knees hurt after 50 and how to support mobility in everyday life.”
Meta tags are technical page elements that help search engines understand the page content. They pass information about the topic, language, and content type. Users don’t see them, but without them it is harder for search engines to process and display pages correctly.
A meta title is the main page title for search engines. It is the first thing a user sees in search results. It must clearly match the user’s query and immediately explain what the page is about.
Example: “Knee Pain After 50: Causes and What to Do”
Off-page SEO is everything that affects a site’s rankings outside the site itself. Most often, this means external links, brand mentions, and the authority of the sites linking to you. For search engines, this is a trust signal.
This is a measure of the strength of a specific page rather than the whole site. Even on a new site, an individual page can have high authority if strong links point to it.
PageRank is an algorithm that evaluates page importance based on the number and quality of links pointing to it. Although Google no longer shows this metric publicly, the underlying principle is still used in ranking.
Reciprocal links are when two websites link to each other. This can be useful if it is logical and relevant, but mass reciprocal linking looks suspicious and can harm SEO.
A referring domain is a website that contains a backlink to your site. For SEO, what matters is not just how many referring domains you have, but also their quality and topical relevance.
These are backlinks coming from different websites rather than many links from the same resource. Search engines value source diversity more because it looks more natural.
A search term is the word or phrase a person actually types into Google. Texts, titles, and pages are optimized for these queries.
Example: someone types “knees hurt after 50.” If your page answers that query, it has a chance to appear in search and bring traffic.
SEO optimization is a set of actions aimed at making a site or a page appear better in search engines.
In affiliate marketing practice, SEO brings organic traffic–users you don’t have to pay for on every click. It’s a longer strategy, but it can deliver stable results over time.
This is work on a specific page rather than the whole site. It includes text structure, headings, loading speed, internal links, and correct keyword usage. In nutra, this is especially important for articles, pre-landers, and informational pages.
An affiliate forum is a place where affiliates share experience. People discuss offers, traffic, GEOs, and cases there. But it’s important to remember: not all information from forums is equally true, so it’s better to verify it.
An affiliate link is a unique link that is tied specifically to you. When a user clicks it, the system understands that you referred the customer and credits the result to you. Without such a link, tracking is simply impossible.
An affiliate manager is the person who helps a partner with their work. They pick offers and GEOs, explain advertising rules, and solve problems. For a beginner, this is one of the most useful contacts.
Affiliate marketing is an online marketing model where partners earn money by driving traffic to an advertiser’s product or service. In most cases, payouts are based on specific actions such as a lead, purchase, or approved order.
An affiliate program or affiliate network is a platform that acts as an intermediary between advertisers and partners. It provides access to offers, statistics, tracking, and support. For beginners, this is often the easiest way to get started in affiliate marketing.
In everyday affiliate communication, an affiliate network may also be casually referred to as a network or affiliate platform – different words, same meaning.
Affiliate software refers to systems that track clicks, leads, and payouts. They automatically record user actions and generate statistics based on which partners get paid.
In everyday affiliate communication, these systems are often casually called trackers, dashboards, or tracking platforms – different names for the same core functionality.
An IO (Insertion Order) is a legal document that defines the cooperation between an advertiser and a partner. It outlines payment terms, advertising rules, and the reasons an account may be suspended or blocked.
In everyday affiliate communication, this document is usually referred to simply as an IO. It’s important to at least review it instead of accepting it automatically, as it contains the key rules of cooperation.
Incentivized affiliates are partners who motivate users with bonuses for taking an action. This kind of traffic needs monitoring because it can reduce lead quality and approval rate.
An advertiser is a company or brand that sells a product or service. In the nutra niche, the advertiser is responsible for the product, delivery, call center, and order fulfillment, while the partner is responsible for driving traffic.
In affiliate marketing, the terms webmaster, publisher (pub), and buyer are often used interchangeably. They all refer to a partner who provides traffic to an advertiser.
The difference usually lies in the traffic source:
In practice, all these terms generally mean the same thing: a person or team that drives traffic and monetizes it.
A category is a more specific segment within a vertical.
For example, within the nutra vertical, categories may include joints, blood pressure, diabetes, or weight loss.
