Types of affiliate websites

Types of affiliate websites

Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (i.e., advertisers) and affiliate networks. There are currently no industry-wide accepted standards for the categorization. The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

• Search affiliates that utilize pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers' offers (i.e., search arbitrage)
• Comparison shopping websites and directories
• Loyalty websites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back
• CRM sites that offer charitable donations
• Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions
• Content and niche market websites, including product review sites
• Personal websites
• Weblogs and website syndication feeds
• E-mail list affiliates (i.e., owners of large opt-in -mail lists that typically employ e-mail drip marketing) and newsletter list affiliates, which are typically more content-heavy
• Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website
• Shopping directories that list merchants by categories without providing coupons, price comparisons, or other features based on information that changes frequently, thus requiring continual updates
• Cost per action networks (i.e., top-tier affiliates) that expose offers from the advertiser with which they are affiliated to their own network of affiliates
• Websites using adbars (e.g. Adsense) to display context-sensitive, highly relevant ads for products on the site
• Virtual Currency: a new type of publisher that utilizes the social media space to couple an advertiser's offer with a handout of "virtual currency" in a game or virtual platform.
• Video Blog: Video content which allows viewers to click on and purchase products related to the video's subject.
• File-Sharing: Web sites that host directories of music, movies, games and other software. Users upload content (usually in violation of copyright) to file-hosting sites, and then post descriptions of the material and their download links on directory sites. Uploaders are paid by the file-hosting sites based on the number of times their files are downloaded. The file-hosting sites sell premium download access to the files to the general public. The web sites that host the directory services sell advertising and do not host the files themselves.

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