Digital Entrepreneurship Glossary

Digital Entrepreneurship (aka Digital Marketing):  In the broadest sense, a business opportunity that involves generting income online via digital transactions.  “Digital” in this context means “not physical,” therefore in a pure digital business, there is no need to purchase, store and ship physical goods.  A digital entrepreneur can therefore operate his/her business out of his/her home, coffee shop or anywhere there is an internet connection.  However, physical businesses that do sell physical goods also use digital marketing to attract customers and sell their products and services.

The three, major business activities of digital entrepreneurship are affiliate marketing which involves promoting another business’ product and earning a commission for your referrals; selling digital products such as ebooks, online courses, videos, .mp3 music, podcasts, graphics, templates, software, memberships, and monthly subscriptions to content; and generting ad revenue by allowing advertisers to place ads on one’s website/social media properties.

Affiliate Marketing Terminology

Affiliate: an individual approved by an affiliate network representing many businesses, or approved directly by an individual business’ affiliate program to promote their products and services online in return for a commission for each sale credited to the affiliate’s efforts. Also called an affiliate marketer.

Affiliate Dashboard: A user interface provided by affiliate programs or networks where affiliates can track their performance, earnings, and commissions.

Affiliate Link: A unique URL (web page address) provided to affiliates that tracks the traffic and sales they generate for a merchant.

Affiliate Network:  a business that manages the affiliate program of many other businesses. It creates a profile for each business with key information such as main products, affiliate banners and links, and sales statistics. It serves as the application portal for affiliate marketers looking for products to promote, and vets each application.

Affiliate Program:  A structured system offered by a merchant or company to manage relationships with affiliates who promote their products and services. It includes Terms of Agreement that outlines rules, conditions, restrictions and pay structure, and affiliate performance tracking.

Commission: The payment received by affiliates for generating sales or leads through their promotional efforts.

Content Marketing: Creating and sharing valuable/useful content to attract and engage a target audience with the goal of driving profitable customer action.  Includes blog articles, special reports/guides, videos, free online courses, social media posts, and podcasts.  The three ways to deliver your content to your audience are through organic search (using SEO), paid ads, and emails.

Digital Download: A file, such as music, software, or an e-book, that is available for immediate download after purchase, or as a free offer.

E-Book: A digital book that can be read on electronic devices, often used as a lead magnet or for selling.

Email Marketing: Using email to communicate with potential and existing customers to promote products, services, or content. Good email marketing software such as GetResponse and MailChimp will include, at a minimum, opt-in form generation, email list segmentation, and autoresponder creation.

EPC (Earnings per Click): A metric in affiliate marketing that shows the average amount of revenue an affiliate earns each time someone clicks on a particular product affiliate link. It doesn’t mean you get paid every click, it is an average across all affiliates for that product and is tied to the average conversion rate (#sales/#clicks), which is tied to the quality of the visitors and landing/sales page of the product.  An affiliate program’s EPC helps an affiliate decide which program to focus on.

Funnel: A series of steps or stages designed to guide potential customers from initial contact to a purchase, with affiliates playing a role in each stage. Funnels can be a mix of website opt-in forms, email solicitations via autoresponders, web sales pages, videos, SMS text messaging and even phone calls. The idea is to guide the visitor to a purchase using various forms of incentivization and marketing copy, and it mostly automated, with programmed intention triggers such as number of days after opting in or after downloading a free ebook.

Impression: A single instance of an ad being displayed on a web page viewed on a person’s browser.

Influencer Marketing: Collaborating with influential individuals on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, to promote products or services to their followers.

Keyword: a word or phrase that is typed in a search engine by individuals seeking information on something, such as best home security system. There are several, free online tools that list keywords and their monthly volume (how many times they were searched). Affiliate marketers use this information to decide what to promote, because they can see how popular it is (how many people are looking for it) and how competitive it is (how many marketers are competing for it). Then, they incorporate the keyword into their content to improve its search engine optimization (SEO). For example, they can use the keyword as the title of a YouTube video, use it several times in a blog article, and use it as a hashtag in their social media posts.

KPI (Key Performance Indicator): Metrics used to measure the effectiveness and success of marketing activities. They can include views, time on page or video, number of clicks/day, and number of purchases per month.

Landing page:  A standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign, designed to direct visitors towards a specific action, such as watching a sales video or purchasing a product or service.  Landing pages are often A/B tested (see definition below).

Lead Magnet: A free resource or incentive offered to potential customers in exchange for their contact information (name and email).

Link Cloaking: The practice of not showing the true destination URL of an affiliate link (which is a long string of random-looking characters) on your website/content by replacing it with a more appealing-looking one, or one that is less likely to be noticed by users (the display URL). When clicked, the display URL redirects the visitor to the affiliate link.

Membership Site: A website that offers exclusive content or services to subscribers who pay a recurring fee.

Merchant: The business or company that sells products or services and provides commissions to affiliates who promote their products or services.

Niche:  An industry category such as Beauty and Wellness, Gaming, Financial, Recreation Equipment, etc.  Niches have many sub-niches within them, such as the sub-category “pedicure tools” within the Beauty and Wellness niche.  The further your “drill down” into a niche, the smaller the market (less monthly searches) BUT also, the less competitive; meaning, you won’t have as many other digital marketers vyying for those buyers to compete with.

Online Course: A structured educational program delivered via the internet, often involving videos, quizzes, and interactive content. Online courses are a popular, attractive digital product sold by digital entrepreneurs since they can generate revenue indefinitely after its creation, with little to no maintenance.