Categories help partners better tailor their audience targeting, offers, and creatives.
A chargeback is a situation where a payout is canceled. The reasons can vary: the customer refused the product, didn’t pick up the parcel, or the rules were violated.
A commission is the part of the advertiser’s revenue that the affiliate receives. In some models it is fixed, and in others it depends on turnover or results.
A close is the moment when an order is considered completed and credited. In nutra, this is usually the customer confirming the order through the call center.
CPA is a payment model where a partner gets paid for a specific user action. This action can be a lead, registration, purchase, or an approved order, depending on the offer.
In the nutra niche, CPA most often means payment for an approved order, not just a submitted lead.
🌿 Read more about CPA and other payout types in our article.
Payment per click. The affiliate gets paid for every click, regardless of whether there will be a result.
CPM is a payment model where advertisers pay for every 1,000 ad impressions, regardless of clicks or user actions.
This model is commonly used in media buying and content-driven projects focused on reach rather than conversions.
A model where the payout happens only for an actual sale. Often used in e-commerce.
CPV is a payment model that can mean either cost per view or, less commonly, cost per visitor, depending on the context and platform.
Both interpretations are considered narrow and niche-specific models, most often used in video advertising or specialized traffic sources.
In practice, most performance marketing strategies are still built around the more universal CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model.
Direct buy is when you purchase ads or traffic directly, without auctions or intermediaries.
For example, you negotiate a placement on a large website for a fixed price.
This is a model where an affiliate invoices the advertiser directly, without an affiliate network. This is usually how people work directly with brands or with large traffic volumes.
Invoicing is the process of issuing documents for an affiliate payout. In most affiliate networks it’s automated, so you don’t need to calculate anything manually.
LTV shows how much money one customer brings in over time. This helps you evaluate traffic not only here and now, but long-term.
A model that provides for multiple payments for different actions by a single user.
For example: registration → confirmation → purchase.
An offer is what exactly you are selling and under what terms.
Put simply: it’s product + country + payout.
Example:
The same product in Kenya is a different offer because the price, audience, and rules are different.
A payment threshold is the minimum amount you need to earn to receive a payout.
Example: if the threshold is $50, then with $49 on your balance there will be no payout. As soon as the amount reaches $50 or more, you can receive the money.
PPL is a payment model where a partner gets paid for each submitted lead.
In practice, this term is rarely used. Most affiliates and advertisers do not distinguish between PPL and CPL and simply refer to this model as CPL.
Regardless of the terminology, lead quality is critical, since not every lead results in a purchase or approval.
PPS is a payment model where a partner earns a commission for each completed sale, either as a fixed amount or a percentage of the purchase.
In practice, PPS and CPS refer to the same model. Similar to the PPL / CPL situation, PPS exists as a term but is less commonly used than CPS.
PPC is how much you pay per click. RPC is how much you earn per click.
These metrics help you understand traffic efficiency.
A payout is the amount an affiliate receives for a confirmed user action.
In nutra, a payout is most often credited after the call center approves the order.
A payout increase is a raise in the payout rate for a partner. In everyday affiliate communication, this is often called a bump.
Bumps are usually given to partners with stable approval rates, high-quality traffic, or large volumes.
RPS is revenue per sale. RS is total revenue.
These metrics help assess the financial efficiency of campaigns.
A rate is a general term for an affiliate’s reward for results.
It can be fixed or change depending on volume, traffic quality, or agreements.
RPM is a revenue metric that shows how much income is generated per 1,000 impressions.
It is used to evaluate traffic quality and monetization performance, especially in media and content-based projects.
A system where terms depend on results. The higher the volume and the better the traffic quality, the higher the payouts.
A vertical is a category or direction of products in affiliate marketing. In everyday communication, it is often referred to simply as a niche.
For example, nutra is one of the verticals. Other common verticals include finance, dating, gaming, and e-commerce.
The vertical determines the advertising approach, target audience, and rules of operation.
A fixed rate is a pre-defined payout amount for an action.
For example, $18 for a confirmed order, regardless of its value.
