Put very simply, affiliates are companies, groups and individuals who promote advertisers (merchants) through one, or many of the various forms of affiliate marketing. Affiliates strive to deliver merchants’ products or services to their users.

What differentiates types of affiliates from one another is which method of affiliate marketing they choose to adopt to reach this objective. They can be broken down into six primary affiliate types as follows:

Niche content and personal interest websites

Affiliates run websites that cater to a certain niche in the online marketplace and can be an ideal way for merchants to target users specifically interested in certain products and drive great quality traffic. Websites that would fall into this category include sites offering freebies, information on certain hobbies or topics, games and bingo websites, and retail and travel-related sites.

Niche affiliates may run newsletter activity, allowing them to push relevant users towards merchants rather than simply running merchants’ offers onsite. This significantly increases conversion rates (the number of customers that complete an action).

Loyalty and reward websites

Loyalty and reward websites build a loyal user base by marketing merchants to their users and then sharing their profits with them. They can share these profits by offering pure cash back to users or awarding them with points that can be built up to contribute towards discounted online purchases through the website or towards a central prize.

The idea is that by sharing profits with their users, these affiliates can build a ‘loyal’ database of users who are happy to make purchases online through the websites because they feel they are ‘getting something back’.

PPC and search affiliates

Pay per click (PPC) and search affiliates bid on words and phrases in search engines to help drive traffic to a merchant’s website by using the sponsored links on portals such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Miva.

As well as sponsored links on portals, affiliates are now able to use brand terms and improve merchant rankings within the natural portal listings. This is called organic search engine optimisation (SEO).

Merchants are able to choose whether they wish their products to have affiliates bidding to promote them. If they do, they must then decide whether affiliates may bid on brand terms or just generic terms. Brand term means using the actual merchant name, whereas generic term refers to using a genre or topic to bid on the product.

Email marketers

Email affiliates send stand-alone email campaigns to their users. Companies have been set-up specialising in this form of affiliate marketing and have expansive and comprehensive lists which allow merchant’s to target specific niches within their target market. Email marketers tend to be paid on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis.

Co-registration affiliates

Co-registration is a fairly new form of affiliate marketing and allows users to opt in to receive offers from third-party merchants whilst registering on a website, but only with the user’s full approval.

Registration details are passed on to the merchant who then pays the affiliate for the users details. The affiliates who run co-registration campaigns vary greatly from large portals and companies, to medium and small sized websites and companies who specialise in only co-registration.

Affiliate networks

Affiliate networks are establishing themselves as ‘top tier’ affiliates exposing merchant offers to their own networks of affiliates while also providing account management and assistance where needed. These large scale networks are often capable of providing email marketing, co-registration, PPC and classic affiliate banners and skyscrapers to be run on their affiliate’s websites.

Summary

It can be difficult to differentiate between types of affiliates. Affiliates are specialising in more and more areas and offering different types of affiliate marketing on their websites. Each type results in a different quality and quantity of leads, varying their incoming revenue streams. What remains constant is the affiliate’s aim to drive performance by bringing merchants to their users.