NEWBIE - BEGINNER: Acronym Soup

A lot of newbs have no idea what all the acronyms related to CPA and internet marketing mean. Lets try and name as many as we can here.

I will give a few to start out...

CPA - Cost per Action/Acquisition
CPL - Cost per Lead
CPS - Cost per Sale
ROI - Return on Investment
CTR - Click Through Rate
CPM - Cost per 1000 impressions
CPC - Cost Per Click
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SEP - Search Engine Positioning
CR - Conversion Rate
SERP - Search Engine Results Page


EDIT: A FEW PEOPLE HAVE ASKED ME WHAT THE ACTUAL DEFINITIONS ARE. I WIL GIVE SOME DEFINITIONS OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD TO HELP YOU GET THE GIST!!!

CPA - Cost per Action/Acquisition

I am assuming most people know what this means. It means you will get paid if somebody clicks on your affiliate link and fulfills a prescribed action. This could be filling in their name nd email address or it can be filling out a questionnaire, or it can be signing up for a free trial. CPA is my favorite acronym haha.

CPL - Cost per Lead

This is sort of the same thing as CPA. Essentially you are getting paid for giving leads to an advertiser. Many people use this term interchangably.

CPS - Cost per Sale

Unlike most CPA offers, cost per sale means you get paid if somebody actually purchases something from your affiliate link (not just completes an action). Normally you will get paid a given commission based on percentage of sale price. So you can earn 10% of the total sale price when somebody purchases after visiting your affiliate link. This is the basis of traditional affiliate marketing.

ROI - Return on Investment

This is one of, if not the, most useful metrics for your business. This is the basis of profit. If you spend $100 on advertising and you earn $110 in commission revenue, that means your return on investment was 10%. If you are using free methods of CPA promotion your ROI will theorectically be infinite percent because you didnt spend anything. (assuming no domain, your time is free, hosting). In general, the higher the return the better.

CTR - Click Through Rate

This is essnetially how "good" your ad is. If 10 people see your ad and 3 actually click on it, then your clickthrough rate will be 3/10 or 30%. Depending on your offer your ctr may be extremely high or very low.

CPM - Cost per 1000 impressions

If you are buying media traffic, a common way to purchase is to by impressions. So you will pay say $1 for 1000 impressions then your cpm is $1.

CPC - Cost Per Click

For paid traffic like ppc, this willbe how much you are paying everytime somebody cilcks on your ad. If you are paying $2 for every time somebody clicks on your ad, then your cpc is $2.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

This is the concept of making your web page or web site "friendly" to search engines. This is great because it will allow you to rank higher when somebody searches for keywords on your site. The higher you rank, the closer you show up on the results page of a search engine, and the more organic traffic you will get. Organic traffic is free! You also want to optimize your pages if you are doing ppc to achieve a higher qulity score and lower cpc.

SEP - Search Engine Positioning

When somebody searches for a term, the different web sites show up for the search query. This is the 'positioning' of these pages.

CR - Conversion Rate

This is the number of people who fulfill your CPA action compared to the number of people who click on your affilaite link or visit your page. If 10 people visit your page and 2 fulfill your action, then your conversion rate was 2/10 or 20%.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page

Similar to SEP

PPC - Pay Per Click

This is when you pay for advertising on search engines. Every time somebody clicks on your ad that you create, you pay money. There are many ppc engines, the most popular being google, bing, yahoo.