Vocabulary Translation

Siren uses different vocabulary than most affiliate platforms because it does more than traditional affiliate tracking. The same install can run an affiliate program, an instructor royalty program, a marketplace vendor payout, a sales team commission, and a referral bonus, all at once. That broader scope needs terms that don’t assume everyone is an “affiliate” and every action is a “referral.”

This page is a translation layer. If you’re coming from another affiliate plugin, the first table maps Siren’s terms to the ones you already know. If you’re using Siren for something that isn’t an affiliate program at all, the second table maps the same terms to whatever your team probably calls these concepts. Use whichever row makes the rest of the documentation click faster. Once a term starts to feel natural, you can drop the translation and use Siren’s vocabulary directly.

Coming from another affiliate platform

Each row is a Siren concept. The remaining columns show the closest equivalent term in other affiliate platforms. A dash means there’s no direct equivalent in that platform.

Siren term	AffiliateWP	Tapfiliate	Refersion	Post Affiliate Pro	Commission Junction	Impact
Collaborator	Affiliate	Affiliate	Affiliate / Ambassador	Affiliate	Publisher	Partner
Program	Global rate + overrides	Program	Offer	Campaign	Advertiser program	Program / Contract
Engagement	—	—	—	—	—	—
Opportunity	Visit	Click	Click / Visit	Click	Click	Click
Conversion	Referral	Conversion	Conversion / Sale	Commission	Transaction	Action
Obligation	Unpaid referral	Pending commission	Pending commission	Pending commission	Pending transaction	Pending action payout
Fulfillment	Payout batch	Payout	Payout	Payout	Advertiser invoice	Payout
Distributor	Tiered rates add-on / Leaderboard	Performance bonus	—	Performance rewards	—	Dynamic payouts
Program Group	—	—	—	Category (loosely)	—	—
Tracking ID / Alias	Affiliate slug	Affiliate ID	Affiliate code	Reference ID	SID	Partner ID
Coupon code (Coupon tracking)	Affiliate coupon	Coupon code	Coupon code	Coupon code	Promo code	Promo code
Manual attribution	Add referral manually	Manual conversion	Manual commission	Manual tracking	Event upload	Manual action
Rejected conversion	Rejected referral	Voided conversion	Cancelled	Declined	Corrected	Reversed action
Renewal conversion	Recurring Referrals add-on	Recurring	Subscription conversion	Recurring commission	—	Subscription action
Collaborator-owned product	—	—	—	—	—	—

A few things to note about the gaps:

Engagements don’t have an equivalent anywhere else because most platforms model the world as “one click leads to one sale.” Siren tracks engagements as per-program credit claims, which is what lets a single visit earn credit in multiple programs at once. The closest concept in other tools is a click, but clicks in those tools aren’t scoped to programs.

Program groups are a Siren-specific construct. Other platforms handle mutually exclusive rates by editing a single global rule or by layering per-affiliate overrides on top of a base rate. Program groups make the mutual exclusion explicit and visible in the program list.

Distributors don’t have a clean equivalent in most platforms. They’re scheduled, aggregate bonus payouts based on tracked metrics, and most affiliate tools bolt this on through a “tiered rates” or “leaderboard” add-on rather than treating it as a first-class concept.

Coming from a non-affiliate background

Siren is often used for things that aren’t affiliate programs at all. If you run a course platform, a marketplace, a SaaS business, or an internal sales team, the vocabulary below maps Siren’s terms to whatever you probably call them already.

Siren term	LMS operator	Marketplace operator	SaaS founder	Sales manager
Collaborator	Instructor	Vendor / Seller	Partner / Reseller	Sales rep
Program	Revenue share plan	Vendor payout plan	Partner program	Commission plan
Engagement	Course completion / lesson view	Product listing view / click	Lead / signup	Lead / touch
Opportunity	Enrolled student (pre-payment)	Visitor on product page	Trial user	Qualified lead
Conversion	Paid student	Sale	Paid customer	Closed deal
Obligation	Payout owed to instructor	Commission earned	Partner commission	Sales commission
Fulfillment	Monthly instructor payout	Vendor payout cycle	Partner payment run	Commission payroll
Distributor	Revenue share pool	Marketplace rewards pool	Quarterly partner bonus	Sales bonus / SPIF
Program Group	Instructor tier set	Vendor tier set	Partner tier set	Rep tier set
Coupon code	Course promo code	Vendor discount code	Signup code	Deal code

Siren doesn’t require you to memorize these mappings. They’re here so that when the docs talk about “an obligation being rejected because of a refund,” you can mentally translate it to “the commission we owed our sales rep gets voided because the deal fell through” without pausing. As you use Siren, the native terms will start feeling natural and the translation layer can drop away.

Where to go from here

Once a term clicks, read the canonical definition in the User Guide. These are the concept docs for the terms in the tables above:

• What are Programs?
• What is a Collaborator?
• What is an Engagement?
• What is an Opportunity?
• What is a Conversion?
• What are Obligations?
• What is a Fulfillment?
• What are Distributors?
• What are Program Groups?

If you’re actively migrating from AffiliateWP, the AffiliateWP migration guide has a deeper mapping with status translations and database table references.