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TrafficAffiliate glossary

What is Traffic?

In affiliate marketing, traffic is the raw material you turn into commissions. It is measured in visits or clicks, but what matters is quality: how many of those visitors match the offer and convert.

Traffic is usually split into organic (free visitors from search engines and social media, built with content and SEO) and paid (bought from ad networks, search ads, social ads, push or popunder platforms). Paid traffic scales quickly but costs money upfront; organic traffic is slower to build but cheaper over time.

Every offer lists which traffic sources it accepts. Sending a source the offer does not allow is one of the most common reasons why conversions are rejected.

Related terms

Traffic sources
Traffic sources are the channels an affiliate uses to send visitors to an offer, such as SEO, email, social, search ads or push.
SEO · Search engine optimization
SEO (search engine optimization) is the work of improving a website so it ranks higher in Google and other search engines and gets more free, organic traffic.
Incentivized traffic
Incentivized traffic comes from users who are rewarded, with points, coins or cash, for clicking or converting on an offer.
Advertising network
An advertising network is a platform that buys ad space from many websites and apps and sells it to advertisers, usually per impression or per click.