I have been amazed at how many small sites with new-ish affiliate programs don't seem to understand the first thing about affiliate marketing. In particular, this "we can't afford our affiliates" meme seems common.
I had one small fetish program owner tell me "we've never made any any money from our affiliates, we only have the program in order to give back to the community of our supporters." My response was, in effect, "Duuude. You must not be doing it right."
He then explained that the reason affiliates didn't make them any money was that "they are sending us sales that we would get anyway, without them."
