Every term you will meet running a SaaS affiliate program, defined in plain language. From attribution windows to two-tier commissions.
40 terms
The share of your roster that sent at least one click in a given month. Below roughly 20% means you have a list of signups rather than a working program, and your effort is better spent supporting existing affiliates than recruiting more.
A person or company that promotes your product in exchange for a commission on the sales they generate. Affiliates can be bloggers, YouTubers, newsletter writers, agencies or your own customers. They are paid only on results, which makes affiliate marketing a performance channel rather than an upfront advertising spend.
A URL containing a unique identifier that ties any resulting sale back to a specific affiliate, typically in the form yoursite.com/?ref=sarah. When a visitor clicks it, the identifier is stored in their browser so a later purchase can be attributed. It is the most common tracking mechanism in SaaS affiliate programs.
A public directory where affiliates browse programs looking for new offers to promote. Listing your program in a marketplace generates inbound applications, which complements the outbound recruiting that drives most early affiliate signups.
A marketplace that sits between merchants and affiliates, handling discovery, tracking and payments for many programs at once. Networks provide reach but charge override fees on top of commissions and put a third party between you and your partners. In-house programs give you direct relationships and better margins.
The dashboard where your affiliates get their links, download assets, and track clicks, conversions and pending commissions. A good portal answers the question "how much have I earned?" without anyone emailing you. Most disputes in affiliate programs are visibility problems rather than tracking problems.
The period after a click during which a conversion still counts for the affiliate. Also called the cookie window or referral period. Thirty days is the SaaS standard; longer windows suit products with long evaluation cycles and read as a more generous offer to affiliates.
An affiliate buying search ads on your brand name to intercept traffic that was already heading to you, then claiming a commission on it. It is the most expensive form of affiliate abuse in SaaS because you pay for customers you would have acquired anyway. Ban it explicitly and check your brand SERP monthly.
The total cost of acquiring one customer through a given channel. A healthy SaaS targets an LTV:CAC ratio of at least 3:1. Affiliate CAC is usually below blended CAC, because you only pay after the revenue arrives.
A payment reversed by the customer's bank after the fact, usually a disputed or fraudulent charge. Because the revenue disappears, any commission paid on it has to be reversed too — which is exactly what a holding period is designed to prevent.
The rate at which customers cancel, usually expressed monthly. Churn directly determines whether recurring commissions make sense: at 10% monthly churn the average customer lasts ten months, and a lifetime commission is worth barely more than a one-time bounty.
Recovering a commission already paid to an affiliate, after a refund or chargeback removed the underlying revenue. Clawbacks damage affiliate trust, so a properly sized holding period is almost always the better mechanism.
The amount paid to an affiliate for a sale they generated, set either as a percentage of revenue or as a fixed amount per customer. In SaaS, 20-30% recurring or 50-100% of the first month are the most common structures.
The percentage of referred visitors who become paying customers. It is often more persuasive than your commission rate when recruiting, because affiliates ultimately care about earnings per click — a 20% commission on a product converting at 4% beats 40% on one converting at 0.5%.
Attributing sales through a unique promo code rather than a link, so the code itself carries the attribution. It reaches audiences that never click — podcast listeners, video viewers, people who type your domain directly — and is immune to ad blockers and cookie restrictions. The trade-off is code leakage to coupon aggregator sites.
A model paying a fixed amount for each acquired customer, rather than a percentage of revenue. CPA suits products with complex or usage-based pricing where affiliates cannot easily predict percentage earnings, and high-ACV B2B where a flat bounty per closed deal is cleaner for both sides.
Following a customer who discovers your product on one device and purchases on another. Cookies cannot bridge two browsers, so these journeys typically go unattributed. Coupon codes are the practical workaround, because a code travels with the person rather than the browser.
Total commissions divided by total clicks sent — what an affiliate earns per visitor they send you. This is the number affiliates use to decide whether your program deserves their traffic, and the single most useful metric for judging how competitive your offer really is.
