The creator economy, defined

A

• A/B testing A/B testing shows two versions of the same thing to comparable audiences at the same time, to find out which performs better.
• Above the fold Above the fold is everything visible on screen before any scrolling, a term borrowed from newspapers folded in half on a newsstand.
• Affiliate link An affiliate link is a URL carrying a unique identifier so that sales resulting from it can be attributed and commissioned.
• Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing pays a commission to someone for each sale they refer, tracked through a unique link.
• Algorithm In social media, the algorithm is the ranking system deciding which posts each person sees and in what order, based on predicted engagement.
• Alt text Alt text is the written description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and displayed when the image fails to load.
• Audience An audience is the group of people who have chosen to receive what you publish, on platforms you rent or channels you own.
• Audience segmentation Audience segmentation is splitting an audience into groups that behave differently, so each group can receive a different message.
• Average order value Average order value is the mean revenue per order, calculated as total revenue divided by number of orders.

B

• Bento grid A bento grid is a layout of tiles of different sizes arranged in a single grid, named after the compartmented Japanese lunch box.
• Bio link Bio link is the shorter name for the single clickable URL placed in a social media profile, and by extension for the page it points to.
• Booking page A booking page lets someone choose a time from your real availability and confirm it themselves, without an exchange of messages.
• Bounce rate Bounce rate is the share of visits where someone arrives, does nothing measurable, and leaves.
• Brand ambassador A brand ambassador represents a company over a sustained period, rather than in a single paid post.
• Brand deal A brand deal is a paid agreement in which a creator produces content featuring a company's product, under agreed terms of usage, exclusivity and disclosure.

C

• Call to action A call to action is the element asking the visitor to do one specific thing — usually a button — and the wording on it materially changes how many people do it.
• Carousel A carousel is a post containing several images or slides that the viewer swipes through in sequence.
• Cart abandonment Cart abandonment is when someone starts a purchase and leaves before paying.
• Chargeback A chargeback is a forced reversal of a card payment initiated by the buyer's bank rather than by the seller.
• Chatbot A chatbot is an automated conversational agent that answers common questions without a human present.
• Checkout Checkout is the sequence between deciding to buy and completing payment, and it is where the largest share of intending buyers is lost.
• Churn rate Churn rate is the share of subscribers or customers who cancel during a period, and it compounds — small monthly numbers become large annual ones.
• Click-through rate Click-through rate is the share of people who saw something and clicked it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
• Cold traffic Cold traffic is visitors who arrive without prior knowledge of you, as opposed to warm traffic from people who already follow or bought.
• Community management Community management is the ongoing work of replying, moderating and hosting conversation around an account or a group.
• Conditional logic Conditional logic makes a form or page change what it shows based on an earlier answer, so each person only sees the questions that apply to them.
• Content calendar A content calendar is the plan of what gets published where and when, usually held far enough ahead to survive a bad week.
• Content curation Content curation is selecting and presenting other people's work with your own framing, rather than producing everything yourself.
• Content pillar A content pillar is one of the few recurring themes a creator publishes on, chosen so the whole output reads as coherent.
• Conversion rate Conversion rate is the share of visitors who complete the action a page was built for, calculated as conversions divided by visitors.
• Conversion tracking Conversion tracking is the plumbing that records which visits produced the action you care about, and where those visits came from.
• Cost per acquisition Cost per acquisition is what it costs, on average, to gain one customer — total spend divided by customers acquired.
• Creator A creator is someone who publishes original content to an audience they built directly, and who typically earns from that audience rather than from an employer.
• Creator economy The creator economy is the set of businesses and tools that let individuals earn directly from an audience they built themselves, without a publisher or label in between.
• Creator marketplace A creator marketplace is a platform where brands and creators find each other for paid collaborations, with discovery, briefs and payment handled in one place.
• Cross-posting Cross-posting is publishing the same content on several platforms, either identically or adapted to each one.
• Custom domain A custom domain is a web address you own and point at a service, so the page appears under your own name rather than the provider's.
• Customer lifetime value Customer lifetime value is the total revenue one customer produces across the whole relationship, not just the first purchase.