A campaign is a separate advertising activity with a specific goal: getting clicks, leads, or sales. Within one campaign, creatives, targeting, budgets, and GEOs are usually grouped together so it’s convenient to review stats and make decisions.
A click is the moment when a user clicks on an ad or a link. Traffic performance analysis starts with clicks.
A conversion is a specific target action by a user. In nutra, this is usually a lead or a confirmed order.
Shows what percentage of users completed the target action.
For example: 100 visitors → 5 leads = 5% conversion rate.
A creative is what a user sees in an ad: a banner, video, text, or a combination. In nutra, the creative determines whether a person stops and clicks or simply scrolls past.
The amount you are willing to spend on ads each day. Budget control helps avoid sudden overspending.
Dayparting refers to periods of audience activity. In nutra, results often change significantly depending on when ads are shown.
A deep link takes the user straight to a specific page or product rather than the homepage. This shortens the path to conversion.
This is a link that leads straight to the lead or order form without a prelander. It works well with a warm audience, but it often converts cold traffic worse.
A setting that limits how many times one user sees the same ad. It protects against audience fatigue.
Ad settings by country, region, or city. In nutra, this is critically important because offers are always tied to a specific GEO.
Gross clicks are the total number of all clicks, including repeated ones. They are used for a general understanding of traffic volume.
A hit is any request to the server: loading a page, an image, or a file. One user can generate dozens of hits in a single visit.
Impressions are the number of ad views. Even if a user didn’t click but saw the ad, that counts as one impression.
Shows how many pages a user viewed in one visit. The higher the number, the stronger the interest.
Raw clicks are all clicks recorded by the system before filtering. This can include bots or accidental clicks that are later filtered out.
A segment is a part of the audience with the same characteristics. Segmentation makes it possible to match creatives and offers more precisely.
The process of selecting an audience by age, interests, behavior, and other parameters. Traffic quality depends directly on it.
Unique clicks are clicks from different people without repeats. They show the real audience size rather than one person’s activity.
A unique user is one specific person. If they saw an ad or visited a website multiple times, they are still counted as one user in the stats.
First click is the first interaction a user has with an ad. In some attribution models, it is considered the primary one for crediting the result.
An ad exchange is a marketplace where ad inventory is bought and sold through an auction.
Affiliates or advertisers can buy impressions in real time depending on demand and price.
An ad network brings together many websites and apps where ads are placed.
It simplifies access to inventory and allows you to launch campaigns across a large number of placements at once.
Ad tech is a set of tools and systems that automate buying, serving, and analyzing ads.
It includes tracking, analytics, bid optimization, and impression management.
An advertiser is a company or brand that promotes a product or service.
In nutra, the advertiser is responsible for the product, logistics, call center, and order fulfillment, while the affiliate is responsible for the traffic. For example, INB.bio is a full-cycle direct advertiser.
An advertising agency is a company that launches and optimizes ads on behalf of an advertiser or an affiliate.
Agencies are often involved for scaling, working with large budgets, or handling complex ad systems.
Advertising software is the toolset for launching, managing, and analyzing ad campaigns.
Such systems are used by both affiliates and agencies for day-to-day ad work.
Advertising tools are platforms and services used to launch and manage ads.
They include ad accounts, trackers, analytics, and creative tools. These tools make it possible to control budgets, targeting, and campaign results.
Banner advertising is graphic ads shown on websites or in apps.
In nutra, banners are often used to attract a cold audience and test hypotheses.
Contextual advertising is shown to users based on their queries or interests.
Most often, it’s seen in search engines or on partner sites.
These are links that are organically embedded into a page’s text.
They look less intrusive and often have a higher level of trust.
A DSP is a system through which an advertiser automatically buys ads across different websites and apps.
It allows you to set targeting and participate in real-time auctions without negotiating with each site individually.
Media buying is the process of purchasing ad traffic across different platforms.
A media buyer analyzes the audience, tests creatives, manages budgets, and optimizes campaigns to generate profit.
Paid search is advertising that appears in search engine results for money.
The affiliate pays for clicks or impressions to get traffic for specific queries.
A placement is a specific place where ads are shown: a website, a page, an ad slot, or a mobile app.