Revenue Share: A compensation model where affiliates receive a percentage of the revenue generated from their referred customers.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The process of improving a website’s visibility (ranking) in search engine results pages (SERPs) through organic means; meaning, not from pay per click ads. It involves a number of on and off-page factors such as keyword density, number and quality of in-bound links, images, style of writing and so on.

Social Media Marketing: Using social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, X and Pinterest to promote products, services, or content and engage with audiences.

Software as a Service (SaaS): A software distribution model where applications are hosted by a provider and accessed by users over the internet.

Super Affiliate:  An industry term used to describe someone who drives a much higher rate of traffic and sales to a merchant’s website than an average affiliate. Super affiliates are often able to negotiate more favorable terms with the merchant, such as a higher commission rate.

Tracking Pixel: A small piece of code used to monitor and report on user actions and affiliate performance.

Webinar: An online seminar or workshop that allows for real-time interaction between the presenter and participants.

Online Advertising Terminology

In the world of online advertising, there are three (3) parties involved: the advertiser who wishes to buy ads to promote his products or services; the publisher who owns the website where the ads are displayed and gets paid for ad views; and the ad network that connects the two parties and serves the advertiser’s ads on the publisher’s website.  Publishers and advertisers can be a major website/business such as Google and Yahoo, or a digital entrepreneur like yourself!

Ad network:  A business that serves digital ads across web properties it owns or has agreements with.  Advertisers set up accounts and budget, and the ad network shows their ads.  Popular ad networks are Google Ads, FaceBook Ads, TikTok Ads, InfoLinks, Propeller and Taboola.

A/B Testing (aka Split Testing): A method of comparing two versions of a web page, ad, or email (Subject line or message) to determine which performs better (gets more opens, clicks, view time, and/or generates more sales).  A/B testing can be done manually (make changes in your website code to show Version A homepage for one week, then switch to Version B) or it can be automated, which can be easily done in Google Ads and any decent email software such as GetResonse, where the two versions being tested are shown 50:50 for the test duration you set.  The idea is to see which one performs better, and then use it permanently or run another A/B test against the “winning” version to get even better results.  Things like headline, copy, color scheme and images are common variables to test in marketing.  It is important to test only one thing at a time in split testing.

Ad Placement: The specific location on a website where an ad unit is displayed.

Ad Targeting: The process of directing ads to specific audiences based on criteria such as demographics (age, sex), interests, and behaviors.  FaceBook ads is known for having this valuable data on its users, but Google algorithms have caught up in predicting visitors’ demographic data by tracking the sites they visit or links they click that go through a Google property.

Advertiser:  a person or business that pays an ad network to show ads on the internet in order to promote his products and services.

Google Ads:  Google’s ad platform where advertisers set up paid ads for their products and services and enter settings such as campaign creation, keywords to target, maximum bid for each keyword, max spend per day, and max budget for a campaign.  The ads are shown on Google search results page and YouTube.  The platform also includes metrics to let advertiser know how well campaign is performing, and therefore the need to make adjustments.  Note, affiliate marketers can use ads as well to promote their affiliate links.

Google AdSense:  While Google Ads is where advertisers create ad campaigns to promote their products and services, Google AdSense is the platform that enables website owners to serve those ads on their website and get a percentage of what the advertiser pays Google Ads.  Once you sign up for AdSense, the platform generates code with your AdSense ID that you place on your website where you want the ads to appear.  You get paid each time the ad is shown in someone’s browser.

Publisher:  A person or business who owns the website where other people’s ads are shown, and earns revenue for each ad impression.  Publishers can be big, heavily trafficked sites such as CNN.com and they can also be digital entrepreneurs/ content creators who have niche blogs that get good traffic.  Note, some ad networks require a minimum monthly traffic for its publishers, like 5.000 unique visits/ month.

Retargeting: A form of online advertising that targets users who have previously interacted with your website or content. The website places a tracking cookie in the visitor’s browser, which serves its ads on other websites that the visitor views after leaving the website.

ROI: Return on investment, it is expressed as a percentage, calculated by (revenue attributed to an ad campaign) / total ad spend.  So if someone gets $2,500 in sales from spending $500 in ads, her ROI is 500%.

YouTube Partner Program:  YouTube’s ad revenue sharing program offered to YT content creators that allow partners to monetize their videos with ads.  In order to qualify as a YT Partner, you need to: (1) Get 1,000 subscribers with 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months, or (2) Get 1,000 subscribers with 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Terminology

Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who view an ad or sales page and take a desired (by the marketer) action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.  So, if 1,000 people saw a sales page and 20 people made a purchase, the conversion rate of that sales page is 2 percent.

CPA (Cost Per Action): An affiliate marketing model where affiliates are paid based on a specific action taken by the user, such as signing up, filling out a form or making a purchase.

CPC (Cost Per Click): in PPC advertising, CPC is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay an ad publisher for each click for a particular keyword (such as $5.00 for the keyword best dentist San Francisco). However, the ad publisher does not necessarily charge the advertiser his max bid for each click. It will usually charge the advertiser a little more than the second highest bidder’s bid.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): An advertising metric, it is the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand impressions of their ad.

CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of users who click on an ad or a link compared to the number of total users who view it (number of ad impressions). 

PPC (Pay per Click):  an online advertising model in which a business (advertiser) pays an ad publisher such as Google or Facebook to serve advertisements on their web properties (such as Google search engine site and Facebook timelines). The number of times the publisher displays the ads across its web properties is tied to the maximum bid ($) the advertiser is willing to pay for each click of a keyword-served link (from a visitor who sees the ad) and/or the total amount it is willing to pay in one ad campaign.