So Many Acronyms: What do They all Mean?

By Neil Jones

As a newbie or freshmen in the Internet marketing world it can often become confusing when you hear people using strange acronyms. I know when I joined my first forum and started my first thread people on the forum began calling me the OP. OP? Huh! Who’s that? Well, I soon learnt that OP meant “opening post” or “original poster”.

In this article I am going to define all the commonly used acronyms in the IM world so as to assist you to not feel intimidated as a newbie when you hear these terms. By the way IM stands for internet marketing, but I bet you knew that one?

AM: Affiliate manager – the individual who manages and communicates with affiliates who are associated with his/her affiliate network/program.

CB: Clickbank – Affiliate Network that specializes in digital products.

CJ: Commission Junction – Affiliate network that has a host of tangible/physical products.

CPA: Cost per Action – amount paid by a program for specific action like filling out a form or entering an email address.

CPM: Cost per Thousand Impressions – the cost attributed to a 1000 impressions of an ad on a website or search engine (M is the Roman numeral for 1000).

CPC: Cost per Click – the average cost for each click on a banner or link.

CPS: Cost per Sale – amount paid to an affiliate for each sale generated.

CR: Conversion Ratio – the ratio of visitors that performed a certain action like subscribing to an email list.

CTR: Click Through Rate – the percentage of people who viewed an ad or sales letter and clicked on a relevant link.

EPC: earnings per click – (income earned from 100 clicks/100 = EPC).

IM: Instant Messaging/ Internet Marketing.

LSI: Latent Semantic Indexing – The sophisticated code used by search engines to distinguish the difference between similar terms that have different meanings.

PPA: Pay per Action – Payment made for a specific action like registering for a free trial.

PPC: Pay per Click – form advertising where an advertiser is charged each time someone clicks on the ad or link associated with the ad.

PPA: Pay per Performance – payment that is released only when meeting certain specific performance objectives.

PR: Page Rank – a number or score assigned by Google to a webpage. Higher page rank assumes authority and trust. PR could also mean press release or public relations.

PV: Page View – each time a webpage is downloaded to your monitor and viewed.

ROI: Return on Investment – Money gained or lost on an initial investment.

SE: Search Engine – Google, Yahoo and Bing are search engines.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing – involves marketing your website via PPC or organic results.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization – involves an on-page and off-page techniques that helps increase website ranking.

SERPs: Search Engine Results Page – the results generated when you search for a specific keyword.

SMM: Social Media Marketing – involves marketing your offering via platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

SMO: Social Media Optimization – optimizing advertising campaigns on social platforms.

TLD: Top Level Domain – domains like .com, .net, and .org are top level domains.

UV: Unique Visitors – a visor who visits your site for the first time.

WWW: no not the world wrestling federation but rather the “world wide web”.

The above forms a list of the acronyms that are most popular; there are certainly others in the programming sphere but a list of that size will have to be inserted into an entire dictionary.  Can you think of any other acronyms that I might have not listed here?

Author Information

Neil Jones specializes in launching ecommerce sites and is currently plying his trade as head of marketing for eMobileScan. With 18 websites based all around Europe, this company is on course to be one of Europe’s largest online retailers of Industrial handheld computers like the Datalogic Memor. Neil has been an online marketer for the past 6 years and in that time he has owned and run a range of sites all built around the ecommerce platform.

Pamil Visions PR Issues Press Release White Paper

Everything thing you need to know about press releases.

My idea of a well written press release is one featuring a smart headline, about 500 words in length, and with complete (and accurate) contact information to help make my job easier. Most importantly of all the newsworthy angle must be front and center – I cannot tell you how many times I’ve received a release that is a thinly-veiled advertorial or promotional piece. Those releases, of course, never see the light of day on my end.

Mihaela Lica

Young people get their news online which means that your press release has to find them where they're at. Social media sites are a good place to look according to a white paper issued by Pamil Visions PR.

It seems that I’m not alone with this viewpoint because a recently issued white paper from Pamil Visions PR – Press Releases Designed For Effect – examines what works and what doesn’t work with today’s news releases. Pamil Visions PR also operates the popular Everything PR news portal, both of which were founded by Mihaela Lica who is a Romanian native currently residing in Germany.

I’ve crossed paths with “Mig” many times over the past several years and was happy to get a preview copy of the white paper which was written by Mig and Phil Butler, and edited by Laura Spencer.

Seismic Shift

As expected, the white paper examines conventional press (news) releases and how they were used by traditional journalists to report news. Much promoted through the 1990s and into the early part of this century, the traditional press release had once been dominant, but that began to change in the late 1990s with Google’s birth and the subsequent shift to where many people now get their news online.

Today, the traditional press release is “dead” not necessarily buried, replaced by the social media press release which currently holds sway. That newfangled piece is still big on the news basis but it brings in additional components, most noticeably a social media angle.

Online Penetration

Thanks to the likes of Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook, savvy press release writers understand that their news may get picked up and disseminated in ways that didn’t exist a few years ago with blogs and web sites getting into the game too.

No longer do companies have much control over the news once they publish their releases – today, news is oftentimes spread online, commented by customers who share their experiences based on their opinion of a service, product or market. Those changes are part of the “new rules” shared in the white paper, with the consumer playing a far more pivotal role than ever before.

Your Copy

There is much more found in this 13-page white paper than I’m willing to share here, with detailed instructions on how to reshape your release to adhere to contemporary modes of communication. Naturally, if you want those details you can purchase your copy of the white paper on the Pamil Vision or Everything PR site, certainly a worthwhile investment for the public relations professional or corporate communications manager.

Please Note: No compensation was received by Pamil Visions for this review.