When you’re new to Internet marketing, you hear a lot of terms – many of them cryptic acronyms like PPC and PLR – that are new to you. Some of them are self-explanatory, but some of them are a mystery. And just like in all the best dictionaries, some of them have multiple meanings, depending on who you ask. This is an off-the-cuff list, so add your own definitions (or words you need defined) to the comments.

Affiliate Marketing: A way of earning money online that involves matching readers with merchants. Think of it as commission sales.

Amember: A membership program management software.

Anchor Text: Anchor text refers to the word or phrase that makes up the readable part of a link. Ideally, you want your backlink to have your keyword as the anchor text.

Article Marketing: An SEO method that relies on distributing content via article directories. Each article contains a link back to your site (in the author resource box) with the keywords of your choice.

Autoresponder: Generally refers to a series of messages sent out to your mailing list, but sometimes used to refer to the system itself. For example, Aweber is an autoresponder.

Aweber: A popular mailing list management system, used by the majority of Internet marketers.

Backlinks: Part of your overall SEO plan. Backlinks are links that point to your page from someone else’s page. Backlinks have varying degrees of value, from nearly useless, to extremely useful.

Blog: A particular type of website that is designed to be updated frequently, and is organized by date, with the most recent posts appearing at the top of the page.

Blogger: Another popular blogging platform.

Bounce Rate: Refers to the percentage of visitors to your site who leave without clicking past the front page. In general, the lower the bounce rate, the better.

Clickbank: An affiliate management center for information marketers. Affiliate marketers can search the database to find ebooks, software, or videos to promote. Most products pay 50% commission or more.

Conversions: The percent of visitors to a page who performed a particular action, such as clicking a link or buying a product.

CTR: Click Through Rate. The percent of visitors to a page who clicked a link.

Digg: Another social bookmarking site. This one tends to attract more news-worthy posts.

Ebook: An information product delivered electronically, usually in PDF format.

Ecourse: A type of content delivered in small segments. Ecourses are usually loaded into an autoresponder and delivered over a specified time period.

Facebook: One of the largest social networking sites on the Internet.

Fixed Term Membership: This is a paid program, similar to a membership site, but which has a defined end.

Forum Marketing: A particular method of marketing that involves promoting your product on niche forums. Most forums frown on this, and will ban you quickly. A better use of forums is for backlinks.

Guest Blogging: Writing a post on someone else’s blog. A very effective method of getting valuable backlinks.

Information Marketing: Selling information products online.

Information Product: Usually an ebook, but might be any form of content including video, audio, or physical books.

Internet Marketing: This is kind of a catch-all term for making money online. It could be affiliate marketing, information marketing, or even marketing your brick and mortar business online.

JV: Joint Venture. When two or more marketers get together to create a product or offer a service to their readers.

Keyword or Keyphrase: This is the word or phrase that someone might type into a search engine to find the information you are offering.

Membership Site: A type of website for which members pay a fee for access.

Opt-In Page: An opt-in page is designed to collect email addresses for the purpose of building a list. The most effective opt-in pages have only one active link: the submit button.

PayPal: The preferred method of sending and receiving money online. Service providers, information marketers, affiliate marketers, coaches, and others can all use PayPal to invoice their clients, pay their affiliates, and get paid by partners.

PLR: Private Label Rights. This is content you buy with the express permission to change it as you see fit, and to add your name as the author. Generally, you can do anything you like with PLR except sell it as PLR.

PlugIn: A small bit of code that adds functionality to an existing program, like WordPress.

PPC: Pay Per Click. A form of advertising in which you (the marketer) buy ads based on keyword searches. You pay a certain amount every time someone clicks your ad and lands on your page.

Publisher: Anyone who owns a website and publishes content.

Sales Page: Similar to an Opt-In page, but much longer, and designed to get the reader to buy.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization. The process of optimizing your web page for a particular keyword, so that the search engines find your page instead of your competitor’s.

SERPs: Search Engine Results Pages. The list of relevant pages returned by a search engine when the user searches on a keyword. Your goal as a marketer is to be on the first page of the SERPs, preferably in the top three.

Shopping Cart: Software that allows you to sell digital or physical product directly from your site, without using a third-party processor like PayPal or ClickBank.

Squeeze Page: Another name for Opt-In page.

Stats: Statistics. A variety of analytical data related to your website, including number of visitors, bounce rate, referring sites, keywords, and average time on site.

StumbleUpon: One of many social bookmarking sites. You can “stumble” pages that you like, and other Stumblers who share your interests will be shown the page as they use StumbleUpon’s toolbar to discover the Internet. One way of driving traffic to your site is to Stumble your own pages, but use caution. It’s easy to get banned for spamming if you Stumble too much of your own stuff.

Twitter: Another social networking site. This one is based on sending small notes, or Tweets, about what you’re doing, reading, watching, or selling.

Unique Visitors: Number of unique visitors to your site in a given time period. Unlike page views or hits, unique visitors counts the actual number of people who were on your site.

Warrior Forum: The largest and longest-surviving forum dedicated to learning everything there is to know about Internet marketing.

WordPress: The most popular blogging platform. WordPress is open source, free, and easy to use. Most hosting providers offer super easy installs, and the plethora of free themes, plugins, and WordPress experts makes it a great choice for newbies. Not to be confused with WordPress.com.