D

• Deliverability Deliverability is whether your email reaches the inbox at all, as distinct from whether it is opened.
• Digital product A digital product is something sold and delivered as a file or online access — a template, a preset, an ebook, a course — with no physical inventory.
• Direct message A direct message is a private one-to-one message on a social platform, as opposed to a public comment or post.
• Discovery call A discovery call is a short introductory conversation used to establish whether a prospective client and a service are a fit before anything is sold.
• Drop A drop is a release made available at an announced moment, often in limited quantity or for a limited time.

E

• Email list An email list is the set of contacts who have agreed to receive email from you, and the only major audience channel a creator actually owns.
• Embed An embed is third-party content displayed inside your page — a video, a track, a post — rendered by the source platform rather than copied.
• Engagement rate Engagement rate is the share of an audience that interacted with a post — likes, comments, shares, saves — relative to followers or reach.
• Evergreen content Evergreen content stays useful long after publication, as opposed to content tied to a moment, a trend or a date.

F

• First-party data First-party data is information you collected directly from your own audience, as opposed to data bought or inferred by a third party.
• For You page The For You page is a feed of recommended content from accounts a viewer does not follow, selected by the platform.

G

• GDPR GDPR is the European regulation governing personal data, applying to anyone processing data about people in the EU regardless of where the business is.

H

• Handle A handle is the unique username identifying an account on a platform, usually written with a leading @.
• Hashtag A hashtag is a keyword prefixed with # that groups content by topic and makes it findable outside a creator's own following.
• Hook A hook is the opening moment of a piece of content — the first line or first seconds — that determines whether the rest is consumed.

I

• Impressions Impressions count how many times content was displayed, including repeat views by the same person — unlike reach, which counts people.
• Influencer An influencer is a person whose audience trusts their recommendations enough that brands pay for access to it.
• Influencer marketing Influencer marketing is a brand paying creators to reach their audiences, instead of buying that attention directly through advertising.

L

• Landing page A landing page is a page built to receive traffic from a specific source and drive one specific action, measured by its conversion rate.
• Lead A lead is a person who has given you a way to contact them, and has therefore shown some level of interest.
• Lead capture Lead capture is collecting a visitor's contact details so you can reach them later, usually through a short form offering something in return.
• Lead magnet A lead magnet is something valuable given away free in exchange for an email address, used to convert an anonymous visitor into a contactable one.
• Link in bio A link in bio is a single web page that collects all the links a creator wants to share, used because most social platforms allow only one clickable URL in a profile.
• Link sticker A link sticker is the tappable element that makes a URL clickable inside a social media story.
• Live shopping Live shopping is selling during a live broadcast, with products purchasable while the stream is running.
• Live streaming Live streaming is broadcasting video in real time, with the audience able to react and ask questions as it happens.

M

• Media kit A media kit is a short document a creator sends to brands summarising audience, performance and past collaborations, used to open and price a deal.
• Merch Merch is physical branded product sold to an audience — clothing, prints, accessories — usually as much a token of belonging as a purchase.
• Micro-influencer A micro-influencer is a creator with a small but highly engaged audience, usually placed somewhere between 1,000 and 100,000 followers depending on who is counting.
• Micro-site A micro-site is a small standalone site of one to a few pages built around a single objective, rather than a full site meant to cover everything an organisation does.
• Monetization Monetization is turning an audience into revenue, through advertising, sponsorship, direct sales, subscriptions or services.

N

• No-show rate No-show rate is the share of booked appointments where the client does not attend and does not cancel in time.

