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.

1. Search affiliates that utilize pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers' offers (i.e., search arbitrage)
2. Comparison shopping websites and directories
3. Loyalty websites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back
4. CRM sites that offer charitable donations
5. Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions
6. Content and niche market websites, including product review sites
7. Personal websites (This type of website was the reason for the birth of affiliate marketing; however, such websites are almost reduced to complete irrelevance compared to the other types of affiliate websites.)[citation needed]
8. Weblogs and website syndication feeds
9. 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
10. Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website
11. 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
12. 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
13. Websites using adbars (e.g. Adsense) to display context-sensitive, highly-relevant ads for products on the site

source : www.wikipedia.org