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BasicsAffiliate glossary

What is Affiliate?

The affiliate owns the audience, not the product. That audience can be a website, an email list, a social account, a YouTube channel or paid ad campaigns.

Affiliates are also called publishers, partners or webmasters. They are not employees of the brand: they choose which offers to promote, how to promote them and how much time or ad budget to invest.

Example: a blogger reviews VPN services and links to three providers. When a reader subscribes through one of those links, the provider pays the blogger a commission.

Related terms

Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based model in which a company pays partners a commission for the sales, leads or other actions they refer.
Merchant
The merchant (or advertiser) is the company that owns the product and pays affiliates for the results they bring.
Affiliate program
An affiliate program is the set of rules, tracking links and commissions a company offers to partners who promote its products.
Affiliate link
An affiliate link is a unique tracking URL that tells the merchant which affiliate sent a visitor.