This topic has been debated here and elsewhere a lot already, but here's a few things to consider:
1) For the majority of traffic affiliates bring, the customer will spend the bulk of his total amount in the first 2 weeks of hitting the site.
2) AWE converts as well as any program out there.
3) The 30% base percentage is as high or higher than any of the major sites out there.
4) If you hit $1000 in gross sales in a 2-week period you get a 5% bonus. If you hit $5000 in gross, a 10% bonus.
5) Every pay period (twice per month) they give out from $100 to $2500 to affiliates in a random draw.
6) The free chat (no registration) seems to do very well and removes a barrier vs. many sites which require a credit card and email to enter the free rooms.
Put it all together, and you can easily see why they have so many affiliates despite the 14-day cookie.
I'd highly recommend giving it a shot and since you can see the usernames of your conversions, spend a small bit of time calculating the avg. lifetime payout you get per customer. Add to this any bonus you receive (divided obviously among all customers equally) and I'll bet you'd be pretty happy with the numbers.
And yes, the co-brand is one of many options to re-cookie customers you convert.
