Affiliate marketing and affiliate marketing programs are so popular online that is resulted in massive expansion on this market. This post is published with the aim to bring some structure into what types of programs are on the market.
The most basic split of affiliate marketing programs is between two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP, also known as pay-per-sale, or pay-per-action).
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is an affiliate scheme when the merchant pays the affiliate whenever someone clicks through the merchant’s banner or text ads or link. The affiliate gets paid even if the visitor (referred by this affiliate) does not purchase anything from the merchant’s site.
• Pay Per Performance (PPP)
PPP scheme is the one when the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever the referred visitor makes a specific action – buys something, subscribes to the newsletter, etc.
Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types of schemes: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).
• Pay Per Sale (PPS)
In a PPS scheme the merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor actually buys something from the merchant’s site. In this scheme affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although a fixed fee can be offered as well.
• Pay Per Lead (PPL)
In the PPL scheme the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor referred to the merchant’s site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company. Affiliate is is paid a fixed fee.
Another factor to classify affiliate marketing programs is the depth of the affiliate network and here we have – single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels (also called tiers) in the affiliate network.
This means that in a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid only for the people whom they have recruited personally to the product or service.
In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is paid for the people recruited personally and also for the people recruited by the people that this affiliate brought personally into the program.
With multi-tier the approach is the same as with two-tier, with the only difference that the number of levels is deeper 
And one more factor used for the classification of the affiliate marketing programs – residual income.
In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate is getting not only a one time reward, but also this affiliate is paid whenever the referred customer returns to the site and purchases another product. Or whenever that customer pays for the monthly fee on the service.
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