An attribution model that credits the earliest affiliate click inside the window, rather than the most recent one. It rewards discovery content — the review that first put you on a buyer's shortlist — and is occasionally used as a recruiting differentiator, at the cost of more disputes.
The time a commission stays pending before becoming payable, matched to your refund window and typically 30 days. It prevents you paying out on revenue you subsequently refund, and avoids the awkwardness of clawing money back from affiliates.
The industry-standard model, crediting the most recent affiliate click before the purchase. It is simple and universally understood, but it under-credits top-of-funnel content when a customer touches several affiliates before converting.
The total gross profit a customer generates over their entire relationship with you, calculated as ARPU multiplied by gross margin divided by monthly churn. LTV sets the ceiling on what you can afford to pay to acquire a customer, and therefore on your commission rate.
The business running the affiliate program and paying the commissions — in a SaaS context, you. Also called the advertiser or the program owner. The merchant sets the commission structure, the attribution rules and the program terms.
Predictable subscription revenue billed each month, the core growth metric for most SaaS businesses. Tracking what share of new MRR comes from affiliates is the clearest way to judge whether the channel is working.
Revenue after refunds, discounts, chargebacks and sometimes payment processing fees. Basing commissions on net rather than gross revenue protects you from paying on money you never kept — but state clearly which basis you use, because the difference is material to affiliates.
The minimum balance an affiliate must accumulate before being paid, usually $50 to $100. It keeps transaction fees proportionate, but setting it too high means small affiliates never get paid at all — a reliable way to lose them.
Paid advertising where you pay for each click regardless of whether it converts, such as Google Ads. It is the main alternative to affiliate marketing and the usual benchmark for affiliate CAC, since PPC costs are incurred upfront whether or not a sale follows.
The rules affiliates agree to when they join: what promotion methods are allowed, how attribution works, when payouts happen and what gets someone removed. Publishing clear terms before your first affiliate signs up prevents the most common disputes, particularly around brand bidding and self-referral.
Another word for an affiliate, borrowed from the era when most affiliates were website owners publishing content. The terms are used interchangeably, though "publisher" still tends to imply a content-driven affiliate rather than a customer referral.
A commission paid on every renewal, not just the first payment. It is the strongest offer in SaaS because it turns affiliate work into compounding income, giving partners a reason to keep promoting you years later. Many programs cap it at 12 months to limit long-term exposure.
A visitor or customer who arrived through an affiliate's link or coupon code. Referrals are tracked from the first click through to conversion, and a referral only becomes a commission once a payment actually clears.
Revenue generated relative to the cost of generating it. Affiliate ROI is unusually easy to calculate because the cost is almost entirely commissions on closed revenue — there is no upfront spend to amortise across campaigns that did not convert.
When someone signs up through their own affiliate link to claim the commission or discount on their own purchase. Most programs ban it in their terms and detect it automatically by matching the affiliate's account details against the referred customer's.
An affiliate recruited by another affiliate rather than directly by you. In a two-tier program, the recruiting affiliate earns a small percentage of their sub-affiliates' commissions, which turns your most enthusiastic partners into recruiters.
An extra parameter an affiliate appends to their link, such as ?ref=sarah&subid=newsletter-may, to segment their own results. It lets them see which placement, campaign or piece of content produced which conversion, without you having to issue separate links.
A tiny invisible image or script loaded on a confirmation page to record that a conversion happened. Pixels are increasingly unreliable because ad blockers and browser privacy features prevent them from firing. Server-side conversion tracking, reading the payment directly, is far more accurate.
A structure where affiliates earn an additional percentage — typically around 5% — on the commissions of affiliates they recruited. It costs a few percent of program revenue and turns your best partners into a recruiting channel, which matters when outbound recruitment is your bottleneck.
An affiliate portal branded entirely as your own product — your logo, your colours and your domain, with no visible trace of the underlying platform. It makes your program look established rather than bolted on, which matters when recruiting professional affiliates who evaluate dozens of programs.
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