Even with a good creative, the wrong placement can hurt performance, so placement choice directly affects campaign efficiency.
Premium targeting is access to a higher-quality, more solvent audience.
This traffic is usually more expensive, but it often delivers better approval and conversion rates than mass cheap traffic.
RTB is a mechanism where each ad impression is sold through an instant auction.
When a page loads, the system decides in a fraction of a second whose ad to show–the one who offered the best price and matches the targeting.
A blacklist is a list of sources, IPs, or placements from which traffic is not allowed.
It helps block problematic and low-quality traffic.
Click fraud refers to low-quality or fake clicks generated by bots or fraudulent schemes.
Such clicks waste budget and bring no real results.
A Click ID is a unique identifier assigned to each click.
It makes it possible to accurately determine which specific click led to a lead or sale and who should be credited for the result.
A click pixel is an element that records the fact of a click.
It is used to confirm transitions and synchronize data between the advertising platform and the tracker.
Cloaking is the practice of hiding the real destination page or link.
It is often used to protect offers or work with moderation, but it requires caution, as violating platform rules can lead to account bans.
Disclosure is a notice to users that content is advertising or affiliate-based.
It is important for legal transparency and compliance with platform rules.
Dynamic tracking is a tracking method where data about the user, campaign, or creative is passed automatically, without manually adding parameters.
This allows the system to accurately identify where the user came from and what worked, significantly reducing the risk of tracking errors.
A pixel is a small piece of code on a page that records a target user action, such as a lead or an order.
A pixel is considered fired when the user completes the required action and the system receives a conversion signal. This means the platform sees the result and can correctly attribute conversions and statistics.
If the pixel does not fire, the system does not know the action occurred, even if the order actually happened.
Manual approval is the review of leads by a human rather than an automated system.
In nutra, it is often used to improve approval quality and filter out fake orders.
A postback is the automatic transfer of conversion data from one system to another.
For example, an affiliate network notifies a tracker that an order has been approved. Without postbacks, accurate analytics is impossible.
Scanners are automated systems that check traffic and creatives.
Advertising platforms use them to detect violations, fraud, or prohibited content.
A tracker is a system that allows you to track the user journey from click to lead or sale.
A Sub ID is an additional parameter in a link that shows which campaign, creative, or source the user came from. Without Sub IDs, you only see overall numbers and cannot understand what exactly is working.
A whitelist is a list of verified and trusted sources from which traffic is allowed.
It is used to ensure stable performance with high-quality placements.
APK offers are promotions related to installing Android apps via APK files rather than through Google Play.
They are often used in mobile traffic and require strict compliance with platform rules.
ASVOD is a video monetization model where revenue depends on views and interaction with video content.
It is commonly used on video networks and streaming platforms where ads or user actions generate income.
DOI is a process where a user confirms a subscription twice: via a form and via an email link.
This approach increases database quality and trust levels.
E-commerce is the online sale of goods and services.
In affiliate marketing, it usually operates under CPS or PPS models, where payouts depend on actual sales.
An email subscription model where users leave their email address to receive content or offers.
It is often used to build long-term communication with an audience.
A flag is a negative marker in a system that signals issues with traffic quality or partner behavior.
It can affect trust levels and cooperation terms.
The term “in-house” is used to describe internal processes, traffic, or tools owned by a company, without involving external platforms.
An indie program is an independent affiliate program that is not part of a large network.
It often offers more flexible or customized conditions.
Lead scrubbing is the process of checking and removing fake or low-quality leads.
It directly affects the final payouts to affiliates.
A sweepstakes or lottery is a user incentive mechanism based on giveaways or random rewards.
It requires careful use due to strict platform rules.
White label is a model where a product or service is sold under a partner’s brand.
It allows you to quickly launch your own project without developing a product from scratch.
Affiliate marketing and nutra are not as complicated as they may seem at first glance. Most terms feel intimidating only until you understand what actually stands behind them.
Save this glossary and come back to it whenever something slips your mind and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Everyone once started with “So what does CR actually mean?”
If you want to move from theory to practice and work with proven offers, register on the INB.bio website to get access to the affiliate dashboard, analytics, and professional consultations from our affiliate managers.