O

• Open rate Open rate is the share of delivered emails that were opened, and since privacy protections became widespread it is a directional signal rather than a precise one.
• Opt-in An opt-in is a person's explicit agreement to receive messages from you, and under GDPR it must be given by a clear affirmative act.
• Order bump An order bump is a small optional add-on offered inside the checkout itself, accepted with a single tick.

P

• Page speed Page speed is how quickly a page becomes visible and usable, measured by metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint and Interaction to Next Paint.
• Payment processor A payment processor is the company that authorises a card payment, moves the money and pays it out to the seller.
• Payout A payout is the transfer of collected sales revenue from the payment processor to your own bank account.
• Permalink A permalink is a URL intended never to change, so that links to it keep working indefinitely.
• Product ladder A product ladder is a deliberate range of offers at increasing prices and commitment levels, letting a buyer start small and move up.

Q

• QR code A QR code is a square barcode that a phone camera reads to open a URL, used to move someone from something physical to something online.

R

• Rate card A rate card is a creator's published or shared price list for sponsored work, broken down by deliverable.
• Reach Reach is the number of distinct people who saw a piece of content at least once.
• Referral traffic Referral traffic is visits that arrive from a link on another site, as opposed to search, direct or paid traffic.
• Repurposing Repurposing is turning one piece of work into several formats — a video into clips, a newsletter into posts — rather than creating each from scratch.
• Retargeting Retargeting shows advertising to people who already interacted with you, rather than to a cold audience.
• Return on ad spend Return on ad spend is revenue divided by advertising cost, expressed as a multiple — a ROAS of 3 means three euros back for each one spent.
• Return on investment Return on investment is the profit produced by an activity relative to what it cost, expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

S

• Sales funnel A sales funnel is the sequence of steps between first discovering you and buying, named for the shape produced by losing people at each step.
• SEO SEO is the practice of making pages easier for search engines to find, understand and rank, in order to earn traffic without paying for placement.
• Shadowban Shadowban is the informal term for a platform quietly reducing an account's distribution without notifying it or removing the content.
• Short-form video Short-form video is vertical video of roughly fifteen to ninety seconds, distributed by recommendation rather than by following.
• Social commerce Social commerce is buying that happens inside a social platform, rather than on a website the platform links out to.
• Social proof Social proof is evidence that other people already chose you, used to reduce a new visitor's uncertainty.
• Sponsorship disclosure Sponsorship disclosure is stating clearly that content is paid for, which is a legal obligation in most markets and falls on the creator.
• Stories Stories are full-screen posts that disappear after twenty-four hours, shown to existing followers rather than to a recommended audience.
• Subscriber A subscriber is someone who has opted in to receive content from you on a recurring basis, by email, on a platform, or through a paid membership.

T

• Testimonial A testimonial is a customer's own account of what your product did for them, quoted with attribution.
• Thumbnail A thumbnail is the small preview image standing in for a video or link, and it decides most of whether the thing behind it is opened.
• Transaction fee A transaction fee is the amount a platform or processor keeps from each sale, quoted as a percentage, a fixed amount, or both.

U

• Upsell An upsell offers a more complete or more expensive version of what the buyer is already buying.
• User-generated content User-generated content is content made by customers or audience members rather than by the brand, and increasingly commissioned by brands in that style.
• UTM parameter A UTM parameter is a tag added to the end of a URL that tells analytics tools where a visit came from.

V

• Vanity URL A vanity URL is a short, readable, memorable web address chosen for how it reads rather than for how a system generated it.
• Verification badge A verification badge is a platform marker next to an account name, historically confirming identity and now often available by subscription.
• Virality Virality is content spreading far beyond an existing audience because viewers pass it on, rather than because it was distributed to them.

W

• Webinar A webinar is a scheduled online presentation, usually with a teaching segment followed by questions and an offer.
• Welcome sequence A welcome sequence is the automated series of emails a new subscriber receives immediately after signing up.
• Widget A widget is a self-contained block of a page that performs one function — playing a track, taking a booking, capturing an email — and can be added, moved or removed without touching the rest.