Thanks for the great info..
Just to add up, the companies that gonna pay you for all the leads or sales commonly called
Advertisers or Merchant. But just maybe there are some networks that refer them as Publisher.
Usually
Affiliate or Publisher is referring to the people who will be sending the traffics.
Anyway just to make it clear there are 3 parties involved. The Network who will act as the middle man between the Company (Advertiser/Merchant) and Sales People (Affiliate/Publisher)